I'm not sure if you're a fan of gambits, but they tend to be dangerous. High risk, high reward. That's all I'll say on the matter.

I'm assuming you're talking about the FE scum thread conversation. I reread it and I think I know what you're referring to. Keeping an eye out. I might see something, but I want to wait to see if patterns form. I'm going to go ahead and trust you on this. If you do it as scum it would only backfire on you anyway.

As for comforting Clyde, well my thought was that if I got him too comfortable he might slip. I figured if he was guilty, if I made him think I was on his side he'd get comfortable and slip at some point. And if he was town, it would help town stay unified. I dunno, it made sense at the time. I've by no means given him a town read at this point. I don't really think it was enough to go off of, even if it was a slip, and like I said in the post, I don't want him to panic and look suspicious when he wasn't, and I thought there was a great chance he wasn't. So I just posted it so as to make a note of it for later, and make sure the rest of town was aware of it, while also hopefully either getting scum too comfortable around me or getting a townie to be unafraid to voice his questions and opinions.

Sounds like you're well aware of it though, so that's good, though I'm pretty sure it was you that made a similar slip at the beginning, not me. It was the huge back and forth conversation I couldn't stand to read where prof thought he'd caught you in a slip about day talk, and you countered that you'd seen it in the sign up thread. Regardless, I disagreed that it was a slip-up, because you HAD seen it in the sign-up thread, and were asking legitimate questions that any noob might ask. With Clyde's question, I just thought it was a really stupid question that he should have known the answer to or at least could have answered himself. I haven't completely written it off yet.

By the way, in your analysis of Clyde, could you say what you think the implications of his question are if he's scum? I'd think if he is scum asking that question, it might imply there isn't day talk for mafia, which means we should be looking for signs of coaching.

With Cone, I maintain that at first, when Smeags made the joke, Cone played along, and then he stopped playing along and jumped on Smeags for it. I explained in that post what I thought of Smeags' jokes. Do you agree with that analysis (deliberate tactic to get town talking and get reactions)? If you do, then look at the post I quoted where Cone jumps on Smeags. Can you see how I might be concerned? It seems like an inappropriate reaction to the joke. I might expect it from WhiteEagle who didn't get the joke in the first place, but not from Cone who actually played along. Cone also jumped on Eric over a joke. I know you said you don't trust Eric, but come on dude. Last game he was worse than WhiteEagle was in his first game. He didn't seem himself at all. It was like he could barely understand what was going on and was afraid to do anything. This game, he actually sounds like himself, and is keeping up with what's going on, he can dish out as much as he gets. The incredible personality shift simply isn't something you can coach. Apparently you think it could be, but I feel like there's been a psychological shift from one game to the next that simply can't be taught. I'm not saying he's confirmed town, but I would be very shocked if he could make that kind of improvement just from people telling him what to say. Remember, he had scum to talk to last game and it wasn't enough.

That said, I think the reason you're concerned about my analysis of Cone is that, first, he's the flat out most active poster in the thread as of your last post count. That definitely counts for something. And second, he's definitely doing investigations, that also counts for a LOT. My concern is that even scum can be active, however, just as you were your first game, and scum can definitely try to do investigations, as you did in the Fire Emblem game. The trick is to look at the investigations, to see what they're trying to influence. I'd hate to find out our most active poster is the enemy, but Cone went after two people for what was obviously pure joking. Recently, he criticized your Noctis investigation for going nowhere, but then immediately after says it's a good idea. That's precisely the kind of empty posts scum try to make. Doesn't really commit to anything. Makes him look like he cares when he doesn't. So I countered in a later post that if he has a problem with the investigation, he should do something about it, which I then in turn demonstrated to him. Alas, Noctis got off, but the point stands.

Keep in mind that these are just investigations. Their purpose is to follow leads, not to condemn or antagonize people. The only investigation I'm remotely confident about right now is Astro. I'm just doing the responsible thing and following leads that I think have some logic to them. Just as you disagreed with my analysis of Cone, I disagree with his reasoning for going after the people that he did. I'm not just lashing out mindlessly. I hope you'll at least consider my ideas on Cone, though for now I have a null read on him. I'd like to hear exactly why you disagree so strongly with my analysis of him, though. I may have overlooked something, so I'm open to criticism.

As for Noctis, his defense was nitpicky. He had done one more post since the start of the day, big deal. Your point still stands, he's inactive. But for now, I think it's best to just see if he improves. Like I said, if his work excuse is true, it will make itself evident. The nitpicky nature of it does make him seem potentially too defensive, but at the same time, it could be seen as you, as he put it, "grasping at straws". I'm reserving judgment for now to see what he does. You've certainly backed him into a corner here. He has to be more active now or he incriminates himself. The bottom line is his entire activity can be summed up as checking in, claiming he's working, and saying that he's not really that inactive and it's just work that was holding him back. I say we give him a day or two, see if the same description doesn't hold true then.

