Gym Leader Choice Pokémafia 2 - Game Thread

[bruh moment]

Spoiler: vote history

vm / jack 807
rari / negrek 852
rnp / negrek 858
rari / stryke 1080
rari / unvote 1090
bruh / tofu 1093
jack / blu 1115
ysabel / tofu 1126
tofu / ultracool 1133
ultracool / tofu 1141
jack / tofu 1157

tofu (4): bruh #1093, ysabel #1126, ultracool #1141, jack #1157
ultracool (1): tofu #1133
negrek (1): rnp #858
jack (1): vm #807*
*i think this was a joke vote?

-m

 

[Negrek]

Since we have only lost two self-aligned players and a roleblocker, I think we can reasonably assume there is both a cop and a doctor still alive right now. I can use my power on the cop, if I know who that is, to redirect any actions that target the cop onto me. The doctor, who should stay hidden, can also heal the cop, providing the cop (and, by extension, me) with a layer of protection. This combined strategy can give the cop two layers of protection, allowing them to openly share information with us to allow us to make more informed lynches. This is ultimately the cop's decision whether or not to go along with this strategy, but if they claim now and tell us their inspection results, then we can hopefully yeet correctly today.

Now before anyone shoots this down outright for it requiring the cop to claim - yes, that is the point. Follow the cop is the strategy that I believe will give us the greatest probability of a town victory. Just look at ooctvtm where the cop played a central role in scumhunting vs. any of the other games that resulted in a mafia win. I think my proposal is a good idea even if you don't trust me because all I can do is add a second layer of protection to the cop, whereas the unclaimed doctor will be protecting the cop regardless of my role.

Knowledge is the best weapon that town has at their disposal and a cop that doesn't share their results is a lot less useful to us. I'd prefer we keep the cop alive and have access to their inspection results sooner rather than later so I'd prefer if the cop were to claim so I can start protecting them. I do strongly believe that's in town's best interests but I understand the desire to stay hidden - this is, of course, entirely up to the cop whether or not to go along with this strategy.

Ah, now this is the kind of content I like to see!

Unfortunately, in a world where you might be Mafia, I think this is a super bad idea. For example, consider if the Mafia had a strongman... then all Mafia!you would have to do is not use your redirect on the claimed cop, and then the other Mafia strong-shoots them. Super simple. Or imagine that the Mafia have a watcher (maybe even Ultracool). First night they watch the claimed cop, then on the second you redirect the doctor revealed through the watch and another Mafia shoots the cop. Also no good, and there are a variety of different ways for the Mafia to take advantage, depending on the exact combination of abilities they have at their disposal. So I don't see this being a good move unless we were quite confident that you're Town.

In the case that you're Town, though, I think this is pretty solid? I was thinking it could still get messed up if there were another redirector around, but actually I think it would be fine. If there were a redirector and a strongman, then they could simply divert your redirect and shoot the cop through protection, but that's the only issue that's come to mind so far. Does anyone else see problems here? I don't think it's a good idea for the cop to claim now unless they already feel certain VM is Town, but this may be something to keep in mind if we were able to clear him, whether through cop check or otherwise.

I've been trying to think of ways to use your role and haven't come up with anything that quite satisfies me yet.

I wasn't paying much attention to the Tofu discussion earlier today, so I'll go back and take a look at that now.

 

[bruh moment]

ok and now this post is just further entrenching my Blu/Tofu w/w thoughts

i think i understand what you mean, but just in case i don't - can you talk a little more about why?
-m

feels like he is trying to lay groundwork/sow doubts in advance so that when Tofu flips, he will more easily be able to steer wagonomics discussion in an unfruitful direction (or maybe so he won't even need to steer bc others will do that for him!)

mm, i gotcha. well ... we were reading it as like, if tofu is villa -> wolves pile on to get the ML, or if tofu is scum -> she's at risk of being bussed, in part because of what i said about the voting pattern. (on the other hand, if blu/tofu are w/w, then he could be trying to scare people away from the wagon?)

i understand your blu reservations but mostly i think that i'd rather sort him with the tofu flip in mind / am reading him charitably for now
-m

 

[bruh moment]

I wasn't paying much attention to the Tofu discussion earlier today, so I'll go back and take a look at that now.

if it helps - it's been kind of scattered discussion so i'll just say that the main post we've written about it is 873, where we went over the timeline of her claim
-m

 

[Negrek]

Thank you!

