TWG CLIX: Form your special exclusive groups now! - Game Thread

[Charu]

Originally Posted by Charu

..

Also, why are YOU being pushy about it? I already said I'm most likely not going to go after you at all unless a super compelling case suddenly sprouts out towards you.

[_Zenith_]

Just sick of the attitudes this game among being mad irl doesn't help me deal with the game at the moment but by tonight you should have your answer with me.

[mellonxcollie]

I've been busy today IRL, sorry if it is aggravating. I haven't forgotten about the game just haven't had time yet. I'm home for the night now tho so I'll be getting to it asap

[Precarious]

Just got home. I'm going to make dinner and then I'll focus on this for the rest of the night.

[Charu]

This is getting ridiculous...

[Precarious]

So, last night I started my rereads on Mellon, with the expectation that I'd be able to prove she's the SK. As much credence as I initially gave to the "tell post," I convinced myself based on Zenith's generally pro-town demeanor that Mellon had to be the serial killer. I read all of her posts, hoping to find something that would explicitly contradict the tell post.

Instead, I became convinced that she has to be town. Here's my logic.

This is the post in question:

Originally Posted by mellonxcollie

Oh, I misunderstood the first post. I really don't even know how

For some reason I thought it meant just investigative immune person?

And there was a chance of there not being an SK

Like: chance of there being an investigative immune person OR chance of there being 1-shot bulltetproof SK

I thought we assumed there was an SK because of the night kills.

Wow that was dumb tho eh

Either this post is sincere or it isn't. If it's sincere, Mellon can't be the SK, because the post operates under the assumption that there might not have been an SK. If she's lying, then obviously that leans toward her being the SK. Accordingly, I reread everything she wrote, paying special attention to any mentions of a serial killer. Had she said anything about an SK on day 0 (prior to the multiple nightkills), that would have basically doomed her. She didn't. In fact, Mellon mentioned the SK only once in the first three days; it appeared in a second day roster run:

Originally Posted by mellonxcollie

danceflashrevo - seems to be reaching for low-hanging fruit with push on me. Only made a post against me when pushed to by Charu, and the post felt overly forced and didn't make a strong argument.

DFR is also fairly low on the activity scale this phase but hasn't really been targeted or mentioned when low activity is brought up. Many posts are short and his posts targeting me feel a bit awkward and forced.

However last phase he posted several unique reads and seemed to have a more scum-hunting mindset. I'm really not sure about DFR. my gut says town, maybe possible SK trying to scum-hunt in the beginning and then lay low?

Thus, there is no evidence that contradicts the tell post. However, I did notice something else while rereading. Mellon explains her misunderstanding through the lens of sickness and cough medicine:

Originally Posted by mellonxcollie

OK wow. I was really fucking sick and stoned on cold/cold meds when I signed up for and started this game !!! Looking at the first post now it seems very clear, but I can't even get into that mindset I was in where I was sick. I honestly don't even know how what I thought really makes any sense now that I think about it so clearly, but I just kind of looked at the setup and accepted it as that was that

I've played games where there was a chance of SK being in the setup or not, and you never really know until you can deduce it from night kills or whatever

I don't know why I thought that in this game. the way it was typed made me think there was a chance of another role, OR if there was an SK it was a bullet-proof SK

So once there were two night kills I assumed there was probably an SK, then after the vigi was killed and two more night kills it was confirmed there was definitely an SK. I was kind of ignoring the possibility at the beginning of the game because it was harder to think about

So I've also been playing this game assuming the SK is bullet proof, which makes me question my thinking entirely

This did not come out of nowhere. Mellon mentioned the issue of illness several times in the first few days.

Originally Posted by mellonxcollie

I went back to quote it for you, but when I re-read it I realized I misread it the first time lmfao.

I still find ShadoWolfe's post odd because of just how out of nowhere it was, and I don't really follow his reasoning. but the quotes he used were legit. my bad.

