Micro 11: Mostly Normal Micro (Day 4)

[borkjerfkin]

Vote Mehdi2277

so many numbers

[borkjerfkin]

been playing so many mish-mash games I forgot to use vote tags. For shame.

[borkjerfkin]

I think #15 is an appropriately dismissive response to a weak/RVS vote. Weak-town read on Lucky.

UNVOTE: Mehdi
VOTE: Salamence

Let's see where this goes.

[borkjerfkin]

I'd file lucky as leaning scum for now, but only ever so slightly since what I can pull from what

he wants to see about Sala

could lead us to believe either way.

You need to elaborate on this sentence - specifically, the bolded, before I make any further judgment on you.

[borkjerfkin]

Let's look at some responses to an early L-2.

Opportunistic bandwagoning at its finest. I'm curious on what you want with this wagon and why you jumped on it.

This is a decent post because of the second sentence, although in a later post you seem to regress a bit, implying that I'm trying to quicklynch you and I must be scum because "Scum like to do a quicklynch" (think about the likelihood of scum getting away with this).
All in all, this is an appropriate reaction to being the one getting L-2'd early on -- you didn't realize what I was doing, which allowed me to see that you also didn't panic or issue ultimatums or anything. You're leaning town.

UNVOTE: Sala

Basically, I want lucky to make good on this before I can start forming a deeper opinion of him. One that uses a read outside of RVS.

Ok. I actually thought for a minute you (possibly deliberately) misinterpreted the first part of #15 which was obviously tongue-in-cheek. This statement doesn't give me much, but it's not incriminating.

but I think bork's statement in that post "Let's see where this goes" comes off as eager to start a wagon. He looks ready to push someone, and I'm not sure it's safe thinking to get bloodthirsty so soon.

Well the vote should've tipped you off that I was eager to start a wagon. Can you define "bloodthirsty" (namely, is it the fact that I'm wagoning or the fact that I want to LYNCH RIGHT NOW) and why it's anti-town to be doing whatever that is early in the game?

Next read that post again. I never said bork needed to vote you. All I meant was to question how godot found bork scummy for that vote. Splitting wagons everywhere doesn't help.

And now this -- especially that last sentence. Why is splitting wagons right out of RVS anti-town? Why is hopping on the biggest wagon pro-town?

Yes I do [think Bork bandwagonned]. I just don't think the vote was super scummy. My main thing dealing with godot's vote is similar to bub it seems to be exaggerating one thing (although on his side the way he's explained it sounds genuine). And covering the next question likely asked I currently think bork is null.

This is the kind of fence-sitty non-opinions on the matter that I'm looking for.
VOTE: Mehdi

Haven't even looked at Bob yet.

[borkjerfkin]

Mehdi had a similar style when we played micro 3 which i found him scummy in that game and he was town. So right now i dont consider mehdi scummy as of now.

I don't agree at all. That game he had quick reads on everyone, even if some were wrong. This game they seem sluggish and undeveloped even after expressing opinions about what some of us have done.

[borkjerfkin]

@Godot:
On you? You're overly cautious, which isn't alignment indicative, and you're mostly stating the obvious -- no scum is going to pile on for a quick hammer on day 1.

What I don't like is that you say:

I don't mind if we wagon someone quickly.

Now you voted me when I piled on Sala. This either means:
a) you DO mind if we wagon someone quickly
or
b) you actually (still) think I was trying to mislynch Sala.

Which is it?

Additionally, I think you might be confusing this setup with a different setup -- where in the rules does it say we get to lynch twice before scum can night kill?

[borkjerfkin]

also: RQS is crap, but question 3 isn't an RQS question so I'll answer it.

Sal's first post is the kind of joke RVS "I pretend not to understand how statistics work" post that you see all the time and isn't worth in depth analysis.

Denouncing early town reads tends to come more from scum than town (early town reads really come from anyone), which speaks worse of Mr. Ree than it does of DJD.

[borkjerfkin]

@Bork, you realize in our last game it was pretty much 3:1 nightless? I only really had to make 3 reads (which were town, leaning town, and null). I've already mentioned three reads in this game (town- sala, town- lucky, scum- bud). And one of those reads I currently changed my mind on (bud to more likely town).

I'll concede that after rereading some of your earlier posts.
What are you trying to say about Godot in #37?

