M&F
tikitok
- Pronoun
- any
so, on Herbe
first of all, my previous reasoning on the likelihood that Herbe's PMs really were town/town/third-party seems to be shot right now; I think the presence of yet another potential scum faction in this setup (sounds like a cult?) officially pushes the needle from "it would be challenging for qenya to ensure that this setup has mafiosxs at all" to "qenya probably was not planning for the scum in this setup to necessarily be mafia".
Herbe has also subsequently claimed their flavor, both active and discarded, at RNP's prodding! so I went and looked the stuff up on bulbapedia. this is what I've got:
-Beauregard is listed as a minor member of the Security Corps, ostensibly the average street cops of Jubilife Village. this strikes me as an obviously town flavor, especially if I consider that my own villa role is also a literal villager from Jubilife. (also, though, there are so many names listed as members of the Security Corps specifically and Galaxy Team in general??? jesus fuck, turns out there's not actually much of an upper limit on how many possible named villa roles there are around here)
-Ginter is a merchant guy who sells stuff to the player. he's also Volo's boss -- and you might recall, Volo is the public third-party PM who Herbe has discarded. however, unless I'm missing something, I do not see where RNP is coming from with the assertion that he'd also necessarily be a self-aligned role; it seems to me like this Ginter really is just some merchant dude, while Volo's reasons for being self-aligned have everything to do with his larger story role and not so much to do with his guild affiliation.
these flavors do seem consistent with a town/town/third-party PM spread, and I think that speaks at least slightly favorably of Herbe. however, I wouldn't be rushing to consider it bulletproof; not when Ginter comes up after a small amount of wikiwalking off Volo, and not when a scum Herbe would likely have prodded qenya for some plausible fakeclaims to make up for not having actually played PLA.
(incidentally, Ginter does have a Bulbapedia page and official art, which is more than can be said for some of the other named roles around here -- so that does make it likelier that he's present as a real role and not a fakeclaim. which brings me to this important point, though: if any of you other than Herbe happen to have a Ginter PM, I invite you to counterclaim.)
anyway, as behavior goes, I'm not inclined to agree that Herbe's has been preponderantly towny so far; sure, parking on an inactive haneko would be a way for them to preserve themselves on the short term -- but one, it wouldn't be a great way as it's somewhat of a transparent self-pres move which would easily be countered by a sufficient amount of townies growing suspicious, and two, well, regardless if it'd have been an optimal game move, it goes without saying that Herbe runs on chaos and audacity at least as much as effective gameplay and probably more. unvoting afterwards, similarly, is the least they could not to be entirely obvious about parking on someone else strictly for self-pres. I don't think any part of this behavior is really alignment-indicative.
at most, what I would consider potentially alignment-indicative is that Herbe hadn't produced much in terms of solvy contribution before RNP came in like a wrecking ball, and they've mostly been playing defense since then. I think that's scummier than townier, although not by a huuuuge amount exactly.
still, I think what this all comes down to is that I'd give it rather low odds that RNP and Herbe are on the same team, which in turn means good odds that lynching one of them will yield productive results. so the question is -- which one?
-lynching RNP and getting a town flip would... not confirm much per se, but would mean that his takes on Herbe have been, if tunnelly, genuinely scumhunt-oriented
-lynching RNP and getting a scum flip would... place Herbe firmly at either town, or a different scumfaction
-lynching Herbe and getting a town flip would... look pretty bad for RNP
-lynching Herbe and getting a scum flip would... place RNP firmly at either town, or a different scumfaction
... so I guess the best conclusion I can draw from this is that analyzing specific player interactions in a scenario with this many possible factions sucks ass. lynching Herbe would be marginally more informative, but if your best-case scenario for a given choice of lynch is that it'll be a slightly revelatory mislynch, that's not great.
