Tol-in-Gaurhoth CXIV – The Evil Breath of Morgoth in Dor-lómin, game thread

[THE Ka]

Firstly, this is going to be a wall of text. Secondly, since I had a little more time than Day 1, I wanted to go back and examine the events around Rikae’s infamous ‘wolf-bait’, sans G55 argument.

Originally Posted by Rikae Post #69: The ‘bait-post’

Well, it's good to see that Lommy and G55 have come to the conclusion that we need to try lynch a wolf, er, quarantine an infected. And G55 and Legate have agreed we should cast fake votes.

And G55 and Lommy have decided that Legate is a cobbler, and Inzil and Mac have suggested he's infected?

Seriously, it's interesting how the fake votes discussion evolved, seemingly from a couple of throwaway comments to a serious suggestion. Normally it would be totally pointless, but there is some sense in it as a way to prevent people from lurking and waiting to bandwagon on the QT vote. However, I don't think it's practical, and probably won't be necessary, as "lurk and wait for the QT vote" would become suspicious behavior very quickly anyway.

When it comes to single top suspects vs lists, both have their pros and cons and leave material to analyze later on. Me, I like lists. Here's one, just to get the ball rolling:

Pitchwife
G55
Macalaure

Mac –

Originally Posted by Rikae Post #121

I don't know. He does love playing as a wolf, but I think he also enjoys looking sinister as an innocent.

Going back and looking over Rikae’s ‘bait-post’, this was especially insightful. Rikae speculates from Mac’s tone and approach that they’re either just happy to be playing again, or the quote given above. If you looked at some of Mac’s earlier posts on face value alone (for lie detecting in WW we don’t have the benefit of ‘face’ language), they’re using contractions, there is very little distance from who their subject is in their lists (using names directly, interspersed with memories/gossip, etc.), etc. They perhaps don’t omit everything and have some extraneous details here and there to roleplay a little with others, but when confronted on this, they cooperate with the questioning. It’s fun to be mysterious, to play, but the behavior above isn’t quite the one of someone trying to hide in the corner nor spend all their mental effort meticulously repeating an alibi.
I don’t think I’ve played with Macalaure in WW before, so I really don’t have the benefit of knowing their play style like others do, but I do know enough basics of looking for lying behavior and I’m not really seeing it in these posts. I didn’t see the logic entirely when players were trying to decide to make a Macwagon (another reason is that term alone is making me think of this: and then my mind just wants to make jokes the entire time…) the first Day.

G55 – Welp, not much to say here since their role was revealed to us yesterDay and we’ve spent most of that time discussing them. Instead, I’d rather spend time looking at who they were casually sniffing around after their debate with Rikae. It’s obvious now that the fake-vote idea was their bait for both villagers and wolves to see not really who, but how players would react and who was going to react the most.

Legate, of course, whom G55 later tried to pin the idea on, showed the most genuine interest in the idea and in usual fashion (not really blaming, I did the same with my curiosity over QT because it was new/exciting/untested), began to work further from the groundwork G55 laid out and tried to figure out why. Here I do have the benefit of having played with Legate before a few times and the fact that he is willing to answer confrontations about his sudden interest speaks genuinely to his past playing behavior. Granted, its been years since we’ve both had a chance to play a game together so he may have changed a few of his habits, but this one isn’t odd for his usual neck-out and stream-of-consciousness extrapolations.

Pitch – This one… I’ve been trying to read for awhile now. I’ve even agreed with them on occasion when they’ve given small isolated replies. Now to see how they interacted with Rikae and what it shows.

Post #98 – Not directly to Rikae, but addresses questions from when they were out. Defends why they pressured Legate over the interest in the fake-vote idea. Asks why all the worry over waiting for the QT vote – it could be just as flawed as the GT result that Day.

Post #100 – Confronts Mac, why did you find my pin on Legate odd when you just said so yourself.

Post #107 – Confronts G55 on twisting words over debate about QT vote. Mention of my question to Legate and confusion over fake-votes/no-votes vs regular deadline.
(To Pitch: I saw your question and re-read my earlier post. I meant ‘bunk’ as in slang for ‘worthless’/’knock-off’/’obvious lie’. Not the other ‘bunk’…har, har)

Post(s) #114,118: Analysis on multiple players. #118 mention of Rikae: Seems usual self.

Post #120 – Reply to Hui:

I don't think I've seen that many people suspecting Mac to a significant amount (Rikae, of course, myself a bit, who else?), more like saying he's creepy & scary no matter what. Anyway, it's always good for a wolf pack not to get all entangled in the same skirmish but spread themselves out in several combat zones, so to speak.