 

[qenya]

So, before I say anything else: unless I missed someone, 4/5 people polled (including me) said they thought Hydreigon was softing a strong PR of some sort on D1. So in the absence of further evidence to the contrary, I think it's a reasonably safe conclusion that Hydreigon was the mafia's nightkill rather than a vig's, and therefore that Negrek is probably more likely town-aligned than not...? Not that Negrek's still the focus of discussion anyway, but.

Another quick thing: I don't think VM's plan is a good idea even if you trust him, because it relies on a doctor existing, which is not guaranteed. Consider that about half the living players have claimed their free actions, and Mr. Ultracool is the only one so far (other than arguably Negrek) whose action is normal. Tbqh, I wouldn't even take for granted that there's a cop.

Now... Having re-read most of Tofu's ISO, there are actually a couple more things that stand out to me as evidence for the Tofu/Blu w/w theory that I haven't seen anyone else mention yet. First off, her very first post contained this, which he immediately responded to:

Hey uh... Does anyone know when the times of the day and night phases end? Sorry if I missed it somewhere.

The phases end at 2am UTC! ^^

In isolation I wouldn't give that a second thought: she asked a simple question and he answered it. But it starts to become a bit more odd when they establish a pattern of call-and-response.

Not long afterwards, she presents her claim, and he immediately responds to it:

Anyway, I'll claim because I don't have a problem with people knowing, and it sounds like I wouldn't be a prime target atm:

I think mine like a one-shot ability duplicator: with my photography skills, I can choose a person to copy their action. Then, the next night or day phase (it said night or day? Are there day actions?), I will use that action. It could be useful if I know for sure who I am copying, but could also just fail if people fake roleclaim, so I'm a bit hesitant about it (especially now early game). Like I said, it's only a one-shot as well.

Just for reference in case people missed my other post: when I die, I can give two badges to someone of my choosing.

It's not me, it's you!?

That could be handy if we get inspection results on D2 or D3 :D A secondary detective! (needless to say @ anyone reading, don't out yourself yet if you're a detective, we need you!)

It's notable that Tofu's claim here doesn't quite match what she says about it later. Here, she says that she can copy someone's action and then use it on the next night or day. Later on, she says that she acquires the action immediately (although she's not told what it is), and can then use it on the same night, or queue it up to be used the next day if it's a day action. That could be an honest mistake, but then I would expect her to acknowledge the contradiction.

A couple of pages after that is when Blu suggests what her "missing action" might be, and she immediately vouches for it as the truth. Same sort of interaction, just the other way round. All things considered, I'm liking the Tofu/Blu w/w theory.

Of the two of them, I think I'd prefer to vote for Bluwiikoon. Why Blu, and not Tofu? We know, thanks to Mr. Ultracool, that Blu definitely performed an action on N0. Either, as VM says, Blu attempted to target me and was redirected to VM, or less likely, VM is lying/also mafia and Blu targeted him directly. There's any number of things that action could have been, but it happened before any deaths occurred, so it can't possibly have a badge cost. Speaking as the person he (maybe) tried to target with it, I'm not sure I want him to get off another shot.

Secondarily, Tofu already has quite a lot of votes, and since she and Blu both have pretty good wolf equity I'd rather they be our two wagons, rather than Tofu/someone else. Especially since each one's flip would either incriminate or partially clear the other. Be the change you want to see in the world.

I have a couple more incriminating Blu posts to talk about (even over and above what Jack said) but this is already quite a long post so I'm just gonna send for now and see if there's anything people want to follow up on.

