Starmen.Net

Hell, I forgot Aither was in the running too. Even in the scenario where we vote Hammer, Sariend, and Aither and all are Town, with Mafia hitting consistently (which they’re not currently known for being the best at) we’d still reach Day 9 with a majority of 3, well enough breathing room to still reach the same conclusion.

Lunch Box:

vote: PKFP

For today, it’s PKFP 100%. Let’s not forget that deybrek targeted drake twice, specifically after I protect Drake from the first kill attempt. For the 2nd attempt PKFP blocked me, but grendel and broomweed were able to keep him alive.

There’s no correlation here. Mafia rolecop was dead by this time, if Scum!Me knew you were doctor I would’ve been on you the first attempt. Blocking you was simply blind fire. If I’d have known you were doctor I wouldn’t have blocked you as, unlike cop (which I had no qualms about blocking) a town doctor also serves my goal of staying alive.

PKFP:

My only experience with the role I’ve landed was in the running own game, Cabin Fever. Now, it has been many years since CF, but at the time I included the role in an already pretty crazy game balance-wise as a fun homage to my favourite film, The Thing. I can’t speak for these Narrators, but in a 4 Dandee game I don’t see why a role like this cannot fit in, especially as I don’t think it’s as pro-Town as you seem to think. I myself, despite adopting a Town role, have caused you plenty of grief, and imagine if I’d have taken the Strongman or something instead. I imagine that would be a reloaded shot, and stealing a scum role would probably add me to the Den as well.

That’s exactly my point, though. You’re not ACTING pro-Town, but your stated role is not only more geared toward the town’s interests if you wanted to survive, but I pretty deeply struggle to believe that you went for literally the first role out there without testing the waters any further, especially when being detected by a cop as an Amnesiac is far from the worst thing that could happen. There is zero reason for you to have been that desperate. You have no reason to be roleblocking the Cop to blend in. That doesn’t help you whatsoever! And for that matter, if the Cop died? Your toast. To do what you suggest in a way worth the risk, you’d have to, oh, I don’t know… know what the night kills are going to be. Speaking of which, why assume that picking a scum role would get you into the Den? That’s a big leap, and no variation on it I looked up does anything like that.

PKFP:

That’s far more powerful than an Indie Amnesiac, who has no expectation to help the Town, becoming a cop or whatever. They couldn’t come out as a secondary Cop and gain protection from Town without putting a massive target on their head. I bet the only reason I’m still alive is because Silv thought to check me and realised I was lying on the Nurse front.

Speaking of the Nurse claim; I had no idea that would be so controversial. Granted I’ve not been playing regularly for some years, and Starmen meta especially is incredibly fluid, but in my day Nurse was a relatively common role. Again, I placed a Nurse in CF, and remember it popping up in a variety of games around that period. It felt like a relatively normal role to claim, which is why my mind jumped to it when I realised my roleblocking came with a message (and that was not in fact, a function of the Charmer variant). This is perhaps why I was on the backfoot a bit D2, as I was dealing with a variety of changing information and the incredibly strong reaction to my claim, to say the least.

On why I’d grab a role ASAP; I wasn’t afraid of a cop coming forward D2, but checking me N1 or N2 and revealing that info way down the line. I don’t think this fear was that far-fetched, as you were indeed on me Drake. Had you been a cop or rolecop instead of a tracker, and I not taken Xedic’s role (assuming that has priority) it would’ve been game over in terms of trying to assimilate. Again, the Mafia meta I came from was quite hostile to pretty much every indie, and it was my perhaps quite paranoid fear that being outed equated death. Now I see that isn’t quite the case but my bed has already been made.

Okay, I get fear of an indie-hostile meta, but did you really think it was a better scenario to have a cop detect you as a townie role that just died, AND one different from what you claimed? That cannot possibly have been more beneficial in the long run. And you absolutely could help the town from the shadows, waiting to reveal your information at a crucial moment. Any number of roles would be better for survival, and the thing that sits with me is that when you originally claimed, you absolutely did not have to, you had like 2 votes iirc. It turns out I was right that wasn’t something a Nurse would do, because you aren’t, but I still think it was a quick way of getting people off your back, a shortsighted lie you’d have to know a curious Cop would check instantly. Again, unless you already knew who the Cop was, which your roleblocking is pretty consistent with since the scum team conveniently had a Role Cop. And lying the way you did would by your own train of reasoning be game over on assimilation for you with any Cop result on you, since they’d detect a lie and you’d have to come clean as not an indie who’s been acting pro-town, but a lying one with explicitly anti-town actions for who knows what reason given the smart move as what you claim for your role is to covertly help until the time is right.

