Andrew Laurent

This. This is what I've been saying all along. I think the most talkative (Vincent, Jean, Daniel, Aiden) are town and the scum are sitting back quietly hiding. And I severely question Alex's vanilla claim. I can't fathom that being true - unless his role is actually scum Godfather. In which case he'd almost HAVE to claim vanilla and beg for trust like he's been doing. A godfather investigates as town, but has no other ability. So he has to claim vanilla in case people tracked him or rolecop him. I can't come up with a better explanation. Even going with an Occam's razor logic, I'd have to say that godfather is the simpler explanation than to believe that in an apparent role madeness game, 1 person is left as a vanilla. So yeah, Vote: Alex Howe Yes, tracker can be scum. But in a role madness game, a scum tracker role is useless. There's VERY little to be learned just seeing who someone visited when you already know both alignments. Scum tracker is only really useful in a normal game to try and discover who HAS a role. Likewise, scum watcher or voyeur are pretty useless. This makes me think that either Emmett is the scum killer and making up a lie about his role (which doesn't work, unless he and Vincent are scum together and making a sloppy in-thread agreement... which now that I think about it, could be accurate since they can't day-PM to coordinate claims) or he is truly town. And since I have said all along that I think Vincent is town, then I have to conclude that Emmett is as well. So for now, Emmett is in my loyal column. Yep, confirming the title of your role isn't a violation of the rules IMHO. Just like claiming blocker or vanillaizer isn't. The point of the rule is to prevent people trying to catch scum by asking them to quote the PM, since they're usually copy and pasted. The phrases used would be all the same in town PMs. Man, I really hope we don't have a deflector/bus driver/redirect to deal with. But since V won't tell us who he targeted, what if he targeted Alex? Would alex being jailed make it appear that Vincent didn't go anywhere to Emmett? I don't think it should, since it should mean that V traveled to Alex and was unsuccessful, but Emmett should still see the attempt. Or what if one of the people not yet claiming is a commuter - someone who self-protects by "leaving town" at night? That WOULD make V appear not to have done anything while he'd get an unsuccessful result. However, it'd also mean yet another defensive role for us.

To clarify, it's just like a normal blocker. Last night I tried to block Fabien and I failed, because you blocked me. Night 1 I blocked you, which is why you failed to block Peter. I'm not sure how competing blocks would be worked out by bob, but I assume he's got some method. Dunno if it's in order submitted, or coin flips, or what. There are different methods I've seen on mafiascum, but I obviously don't know which one bob is using for this game. Like, if you and I blocked each other tonight, how would that work? We couldn't BOTH be successful. I don't know who's block would go though.

As has already been clarified by others, I blocked (or vanilaized) Fred on night 1. I chose him because he'd been pretty middle of the road, forgettable. Seemed like a decent pick. It was day 1, there wasn't a ton to go on yet. I honestly didn't think I'd ever called you scummier, but I went through days 1 and 2 and yes, I did on day 2. I said "As a loyal soldier, if I had to pick one of the 3 to be scum, my bet would be on Vincent. However, as I've said, I think all 3 are town and so I am not voting for any of the 3 unless new reasons show up. " Key words being, if I had to vote for one of you, I'd pick Vincent. You're right, it was based on annoyance more than anything. Nope, it doesn't. I couldn't figure out what the difference was between vaniliaizer (or however the heck you spell it, it's not a real word so my dictionary red underlines it no matter how I spell it) and blocker was. I assumed it had to be that vanilaizer was a permanent effect which seemed super overpowered (which might be why isn't not a common role). So I talked to the host. In this game, there is no difference other than name. Over on mafiascum, the difference is that a vanilaizer typically affects the target the NEXT night, not the night the effect is used. That seems quite weak - there's such delay in it. So that is why it's an uncommon role. Here, bob just stole the name and used it how he wanted. Sorta like how Pirates 2 had a "commuter" that was really a rolestopper (commuter usually affects themselves, but the P2 commuter affected someone else) Every night. As I said, it's really a standard "blocker" but with a weird name.

Not at all. If you think back, I have repeatedly stated that I think you, Daniel, and Aiden are all town. Based on past experience, people fighting like the 3 of you are almost always all town. That's why I haven't voted for you and don't intend to unless something changes and gives me a solid reason to. Yesterday there was a decent wagon starting to form on Daniel, but I did not change because I don't want to lynch him. Oh, so being a productive, helpful townie (as opposed to screaming profanities at each other) is now a scum tell? And I haven't voted Alex because he has not actually claimed vanilla (I hope he's not actually vanilla, because such a claim would be basically suicide at this point). He could easily have a role like miller (but should have claimed that early on) or lover. Or for that matter, he could be a godfather.... that's technically no action, so he wouldn't want to claim an ability with no way to prove he used it or be watched and not see him go anywhere.... I can't see him being a jester since he hasn't tried to get lynched (unless it's a "get lynched after day x" variant). Could be a bomb...

