plasmid

OK, S-chan, I'll let you live then. IDK whether or not MiKi will though... For mboon and others, since this is a trainer's manual mafia, maybe we should go back and point out the hints after the game's done. I def missed them all in my first game until I had them pointed out to me. As for MiKi's role, I think I see which one she hinted at, and have no particular reason to doubt it at this point. But I won't say what it is for now in case Tom has RID.

Avatars don't count!!! =P XP

WIFOM: v. to try to out-think your opponent in a way that leads to circular logic. Example: if a goodie makes it look like he will save player X then the baddies would not want to target player X, so the goodie has no more reason to save player X and should not target player X, but if the baddies realize that the goodie should not target player X then they should target player X, so the goodie really does need to save player X after all, but now the baddies know that player X will be saved and so will not target him... (that goes on for a while) Derivation: WIFOM (or WiFoM) stands for Wine in Front of Me, and refers to a scene from the Princess Bride where the hero takes out two goblets of wine and tells the villain that one of them is poisoned, and they are to each choose one to drink. The villain uses this sort of circular logic for several iterations before picking one. In the end, the villain drinks from his goblet and dies, and we learn it's not because he picked the wrong goblet, but because both goblets were poisoned and the hero had built up an immunity to that poison over the past few years. Moral: you should start taking tiny non-lethal doses of arsenic now just in case you end up in a posioned-wine-drinking contest with a villain.

Wow, IDK why it looked like I was claiming the Jerry role? I said it'd be ok to role copy me because at least I'm not Jerry. =P That's only if cuckoo realizes all these ramifications of saying who is going to be spied, which he might not have if I hadn't posted. But now that you've said that cuckoo should save me, the baddies will know that I am about to be saved and won't target me, so cuckoo should target someone else, so the baddies SHOULD target me, so cuckoo should target me, but that means the baddies should target someone else... and the WIFOM begins.

Hmm, try to look at that from the baddies' perspective so you understand the implications. If you make it known on the main thread ahead of time who people are going to "spy" during the night (in this case using Tuffy's role copy as a spy but same idea) the baddies will know that if the person being spied is good and will become a confirmed goodie, there will be one less goodie under suspicion during the next day's lynch votes and more chance that a baddie will be lynched. Because of that, if their thinking caps are on, they have an incentive to NK the person being spied if they're a goodie: that would eliminate the person who would otherwise become a confirmed goodie and avoid narrowing down the number of players who are potential baddies during the lynch vote. So in general it's probably not good to broadcast who is going to get spied (particulary for the spy-ee). But now that I've made this public knowledge, the spy knows that there would be an advantage to not actually target the player mentioned in the main thread. And baddie behavior changes a bit when all this logic is out in the open because they might start WIFOMing: if they don't NK the proposed spy target, then they can use this logic to say that not getting NKed implies that the proposed target was a baddie. All that aside, my ability seems reasonably useful so Tuffy can go ahead and role copy me just for the ability if he wants. (At least you know I'm not Jerry.) Edit: lynched an extraneous comma

Hi DD, long time no hear. Whatever you've been up to in the meantime, it hasn't dulled your riddle solving skills; your first guess was a hole in one.

Okie dokie, new stanza added.

Completely off topic, but would anyone like to take bets on who gets NKed night 1?

Since this is a Trainer's Manual Mafia and most people are learning the ropes, a few things that might help for newbies. Feel free to argue / scream / throw things at me if my conclusions seem off. The fact that the goodies have a RID kill and the baddies don't (I don't know whether or not Tom does) makes it seem relatively safe to give hints about your role. It's better to keep your role secret if you can because indy wincons often have a RID requirement, but it's not like you're sure to get RID-killed if you hint at your role or out yourself to take away heat from a lynch vote. Since Tom has a vote manip, the goodies are probably better off if their lynch votes end up being landslides. If the votes are close, then Tom can use vote manipulation to achieve his ends which are probably nefarious. Day spy is something I've never seen before, but it seems like it could be very valuable to affect the course of lynch votes if someone's getting bandwaggoned. If you can, check back when the day is almost over to see if the day spy revealed something important. Jerry's redirect looks like it won't be too useful in this game because OOP/OOA has baddies>goodies and block>redirect. That means Meathead's block or redirect will take precedence over Jerry's redirect and would therefore not be affected if Jerry targetted him (I verified this with kristmark1). So the only really useful person for Jerry to target would be Butch (and maybe Tom if his secret ability is a night action with lower precedence than redirect). For Tuffy, role copy is only used once in the game and then gives you the targetted person's role for the rest of the game. It's up to you whether you want to wait until you have a better idea of who has good abilities before using role copy, or go ahead and use it now semi-randomly so that you can start using an ability right away. IMO, only Jerry's ability seems like it really sucks, so I'd favor going ahead and picking someone randomly. Kristmark1 told me that a Tom win does not necessarily mean that the goodies or baddies cannot win, so killing baddies should be a higher priority than killing the indy. But we should probably still kill Tom if we find him, because indies often have a clause like "if you primary wincon becomes impossible then you must survive until the end of the game" and that might have been what kristmark was talking about. And for the baddie roles, your best strategy is to night-kill each other.