I'm sick my brain is not working don't blame me

Originally Posted by mellonxcollie

I am sick and on drugs.

Originally Posted by mellonxcollie

I have played with him before. I honestly have no idea why I interpreted it that way, I realized I misinterpreted it immediately when I reread it.

It might have to do with the fact that it happened so early in the game. Nobody is usually taking anything too seriously right at the start, and I assume a lot of posts are just going to be jokes and shit posts.

I think the fact that I had a cold, was on drugs for the cold that were messing with my focus, and also smoked weed might have contributed to that misunderstanding a bit too rofl

Cool play by play posts btw, I'm digging them

Now, as a general rule, I take irl explanations at face value in these games. People get busy with real life. The thing is, it would be contemptuous to lie about certain things. While there's an expectation that anti-town players will lie about their alignment (that's the game, after all), saying that you were inactive because you were caring for your critically sick grandmother when no such thing was happening would be completely fucked up. I would be shocked if Mellon were willing to lie about real life, because her posts elsewhere suggest an appreciation for the spirit of the game.

Originally Posted by mellonxcollie

_Zenith_ - I like that he is against voting for the substituted player. This is in the spirit of the game and I like playing with nice people.

Originally Posted by mellonxcollie

I know this should sort of be a null-tell but the fact that he suggested the phase extension really makes me doubt he is a wolf. There are so many ways the wolves could have taken advantage of that situation. but he was the one to nip it right in the bud. Town could have been royally fucked yesterday, but we weren't largely thanks to Precarious' suggestion.

Honestly if he is a wolf, at least he has enough honour to play the game properly and I really respect that so good job.

What I see then is a player whose "tell post" is supported by context elsewhere. There was no mention of a serial killer on day 0, which would cast doubt on Mellon's post. There were several mentions of having a cold/using medicine, which jive with the follow up. And Mellon's overall personality does not suggest someone who would repeatedly lie about real life in order to support a big gambit-ish lie in the end game. All these factors considered, it makes sense to me that Mellon would really have misunderstood the serial killer part of the OP, and based on the context of the tell post, would suggest that she is not the serial killer.

From my perspective, then, it's Zenith by process of elimination, but obviously that'll be another post. I probably won't finish that tonight, particularly since Zenith has twice as many posts as Mellon, but I'll at least start rereading.

[Precarious]

Originally Posted by Charu

This is getting ridiculous...

Sorry for the delay, but reading everything someone wrote and then writing stuff about it takes a long time. :S

[mellonxcollie]

Zenith

First thing that stuck out to me is that this post really weirds me out:

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

Pre sounding so robotic throws me off Everytime however, didn't raeko have a mean slip last phase? Or I skimmed something about a slip and it might've not been her?

Normally if I see somebody make a potential slip, that is a BIG DEAL. It makes me completely re-analyze everything I thought about that person. At the very least, I try to analyze the post that contained the slip. “skimmed something about a slip” just seems like the exact opposite of anything I would ever do… especially to the point where he wasn’t even sure if it was me who might have slipped.

I think that humans who have a scum-hunting mindset jump on stuff like that. The fact that he did not and still hasn’t really said his opinion or questioned me about it does not look good to me. If he already knows it was not a slip because he is the SK, that would explain why it did not catch his attention more.

Another thing that struck me as odd was his basically tunneling on Xel all last phase. Although Xel did turn out to be a wolf, he would have had no way of knowing that for sure, and he didn’t really examine anyone else or consider anyone else for the lynch. It seems to me like an SK at that point in the game may have a mindset of “I don’t care who we hit as long as it’s not me!”. It seems to contrast with the way he responded to Charu in this phase when he was tunnelling on Pre. What he said to Charu seems like a town-like response, but what he did last phase contradicts that.

After re-reading all of Zenith’s posts I think I can better pinpoint why I had that feeling about him. He has a pretty aggressive and overly confident tone in most of his later posts that wasn’t there in the early game.