Ok, yeah, I get the point of your warning. I think after Pirates 2 and how bob pretty much said he was rebooting for P3, we all came in assuming role madness, so that made your warning feel off.

Also found this gem while I was going through day 2 to get all my Jean quotes. Vincent, both yesterday and today you are warning us away from reading into Alex's vanilla claim. This feels way way off - but I don't think you'd be a bad enough scum player to defend him so blatantly. Obviously you know something you haven't shared, and that's fine, but you both do understand how this looks, right? I mean, in Pirates 2 there were no vanillas, so what's your point? Ninja'd again! Quit that Vincent! Is that really the only reason you're warning us in BOLD not to lynch Alex over a vanilla claim? Because someone got lynched for that last game so you expect the scum to have claims planned?

Here's all the times that Jean called for Joshua's lynch on day 2 (after being the first to vote for him and pushing me to do the same) This was quoting his own post above "exhorting everyone" to vote for Joshua And pushing Daniel specifically When asked why he's voting for Joshua over other people So yes, Vincent, I would say that Jean pushed hard for Joshua's lynch. He was probably the biggest factor. He saw through the noise of yesterday's fighting and locked onto a target and stuck with it. Maybe that's why the scum took him out? He was too good? Darn good question Peter. That's why I had to get some clarification... my PM and the name didn't seem to line up. My guess is just that bob gave different names to people with the same role so he could keep them straight easier in his spreadsheet or mind or however he tracks these things.

Jean and I voted for Joshua early in the day. A lot of time (and other votes) went by before you and Aiden jumpstarted the wagon on Joshua. I'm not so much taking credit for a wagon as I am just pointing out I voted for him early and kept it there. If I was a traitor surely I could have found SOME reason to move my vote to help derail the votes before Joshua got lynched. I pretty much laid my thoughts out as to the two dead, and if you'll give me a minute, I'll go grab the quotes of why I thought Jean wanted Joshua gone. It was pretty flippin' blatant. Well... this complicates things although it all lines up well. I am a town vanilaizer. Sort of - I was confused enough by the role I had to have the host clarify some things at the start. The mafiascum wiki says that vanilaizers are typically scum and permanently remove the target's ability. What I am is just a regular blocker. I prevent my target from using their ability for that one night. I don't know how bob is sorting out all the actions, but I will say night 1 I targeted Fred, which is why he was unsuccessful (he could have been jailkept or scum blocked TOO, but I only know for sure that I blocked him), and last night I was unsuccessful since he targeted me. Last night I tried to block Fabien since he's been so quiet he felt like a potential scum to me. And vincent, you don't want us discussing role madness? That's madness! Considering we have jailkeeper and dual blocker claims, not only do I suspect role madness, but I suspect a larger or more powerful scum team than normal.

Day 2 TL;DR: Jean poked at me for not having voted for Joshua on day 1, so I responded by voting for Joshua. There's some poking at each other between Jean, Vincent, Aiden, and Daniel. Then Jean calls me scummy for how I voted for Joshua and it didn't feel like a real vote. As I already admitted above, it wasn't so much a vote on Joshua as it was trying to defend myself to Jean, so I guess I failed at that. But I did succeed in starting the wagon on Joshua, so ends justify the means or something like that? My vote reasoning may not have been the best, but it turned out great. And at the time, I said as such to Jean that it wasn't the most reasoned-out vote, but it was the start of day 2, so what do you expect? Jean then pushed repeatedly to get more people to vote on Joshua. He obviously thought Josh should go and fought consistently for that position. This was followed by more arguing with Daniel, Vincent, Aiden, while still pushing for the Joshua lynch.

Dang you're quick - ninja'd me while I was rereading day 1. In summary, day 1 started with Jean making giraffe jokes. I poked at him, calling him a traitor (without voting for him) for speaking french. So far all just day 1 roleplay. Then Jean voted first for Justin and later for me, saying we seemed to be saying the same things. For the record, I have no PM conversations with Jean at any time in this game. I understand that being gone for a good hunk of day 2 looks bad, but that's life at the moment. Yes, my vote for Joshua initially was petulant (good word, btw). I was more defending myself than really voting for him. But I never saw any better lynch candidate, nor did I see any reason to NOT vote for Joshua, so I left it all day. When I finally got back to the game after day 2 ended, I saw that everyone had wagoned on and he was lynched. Good riddance.