PKFP:

As to my roleblocks, I can’t claim to have been helpful to town. That wasn’t my aim after all! My aim was to assimilate, and I believe that within that context (and the context that I am something of an old-thinker into how to play a protective role), I think my choices make sense.

However, I have a proposal for you all. I’m fairly confident that our final scum is within Hammer7 and Sariend. I’m even more confident that you’d all agree that our final scum is between one of them and me. Whoever the Town is among the two will win alongside Town provided we hit scum, and if left alive to the end of the game I too will win. Seeing as we have plenty of room to spare – even if we hit execute a town today, Rake strongmans a town and scum kills a town, there’s still no way a one-member Mafia can effectively win at this point. So… In the interest of letting an Indie win alongside you all, which at this point the Socialites are unlikely to do, I propose we vote off either Sariend or Hammer7 today and strongman the other at night. If the game is still going by then, feel free to eliminate me without a second thought. Even accounting for the AFKs there’ll be enough votes to hit the 4 majority there’d be at that point. We can afford this, and I think it is easily the best outcome for everyone except scum. I obviously have a vested interest as the Indie in question, but I don’t see the downsides for Town here, even Hammer or Sariend.

Vote: Hammer7

Niiice try. It ain’t gonna happen. I thought you might try this. My plan for Hammer lets us vet him with no casualties (since if he is a Parrot, he cannot possibly be mafia, that would be beyond broken), and inactive hunting can eeeasily wait another Day or two before we would act on it. You’re awful quick to burn away the Town’s lead, and I do NOT love it. You also conveniently ignore that your innocent act of “survive to the end” is also what a one-member mafia team wants to do. So I think as far as walking with you, I’m gonna not.

No it’s very weird. My role PM explicitly said I only receive someone’s alignment but I’ve been receiving role as well, not sure why.

Oh, I checked MafiaScum, MafiaWiki, and Town of Salem, but not MafiaUniverse.

I still think we should get confirmation on Sariend, and then vote PKFP.

That’s all true, and it’s why I doubt you’re actually mafia, but something about the way you’re saying what you are reads incredibly scummy despite the fact that you’re basically cleared in my book.

Drake; a lot of your criticisms of my actions in the role assume that it was a given that the cop role also had a rolecop function built-in. This is not an assumption I had ever made and my taking of Xedic’s role accounted for the more likely presence of a standard alignment cop vs a rolecop, and certainly not a combination of the two.

I also don’t think that gutting Hammer, Sariend and Aither would be “burning through our lead” especially given the near-certainty of there being scum along the four of us (something I think we can both agree on). The game is won for Town at this point. Assuming a one-member Mafia, there’s practically no way they can win at this point, even if three more townies were to die. Why would I push for this as a scum roleblocker? There’s no self-interest there.

Rake;

Unfortunately I cannot remember how Amnesiac functioned in CF, nor do I have access to those old Role PMs at this point, which is a shame. I will say that at the time, I based a lot of my roles off the EpicMafia versions, which are now also lost to time. If anyone remembers how Amnesiac worked there, or has a way back machine, that’s probably it, minus the serial killer checks and the like. If I ever run a Mafia game again I promise to archive things better! The follies of youth.

The survivor aspect of the role is interesting though. I don’t think it’s something I’ve ever seen before, but it makes sense if they were pushing the role towards a true agnostic indie to combat the more Town-friendly nature of Socialites. I actually think it makes a lot of sense within the setup that’s unfolding before us, where we’ve already witnessed another ability copying role, a doctor, a stump. An amnesiac that openly allied themselves with Town would be given plenty of protection, and an amnesiac who sided with scum wouldn’t be at risk of night kills (assuming contact) but would be executed by town if found out. It seems like a much more dynamic and interesting version of the role vs the more traditional “absorb the wincon” and fits a lot of this game’s design quite well, even on a flavour level.