[borkjerfkin]

Here's where I'm currently at with people:

I will eat my hat if there is not at LEAST one scum in here:
Mehdi -- I don't like his fence sitting reaction when asked about my vote on Sala, and #32 and #33 read like 'not sure if I have to bus or not'. If he flips scum, I'm looking at Godot.
Ree -- his denouncing of DJD even HAVING a townread early on (and the semantic argument he veered to) is scummy as hell. Also, the introduction of "RQS" with a legitimate question thrown in, followed by the admission that Question #3 was the only one he cared about is bizarre.
Bub -- his VCA based play without any flips is entirely IIoA and therefore incredibly easy for scum to base their play off of. Weaker read than the other two.

Null:
Godot -- I'm having a lot of trouble reading him. He never actually answered my question about why his vote was on me earlier, and his most recent response to me (just taking it off) smells of backing down under scrutiny. I like to think that the utter phobia of L-2 is more common from town, though.
Djd -- Meta based case (it's more useful to notice similarities in previous game than differences in a previous game to make an argument). The time-zone discussion really isn't useful.
Zab -- lack of content.

Town:
Lucky -- I like his response early game, but this is sliding into null territory with the lurking and the persistence of an RVS vote.
Sala -- I talked about his response to pressure earlier.

[borkjerfkin]

Mehdi: who is scum?

[borkjerfkin]

In post #60, [Bork] completely ignores the main point of my question, what his feeling were on DJD giving Sal a golden townie ticket.

Pretty sure I answered that -- early town reads come from either alignment, and therefore the fact that he did that doesn't bother me at all. Whereas you focused more on the terminology "is town" rather than "leaning town" or "looks townish", which is a weak semantic argument.

Why did you say (in post 79) I had an early town read on DJD?

I didn't. Read it again. You denounced DJD. DJD had the town read [on Sala]. denouncing the occurrence of an early town read is a common scumtell (especially with no reason other than 'it's too early'); having an early town read is not a scumtell, it's null.

Some of these reads are parroting what other people have said (Lucky, Bub, Zab) Others are derpy and inconsistent (me [misinterpreting what I said], Sala [conclusion does not match analysis], Godot [serious about the nightkill thing?]). This is more likely scum than really sloppy town.



On another note, I don't like Mehdi's #97. It doesn't SOUND sarcastic, it sounds like you actually hold that opinion (fine! -- a legitimate argument can be made for not letting scum weasel out of your sights when you're sure you have them, but that's a playstyle thing) but then are waffling away from it later when called on it (not fine!)

I'd rather lynch Mehdi than anyone else today.

[borkjerfkin]

"I've used sarcasm badly in the past, so I must be doing it now?"

[borkjerfkin]

Because he's probably town, if based on nothing other than the sheer amount of scumreads I have from others. Your case is bad.

Sala says it's gut on his part. Good for him, but you can't expect me to sheep him based on that.

[borkjerfkin]

I'll concede the point on misinterpreting my statement. Putting a comma there does totally change the meaning of the sentence.

[borkjerfkin]

The fact you can say you have a sheer number of scum reads mean you have to be wrong with some.

Agree. That's the nature of the game.

And saying someone must be town just because I find some other people scummier isn't the best logic.

Disagree. Remember what I said in Micro 3 about town caring about what is more LIKELY than not whereas scum simply wants to keep all possibilities open? Picking the most likely option is how we win games.

[borkjerfkin]

@Sala:
You should've just said meta, then.

Meta is more useful when you can prove similarities rather than differences. Link me to a scum game and show how he's been behaving similarly.

@Ree: You're acting like him calling Sala town is some sort of Innocent-child-like authoritative claim. It's still just an opinion, and hardly a "golden ticket". I don't understand how someone who isn't trying to misdirect us doesn't understand that.

[borkjerfkin]

Please elaborate on the bolded section or say it in a different way. It makes no sense to me in it's current format. How was it not a golden ticket? Why are you so concerned with how I read it when you are currently voting for Mehdi? How does what Salamence just said not throw up any red flags to you? Sal just used his meta to say that DJD would "NEVER" proclaim Salamence as town so why does it still bother you? Are you trying to help DJD out? That's kinda what it's looking like to me... and I don't understand how someone who isn't trying to misdirect us doesn't understand that.

P-Edit: I would like to press the replacement. They will never have the answers I want but I would like to see something from them nonetheless. That slot feels scummy to me and I don't care if nobody else sees it. I told you I would give you something before you went ahead with any hammer votes on me. This is what I'm giving you. Even if you lynch me now, at least you have something to work with tomorrow. If you decide not to, form your own opinions, don't critisize mine for being different (or similar??? (bork)) from everyone elses.

I don't want sheep. I want investigations and opinions from everyone, not just the self proclaimed investigators.