What a shock, Vincent with the first post. For a brief moment, you had 100% of the day's post count. That's not that much higher than days 1 and 2 (and yes, I'm teasing. I'm not mad) So our lynch was right, always good news to see. Catching a traitor already on day 2 is pretty good. And Jean... I feel like a hardly knew ya. But now I shall see if you had anything of note to say. My guess is the scummos picked you off just as someone quiet enough to be unlikely to have been watched/protected/etc, but we won't know till we get to read the scumboard after this adventure is over.

Way to take things horribly out of context. For the context, note that my reaction and vote on Joshua was on the first page of this day. I didn't expect him to have posted yet - most of the players hadn't. Adding in that accusation would have been weak and, well, looked scummy. My vote was to show that I'm not scum buddies with him. I'm town. He may or may not be scum. He's hardly said enough to make a judgement. At this point, he STILL hasn't shown up today so I'm quite happy leaving my vote on him along with a couple others who voted for him before and after I did. I numbered paragraphs there and deleted some parts so that I can answer clearly for you. I don't want to start another war of the walls of text. 1. So you think I'm either a smart scum or a proactive, good townie. I guess that's a compliment. I'm not sure what it'll take to prove to you that I'm a proactive townie and not a smart scum, but I'll keep on trying for however long this scum hunt takes. 2. Uh, nope, I haven't. I have had people I didn't trust PM me, and yes, sometimes then I have worked with them. 3. See above for about my vote today. 4. Why you? Well, I still think you're town. However, if I was going to lynch off one of you three, my gut would vote for you. I don't have anything specific to cite. It's just a gut feeling. Maybe it's just that your style annoys me more. 5. Alex and Fred. Who are they again? Hard to pick anyone else out against the walls of text. Seriosuly, Alex has made a whopping single post today and Fred only 3. 6. I have to say, I find it interesting that you write this whole post digging into my words, and then end with voting alongside me against Joshua. You even said just above that you're suspicious of Justin and I, yet you vote for neither of us. You voting Joshua to test me, see if I try to back away from my vote to save my scum buddy?

There are always a lot of people sitting back in these scum hunts. Some are scum, some are town just not being terribly active. With the mountains of text produced, I can understand people not wanting to wade through it all and sitting back and playing passively right now. Yes, I do think that there would be more people talking if the 3 of you shut up. So you know that what you're doing isn't helpful and yet you keep doing it? Quit responding to him! It's like when my kids are fighting. They both keep yelling because both have to prove themselves right. Instead, if one would just shut up and walk away, the other would quit yelling too (they'd probably yell a couple times trying to drag the first one back it, but they'll give up quickly). Honestly, this statement is almost scummy enough to make me change my mind. An honest townie doesn't feel the need to respond to every tiny accusation. The scum sometimes too, because they are terrified of being caught. And a scum being lynched is a much bigger deal than a townie being lynched wrongly - we've got the strength in numbers. We can afford to lose a few - or a whole bunch - along the way and still win.

I personally believe that Vincent, Daniel, and Aiden are most likely all town. This is based off of years of hunting traitors and seeing how both the town and scum behave. Virtually every time there is aggressive fighting between people, they turn out to both be town. As someone said yesterday, the scum are probably sitting back eating popcorn and just watching the fight. If I were a traitor, and assuming they're all town, then I absolutely would have killed someone like poor Remi overnight. No way would I have gone near Vincent, Daniel, or Aiden, since I'd assume lots of town abilities would be watching those 3. Way too easy to get caught. And even more so, I'd LOVE having the fight continue for days so I could keep just cruising along, not having to do much since they're sucking up all the time and energy with their walls of text for everyone to read. Now, let's take a look at the possibility that one of the 3 IS a traitor. In that case, if I were also a traitor, I would again not kill off the others, at least not yet. For the same reason - too likely for them to be watched and get caught. I'd have to take the gamble that we as a scum team could push any bandwagon to one of the others. I am NOT scum, but I have played one in a previous life. As a loyal soldier, if I had to pick one of the 3 to be scum, my bet would be on Vincent. However, as I've said, I think all 3 are town and so I am not voting for any of the 3 unless new reasons show up. I think we should ignore the 3 of them for the rest of the day - yesterday and already today they're a distraction.

You may be a first mate while I'm a simple soldier, but that doesn't mean I have potato brains. I have radishes for brains, thank you very much. You ninja'd me with posting this while I was in the middle of posting, but I want to respond so you don't accuse me of ignoring what you said. I didn't vote for Joshua for exactly the reasons I said. I could have not given any reasons, much less pointed out that I was not voting for him twice, if we're some traitorous buddies like you think. I could have not started out the whole voting if I was trying to keep attention off certain people. But since you're so concerned, let me put it this way: Vote: Joshua Levitt because I'm a loyal soldier and I don't know if he is, so let him defend himself.