This seems like it could be SK-like behaviour to me because of the way the serial killer role works. In the beginning of the game, everyone is focused on finding wolves. It is very easy for the SK to blend in during this time because they are able to get in on this action and scum-hunt just the same as a human would.

But as the game progresses and night kills begin to be analyzed, vote trains begin to be analyzed, wolves start dying and people begin to turn their focus to the SK. it’s not as easy for the SK to just blend in anymore. I think an SK would feel a lot of pressure since they automatically lose if they die. They might have extra reason to be defensive when playing by themselves against everybody else.

Zenith has mentioned being busy and mad IRL in the thread, so that may contribute to why his tone changed. This is not my strongest argument, but I wanted to expand on my reasoning from yesterday.

So although he did tunnel on Xel, he did not automatically jump on Precarious even after he had expressed suspicion about him, instead urging Charu to re-analyze the entire game. I think a serial killer might have been a bit more opportunistic and tried to go for an easy target but he did not. I also liked that he did not go for Pre's last minute EOD gambit, which again I think someone who may have had reason to might have been more opportunistic and jumped on.

[mellonxcollie]

I have another post in the works about Precarious that I wanted to post now but it's not quite done yet and I have to go run some errands

This is taking me way, way longer than I expected and I am coming up with way fewer conclusions than I expected.

[AragakiAyase]

Won't be around to post vote counts until around 30 min before EOD. No votes this phase so far.

[Precarious]

Zenith is a difficult player to evaluate, because many of his posts are content-related, but short, which makes it difficult to evaluate them for pro- or anti-town leanings. This is complicated further by the fact that, especially in the early going, it should be difficult to distinguish a serial killer from town.

Zenith's first two days (he subbed in late-ish on the first day) are fairly standard: reasonable reads and comments, some interactions with various players, and a couple random context posts. He was suspicious of Haku at various times and liked Xel at first, although that would cool over the course of the game. He felt a little overdefensive in responses to Freezin in #688 and #691, but Zenith had been suspicious of Freezin to begin with so the sarcasm is somewhat understandable. He was fairly adamant about not lynching the new subs on the second day. He had some good observations generally toward the end of that day, and voted Juckter. Overall, there's nothing really striking about this period, and it's hard to read it in light of what we know now as obviously town or obviously SK (and if anything is more town).

This changed on the third day. In this post, I addressed my main concerns with his play here, but to reiterate.

Zenith made a series of posts where he discussed his suspicions in light of the end of D1/events of N1. His first post pertaining to me was:

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

Mechanically three options happened:

Stacked Kill
BP was popped on SK
BP was popped on Charu

Do you get a notification if BP gets popped? I forget and am too lazy to look it up right now but if not then rip (if it was charu for example, rip).

Gonna say this now after seeing Juckter flip wolf I'm now really looking at Precarious as Anti-Town.

The notable quote here is "after seeing Juckter flip wolf." On D1, I voted for DFR over Juckter; the Juckter wagon ended up with more votes, Juckter was lynched and flipped wolf. Given that I was particularly vocal in this game about lynching DFR, I can understand why someone would look at that and say "Prec is a wolf." After all, if I had been a wolf, it would have made sense for me to protect my teammate by promoting an alternative lynch.

But as we know, I'm not a wolf, and that wasn't what Zenith pinged me for. He twice mentioned me as anti-town or a suspect, than made this post:

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

It'd make sense of why Botchi was doing good if you want to look at this at surface level, but it isn't enough to go ahead and claim such on MML.

I'm still looking at Precarious as a likely SK candidate.

Here, his anti-town read on me is clarified as an SK read, as opposed to wolf. The problem is that there's no logical way that he could have arrived at this based on his prior posts. If I'm suspicious for not voting Juckter, it doesn't make sense to paint me an SK. An SK would be as motivated as town to lynch wolves, and would do so with the same information, not knowing any other player's alignment. Had he argued that it was just a gut read, or something in my tone, that could be explained away, but his initial anti-town read was premised explicitly on that vote, and his conclusion does not make logical sense.