I also dislike his logic here. It feels like he's trying to build a story to claim a non-playable character that wouldn't be counterclaimed instead of the villain he probably is, making excuses why villains could be good and heroes could be the bad guys, when occam's razor would suggest that it's not worth considering until the simpler answer (that heroes are town and villains are scum and everyone is a playable character) cannot explain the evidence. His posts sew confusion rather than actually investigate. If he's town, he's bad at being town, but he's supposedly experienced, so you'd think he'd be better than that right?

Consider this then:

1. Then why have flavor? I'm well aware prof isn't crazy about it, but that would just mean he'd put in something to make it harder to guess just from the flavor. Prof himself made use of flavor last game by looking at the kill posts to glean information about the scum team. As long as the flavor isn't written such that it does all the work for you, but gives you enough that when you finally find the bad guy, it's satisfying ("Yeah! We got Ganondorf!" Not, "Yeah! We got...Mario?") The past two games were not ruined by flavor hunting. Instead flavor hunting just added a bit of...flavor.

2. True, but then it all becomes really arbitrary. Link is scum because he just is, while Ganondorf is town because he just is? Smash may have teams, but it doesn't lable one team good or evil. So in a game like mafia where they are, the analogy doesn't work. But there is a way to make sense of it. People always want more villains in Smash, you see threads with the coming of each game counting how many villains are in the new game. Then you have Subspace Emissary, where the villains all teamed up against everyone else. Villains are still viewed as evil by the fanbase and developers alike.

3. Hmm, I guess "neutral" characters probably could go either way. That could be how prof gets around the issue of making flavor hunting too powerful. The scum team could be composed of pure villains like Ganondorf, with things like Ice Climbers thrown in to keep people guessing. Flavor would make a joke about how the Ice Climbers actually club baby seals with their hammers or something (they do in the Japanese version), while Ganondorf's would just say he's the King of Evil.

My issue with the Mr. Saturn comment is that it was Astro that made it, and then he makes the comments about how non-playable characters might be in the game while things you might think are town actually aren't. It just sounded too much like he was trying to build a bogus claim while being able to attack townies on their claims. But I guess you're right, some characters aren't really heroes or villains. I maintain, however, that the bit about non-playable characters being possible is bullshit. 50+ characters in the history of Smash and prof is going to pick an item or assist trophy? Yeah right.

But enough about the game setup, Yoshiya, we've already given enough attention to Astro's crap. Point is that until we have reason to believe otherwise, there's no need to worry about what characters people are, but rather whether they're scum or not. Until then, for the purposes of flavor, we may as well go by Occam's razor. Character claims shouldn't be happening today anyway.

Alright, that's it for now. I'm heading out for the night.

This is effectively what I was trying to argue, I just wanted to make people realise that the flavour is irrelevant. Prof is writing his own flavour for this round (I mean since when was Ms. Kitty a Smash character?) and as such, he can do what he wants with the characters, that's why he has flavour, to come up with fun little explanations for why popular characters are acting out of character (or even in character depending on what the mafia's motives are this game, Prof never revealed what Ms. Kitty was actually doing with her list). I want people to realise that when someone does claim a character down the line, there is a high chance that it has no reflection on their alignment or powers so that we can get some real scum hunting done rather than mis-lynching a town first to learn that actually, just because X was Bowser, he wasn't confirmed mafia.

And yea, I definitely think the non-playable character thing is a bit weird. The only reason I can see Astro having said that would be if he himself was a non-playable character. Such a possibility seems a bit weird.

for those newcomers here. Like Yoshiya said. I do this everytime. Why? I still see he is random according to Yoshi and I like to poke him with this. 

I'm unsure of you Spurge since you haven't contributed a lot to conversation. Though bringing attention to yourself suggests you are town.

Hylian has been pretty active on the other hand. I feel he's possibly scum but that's just some gut feeling now. Can't really prove it. My terrible play makes me a really easy target but, hylian is the only one who targetted me seriously after I got some activity in. He also targetted Nickles rather strongly aswell. May just be some aggressive strategy but also, a possible diversion.

What do you think about the 3 votes that you got?

Glad to see you are paying attention and that you remember some of it. Remember some of the more heated arguments in the begginning? It wasn't all coddling. That came a bit later and inbetween. Ask yourself what happened first. It was multi tiered. Which is something you should also look out for if you are town. Then again as i said I could have made a miscalculation considering I don't really know any of these experianced players.