I've been very confused by the last few posts in this game, and I finally understand why. Atvelonis, NOBODY was interpreting yimmy's message as being "advice." In terms of theories presented by us where you are scum, there is either HB's theory that the post was an attempt by yimmy to distance himself by you, or soccer's theory that yimmy wanted you to contribute (because you would be his only scum partner). Atvelonis, you seem to be viewing your activity as an active decision rather than a result of one's desire or ability to contribute to the game. You have suddenly put forth the theory that yimmy's request for you to be more active is a suggestion on how you should change your playstyle, rather than simply a way to pressure you to contribute. You don't even seem to be viewing this conversation from the perspective that being active as town is inherently beneficial, which is evident to anyone playing as town. The only reason you would be framing inactivity as being a gameplay decision rather than a result of apathy or lack of ability is if you are mafia. This is further compounded by the fact that this is your first game ever, so if you are mafia, then you literally only know what it's like to play as mafia, and have never experienced playing the game as town; so if you were town, it would be extremely unlikely for you to be seeing activity from this perspective.

I need to actually preview my posts. The first two paragraphs are quoting atvelonis:

Atvelonis, you are currently online. I would prefer you state your flavor now rather than later. Even making a small post with just that will suffice.  

I'm the water level, pure vanilla townie. Trying to collect my thoughts in a longer post.

No, I don't think Yaya was incapable of saying he was VT, it was in no way supposed to be a slight to his intelligence. I was simply pointing out that when he was sent his role PM, it probably said everything about scum and nothing about "vanilla townie" specifically (certainly something along the lines of "kill all townies" for the win condition, but not vanilla in particular). So in the event that he did roleclaim—the closest he came was saying he was simply "town" on Page 15—his first thought could very easily have been "town" instead of "vanilla town." It's a weak link, which is why I expressed some doubt about it above, but I wanted to see what others thought (evidently not much).


I certainly wouldn't play perfectly as scum, but I can say pretty confidently that I would have been more active and also more attentive to my mafia partner's requests, such as not fence-sitting, which is totally in my control. It's not that my logical ability would have been magically heightened or anything, but as scum I think I would have been more personally invested in the game. That isn't to say I'm not invested in this one, but you have a fundamentally different approach to the game when you have six teammates rather than just one.

As town you can rely on the fact that in the event you get killed, there are a bunch of other people left to win the game in your absence. This is not quite the case for scum, especially if your buddy has already been killed. Having only one other teammate adds a little more pressure for you to be creative/careful in your approach. Being inactive makes you a target right off the bat and is pretty much the last thing I would want to be known for if I were scum. For example, Yimmy was sure not to be placed in the "inactive" camp at any point in the game, while still providing enough activity that would, on its own seem, plausibly pro-town. That way, he could focus on manipulating the conversation to his advantage rather than simply defending himself.


As I pointed out above, I think your desire to play the game, and by extension your activity, as you rightly point out, is at least somewhat related to which team you're on. In the few games of mafia I've played in real life, I've definitely felt more pressure while playing as scum than as town, which had a certain amount of influence on my behavior. Of course it is a very different atmosphere because a normal-sized game in real life takes like three hours at most, whereas this one takes weeks, but that feeling is certainly still there to an extent online.

I can't entirely refute what you're saying here. I suppose apathy isn't as much of an issue in a shorter game, so in this context the additional pressure/motivation to play actively as scum dwindles somewhat when it continues for a very long time, and especially when you're being targeted. Yaya pointed out above that this was what happened to Yimmy, and this makes sense.

Still, I stand by my earlier statement that having a partner whom you could be 100% positive was on your side is a pretty big boost. As Soccer mentioned earlier there can definitely be miscommunications and disagreements between scum, but I think this is outweighed somewhat by the fact that they are definitely not intentionally doing anything to make you lose the game. That alone makes you more trusting of what they have to say, and because of the more cooperative approach that results from that trust, you each end up playing better.

I don't know if i believe that flavor. The other vanilla townies were pretty boring standard tiles (platform, metal crate) whereas power roles seem to be more special tiles (hannah, secret area). Water level sounds like it should have some sort of ability because its nonstandard.

But maybe that's just comfirmation bias
¯_(ツ)_/¯

I had the same thought as people got killed off, actually. Especially weird that it was the water level, not just the water tile. You'd think that since that implies a full level it would maybe have some sort of special power, but I guess not.