I’m quite happy to go with whoever today, we’re already at an effective checkmate with a presumed 9:1 ratio of non-scum:scum. There’s truly no reason to rush this!

Yes we’ve got about 38 hours left.

I placed my second vote on PKFP as well, so that’s four votes for her right now. Just two more which I’m sure we can get sometime tomorrow before the day ends.

And yeah I see no reason to be voting sariend right now. Out of our four hypothetical mafia members, Sariend is the least dangerous. He’s also the least likely, if you ask me. I believe we can just leave sariend inactive until the end.

Also, a message to Hammer: I might use the Strongman Dish on someone tonight, so please do not use your parrot ability on me. That might cause me to strongman myself, which would suck. Right now we really need to prove that your ability is real so I would recommend targeting someone who will both not be in danger from your ability and will see a result from it (Broomweed or Drake) since they will not be in danger even if their ability is reflected back at them. Drake would likely see who he visited, and Broomweed would investigate herself, without either of their actions being harmed since the original still goes through. I doubt you would see the same result from Lunch or Grendel, who likely wouldn’t be aware of their ability being reflected back at them. So please target either Drake or Broomweed so that we can prove the Parrot ability.

I got it!
Also I’ll change my vote quickly.
Unvote: Sariend
Vote: PKFP

Look, I’m not gonna act like I don’t get wanting me dead. You all owe me nothing and I’ve caused plenty trouble enough – but when we’re already in a defacto winstate I don’t get why we’re prioritising taking out the one person whose win condition is to survive?

Mathematically speaking the game is already solved. There’s essentially 4 candidates for final scum, only one of whom has claimed such a wincon.

In the scenario where my claim is true and you let me live today, everyone bar scum wins. In the scenario where my claim is false and you let me live today, you still win and I still lose.

There’s essentially nothing, as far as I’m aware, that Mafia can do to win from this junction. If I’m wrong on that feel free to point it out and without a good rebuttal I’ll happily vote myself but if I’m right, why are we voting me first?

Uh, we want to kill you because we think you’re mafia. You would benefit from lying about being the Amnesiac because it would keep you alive. That’s like asking how scum benefits from not being killed. You conveniently address the possibility that you’re mafia in regard to your voting patterns and how they would supposedly not make sense for scum, and then fail to address it where we are actually challenging you. You’d hammer Silv because he was going down anyway and you knew it. Don’t pretend it was really going to go any other way. And if you HADN’T voted for him by then, we’d have gone even harder for your head now.

There’s got to be only one mafiat left, but acting like you as the last mafiat would just throw in the towel is just SO facetious I can’t believe you’re willing to say it. You claim your wincon is to survive to the end. I think that is essentially true. It’s just that you happen to be mafia, I’ve given you everything you have asked for, and pointed out flaws in your approach to this role that make your claim unlikely to be true even setting aside the admittedly incautious assumption I worked with in some of my analysis that the Cop had a role-detecting element. You continue to sealion, suggesting you’ve addressed everything against you, and cleared yourself of any reason to suspect you’re not telling the truth. You have acted anti-Town this entire game despite the town having been consistently winning nearly the entire time. This is inconsistent with your supposed win condition, given it makes things more difficult for the winning side to quickly sniff out the mafia and win (especially when you roleblock the Cop, I mean, come on), letting you win also by proxy. You claimed NURSE, which would make you a mafia target real fast in response to, again, very little pressure, but endangered you from the Town side as well. You ask the wrong question. Knowing all this, what reason have you given us to continue letting you live?

It’s hard to explain away the re-direction, but I think it’s interesting that it happened on the same night that we got no confirmation of anyone getting fizzled. Let’s start with this…

In my opinion, targeting sariend seems like a really odd choice for town! PKFP to choose. Think about it this way: you’re an amnesiac turned townie, and you know you aren’t the last mafioso. You imagine that the mafioso will kill and so you want to target someone who can confirm they were fizzled, so that the town knows it’s impossible for you to be the last mafioso. But because you chose to target sariend, we cannot confirm that anyone was fizzled last night.