I was referring to the Innocent Child role (mod confirmed town). There are two things wrong with your semantic argument (other than the fact that it's a semantic argument):
1) saying "I label you town" is a lot closer to "I think you're town" than it is to "THIS GUY IS 100% TOWN [which scum might say because they know]"
2) even if 1) weren't true, it's not a golden ticket because nobody is obligated to believe him (hence why I mentioned Innocent Child, a situation where we would be obligated to believe such a statement.)

Seriously, look at other games. People throw out this kind of dismissive "you're town" read early all the time. And I care about how YOU read it because YOU'RE one of my early scumreads. Scum doesn't WANT an early semi-confirmed townie; it narrows the mislynch pool.

If I think DJD is town, I am very much obligated to "help him out", but it's really more here that I drastically disagree with what you're trying to pin on him. I believe that Sala is not lying about thinking DJD is scum, but that's totally different than AGREEING with Sala. If he's gonna meta, he needs to meta from the side he thinks DJD is. "He has a history of doing this as scum" is much easier to prove than "he would NEVER do this as town (because I haven't seen him do it yet)".

We need more from DJD's replacement -- I won't argue that point, but he's still probably my #2 town right now because:
@Lucky, reads please. Your last post's arguments are terrible.

[borkjerfkin]

To clarify: Lucky WAS my #2 town until that last post.

[borkjerfkin]

@Lucky, what's wrong with 128? Why is it filler? I wouldn't call that filler at all.

[borkjerfkin]

Do you really think the mafia would no kill twice to get one person lynched? Is that even a feasible plan?

Basically this. This was a misunderstanding that Godot had early on that people are taking to extreme levels of silliness.

[borkjerfkin]

Sorry for the relative scarcity; this weekend was busier than most.

Next few posts will only be commenting on the issue du jour, namely johdog & sala. It bears repeating that these were my top two townreads early on.

Sala calls the initial case gut, but it turns out he really meant meta. I have two problems with this:
1) I (still) want you to at least

look

at some of his scumgames and see if you can draw any parallels.
2) Your case essentially amounts to "he didn't do what he's doing in the sample size of

two games

that I've played with him." The fact that you're in a situation now where you know each other and you didn't before those two games is actually incredibly important here and you're not even taking that into account.
This is a

bad

argument. It's not scummy but it's incredibly short-sighted.

#180 is moderately scummy -- it's a bad pressure reaction to a non-vote.

Stuff of note in #189:

Its not a fake post. I just don't understand attacking lucky over a RVS vote.

You previously mentioned that RVS is not completely random. Where exactly do you expect scumhunting to start? It seems like you're either downplaying (as shown here) or uppplaying RVS ("not completely random therefore X action is telling") in order to make your argument in several different places.

Translation: I know I am scum, so I am backtracking because you know it was scummy for your replacee to call me scum.

This is just making no sense to me every time I read it. Did you mean 'town' instead of 'scum' at the end? Explain this.

Truth: [bandwagonning is scummy].

Why?

Everything else is just a lack of even exploring the possibility of DJD just being town who thought Sala was town. Exchanging a joke about pokemon does not constitute buddying.

Overall, Sala is either 1) Deliberately dismissing the possibility of town-DJD because he's scum who decided he was going to push that wagon before the game started or early on or 2) allowing himself to be goaded and therefore not thinking clearly -- there's a lot of emotion in his last few posts. I want to hear more from him today without all the confirmation bias that I saw in #189 and #192.

In fact, #192 is almost devoid of content -- please stop this kind of stuff. Anything that you feel is unimportant enough to put inside a massive spoiler tag is probably something that you don't have to post at all.

This ended up being entirely about Sala. I'll just end the post here and start a new one.

[borkjerfkin]

DJD

:
I've said how I feel about #39. It's null.
I think a lot of people are misreading #43. This post, to me, was a (cheeky) way of saying "the wagon on Sala has no merit". This is true.
#62 -- attacks Ree for late onset RQS (agree) and comfort level with early L-1 (disagree...very playstyle/site meta based).

overall I seriously can't find a single scummy thing that DJD did before he replaced out, and that's more than I can say for most everyone else.

johdog

: First off, the chronological post by post stuff that you did opening up is incredibly difficult to follow as it jumps around from player to player -- organize your thoughts either by player or by centralizing around a specific argument. This is why people had to ask you exactly how you felt about people at the end of all that.

The 180 johdog pulled from DJD's initial read on Sala seems like a town thing to do. If he were scum and he were concerned about making sala a confirmed townie, I think the safer thing to do is to slowly back off from that read rather than immediately shift focus to that person.