Sorry, I didn't realize that I hadn't been very specific. In the first quote I wanted to know what you thought of Kro's logic. In the second quote I wanted to know what you believed HB's reasoning might be. The part about HB having argued against RG wasn't addressed specifically to you, which is why I didn't put it in as a quote. In retrospect I see that I should have made this all more clear.


I figured that although he did backtrack, some of his statements did make sense. Perhaps that was a mistake.


My reason for that was this post (on page 8 if the link doesn't work), in which Kro lists 11 posts where HB voiced her suspicions of RG, and points out that there were only 6 posts up to that point in which she didn't mention her suspicion of RG.


I don't think it would be risky to do that. If I were scum, I probably would. While some people would likely realize that it was an attempt to distance myself from my scum partner, I could argue that scum would anticipate that and as a result would be unlikely to do it. Overall there wouldn't be any way for anyone to tell for sure whether I'd have been scum or not. Since it would draw some attention to me I could claim that scum wouldn't want to be in the spotlight, and it might also help me avoid being called inactive. So overall I think distancing oneself from a scum partner is feasible.


While atvelonis' lack of accusations against anyone does stick out, I don't think it's too much of a cause for concern because his reluctance to take a strong stance in this game seems more or less consistent with how he is in real life. I don't know about his interactions with his friends but many times when he, I and our parents are discussing watching a movie or going to a restaurant, he often says he'll be fine with whatever the rest of us choose. His posts in this game don't seem out of character. Also, HB has never seemed remotely similar to atvelonis to me, so I feel that it's not very strange that his reads list is so different from hers.


On his reads list, atvelonis rated both me and HB as "neutral", which suggests he didn't have much suspicion of us. If he really didn't strongly believe anyone to be scum, it makes sense that he would have withheld his vote. This is consistent with one of his more recent posts (I forget exactly where it was, but I believe it was within the last 3 pages) when he doesn't seem to have considered process of elimination to be enough to warrant a vote.


I can't see why atvelonis wouldn't have said anything about it. It seems like mentioning it surely would have strengthened his argument that Yimmy wasn't communicating with him. However, overall I think the idea of a hidden hidden message in Yimmy's "play the game" posts is unlikely because those 3 words simply aren't enough to convey any specific directions or suggestions, unless each letter represents something, in which case atvelonis would need some sort of a key to interpret the message, which would have to have been predetermined by an earlier conversation between them, which, unless I'm mistaken, isn't allowed.


I guess that's true; there don't seem to have been many situations where there was strong evidence of someone's alignment.
I'm feeling pretty uncertain about Yaya and atvelonis, and I don't think my reasons for voting for Yaya are strong enough to be worth a vote anymore. Unvote: Yaya

I know that I didn't answer everything that was posted in the last day, but it's past 1 AM and I have school today, so I'm going to go to sleep and I'll post again later.  

It seems as though atvelonis is incriminating himself here, although his explanation in his next post is possible.

Also, since atvelonis expressed uncertainty about my role, I'll clarify: I am indeed vanilla town. The "flavor" attached to it is a box. Also, atvelonis' role claim and his claim about the flavor seem plausible to me.

About what Kro said: overall I think it is significant, and atvelonis' reply has not succeeded in deflecting it. One thing I noticed:

In his reply to Kro, atvelonis didn't say anything that suggests that he is either apathetic or bad at the game. This adds more credence to Kro's argument that he is scum.

Overall atvelonis is looking moderately scummy. But, I don't plan to vote soon because he's already at L-1 and there's still a decent amount of time left in the day which we could use to get more information.  

I'd like to believe I made my thoughts on Kro's logic clear in my previous post. Likewise, I said I don't know what HB's reasoning was, and think it was a dumb thing to use as evidence regardless.

Given that you, Kro, and Atvelonis are the only people not voting for Atvelonis, and Atvelonis is not going to vote for himself, is there any specific information you want besides an outright confession?

i can't say a lot rn but jesus christ mymop why would you claim??? totally detrimental to town

Yes, you had; I wasn't asking for it again, I was just clarifying that that was indeed what I had been asking for earlier. I also realized that my evidence was weak, and as a result I un-voted you.


There is zero chance that he would confess. While I don't have anything specific in mind, you, Kro, Soccer, and Jorster might. If I were to lynch atvelonis now it would deprive everyone else of the ability to ask him things they think are important.


How? Is there some specific process that needs to be followed when claiming? I wasn't trying to put that in the spotlight, I just thought I was clearing up a minor point that hadn't been made clear.  