In other words, this is the only night we haven’t had a provable action from you. The other important thing is that this is the first night we’ve had any evidence of this redirection ability. If the re-director was acting every night, we would know by now. Plus, this isn’t just a typical re-direction, because it’s a “move all people targeting person A to targeting person B” instead of just a single person. That sort of power makes it more likely to be a one-shot ability. Who’s likely to possess a one-shot ability, particularly when they become the last person of their alignment? The final mafioso.

This is a 4.5 dandee game, remember, and it’s not out of the question for the final mafioso to “super-power” up at the end of the game, as has happened before (I’m not sure which game but I just remember it being mentioned in HG 1.5 – could anyone confirm what game that was?). This last mafioso is more likely to possess new one-shot abilities and things in order to counteract the town, perhaps exactly to prevent the strategy of the final mafioso being obvious due to the disappearance of their ability.

In addition to that, targeting abilities put on Lunch and moving them to me seems pretty random. It serves no advantage to the final mafioso except to throw confusion into the town. Nobody died from it, nothing. Which suggests the purpose was simply to make us question what we know and search for alternatives.

I think your strategy was to use this re-direction one-shot ability to make us think there must be a re-director and thus stop looking at you, since we know you’re a roleblocker. Then, you can claim to have blocked sariend, and we look at other people with unconfirmed roles instead.

Now, I can’t explain the town report from Broom, but in a 4.5 dandee game where the cop gets both alignment and role, there’s got to be some sort of error somewhere, because that’s super OP. I don’t doubt the role just cause it’s pretty clear that you’re a Roleblocker, but perhaps because of flavour reasons, you were specifically given immunity to the alignment check.

The other thing that makes me think you must be the final mafioso is that you’re the only one with an obvious mafia-type ability. Typically mafia abilities become pretty obvious as the game goes on (Silencer, Janitor, Strongman, etc.). And the slot for the investigative role that isn’t as obvious was already taken by Role Cop. What other mafia role could they possibly have? Not a Redirector, because that would have been far more obvious by now. Not a Janitor, or else we would have had cleaned bodies. What other mafia role could they possibly have? What would fit with the others? Well, the advantage a Role Cop gives is that the mafia can block harmful town roles like a doctor or a cop. In other words, a Roleblocker. A Roleblocker fits incredibly well on this team.

And if you think about it, a lot of town and mafia roles are paired for gameplay:
Doublevoter and Silencer
Telegram Concierge and Luggage Concierge
Mafia Role Cop and Townie Role Cop
Charmer and…perhaps…Roleblocker?

It only makes sense for the game balance to include roleblocking capability on both sides.

One more inconsistency – typically, I’m used to Amnesiacs needing a night to absorb their role before they can start acting. Yet, you supposedly started sending night actions the same night you absorbed Xedic’s role. That seems a bit odd. Especially if you ended up picking a mafia role. That means you could absorb the Strongman role and use it the same night you absorbed it, without even being invited into the den. Just seems a little odd to me.

Okay, that was a lot but I hope everyone understood what I was getting at.

They actually don’t. I’m not saying you didn’t do things that make sense when trying to play the part of a pretend Nurse, I’m saying the very act of claiming Nurse at all was unnecessary, ill-advised, and uniquely dangerous on every side for your purported role, and then continuing to act in an anti-town manner in the interests of pretending to be a Nurse would be beneficial to you in earnest only if you were mafia, because the town was winning and you want us to win quickly.

I’m actually not sure, that’s part of what I want to kill you to clear up actually. I have no idea what’s going on with redirected actions or whether that particular cop result was compromises

But the biggest nail in the coffin here is something I commend you on genuinely, you were very slippery about it and it wasn’t until now that I realized the problem. How exactly did you know Broomweed was the Cop? I went back and checked, all you said was you’d figured it out. But nobody else seemed to have figured that out (I know I hadn’t, though I suspected she was something important BECAUSE you kept roleblocking her.) You still targeted her, solely for the sake of authenticity to your claimed role as Nurse. But tell me, why would you do that when no eyes were on the Cop? Why do something blatantly anti-Town to “prove” your “protective abilities” on somebody nobody else seemed to know was the Cop, repeatedly, simply on what you’d have us believe was some lucky hunch?