 

[bruh moment]

Of the two of them, I think I'd prefer to vote for Bluwiikoon. Why Blu, and not Tofu? We know, thanks to Mr. Ultracool, that Blu definitely performed an action on N0. Either, as VM says, Blu attempted to target me and was redirected to VM, or less likely, VM is lying/also mafia and Blu targeted him directly. There's any number of things that action could have been, but it happened before any deaths occurred, so it can't possibly have a badge cost. Speaking as the person he (maybe) tried to target with it, I'm not sure I want him to get off another shot.

Secondarily, Tofu already has quite a lot of votes, and since she and Blu both have pretty good wolf equity I'd rather they be our two wagons, rather than Tofu/someone else. Especially since each one's flip would either incriminate or partially clear the other. Be the change you want to see in the world.

i honestly don’t think this makes a lot of sense. for one it kind of sounds like you’re saying “i’m voting blu over tofu because he did an action,” which... huh? i agree there’s some w/w equity but i think w!tofu suggests a possible w!blu; it’s not even damning and i don’t really see the advantage in pushing blu alongside her. makes way more sense to flip tofu and then sort blu based on that.
-q

 

[bruh moment]

in other words, i guess, this blu read 100% depends on tofu being mafia, and even then it isn’t a sure shot, so there’s basically no good reason to not just vote tofu here.
-q

 

[haneko]

I spent way too long summarising what happened toDay. I accept there may be mistakes in my notes but you can check them out in the spoiler below.

Spoiler

D1: Zori (Jasmine) lynched; self - aligned.

N1: Hydreigon25 (Volkner); town
Herbe (Cilan); self-aligned; killed by Negrek

- JackPK targeted RNP & Hydreigon. Hydreigon's ability was triggered and prevented JackPK from taking any more actions until N3. He targeted RNP because of an earlier agreement to check RNP's status as a miller (town member who appears to be mafia when checked by other players). Hydreigon was chosen because of their relatively unimportant role.
- Tofu suggests that rock/fire/fighting/dark leaders may be responsible for the deaths, but JackPK points out there are no fighting, fire, or rock leaders in the game
- Mawile points out that Lt. Surge (Zero Moment) is known for setting traps, which is how Hydreigon (Volkner) died, but says at best this is a tinfoil theory (ie. probably not significant)
- ZM theorises that Herbe was a Neighboriser/Mason/Cultist, who have the downside of dying if they accidentally target a mafia member. Hydrei "was probably just a scumkill". Also says that Hydreigon's death's flavour text can be explained by his role; he could have been a trapper based on the way JackPK was paralysed for the night.
- JackPK also points out that the kills must have been done using free actions because no badges have been distributed yet.


- rari makes the following case against Tofu in 851: Tofu says she doubts that an ability would be wasted on badge distribution if it automatically happens when a player dies, but later claims that is exactly what her Vivillon's move is. While trying to explain this ability, she uses the same explanation that Blu offers, making it look like two mafia buddies helping each other out.
- bruh moment on Tofu: " now, let's jump back to the post before this one, with the added context of colorful scatter's supposed power. at this point she's in sort of a liminal state where she remembers colorful scatter existing at all, but doesn't seem to recall fully what it is. it's a bit difficult for us to imagine this, given the detail she went into in her duplication power write-up. additionally, if she has two discrete abilities as her final post suggests (duplication + colorful scatter) PLUS the normal badge distribution we all have, it's hard to imagine that she just completely failed to notice one of her two abilities (but still managed to catch the name?), to the point that she repeatedly made specific claims about only having the duplication power and the two badge distribution and nothing else."
- Tofu's response (890): she points out that if she was hiding a good second ability, she wouldn't have asked people not to give her badges. The inconsistencies are because she conflated the two abilities she has (non-badge copycat and Colourful Scatter), which also led her to think she and everyone else had one ability, not two.
- more Tofu discussion between bruh moment and rari_teh on page 49.
- kokorico finds more reasons to suspect Tofu (& Blu) in 1166

