Re: Villainous Team Choice Pokémafia - Game Thread
Okay now I have some more time.
Here's the thing about Negrek's claim. A lot of that Oracle stuff is easy to claim retrospectively. Like, we were looking at Nira's actions with that idea that "every claim that was made was something that could have been gleaned by looking in thread and is retrospective" and Negrek's claim is kind of the same way? The first two questions Negrek (supposedly) asked of MF are pretty "safe" because they were things that could almost be expected if it wasn't a surprise bastard mafia, and plus Negrek didn't even make a mention of the information they (?) received - I mean yeah if you're oracle you're gonna want to be keeping your role a secret, but look at this:
Negrek said:
Given 2-4 scum players out of the remaining six, we'd have at least a 33% chance of hitting a scum player even if we randlynched.
This is from Day 3, after Negrek had presumably already asked MF about number of factions and number of scum-aligned players - assuming Negrek is telling the truth. I'm not sure why, then, they would choose to obfuscate things with "2-4 scum players" when it would have been easier to just go "I think we can assume that, in a game this size, there are three scum players" and people would probably agree without having a reason to think they gleaned this from a night action - in other words, it's not suspicious. But
if Negrek made up the night action retrospectively it makes a shitload more sense that of course they wouldn't have "known" there were three Mafia aligned players back then.
Further - and here's the rub - Negrek was the last one to claim. Even Nira who flipped Mafia claimed before Negrek did. This makes it real easy to say "oh yeah I'm the Oracle" because nobody else had claimed it.
Of course... that's not a role you (general you) really want to go around claiming because of the fact that it paints a target on your back. So, yeah, I get that being the last to claim is likely because of that reason if really innocent. But it's also a convenient excuse: "I was last to claim because I was Oracle" - really, "I was last to claim because I was Mafia scouting the other claims and oh, Oracle would be
counter-intuitive to claim, so that's a reason why I'm innocent." But like,
choosing Oracle to claim justifies the late claim and so therefore is a good claim for the Mafia to choose because of that. Does that make sense? It makes sense in my head.
Anyway, it's also really easy to fabricate claims with that in mind. ILS isn't lying about his role, and the fact that many of us have been pulled into the Secret Cabal confirms that. Further, it seems unlikely to me that such a role would be Mafia, and I think that was generally accepted. So, if the Oracle uses a "safe" role to claim as innocent, then that means they can basically get away with calling any other role, whatever alignment they want it to be, because they're already "trusted" due to claiming ILS as innocent. The idea, I imagine, is that a
Mafia member posing as Oracle wouldn't have a reason to specifically name a certain player as
innocent but it could totally be done for the sake of trust? Then if you even go so far as to say both Jack and ILS are innocent, one of those players is pretty much known to be innocent, while the other was under suspicion from multiple other players. Claiming Oracle and using ILS' safe role as a cover allows Negrek to protect both themselves and Jack by claiming Jack is innocent - since ILS is innocent then Negrek must be by extension, and if Negrek is innocent then that means they're likely telling the truth because an
innocent fabricating the Oracle role would be ... pretty dumb, and therefore by extension again Jack must be innocent.
So I'm pretty sure this is all an elaborate set-up, a back-formation made by Negrek to gain trust and protect themselves and Jack in one fell swoop. If you want proof, consider the fact Butterfree pointed out - Negrek didn't die last night, and it was not a no-kill night, so unless Flora has something she wants to share with the class about her vig role or Jack confesses to having swapped Kratos and Negrek (assuming Jack is innocent, which may be unlikely if Negrek is Mafia) then that means the mafia
didn't target Negrek, and honestly I can't see a reason why that would be the case.
As for myself... I'm
in ILS' chat with Negrek. You'd think I'd have even more reason to kill them if I was the mafia considering they were openly suspicious of me there,
and then made a cryptic claim that indicated they might be able to see the alignments of players, somehow (not until this morning did we get confirmation of the exact details).
Of course, we have to keep this in mind: If I'm lynched today, I'll flip innocent. That would
immediately put a target on Negrek's back for obvious reasons, and the most likely outcome of that is that tomorrow Negrek has a strong chance of being lynched. Then the question obviously becomes "why would the Mafia fabricate all this shit for the sake of getting
one innocent player lynched"... and I don't know enough about how Negrek's mind works to answer that question. I don't know enough about how the Mafia roles work to answer that question, either. Maybe there's some secret power the Mafia has access to such that "ensuring" an Innocent lynch (or hell, maybe
me getting lynched, not that I have any idea why it'd be me specifically) today by way of this fabrication about my role is enough to set something up for success in the future - as opposed to just letting the cards fall where they fall and "hoping" that neither Negrek nor whoever is the third Mafia is (maybe it's Jack or maybe that was a second red herring) suspected of Mafiadom during the day phase today. Does that make any sort of sense?
Actually wait I just considered something. There are most likely 5 innocent and 2 Mafia players remaining in the game (even if not part of the Oracle role, 3 does seem like a reasonable number). MF's games tend to go such that if 50% of remaining players are Mafia, the Mafia wins, right? If Negrek is gunning for my lynch, I could see the game proceeding like this:
-I'm lynched. I'm innocent (4 innocent/2 Mafia remaining).
-Innocent is nightkilled (3 innocent/2 Mafia remaining).
-Negrek is lynched because of the reasons described above (3 Innocent/1 Mafia remaining).
-Innocent is nightkilled (2 Innocent/1 Mafia remaining).
Now, here's where I think Negrek is going with this. I said earlier that I wasn't sure why Negrek would claim me as Mafia because once I'm lynched and flip innocent, this obviously means Negrek has to be Mafia and "why would you waste your life over 1 innocent's" - well, here's what I think is the answer. I kind of implied earlier that Negrek might be using the Oracle cover as a way to make us trust them because of the ILS claim, and the idea would be that Negrek could protect themselves
and Jack. I even said it's likely that Jack is mafia if Negrek is. Well, if/when Negrek flips Mafia, suspicion would likely fall on Jack because of all the reasons I've described,
plus the fact that people were suspecting Jack anyway. When the game is down to 2 innocents and 1 mafia... I suspect that Jack will one of the
Innocents, the other innocent is probably ILS, and this means the last Mafia member is the 3rd player - but the idea is that ILS and the last Mafia member will be suspecting Jack because of the suspicious-by-proxy stuff, Jack gets lynched, Mafia wins.
So I think Oracle might be a convenient claim that's being used to set up a far-reaching plan utilizing the way people tend to act in Mafia games and psychology to all but "guarantee" the win. I'm simply the first one on the chopping block because I have the ability to prevent the night kill going through, even if I end up dying because of it... and because Butterfree was already suspicious of me, I'd imagine, helps to cement that decision.
I said in my last post that Negrek could be self-aligned or an innocent that has it out for me. There is a possibility Negrek is an activated alien from an earlier no-kill night (since I don't have any way of confirming if my heals worked) who is utilizing this oracle claim to get lynched for all the same reasons I've discussed, and that's definitely a possibility to keep in mind - and the whole reason I'm not voting for Negrek immediately yet. I think the Innocent-but-lying claim is a lot less likely than I initially thought, though, enough to be discounted.
But the fact of the matter is that I'm not Mafia and I'm pretty sure - no,
very sure - this is just an elaborate set-up. I can't prove it any more than I've already tried to, though... if I end up getting lynched, so be it. I've said my piece, I suppose, and there isn't any more I can do. I just hope I've prevented a convincing argument, because if not, like I said I can easily see this game proceeding right into the Mafia's hands.