Rake!! That is legitimately such a good theory I want to believe it myself but I promise you I have no idea whk or what is causing the redirection. you claim that I would’ve used the redirection to cause confusion since Town “knew I was the roleblocker” but that wasn’t the case!

I’ve claimed, and I hope you will believe me given that you yourself and others have corroborated that this is odd, that I wasn’t expecting the cop to have a rolecop function. If I were scum relying on a green cop report to bring my fakeclaim to roost (as opposed to an indie who was doing that teehee) why would I want to use a one-shot ability now?

You’re probably right that targeting Sariend isn’t something Town me would actually do. I’m gonna be honest I genuinely just thought of this as going on the offensive with my ability, which I saw someone suggest yesterday and decided to go along with it in the interests of blending in. I did not realise it would be this controversial at all! That is honest to god the truth.

I agree that the ability to trigger an ability the same night you receive it is Odd but everything about it seems idiosyncratic, which probably helped it earn the title Mortuary Assistant vs fitting an Amnesiac into the flavor.

I’m gonna reread in the morning on the Hammer stuff – it’s late here. Did they use their ability on me last night? I don’t recall seeing them claim that but it’s very likely I missed it.

Ooh, your analysis of the redirect is excellent too, Rake! I had been putting that off as something that we would learn more about later if PKFP somehow wasn’t the last mafiat.

Drake Inferno:

Ooh, your analysis of the redirect is excellent too, Rake! I had been putting that off as something that we would learn more about later if PKFP somehow wasn’t the last mafiat.

Genuinely is great stuff, I’m loving both of your rebuttals and responding to them is genuinely a lot of fun. Bravo!!! I don’t want this to end.

Assuming my double vote has been included in the count now we’re 1 away so nobody else vote quite yet.

Swear down on my life that I wouldn’t. All I want is to live until we catch the last Scum. I will do whatever is required to do that at this point, I am a puppet on your collective string!

Ack that should’ve been it’s own line, I need to stop midnight posting.

Unvote: Hammer7

Also, I just didn’t receive a message back from the narrator; which made me think my night action didn’t go through. I haven’t played a starmen mafia game in a year, so maybe you aren’t supposed to get a response on the success of it.

rakethelawn:

Yes we’ve got about 38 hours left.

I placed my second vote on PKFP as well, so that’s four votes for her right now. Just two more which I’m sure we can get sometime tomorrow before the day ends.

And yeah I see no reason to be voting sariend right now. Out of our four hypothetical mafia members, Sariend is the least dangerous. He’s also the least likely, if you ask me. I believe we can just leave sariend inactive until the end.

Also, a message to Hammer: I might use the Strongman Dish on someone tonight, so please do not use your parrot ability on me. That might cause me to strongman myself, which would suck. Right now we really need to prove that your ability is real so I would recommend targeting someone who will both not be in danger from your ability and will see a result from it (Broomweed or Drake) since they will not be in danger even if their ability is reflected back at them. Drake would likely see who he visited, and Broomweed would investigate herself, without either of their actions being harmed since the original still goes through. I doubt you would see the same result from Lunch or Grendel, who likely wouldn’t be aware of their ability being reflected back at them. So please target either Drake or Broomweed so that we can prove the Parrot ability.

If you’re shooting tonight we should try and coordinate so we dont both target into the same person.

Hammer7:

Also, I just didn’t receive a message back from the narrator; which made me think my night action didn’t go through. I haven’t played a starmen mafia game in a year, so maybe you aren’t supposed to get a response on the success of it.

This is totally true – what has me more convinced that PKFP didn’t fizzle is that theoretically she should have received her own fizzling message. If the OG target still goes through but it gets reflected back at them, PKFP should have self-roleblocked. But she didn’t say anything about that. So maybe your action was incompatible again, but in a different way from Deybrek’s night kill.

Oh wait, I thought the Parrot was passive and reflected things that target them, not bouncing back the action and f a target chosen by the Parrot.