I will therefore unvote and continue observing how this develops, on the off-chance that this tree gets shaken enough for something meatier to fall off; I don't think that's likely, unfortunately, but until we're staring down EoD again I can't say I'm exceptionally pressed on letting the blade fall on one particular side of this one
first of all, my previous reasoning on the likelihood that Herbe's PMs really were town/town/third-party seems to be shot right now; I think the presence of yet another potential scum faction in this setup (sounds like a cult?) officially pushes the needle from "it would be challenging for qenya to ensure that this setup has mafiosxs at all" to "qenya probably was not planning for the scum in this setup to necessarily be mafia".
Herbe has also subsequently claimed their flavor, both active and discarded, at RNP's prodding! so I went and looked the stuff up on bulbapedia. this is what I've got:
-Beauregard is listed as a minor member of the Security Corps, ostensibly the average street cops of Jubilife Village. this strikes me as an obviously town flavor, especially if I consider that my own villa role is also a literal villager from Jubilife. (also, though, there are so many names listed as members of the Security Corps specifically and Galaxy Team in general??? jesus fuck, turns out there's not actually much of an upper limit on how many possible named villa roles there are around here)
-Ginter is a merchant guy who sells stuff to the player. he's also Volo's boss -- and you might recall, Volo is the public third-party PM who Herbe has discarded. however, unless I'm missing something, I do not see where RNP is coming from with the assertion that he'd also necessarily be a self-aligned role; it seems to me like this Ginter really is just some merchant dude, while Volo's reasons for being self-aligned have everything to do with his larger story role and not so much to do with his guild affiliation.
these flavors do seem consistent with a town/town/third-party PM spread, and I think that speaks at least slightly favorably of Herbe. however, I wouldn't be rushing to consider it bulletproof; not when Ginter comes up after a small amount of wikiwalking off Volo, and not when a scum Herbe would likely have prodded qenya for some plausible fakeclaims to make up for not having actually played PLA.
(incidentally, Ginter does have a Bulbapedia page and official art, which is more than can be said for some of the other named roles around here -- so that does make it likelier that he's present as a real role and not a fakeclaim. which brings me to this important point, though: if any of you other than Herbe happen to have a Ginter PM, I invite you to counterclaim.)
anyway, as behavior goes, I'm not inclined to agree that Herbe's has been preponderantly towny so far; sure, parking on an inactive haneko would be a way for them to preserve themselves on the short term -- but one, it wouldn't be a great way as it's somewhat of a transparent self-pres move which would easily be countered by a sufficient amount of townies growing suspicious, and two, well, regardless if it'd have been an optimal game move, it goes without saying that Herbe runs on chaos and audacity at least as much as effective gameplay and probably more. unvoting afterwards, similarly, is the least they could not to be entirely obvious about parking on someone else strictly for self-pres. I don't think any part of this behavior is really alignment-indicative.
at most, what I would consider potentially alignment-indicative is that Herbe hadn't produced much in terms of solvy contribution before RNP came in like a wrecking ball, and they've mostly been playing defense since then. I think that's scummier than townier, although not by a huuuuge amount exactly.
still, I think what this all comes down to is that I'd give it rather low odds that RNP and Herbe are on the same team, which in turn means good odds that lynching one of them will yield productive results. so the question is -- which one?
-lynching RNP and getting a town flip would... not confirm much per se, but would mean that his takes on Herbe have been, if tunnelly, genuinely scumhunt-oriented
-lynching RNP and getting a scum flip would... place Herbe firmly at either town, or a different scumfaction
-lynching Herbe and getting a town flip would... look pretty bad for RNP
-lynching Herbe and getting a scum flip would... place RNP firmly at either town, or a different scumfaction
... so I guess the best conclusion I can draw from this is that analyzing specific player interactions in a scenario with this many possible factions sucks ass. lynching Herbe would be marginally more informative, but if your best-case scenario for a given choice of lynch is that it'll be a slightly revelatory mislynch, that's not great.
I will therefore unvote and continue observing how this develops, on the off-chance that this tree gets shaken enough for something meatier to fall off; I don't think that's likely, unfortunately, but until we're staring down EoD again I can't say I'm exceptionally pressed on letting the blade fall on one particular side of this one
