How to catch up

[ThinkBig]

Hello all,

I've played a few games and one of the things I've noticed is that it is quite difficult for me to catch up after being away for a bit. In one game that I had to replace out of, I was V/LA for an exam and the game got to well over 40 pages from the time I've left.

So, how does one effectively catch up and get back in the game?

[BrainpanSonata]

That depends on how much time you're willing to spend. The shortest way is to ask the remaining players for a tl;dr recap. The longest is to slam down your enery drink of choice and bingeread everything, at the cost of sleep and pending social engagements. I say go for the recap, plus check the phase end and start posts and maybe also votals. But get multiple players to fill in the blanks for you, in case of shoddy memories and or critical omissions.

[Accountant]

Read everything. Even if it's 200 pages, I would still advise you to sit down with a bottle of coke and read through it all.

[Postie]

The longest is to slam down your enery drink of choice and bingeread everything, at the cost of sleep and pending social engagements.

You can always split it into several reading sessions if there's really

that

many pages, and give your thoughts "as of page [number]".

[Ircher]

That works until like pg 50 or so and then its just too many pages to read...
For me, 5 pages of thorough reading is about an hour and a half (30 minutes or so if I'm scanning through)

[Raskolnikov]

effectively?

ISO skim leading wagon
if you townread them then skim ISO next viable lynch
if you townread them then skim ISO next viable lynch

[Raskolnikov]

okay that has caveat ISOs arent always telling without the context

but it's fast

[GuyInFreezer]

You don't.

[rb]

1. read last 5 pages, give quick reads of scum/town for anyone applicable, null everybody else
2. ISO the biggest wagon, give opinions on it
3. ISO most active player, give read on them
4. ISO any of the players you had a read on in the last 5 pages to double check
5. start townblocking with your townreads and trying to get a good lynch (if the current biggest wagon is no good)

The thing with catchups I find is that people try to do these HUGE catchups, when what you really need to do is start giving reads/thoughts, cooperating with townreads and pressuring your scum reads. The highest priority for town is to be accurate, pressure scum and cooperate with other town. Being fully caught up helps with that, but it isn't hugely necessary. Your activity and input helps sort the game as well, and I think it's important to interact WHILE catching up and emphasise starting to nudge the town towards a good lynch than it is to spend 3 days catching up to make a big wall of text that's 3 days out of date - and then you're playing catchup again. Boring and doesn't help anyone really.

[mastina]

If it's longer than half a screenwidth--skim.
If it contains a block of text (we're talking looks-like-a-300-word-run-on-sentence-even-if-it's-not), skip; don't even bother with a skim. People who format their walls in that unreadable way deserve to be ignored.
If it's a petty fight, skip.
If it looks important, read it all.
If it is spam, skip.

Spend no longer than a couple of minutes MAXIMUM per post. No more than ten minutes per page.
Respond ONLY to the things which you think are important. Keep your responses brief and to the point--if you spend too long on them, you violate the above rule.
Power through in one sitting--give yourself about an hour per 30 pages, so in a 300-page game, yes you'll need ten hours to read it all.

[Creature]

I usually don't read the previous posts, I rather wait the new posts and eventually I am caught up.

[mykonian]

Yeez you guys are young Treat it like a paper, or something you need to study for. Goal is to understand as much in as short amount of time. Read the summary (iso votecounts). Skim the text. First two sentences, last sentence of each paragraph, that kind of work. Skip examples, paranthesis, quotes, all that jazz. After that do a real read. Now this sounds like a lot of time since you are essentially going over the matter 3 times, but the first two times cost just a fraction of the time and provide structure with which you can read the third time way faster, but crucially actually get more information from it than if you'd read it straight away. If you aren't taking notes 40 pages of mafia game can be done in an hour or so if you are nicely awake.

[Ranmaru]

Take notes. Spend some quality time catching up. Easier if you use two monitors. I use two monitors when catching up so it's easier to view the thread and respond to certain things I find off. (If town) Now, you say you had been away for your particular scenario. Only way to get back into the game is posting. Regardless of catching up or not. I would suggest catching up and forming reads before you post, though. Imagine you missed an assignment because you were sick. How would you make it up? You'd have to 'catch up' to get up to speed. It's the same thing here. There's no short cut around it.