Well played there. Rare to get to use emoji quite so accurately... Who said any trust has to be involved? In past searches for traitors, I've had multi-day conversations in private with people I did not trust. Just like I can talk to people publicly who I do not trust. Heck, I don't trust you and I'm talking to you right now, right? What is this? Are you claiming to have an ability that you didn't use? An ability that was unsuccessful? That no one PM'd you overnight? What?

Hey, put the 8 on the 9 over there.

Robin, not going to replace that vote with anyone else? We've only got a couple hours...

This is nuts. We've got 3 people doing 75% of the posting, and somehow none of them have more than 1 vote. Our votes are spread amongst almost a dozen different people. Personally, I'd be ok with a lynch on Vincent or Daniel to reduce the yelling, but from experience, I'm 99% sure both are town. I'm pretty sure that every time I've ever seen a duo fight like this, it's turned out both are town. Scum try to stay out of being noticed, and the more you say, the more people have to justify a vote against you (not necessarily "catching you in a lie," but come on, how often do lynches (especially early in the game) turn out to be people bandwagoning on and just desperately finding things to justify their votes? As I'm posting, we've got less than 7 hours left. I don't see things turning around, unfortunately. My preference on a lynch would be either Alex (where my vote currently lies) or Fred. They both jumped quickly onto Robin after his vote against the missing crewmember. While I agree that Robin's vote was poorly cast under the circumstances, I don't like the way those two copied each other and very much look like they're scum trying to get a bandwagon kicked off. Of the two, I think Fred is more likely to be scummo, but that's just a gut feel. No coin toss involved

Um, yeah, I am. I'm trying to get people to lynch someone. That's what we do - we try to lynch scum. I happen to strongly believe that we need a lynch every day. Any day we fail to lynch is just a day for all the scum to survive and have a chance to pick one of us off overnight. So yes, I'm throwing votes around to see if anything will stick, because we need a day 1 lynch. And on day 1, that's how the game is played. At some point, a bandwagon will form on someone, or a lynch won't happen. If I can help start the lynch I'm going to. I disagree. Going by the sheer statistics, we will probably lynch a townie today. That sucks. But the lynch - and the voting process leading up to it - is our most valuable tool and we need to use it. And we might get lucky and get a scummo dead on day 1. If we don't lynch, then we absolutely give the scum a day/night cycle with a "free kill" since they have that ability at night. If we spend the whole day without lynching, then we also don't have any votes to look at since it's so freakin' easy for the scum to hide in a sea of random votes.

Or, you know, it's day 1 and we're not likely to have any *actual* evidence of scumminess. Hell, look at all the votes so far. Pokes, responses to pokes, and that's about it. It's day 1. Of course I'm poking at low-activity voters to encourage people to talk. That's how we find scum! I can't imagine scum buddies jumping to defend each other, so I'm actually leaning slightly townie on Aiden and Alex for this. If anything, in my experience, the scummos attack each other gently in the first day or 2.

Now, since my first poke vote got people talking.... Vote: Alex Howe Why? Let me counteth the reasons. 1. I unvoted without placing a new vote 2. Someone is already voting for Joshua, the least-talkative member of this hunt other than Michael. 3. There's a bunch of people who have only posted a couple times, and out of those, Alex was the first alphabetically. 4. And when I then looked at his sparse activity, it's been entirely first day nonsense. That seems like a scum tactic to me - post just enough to be "here" but don't risk taking any position or saying anything memorable.

Really? Seems like my poke has caused more conversation than anything else around here (except giraffes). And when I placed that vote, I hadn't seen a replacement request. Or, you know, it became Monday and we had to return to our regularly scheduled duties around the fort. And for someone griping about "useless poke votes" and the like, you sure make a lot of useless noise! Really? Mentioning a coin flip is what seems odd out of all the usual first day nonsense? I knew someone would ask why I voted for Michael over Joshua, so I was explaining my vote. dang, almost forgot: Unovte: Michael Lavole since it seems apparent he's not going to be around, and as others have mentioned, lynching an absent player isn't really the point here.

I never said pointing at the absent wasn't lazy. I openly said it's a poke. I'm trying to get people talking, such as yourself. So thanks for replying and keeping conversation going.

Oh yes, some of us probably do. But I don't want to rely on that. We need to do our job in discussing, voting, and lynching. Especially with the PM restrictions, I think whatever abilities we have will take longer to show their usefulness.