You know, I typed this a few hours ago as a response to Crab's post but, since nothing much was happening I decided to keep it to myself until day 2 where I was hoping to get a bit more evidence for or against my theory; sticking with my kingkitty vote even though I wasn't really into it anymore.
I didn't know role calls had such a high impact - or maybe they actually don't as Crab's reaction to Makai's reveal is so completely different in tone to anything else he has posted before. Now that the game has gone completely crazy and Crab's on my ass so ridiculously hard just 2 hours before night that I don't feel safe anymore I'll just post it unaltered as I don't want to get bandwagoned out last minute without at least sharing this.
If you think this makes me look even more scummy then so be it and I don't blame you. My first posts were pretty weak and I especially focused on rushing to my own defense when, as I'm learning, as Town a better way to start the game is posting your thoughts and letting others judge them on their own merits. It's also hilariously unfortunate that I gotta get up really damn early for a new job tomorrow with all this craziness going down. I'll stick around as long as reasonably possible but whatever happens at least I'll have something exciting to read tomorrow.
I'm by no means fully satisfied with Salva's response, but he's done us the basic courtesy of letting us know how he feels about at least one other player (swamped), and his explanation seems at least plausible and consistent with how both have played so far. I'm not comfortable with my vote on him any more. I've also decided that, as we're now reaching the end of the day, it's time to use my vote more forcefully. So, first, a brief description of how I feel about players so far - note that I'll explain why I found you suspicious, but I'm not going into my townreads in too much detail so early in the game, so this is dedicated to null and scumreads.
A Human Becoming: I'm struggling to tell if this is new player jitters or not. I'm leaning somewhat towards it being so, but I can't understand how someone can have so little contribute given we've had over 10 pages of discussion at this point. There's huge amounts of material to go through, certainly enough for someone even with very limited experience to posit something.
ViviOggi: I'm not really happy with the direction ViviOggi has taken. His posts are either largely nothings, or focused on tunnelling kingkitty. There's barely any other comment on any other of the various conversation topics that have popped up so far. The exclusion to this is when Vivi decided to comment on Rest and myself earlier, but the post (#
664) is deeply non-commital. It sort of throws shade at both Rest and myself in small degrees without actually coming to any sort of genuine and definite conclusion, and doesn't seek to push either of us further.
Pau: This is more of a nullread than a scumread, but Pau has 8 posts.
Eight. That's less than Blargonaut and he's not even playing in our game. Obviously I understand real life concerns get in the way, but that has a limit, so I'm watching Pau more closely if not moved to act immediately.
Hagi: Almost exactly the same reasons as above. This level of town inactivity is deeply harmful - we can't tell if you're scum or not, which is a distraction we don't need, and if you die we don't learn anything (except that you weren't scum, which isn't useful at that point) because you didn't form any connections with other players.
VOTE: Makai
Mafia is not about PRs. The original game functions without PRs. If the PRs are critical to town's victory, it wasn't a well-designed game. The key and critical fundamental mechanic by which mafia works is giving reads. If nobody gives that, the game doesn't work. Makai is deliberately avoiding playing the game and has no good justification for this. He is either scum, or a town who is playing *actively* to the detriment of other town players. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending his Punishment.
Firstly, you are correct in saying that I've been hesitant to fully commit to my reads, the reason being that, after stupidly jumping on swamped's random bandwagon, I wanted to simply throw my thoughts out there without judging anyone too early. Being directly involved in the beginning of the kingkitty situation though I saw no other choice but to vote for him (and this was at a point where his posts weren't completely out there yet). But I have been pondering a lot over this vote, and at this point he is too all over the place for me to be comfortable sticking with it, at least for this first day. For the record, A Human Becoming still strikes me as odd but I've got something else on my mind right now.
I will now put forward a potentially dangerous theory. I am aware that my timing could make it seem like a deflection attempt, but I don't consider your opinion of me requiring that. If anyone else is suspicious of me I hope my previous explanations and upcoming argument speak for themselves.
You have been trying to establish yourself as a Hope leader type from the very beginning by aggressively poking a number of players for information, which is fair but also a rather easy thing to do. Meanwhile, throwing out meta nuggets any chance you get emphasizes your experience with the game, though for the most part I don't think they are that helpful to Hope at all. Special roles
should be neither too quiet nor too loud, but what if they're pursuing an unusual strategy or Launchpad has put a game-changing twist into the roles? Scum
should always keep a distance from each other, but what if they're exploiting this very assumption? How valuable is all this repeating of implied rules when Mafia is a highly dynamic social game where actively subverting these perceived rules can be a winning move? You say that this is typical, formulaic day 1 behavior (which is another meta post in itself), when at the same time you're constantly demanding much more from everybody else.
You did start sharing your own reads in some capacity, although exclusively going for low-hanging fruit in either the "no punishment" voters, the most inactive or the most inexperienced players, always with vague excuses for not delivering more. At first you focus entirely on Makai, then switch your vote to SalvaPot despite not being
"happy at all with Makai's response, for reasons I'm going to go into slightly later" (which you haven't). You claim having
"other priorities for the time being" but never elaborated on those, in fact after nothing but two more meta posts you're right back to Makai. Again despite being
"by no means fully satisfied with Salva's response". You don't want to go into your town reads "in too much detail so early in the game", which would be fair when you hadn't actually not given any town reads whatsoever.
This being my first real game of Mafia I may lack the sense for the bigger picture. Perhaps when you say things like "slightly later" you don't mean in a couple of hours but in one or two game days, with a reasonable plan in mind. Regardless, right now I am simply not happy with a leader who demands others to put everything on the table and then keeps all the goods to himself.
I also don't think that, assuming Crab really was Despair, playing this way would be a huge gambit of any sort. Rather, with him being known as a talkative and experienced player, nothing would make him more suspicious than either suddenly going quiet or going in too hard on other high-profile players so early on. So from what I gather this would more or less be his natural playstyle regardless of affiliation.
And now, since I didn't get any new, convincing reads from the most recent pages, I might as well throw in my vote - not in hopes of getting a majority, but rather to finally commit to a read and push you further, Crab.
VOTE: Crab