It takes away speculation on the night kill, because they now know you dont have any additional roles.  

erm powers not roles

The three of us have had our votes on Atvelonis for at least 4 days now, and I don't think we've been *particularly* satisfied with his answers to our various questions. None of us can vote for him twice. You're just as much in this game as Jorster and the people who have voted for Atvelonis are. Twiddling your thumbs while everyone else does the heavy lifting isn't particularly pro-town

Ninja'd: Jorster double ninja'd me, but my post remains the same

Jorster, thanks for explaining. I now see that my role claim was a mistake.

Yaya: If we lynch atvelonis and he turns out to be town, then the more information he gives us before he dies, the better. You even criticized Kro for hammering RG with 5 days left in this post, and pretty much everyone else voiced similar opinions in the immediate aftermath of the lynch. Atvelonis was also criticized for lynching Yimmy so quickly. Overall we have nothing to lose by waiting a bit, so long as the day doesn't end without a lynch, and we have nothing to gain by rushing things.  

I'm not satisfied with how atvelonis replied to my post whatsoever.


Atvelonis, here you give a hypothetical where you are town. You basically say here that you chose to be inactive, in that you "did not take Yimmy's advice because [you] had no direct motive to do so," rather than that you were apathetic, lacked ability, or lacked time. You seem to either not recognize, or not understand, that activity is fundamentally good to the town. Why is this?

Atvelonis, you interpret yimmy's posts asking you to be active as being suggestions on how to play the game (Mafia will sometimes intentionally be less active to avoid attention), rather than simply a way of pressuring you to be active. Like I said, I cannot see this perspective coming from anyone but mafia, as that sort of suggestion would only make sense in mafia-mafia communication. Why then would you think this way? Also, why would you, as a townie, possibly think that being asked to be active could be an attempt "to push you in the wrong direction"? Don't backpedal again, you've already done that multiple times.

Yaya, atvelonis seems extremely scummy to me, but I chose not to vote for him because, like mymop said, I thought that perhaps more information could be gained somehow. I don't see any benefit to voting against atvelonis now vs. voting against him later, other than that you save some time, but this carries the risk of unnecessarily missing out on information. I also don't want to hammer atvelonis before the Day is almost over because I did that earlier to RG and it had a very negative outcome. I'm still not sure whether others have gotten all out of atvelonis that they want to, and I don't want to deprive the town of information again.

Kro's post made me realize that in my previous post I implied Jorster was not currently voting for Atvelonis. I meant to say Kro there.

My previous post was not criticizing people for not lynching Atvelonis right this instant. It was criticizing Mymop for not voting Atvelonis because we can get more important information out of him, but then saying he desires no specific information. I assumed any information he'd get from Atvelonis would help him decide whether or not to ultimately hammer him, but then him saying he doesn't wish to further things along himself by being the person to request said information (especially as a person not voting atm) rubbed me the wrong way.

I dunno, the meaning behind that message seems pretty clear to me. I don't think he was trying to encode a specific phrase/crumb/anything else complicated, only trying to encourage me to step up my activity.


I think my limited number of posts and overall indecisiveness is a pretty big indicator here.


I'm aware that activity is pro-town. I'm not intentionally being inactive, and was not arguing that. Inactivity just happens as a result of your approach/commitment to the game or being busy, as you point out; the level of activity I've had during this game has pretty much been my default state of activity. Being on the mafia team would have been reason for me to make the choice to be more active, because Yimmy/knowing I only had one teammate would have been pressuring me to do so.


Note again that I interpreted Yimmy's post as encouraging decisiveness, not just activity. Anyway, unnecessarily pushing town for a ton of activity (especially inexperienced town) could get people to reveal more than they should. Mymop's reveal above is sort of an example of this (and I guess mine earlier). Again, I know that activity is generally pro-town, but the point of that was mainly to explain why I was cautious of mindlessly obeying everyone who told me anything.

That's exactly what I was saying. I suppose I didn't explicitly mention that the message encouraged activity, but because I said that there was probably no hidden message, I figured it would be obvious that I thought the phrase was intended to encourage more activity.


I suppose your earlier inactivity could be interpreted as apathy, but you certainly don't seem apathetic now, since you've been posting more frequently and making more lengthy posts. As for how good or bad you are at the game, I don't think I'm qualified to judge that.

Alnyway, you suggest here that you are/were apathetic, but this contradicts your next paragraph, in which you argue that you were not intentionally inactive. What is your explanation for this?  