- rari says that Negrek's questioning over the details of RNP's role make her look like a mafia fishing for info. Also doesn't like Negrek's push to abstain.
- bruh moment (929) responds (to rari specifically) that Negrek is a player who is used to having lots of mech information, and she was likely trying to see if there was any utility left in RNP's (fake) role for town. Quote: "i think that "asking for clarification on someone's unclear/weird role," from someone who we know has roots in old/more mech-focused and claim-casual meta, is a super far cry from "trying to drag info out of townies" when the most important stages (the roleclaim itself) had already happened in both tofu and rnp's cases."
- JackPK speculates on possible alignments for Negrek & RNP (898): Negrek is either a curious mafiosi or a townie not playing so well. RNP is most likely a townie, based on their town play in past games.
- Negrek's initial response is understandable frustration over differences in playstyle, but she returns in 920 & 926 to clear up some things. She killed Herbe using Alakazam's Psyshock and her role is JOAT (Jack of All Trades).
- JackPK asks why Negrek singled out Herbe as an activated alien. Negrek responds in a long post (1048): she prefers to have as much information as possible out in the open, and believes that Town can leverage it more effectively than mafia can, as long as Town collaborate with each other. Understanding how people's roles work makes it easier to figure out when mafia is fakeclaiming. Therefore she will try to get information on people's roles, even if, in the current meta, it makes her look anti-town.
- Negrek also assumed that Herbe's claim that he was 3rd party was true, because there is no benefit for a town (or mafia) member to claim 3rd party. "At best their wincon would be neutral to town", she says, "and often 3p wincons are actively anti-town, but like, if we actively have to get rid of them to win... away they go."

Recent Events
- Ultracool is suspected by VM, Negrek, and Tofu
- RNP and Negrek mutually find each other suspicious
- rari votes Stryke, then backtracks once Stryke re-explains that his abilities are unlocked upon his death.
- JackPK brings up Bluwiikoon's ISO (1115). Blu's questions about VM's role come across as infofishing, while his interaction with Tofu again appears to be an attempt to help a fellow mafiosi cover up mistakes. However, rari points out that it would make more sense for them to discuss roles in scumchat, not in thread, if they were mafia.
- kokorico votes Blu and explains why (1166): because Blu has a potentially dangerous free action, as confirmed N0 by Ultracool (a watcher). koko's vote is also partially to balance the wagons.
- VM asks the cop to reveal themselves in 1136 to implement a "follow the cop" scumhunting strategy. Negrek responds in 1162 that it is a sound strategy as long as there is some way to confirm that VM is town. kokorico doubts if a cop or doctor actually exist in this game.

I think the reasons to vote Tofu are pretty solid at this point; if she really isn't lying, at least we haven't lost a power role, and if she is mafia or 3rd party, that would be a very useful kill.

 

[haneko]

useful as in we'd get a lot of information from her flip

 

[RNP]

- RNP and Negrek mutually find each other suspicious

the most innocent thing to do, of course, is to point fingers at the one investigating you

 

[bruh moment]

I think the reasons to vote Tofu are pretty solid at this point; if she really isn't lying, at least we haven't lost a power role, and if she is mafia or 3rd party, that would be a very useful kill.

hey, can you elaborate on your progression on tofu? was there something you revisited that switched the read?
-m

 

[Mawile]

this is stupid to say but like.
why not simply nightkill her then

people are already suspicious of her, so if she's town and gets yeeted, then it frees up a nightkill for the mafia to try and nightkill someone who's claimed a nightly action (as opposed to tofu's one-shot)

In the case that you're Town, though, I think this is pretty solid? I was thinking it could still get messed up if there were another redirector around, but actually I think it would be fine. If there were a redirector and a strongman, then they could simply divert your redirect and shoot the cop through protection, but that's the only issue that's come to mind so far. Does anyone else see problems here? I don't think it's a good idea for the cop to claim now unless they already feel certain VM is Town, but this may be something to keep in mind if we were able to clear him, whether through cop check or otherwise.

