Sorry if what I posted about my Day 1 vote confused everyone. Then, not being able to get back to expand my thoughts or answer the questions raised just left that hanging for you all.
I couldn't find a satisfactory suspect, so I went with something fairly random. By that, it's "random" to me whether I pick one reason over another without much conviction either way when it's that early in a game. Anyhow, let me post my thought process for what I probably should have termed more of a process of elimination rather than "random" pick.
1. I read the thread again, couldn't find anything solid (IMO) to place my vote. At the time, there had been an 8-way tie and Labby wanted to use Zaffy's 8-side dice. I figured I'd just randomly pick someone to vote. So I went to random.org and that site wanted me to vote AAF. (Big congrats there, AAF.) I actually didn't like the idea of adding a 9th name to list of vote-getters when the voting was real spread out to begin with.
2. With that in mind, I looked to see who was voting whom and why. The 8-way tie had become a 3-way tie then between UN, Dun, and 2H. At least that development gave us something to look at and I figured there were some options to decide my vote.
Option 1 - Look at the singleton votes for someone hiding out who didn't want to get noticed. There were 2 votes/reasons I thought should be questioned.... Rich voting Pappy for no real reason and 2H voting Rich for being unlynchable. Pappy and Rich are both good players who aren't exactly expendable if they're innocent. And if they're scum, I doubt any of us are gonna spot that from their posts Day 1. One thing I didn't like about the singleton voters as possible suspects was it isn't only scum who tends to hide in a game like this. We have a lot of PRs too who might try to avoid drawing attention to themselves.
Option 2 - Focus on the people who placed a second vote on someone and why..... that was Dun, Dawg, and Ice... the second votes caused a tie. Didn't see anything suspicious there so I was left still with Rich or 2H for a vote or keep looking for something else.
I thought about just picking one of them but felt either vote would be weak/unhelpful. Rich voting a top player without reason wasn't a huge deal... Rich is often a cantankerous player anyway. Him voting Pappy just because isn't unreasonable, from him, and didn't mean Rich must be evil. Same thing with 2H though.... him voting someone for what I termed was a garbage reason isn't uncharacteristic for him, considering his previous choices in other games. In both cases, it was a good "reason" to question these votes, but not a great reason upon which to base a vote.
Option 3 - I looked to see who hadn't voted yet. That was Pappy, me, and LG. No big deal there. It wasn't scummy to not have a vote in yet.... though nightfall was coming up and there wasn't much for us to go on.
This is when I wondered what would happen if someone broke the tie and I decided to just pick one of the 3 randomly. I looked at UN and really just hated his OMGUS vote/attitude. I felt he could/should have tried to actually help the town better than that. Dun didn't strike me as being suspicious over the comments he'd made so I had no reason to pick him. 2H was still there but I'd already decided voting him for his unlynchable vote wasn't a very strong case for scum. It's more an assessment of his general game play.
So yes, it was an elimination process I went through to narrow things down, but voting UN (for being OMGUSSY) instead of voting Rich (for voting a good player) or 2H (for voting good player) seemed like a random/arbitrary thing to me, even on Day 1.
2H citing a garbage reason for voting someone isn't all that unusual. I felt it worth asking about but not vote-worthy all by itself. Besides, there were a lot of non-reasons given for day 1 votes..... not just from 2H. Why would I single him out for that and ignore all the others? When I didn't see anything worthwhile looking at the votes/reasons, I decided to just break the tie instead. The tied players were 2H, Dun, and UN..... so that's where my pick fell.
No, not at all. Seriously, it was day 1. I could've voted anyone for any reason at all.... so could Ice, so could most anyone else in the game. I just felt adding another useless vote to a pile of other useless votes just because we can think up a defendable reason if questioned later was lame. Breaking the tie seemed like a better strategy at the time, particularly as day 1 ties are notorious for including nothing but innocent townies against other innocent townies in the running. This made it more important for me to break the tie to see if I could shake things up.