…
This response I found the far more reasonable so far. Co-conspirators typically don’t exclusively interact with one another, especially when they’re trying to tell ‘the tale’ and collaborate, because they’re usually too busy trying to put what they rehearsed before into use and for safety. They’re not going to expend the effort to elaborate each other’s stories (because, surprise, one might’ve had to change theirs to fit the situation and now they’re out of sync). Two truthful people asked a question about an event are going to naturally reconstruct what they shared together and have no difficulty being interactive.
…

Post #163: Echoes some of the other’s suspicions on a possible wolf between Rikae, Brinn, Kit, and Lottie.

G55 is all over the place, fairly confrontational, sometimes eyebrow-raising (about Urwen/Maeglin: really? ). Her all-out attack on Rikae just now does sound a lot like passionate innocent though and makes me feel better about her.
Paradoxically, so does Rikae's response so far.

…
Makes a line up and then eliminates one along with their main confrontation. Though in the context this presents a reasonable choice (plenty of others acted or said the same about G55/Rikae debate). Could have included Rikae in the list anyways as a demonstration that they were involved with the other three, but while Brinn and Lottie were hovering around the G55/Rikae debate, Kit was not directly in it. Kit was however connected to the G-L-P by being it’s main arbiter when it came to trying to find a possible wolf between the three.

My main question is, unless I’m just tired and missing it, why Kit in this specific grouping?
….

Post #171: Confronts Brinn on casually suspecting Kit for pushing for wolves in G-L-P. Brings up they only did so after Mac.
(Rikae by this point previously had already voted for Brinn).

Post #174: Responds to Rune, admits that they are flip flopping on suspicion on G55 again. Notes suspicion on Eonwe’s heightened agreeableness.

Post #210: Vote post. Votes for Brinn with reasoning:

Picked suspects from Rikae's shortlist, then backed off when attention turned away from the LPG triangle, and when she got suspected for this she tried to shift the suspicion to Kitanna, who had been more or less in the same camp.

Question I’m wondering, is why didn’t Pitch go with Kit given the previous amount of information and continued suspicion they had on their sudden hunt for wolves among them, Legate, and G55? They admit their uncertainty on G55 previously and Rikae’s possible innocence, but then go with Rikae’s list of fellow accused, swap out Mac, and then include Brinn (why not Lottie as well?).

Onto another note:

Post #305 -

Originally Posted by Macalaure

Except wolves know all day that they have to make up the reasoning for a vote for an innocent and can plan for it accordingly.

That’s to be expected and wolves would definitely know that themselves… and then act in contrast. Similar to when you’re examining someone on an event, the liar needs to make a story of what they did and why for protection, but at the same time they’re watching you very closely because they don’t know what facts you have about them.

There’s also the fact that wolves don’t know who the cobbler is on Day 1 any more than every other role. Once the cobbler starts disrupting though, the wolves are going to study it closely. Not for the cobbler, but who is on the sidelines with whoever the cobbler is arguing with. When they see an opinion of the situation start to form from the spectators, they have to adapt their plan and story rather quickly. If a wolf can’t do so, they need a temporary shelter until they can write their reasoning up why. If this is before a bandwagon forms, they’re quickly joining either side of a good ol’ fashioned cobbler debate and when asked about it later, feign the same fears as a villager, ‘oh, they were just so adamant and I didn’t know if either was correct, but I didn’t want to be singled out for doing nothing so I panicked and said enough to contribute.’ This can later be used as a convincing means of why they might back-peddle, saying they have more evidence now that they’re not under attack, etc.

When pressed later though, if someone is a villager, they’re going to defend themselves. It might not even be the exact same way they told you the first time, but the difference is they’ll be more eager to tell you to clear themselves.

When I was suspicious of both Brinn and Loslote of drifting into the shadow of Rikae-G55 debate, Loslote was the one out of the two who began defending themselves. A villager is probably gonna show anxiety on small things like when they replied to you, semantics and word choice, etc. not immediately what you’re accusing them of. At that point, they just want to prove themselves.

If a wolf was defending themselves, they’d of made a script or perhaps several to accommodate for this. You could ask a wolf trying to hide to explain themselves and you’ll get a lot of words, very direct, but not entirely what you asked. Another is the ‘duping delight’ of WW, usually the confident little glimmer in responses ‘you can ask/vote however you want’ or ‘it’s whatever you make of it’, which puts the blame of ‘mean interrogator’ on who’s pressing for an explanation.

We definitely saw this with Rikae to G55, but surprisingly a few times with G55 to a few others they were questioning afterwards.



On that note, it’s past midnight in my time zone and I should have already been in bed, but I wanted to look over who was hovering around Rikae’s list a little more. I’ll be back tomorrow, hopefully early enough to catch up everyone’s posts before I make a vote.