Lol, I don't let that kind of stuff just sit around in my icebox, I eat it all instantly as soon as I get my paws on it.

TMM VIII - Tom & Jerry kristmark1 and Maurice 1. plasmid confirming 2. tolecnal 3. Hidden G CONFIRMING! 4. Tralala! Confirming! 5. mboon 6. smoth CONFIRMING! 7. Sakura-chan CONFIRMING! 8. 'Cat'astrophe CONFIRMING! 9. MiKi

That particular piece of headgear would actually defy the specified number of holes seen in relation to time of observation described in the second and third stanzas... Edit: And if it's any help, I had originally written the last stanza to be along the lines of the riddle from the Hobbit "No-legs lay on one-leg, two legs sat near on three legs, four legs got some."

I'll be back at work soon and will get barely any time to log in let alone strategize. IDK how busy it will be, but there is a high risk I'll have to be inactive or essentially random.org-ing actions. So if anyone else wants to play and would be relatively free, they can gank my spot. Otherwise I'll play as much as I can.

Haha, nah, I wrote this one before I started playing Mafia.

Big thanks to everyone for playing, and especially to Molly Mae for hosting a great game! From the commentary, it sounds like I need to play a game with this curr3nt character sometime. And next time, if I say I want everyone outed on night 1, I expect everyone to spill their roles, factions, and secret wincons with no questions asked! Edit: Almost forgot, night 1 action PM That goes on for a while...

Only slightly off topic @Molly Mae: I know it's generally a Heinous Crime to PM-rep, but after the game can I post what I sent you on night one?

Ooh, I really like the way microscope could work as another way of interpreting the second stanza, it would fit perfectly. The only problem is with the other stanzas, you're right in that it wasn't the direction I was heading with this riddle.

Forgot to add explanation for my action. I'm guessing that you decided not to try to block me after I quoted Maurice outing you as the blocker, since that would really incriminate you if it showed up in the night post. Without being able to use your block, you had to WIFOM and guessed that I would likely try to save myself, so I couldn't be NKed. You knew that I trusted aura absolutely and my suspicions were between you and flamebirde, so you chose to NK aura and leave me wondering whether you or flamebirde was the second rat. All of that was perfectly well calculated based on what you knew, and you played that part of the game well. There's only one thing you missed. If you're good, why wasn't flamebirde's Tech spy blocked last night? Flamebirde, the game is in your hands.

ROFL, I sure hope you meant to say Pea Coat! Otherwise... well I'm not even going to go there. But that still wouldn't fit all the clues, or the hint in post #30.

Host: Yuli and Molly Mae 1. plasmid - voting for MiKi 2. Flamebirde 3. MiKi 4. 'Cat'astrophe - DEAD - Lynched D1 and found to be a legitimate gangster 5. KlueMaster - DEAD - Killed N2 6. maurice - DEAD - Killed N1 7. Auramyna - DEAD - Killed N3 8. Araver - Bound and gagged and used as a hostage, since he was an undercover cop

Night is practically over, so it's time for my last minute revelation. Maurice's post as the Boss makes it look like MiKi is Mr Gray (the blocker). If that's true, it doesn't matter who I try to save. But I considered the possibly that Maurice was lying about MiKi's real role. We know that one of the rats was the Boss' son (the redirector) so I still had to prepare for the possibility that MiKi is actually the Boss' son. If that were the case, she has one good way out of this situation: she can redirect my save onto herself, then night-kill herself, to make it two rats against two mobsters. I countered this tactic by not acting at all. That way, if MiKi really is the Boss' son and tried to execute that plan, she would end up night-killing herself while redirecting a no-action instead of a save onto herself -- game over. But, if Maurice was telling the truth, then MiKi has the blocking ability. It wouldn't matter who I targetted to save, so I stuck with the plan of not saving anyone in case she's the Boss' son. And I'm pretty sure that I'll be the one she NKs because I showed no doubt that I would lynch her, so I have to tell you all this now before I end up dead. Here's the important point: she will try to argue that she has been outed as the blocker already but no one was listed in the night post as blocking my save, which is what she would do if she were a rat. The real reason she did not appear in the night post as blocking was because there was no action for her to block. So, aura and flame: 1) Do not overlook the evidence in post #126 incriminating araver and MiKi as having BTSC. Maurice said this in night 1 after I revealed my plans that depended on the Boss. If the rats knew he really was the Boss (because MiKi really is Mr Gray and is a rat with BTSC) then they would certainly kill him night 1, which is what actually happened, and they would know that the Boss was dead then. 2) Do not trust the argument that the absence of a block against me proves that MiKi is an innocent Mr Gray - I did not act at all for the reasons above in case she's actually the Boss' son. 3) If I'm about to get NK'ed, that's more evidence that MiKi's the second rat. If either aura or flame were the second rat, neither of them would want to NK me because I've made it clear that I'll vote to lynch MiKi and not vote to lynch them.

"Mommy, quick, can I have a quarter? It's..."

I think that Maurice has this one nailed

Most definitely on the right track. There was a reason why I chose those particular times of the day though, as well as the way the second stanza was put together.