Now, replacing in constantly will also help you get better at replacing in. It is interesting to see what kind of shitty situations you can get yourself out of. (One time I replaced into a game with a case against my slot and I had to answer for it, as a newbie)

[Burgerking]

dont bother reading what u missed if there are too many pages to read.

just read whatever is being posted at the time and read players based of that.

[ThinkBig]

dont bother reading what u missed if there are too many pages to read.

just read whatever is being posted at the time and read players based of that.

Thanks

Hey Vedith/Transcend, how many alts do you have?

[callforjudgement]

I skimread the entire thread, and then skimread each ISO individually. If something catches my eye, I look at it in depth, but I prefer not to read posts really thoroughly at the catchup stage (and doing that for every post is a waste). I can do that if someone asks my opinion on a particular post, or if I decide something needs more investigation (but in the latter case I'll normally ask a relevant player a question about it first,

then

reread it in depth; you don't want to leave the other players hanging too long).

Note that this changes slightly if you replace in to a widely scumread slot. If the priority is saving the slot rather than catching scum, you probably want to claim the instant you get your role PM (assuming you're actually town; if you're scum, pretend you didn't immediately get the replace-in PM and scour the thread for claims / talk to your scumbuddies if you can, first), then write your thoughts in the thread as you catch up. This is hard to fake as scum, which is precisely why I do it as town in a scumread slot. As scum, there's the choice of trying to fake it anyway, or of omitting it and hoping that nobody knows my meta too well. (I do find it hard to save a scum slot that's widely scumread when I replace into it, though, especially because often the slot can correctly be scumread off my predecessor's actions. I've had good success as a scum replacement, but only when the previous holder of the slot wasn't widely suspected at the time.)

[Human Sequencer]

Catch up more.
The way to get better at anything is to do it a whole bunch, practice makes perfect.
Keep an eye on the newbie game queue for games w/ about 20 pages that need a replacement, and replace into those w/ rb's advice in mind. It's a trial by fire, but it's the most effective way to learn.
Then when you get better at that, try games with more and more pages.
Ignore immature fools who yell at you for not reading the thread 100%.

[kuribo]

Easiest way to catch up is to quick lynch someone as soon as you replace in, claim a PR in twilight while saying you'll catch up during the night phase, then get shot that night so you don't actually have to read what people wrote before you came along.


That usually works for me.


Failing that, tell them you have no intention of catching up and that if they're smart they'll shut the hell up about that fact because DONT THEY KNOW WHO YOU ARE YOU ARE THE ENDER OF GAMES, THE SCOURGE OF SATAN, MASTIN'S BANE, AND BY GOD IF YOU GOTTA 1V1 SOME PIG JUST TO GET OUT OF READING A HUNDRED PAGES OF DERP DONT THINK FOR TWO SECONDS YOU WONT ROPE THEM IN A HEARTBEAT AND FORGET THEM FOREVER, WHY DO THEY COME TO ME TO DIE

[Accountant]

Easiest way to catch up is to quick lynch someone as soon as you replace in, claim a PR in twilight while saying you'll catch up during the night phase, then get shot that night so you don't actually have to read what people wrote before you came along.


That usually works for me.


Failing that, tell them you have no intention of catching up and that if they're smart they'll shut the hell up about that fact because DONT THEY KNOW WHO YOU ARE YOU ARE THE ENDER OF GAMES, THE SCOURGE OF SATAN, MASTIN'S BANE, AND BY GOD IF YOU GOTTA 1V1 SOME PIG JUST TO GET OUT OF READING A HUNDRED PAGES OF DERP DONT THINK FOR TWO SECONDS YOU WONT ROPE THEM IN A HEARTBEAT AND FORGET THEM FOREVER, WHY DO THEY COME TO ME TO DIE

This works too

You can go full ham and render the last 200 pages irrelevant sometimes