PPE: OH MY FUCKING GOD I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF WRITING MY POST AND THEN MY TRACKPAD DID THE THING WHERE IT SELECTED THE ENTIRE POST WHILE I WAS TRYING TO PRESS BACKSPACE. FML.
Just laptop things.
I was going to write a whole thing on the good, the bad, and the ugly of fallacy with my final thoughts at the end but I've lost so many of my quotes that I'm going to give the cliff notes version.
The Good:
I like Fallacy's "scum first, third party if no scum found" attitude, whereas most people seemed content to settle on Tricmagic as a perceived third party and call it a day.
The fact that he followed basically the same gameplay trajectory as IcyTea, someone who's a mechanical clear to me, is definitely a major plus. This one is meta dependent: I know I've personally used the "Draw heat early D1, burn it off over the course of the day" strategy before as scum before, because it tends to lead to people reading you well heading into D2, but I'm not sure whether that's something scum!Fallacy would do (and I'm also a lot less blatant about screwing around than Fallacy is, which is probably points towards town!Fallacy).
His flip-flopping on Icy last night strikes me as more townie than scummy. It's easily faked, but scum are, generally speaking, more reticent to flip-flop on a case, and Fallacy just went full stream-of-consciousness over whether or not IcyTea was scum over the whole Hydraform discussion. He was wrong, but being wrong isn't inherently scummy, this is mafia.
The Neutral:
The grasping at straws and raking in the mud to come up with a plausible scenario in which scum!Mask and scum!Icy claim masons on D1 is... a thing. There's a reason dolores, Leafsnail, and Jim largely just shrugged and moved on with their lives, accepting it but not putting 100% faith in it. It's essentially a nothing claim, an interesting tidbit that will be proved right or wrong eventually. Clowning around coming up with increasingly elaborate scenarios where it's some dramatic ruse, the rest of the town is sheep, and nobody else can see it but you doesn't actually help anything. I'm willing to give him more a pass here, though, because frankly it seems more in-character for him than the other two.
The Bad:
Inconsistency of words vs. actions. He claimed during RVS that his playstyle was "tunneling one person" and then... kind of didn't do that? Like, he was getting on Tric's case over the whole "lol lynch random players, get hat" thing while at the same time maintaining the presence to make aspersions at Jim Groovester and later Lucky and Icy. Then suddenly it was like his mind went into full lockdown mode the moment he decided Icy was scum, and his previous presence and making accusations at multiple people just disappeared as he went full tunnel mode, and has continued to grasp at straws to try and keep his tunnel going and coming up with outlandish gambit scenarios when faced with a rather meaningless claim that would indicate he's wrong. This is more in line with what he claimed he was going to do at the beginning of the game but a sharp descent from where he'd been at, playwise, previously.
Continuing on this trend, while his case on Icy is mostly whatever to technically reasonable if you don't know Icy's alignment, his first accusation (that icy refused to use his vote to pressure by using it on himself) is coming from the same person who said "My vote doesn't mean anything, it's RVS, I'll sling it whichever way I want!" It's trying to have his cake (RVS votes don't matter and apply no pressure) and eat it to (You didn't use your RVS vote to pressure, that's a point against you).
Personally, I place him as probably most likely to be town of the three people I have grouped together. Which three? Toonyman, Toaster, and FallacyOfUrist. I've lumped them together because I have a theory that at least one, but not all three, of them are scum. I've heard a theory of wagonomics that the top wagon of D1 will always have some, but not all, of the scumteam on it, and will never be made entirely of scum. And frankly, as much of a nothing theory as that is (while generally true, I've never seen it lead to interesting insight in who is scum or not), I think there's a more broad application that can actually be used to group people: in a large enough group engaged in a specific behavior contrary to the town's interests, at least some but never all will be scum taking the opportunity to stir up shit. Scumteams rarely like to put all their eggs in one basket, but scum have a vested interest in both starting smokescreen tactics and in encouraging those that have already taken root among a minority of townies.
Toonyman I've viewed as scum on and off for quite a while anyway, and his blatant rolefishing and selective grasp on history (claiming to be asking webadict basic gameplay questions when called out for fishing around Icy re: Hydraform, etc.) have only served to strengthen that notion.
Toaster should frankly know better than to stir the shit pot but I've largely liked a lot of the rest of his stuff (yes, even him constantly reminding me to answer his questions and post reads. This is far from the first time town!Toaster has harped on me for this on D1). I haven't given him as close a read as I have a lot of other people but I didn't see anything that jumped out at me as objectionable, so unless Toony flips town I've not got any specific reason to believe Toaster scum.
Fallacy strikes me as just a lone wolf townie who got a little stuck in his own cases. I haven't played too many games with Fallacy, but I have vague memories of him kind of being like this normally, very enthusiastic and very focused but sometimes getting a little too stuck in the weeds to see the big picture. Ultimately, the bad of his inconsistency isn't the worst thing in the world, we all have moments where we say (and technically believe) one thing in mafia and then do another when the context changes. I know I've been a little inconsistent on my beliefs versus actions before.
Bluh, that was barely anything and it still took me almost an hour, and I know I probably missed several things I wanted to say in there. But that's life for you.
Author
Topic: BYOR 15: Game Over - Mafia Win (Kinda?) (Read 115223 times)