I'm back at my laptop now, sorry about that. To elaborate, claiming is generally more beneficial to scum than town as it provides more knowledge to scum than it does to town. In this particular instance scum has many "knowns" and depends on who actually is scum:

Current claims/flips:
RG: VT
Dar: VT
Isa/Kro: Miller
Jory: Commuter
Me: Cop

Atvelonis: VT
Mymop: VT
HB/Yaya: ???

As for the consequences of what you just did...
If HB/Yaya is mafia, they now know EVERY PERSON'S ROLE. Like Jory said, this takes away any sort of speculation and they now know that there is not a doctor to save me tonight. Because of this, I am most likely to die tonight in this case, so say goodbye to any real information. This also opens up the field for Yaya to then fake any claim they want because they now know that you won't have it. What if Yaya was asked to claim and chose to claim as what you have? You would instantly be able to win the game.

Even worse, however, if Kro or Jory is mafia, they pretty much outright win. If Atvelonis or Yaya were to be lynched today, I would investigate the other, but now this will likely not happen. Before, there was at least some speculation over your role which would put you at a higher target, and possibly enough to warrant killing you over me. Theoretically, if I survived the night and investigated the other, we could get a town/scum read and be able to surely say it is the other, OR that either Kro or Jory is mafia (I would go with Kro). Now, it's pretty much guaranteed unless Yaya is the doctor or we lynch scum today. In essence, you better hope it's either Atvelonis or Yaya. Otherwise gg. We're now in a very difficult spot, though we may get lucky.

If atvelonis is scum, it's not quite as bad as if Yaya is scum, but it's still 1 role less to make guesswork over: 1 role vs 2 that could protect me.

There's still the chance I'd get NKed regardless so don't beat yourself up over it but in the off chance... it might kinda screw us over. eh, next time.

Claiming VT is literally only beneficial to scum at this point. There's no reason why atvelonis needs to know that you're VT other than if he's scum and is worried about his fakeclaim. Claiming should only be done if it is important to the rest of the town: miller -> no wasted cop vote; commuter -> no wasted cop vote/explanation of past event; cop -> yimmy's lynch; VT -> literally nothing.

tl;dr we can still win, but you jeopardized this. You better hope it's atvelonis or Yaya so we can win by process of elimination...

As for atvelonis, I wanted him to pick his flavor claim as soon as possible. He neglected to do this at the beginning and I find this suspicious. I tried to pressure him to do it quickly so that he might mess it up but he took more time than I would like. I don't know if I believe that the water level is VT but it's too flimsy to build a case off of.

I'm incredibly frustrated because I 95% believe atvelonis is scum, but Yaya might be better to lynch from a tactical standpoint due to your claim. We'll have to think on this and come to a decision soon. Also, I feel like Yaya should just claim now. All cats are out of the bag so we could use the information. Thoughts?  

As for atvelonis, why are you arguing that if you were mafia you'd play better/be more active? Yimmy was the one who originally brought about the "apathy" discussion and he flipped scum.

Your logic that pushing for more activity = scum encouragement is kinda just... lame? Like, the only reason that we're supposed to view you as town is that you're playing poorly? I wouldn't call it scummy but that doesn't mean I like it.

I was somewhat apathetic, just not on purpose...? I just wasn't motivated to be unusually active.


While Yimmy's apathy was seemingly present from nearly the beginning, probably starting when his answers got a bit snappier in Day 1, looking back on his posts it appears that his apathy grew with each vote placed on him. He likely gained a sort of "why keep fighting?" mentality that a townie probably wouldn't have, for the reasons I discussed above (having more teammates in case you got mislynched). Chronologically:


I'm sure Yimmy was also particularly aggravated by the fact that so many of the players in this game are inexperienced, including his partner, most likely (either HB/Yaya or myself; possibly Kro). Maybe the pressure that would normally give mafia more of a reason to play harder ended up whittling down his motivation because of its combination with the aforementioned factors influencing his perception of the game. If I were scum I feel that I wouldn't have been as upset as Yimmy was at other players for being inexperienced because I'm inexperienced too, so that pressure of being mafia would have remained a net positive and my activity would have been higher.

For someone who claims to be town, you sure like to post about "hypothetical" scenarios in which you're scum.

I'm fine with claiming, but you are the only person who's requested it thus far (despite me saying in my entry post that I was open to claiming, lol), and you did ask for other players' thoughts on the matter, so I will hold off for now.