the mafia could also just straight up kill VM and leave the outed cop/doctor defenseless
or if mafia had a roleblocker, they could block VM and kill cop/doctor

personally i'm vibing with a Tofu vote specifically because of the mismatch between her initial claim of "use it the night/day after" and her later claim of "use it the same night/day". it's fairly easy to go and check your role PM when you're doing a legitimate roleclaim, so why not go and double-check it to make sure you're providing an accurate claim

i still don't particularly like Ultracool targeting himself last Night despite us telling him not to, but i don't see it as a cause for voting him right now
in addition, i don't feel particularly compelled to vote Blu either right now, but I feel like a wolf!Tofu flip would be good reason to investigate him more tomorrow

maybe my Thoughts will change later since i just recently woke up and my brain is not functioning Correctly
gotta go drink water tbh

 

[bruh moment]

people are already suspicious of her, so if she's town and gets yeeted, then it frees up a nightkill for the mafia to try and nightkill someone who's claimed a nightly action (as opposed to tofu's one-shot)

when i replied it was in re: ysabel characterizing our push on tofu as hypothetical-mafia trying to eliminate a role they found dangerous through lynch (at least that's how i read it, not like there was anyone else in thread hard-sussing tofu)
-m

 

[bruh moment]

also people were definitely not already suspicious of her tbh
hence the hard-push on our part

 

[Negrek]

That took way too long, but.

From my perspective, Tofu's story is entirely consistent up to 474, which is where she contradicts her early claim that she gets to use her ability the next night by saying she actually uses it in the same night. Ordinarily I wouldn't think much of this, since 474 would be where I'd expect her to actually look back at her role PM and double-check things like this. I do agree that it's a bit odd that she managed to be so in-depth about her copy power while completely missing that she had a second formal ability, but I've managed far stupider misreads in my day and can see how if she was focused on the copy ability she would pretty much ignore what was going on with the rest of it on the assumption that she knew how it worked.

Where things start to get really weird is where Bluwiikoon apparently correctly guessed what "Colorful Scatter" actually does. Although it doesn't seem incredibly unreasonable to me that he simply guessed it straight-up? Tofu's posts pretty clearly circled the idea that she had an ability that would let her distribute badges once she died, the confusion was in whether or not that was *in addition to* her normal badge grant. The fact that he was leading Tofu along in (apparently) figuring out her own power is strange, but also doesn't seem inconsistent with wanting to help figure out what was going on.

To me, the only way this is alignment-indicative for Tofu is if Mafia role PM's are structured differently from Town ones and Tofu obliviously misclaimed because she didn't realize that, then had to rush to cover things up. However, I don't really like leaning a lynch on speculation about the structure of a Mafia PM this game, and to me Occam's razor is just... Tofu really did make a big mistake? And was generally confused/incautious about how she phrased her posts (the confusion over actions/abilities)? One way or another this incident was a big *sad trombone noise* for some faction, but honestly the whole thing reads more like a Town fuck-up than a Mafia fuck-up to me. I do feel worse about Tofu upon rereading, but nothing looks like a smoking gun to me.

I'm going to take a closer look at Bluwiikoon and Ultracool next to see what I think of them.

 

[bruh moment]

To me, the only way this is alignment-indicative for Tofu is if Mafia role PM's are structured differently from Town ones and Tofu obliviously misclaimed because she didn't realize that, then had to rush to cover things up.

hmmm, curious what you think about the theory we aired out in this post. i know it's just speculation and maybe it won't push the needle for you, but i'd still like to hear your thoughts.
-q

 

[M&F]

six hours left!