Now, while that's a mistake, it's not a particularly huge one. Most people probably said something that doesn't line up logically during the game. But he pushed the suspicion FOUR TIMES in rapid succession, which would suggest that it was a priority for him. It's weird that something that seemingly important would fly apart under closer scrutiny.

At the same time, he began what seems to be a pattern of avoiding answering questions. This case I've made isn't new, although I've stated it with a little extra detail this time. But he also refused to answer question from MML (see #1805), and his answer to my case was basically to dismiss it as OMGUS (#1929) without ever addressing the structural issues it brought up.

After that bizarre third day, his play improved again (which seems to correlate with not being challenged; his ugliest moments have been under duress, although that tends to be true for everyone). He was very committed to lynching Xel on the fourth day, which happened (and Xel obviously flipped wolf). He urged restraint today, which is a good thing for town regardless of his alignment. But he once again disappeared, apparently aggravated with Charu for pestering him. Zenith throughout the game has largely been proactive about making reads and sharing opinions, which is largely a townie trait. This is in fact his best defense, since his behavior could have theoretically made him a night target for the wolves. But whenever he has been challenged, he has been unwilling to address the challenges. He brushed off Freezin, he brushed off MML, he brushed me off, and although he urged restraint today, has been absent on his explanations. Because of a game that bears many town-marks, it's hard to paint him as anti-town if he simply avoids answering pressure. And that's a definitive issue, because other players, when challenged, have at least tried to clarify. Zenith hasn't.

Now, let's look to the nightkills.

N0. Gradiant, inDheart
N1. Shado, Haku
N2. Psycho, Roundbox
N3. MML

We can thus surmise that the SK attacked either Gradiant or inD on N0, Shado on N1, Psycho or Roundbox on N2, and MML on N3.

On D1, Zenith made these two posts.

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

When I reread, two people had extremely off posts and I just dislike in general how they are playing the game (maybe biasing
On that front, because I can't read a post from them and help cringe even if it's a good one):

inDheart
Hakulyte

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

Oh I'm a fucking idiot I forgot inDheart is dead and I included him in my fucking reads lmfao

For a player who had otherwise shown great attention to detail, not knowing who had been nightkilled seems a strange lapse. However, it would distance from the kill--after all, if he wasn't even aware that inD was dead, how could he have killed him? Shado is a superficially understandable choice, but it strikes me as wasteful given that the wolves would likely target Shado. However, there had been some minor suspicion by Shado

Originally Posted by ShadoWolfe

Oh, I might just shoot Zenith to shoot Zenith, so will the real Zenith please speak up?

and given Zenith's reluctance to address suspicion, that might have made Shado an even more enticing target. Zenith felt roundbox was likely the SK target on N2,

Originally Posted by _Zenith_

SK killed roundbox imo

the same roundbox who had said:

Originally Posted by roundbox

we should all note that both zenith and mml have tried to force the narrative that Charu is not a legitimate blue

this is concerning

which again was ignored by Zenith. Somehow, he always manages to avoid answering to any challenges posed in his direction; even now, he hasn't returned for whatever end of day stuff is coming. That's stringing out the game, and that's why I think the serial killer is Zenith.

[Precarious]

Going to make dinner, should be back with a couple hours left at least.

[Charu]

First of all, your dirt on him mistaking a kill when it was still early game and was just replaced is kind of 'lol' tier

Second of all, since Zenith apparently doesn't want to win this, I'll just vote for him so we can keep the tradition of "SK always win" on FFR

[Charu]

That sound cool to you?

[Charu]

But of course that all depends if mellon comes back and makes something for you. She's saying isn't SK here, y'know

[Charu]

Zenith isn't SK here*

[_Zenith_]

Oh, I just got home

[Charu]

Welcome back

[_Zenith_]

How much time do I have?

[Charu]

I say an hour and a half.