 

[haneko]

I think the reasons to vote Tofu are pretty solid at this point; if she really isn't lying, at least we haven't lost a power role, and if she is mafia or 3rd party, that would be a very useful kill.

hey, can you elaborate on your progression on tofu? was there something you revisited that switched the read?
-m

At the time, it seemed as if Tofu had made an innocent mistake, so I ignored most of the initial speculation that Tofu was lying about her role. What changed my mind was seeing you and rari_teh discuss it; after looking at Tofu's posts in more detail, I could see why people were speculating she was mafia based on the way she contradicted herself. Almost as if she was lying.

I'm not entirely sold that she *is* mafia, because there's a 50% chance she really is town, she royally screwed up, and the interaction with Blu was just a coincidence, but I'm down for a Tofu lynch because even if she is town that would give us information on other players, such as Blu. If Tofu is town then chances are the exchange with Blu really was a coincidence, and we'd conclude Blu has a good (or at least, better) chance of being town. If Tofu is mafia, then that would suggest Blu is mafia, and also make players who defended Tofu toDay look suspect. That would at least give us leads for tomorrow. Other options for a lynch today, such as Ultracool, wouldn't give us as much information.

 

[Negrek]

ftr skylar and i mentioned having a badge theory at some point earlier on
the theory was that mafia doesn't hand out badges because they'd be incentivized to just keep badges within their own faction

-m

to expand on this a bit, if we look at this from the bird's eye view of the game design, the badge mechanic is interesting because you're basically empowering other players based on trust. however, this doesn't really work with the mafia—due to their information advantage, they'd essentially just be receiving a free buff with each death they experience, which seems a bit strange/unbalanced. it seems more likely to us that mafia can't give each other badges, but that they do have powerful abilities that are activated if they manage to dupe town into giving them some. like, obviously there's no way of knowing this for sure, but it does just sort of seem to Make Sense from that game design perspective?

as mewt said, this is part of what made us so suspicious of tofu, since getting mixed up about badge distribution specifically fit into this theory really well, given that mafia would have to play it by ear here since they're excluded from this mechanic.
-q

I actually wouldn't be surprised if the Mafia could give each other badges. It gives them kind of a "there's fewer of them, but they're stronger now" power-up mechanic that I think would actually be more interesting than "they can receive but not give badges" or "they can give badges, but not to each other." Also, it's looking like there's probably no more than four of them, so it wouldn't be hard to make it so they can't charge up their own abilities entirely through their own deaths by adjusting the ability costs and the number of badges they give out accordingly. The other issue is that if they try to charge up one person in particular, but then that person gets taken out by the Town... oops, they just lost everything.

But as a game designer I can see the appeal of "if the Mafia play things right, they can maybe charge themselves up for one super attack and turn the game around even if there's only one left." It also gives them more interesting decisions around badges, similar to what Town players have. I don't feel comfortable ruling it out as a possibility.

Ultimately I'm not too fussed either way as it applies to Tofu, specifically, because I'm seeing four possibilities here:

1) the Mafia don't distribute badges, and their PM includes nothing about badge distribution as a result
2) the Mafia distribute badges the same as normal players and have the same verbiage
3) the Mafia distribute badges differently than normal players, but the information is presented in the same way
4) the Mafia distribute badges differently than normal players, but the information is presented differently

I think 1) is out, since Tofu was mentioning her badge distribution ability right from the get-go, just in weird terms. If she were Mafia she'd know that this was actually a special power because nobody else would have gotten something similar in their PM, so I think she'd have more explicitly framed Colorful Scatter as a special ability of hers. For 2/3, Mafia!Tofu is just misreading in the same way Town!Tofu would be. Four is the only scenario where I see Tofu as uniquely making this mistake due to alignment.

So, like, even if Mafia can't give badges to each other, I see multiple scenarios under which even if Tofu were misreading her role PM, it'd be no more or less easy to do so than she were Town, and if anything I'd kind of expect her to be less likely to screw it up as Mafia, because surely she would have shared her ability with the team and had them go, "Oh, huh, that's weird?" And like I said, I'm not huge on lynching someone over my guess at how the Mafia's role PM's are set up.