I've got incredibly mixed feelings about 190. The foremost being:
Why do I have to wade through a line by line posting of a response to every single thing he said, considering you don't have anything useful to say about a lot of it (responding to "ok" with an underhanded remark is not useful for someone who's trying to ISO you).

And you're definitely not supposed that someone would never never never never never whatever never never ever do something because you've played with him twice.

This is a good point and it's why Sala's meta argument sucks. That's all.

You're either not understanding what I mean or you're just playing dumb. Probably the latter. Anyway, I'll explain for the laymen around. My problem is not you voting "your rival". My problem is your word choices, you're trying to look like you don't care but your whole post feels forced. That goes for your last post too btw. You're always trying to look laid-back but it's so obviously forced.

You need to get a lot more specific in order for this accusation to hold any water: what's disingenuous about his initial RVS post? You've also accused him of both faking being "laid back" and faking "overreactions", which seems a bit at odds with itself. Do you really think he's done both of these?

List of reasons:
1) Gut.

You're really oversimplifying the issue by just calling it gut. He certainly qualified it later.

town overreacts, scum fakes overreacting. Case in point: you.

This is just silly, because it assumes that it's always easy to tell the difference, and then you've got confirmation bias at the end of it.

Overall I consider this slot to still probably be weak-town, but it's definitely more due to DJD's play than anything Johdog has done so far. Johdog's mixing in just enough of subtle ad-hominem to get Sala to fly off the handle at him, which isn't actually getting anything useful accomplished here.

I want to know some other people's opinions on this exchange: is this TvT? TvS? SvS? Why?

I need to update my reads, and I'll try and do that this afternoon.

[borkjerfkin]

I just realized I called you johdog everywhere instead of johhog. Apologies.

[borkjerfkin]

Sala is more likely scum than Johhog to me, and this is almost assuredly not bussing so if we correctly hit one the other is town.

Mehdi

is still my preferred lynch: he's got a habit of asking questions that he doesn't draw any conclusions from, and then simply declaring people town based on tells. This has the effect of 1) allowing him reads that he doesn't have to defend because they're not based on his perceptions (which would show a thought process and make him more transparent), just objective actions and 2) he looks like he's genuinely scumhunting because he's asking so many questions.

Ree

is weak-scum. His fanatical devotion to his case against DJD/johhog even though it made no sense is the only thing making me not want to lynch this slot -- I'd have expected scum to back down under pressure almost immediately. I'm still having trouble seeing a townie thought process from the following:

What I'm not fine with is ending the day on page fucking 3. How the hell does that help anyone?

This is sounding to me like you're trying so hard to seem inquisitive that you're forgetting that the main objective is to lynch scum. I'd rather have a scum lynch on page 3 than a town lynch on page 25.

There is a number between 0 and 1 scum in [

Sala

/

Johhog

]. If there's a scum there, there's around a 2/3 chance that it's Sala -- Sala's walls had more signs of scum mentality than johhog's did, but neither is seeming glaringly town to me and I don't buy Mehdi's argument that scum would never tunnel someone on day 1, especially considering 1) you've got no idea how this person plays scum and 2) it's WIFOM (that's what scum wants you to think etc.)
Overall, Sala is weak-scum, Johhog is weak-town.

Lucky

is approaching day2-3 policy lynch territory for me (if we hit scum today). He's by far contributed the least in terms of content and the fact that he was voting someone based on lack of content is . He's null but profoundly not helping us at all.

I want to know what people are seeing on

Zabriel

, because I don't have a particularly good read on him, and what little I have is suggesting a lack of scummy interactions.

Everyone who's voting Zab, why are you voting Zab?

Godot

's town.

Bub

is probably town.

[borkjerfkin]

This is like the king of misrepresentations. I said I would rather lynch SCUM on day 3 than TOWN on day 25. Where you even get to what you just posted I haven't the foggiest. You're probably scum.

[borkjerfkin]

EBWOP: day=page

[borkjerfkin]

Also: Don't chop my posts to make me say things out of context. Most are short enough that you can easily quote the whole thing. There is no townie motivation to chop posts. It usually just edits out the main point of the post and changes the meaning.

You think I'm trying to sound inquisitive? Is that what you picked up off a snippet of my post? Did you happen to read this page or just skim it? I'm pretty sure Johhog, Godot and myself have all said (in the last 2 pages) the reason a quicklynch on day 1 is bad. We have better luck looking at interactions day 1 when we have ALL the players together than in any other day. I'm not saying I wouldn't love to Lynch scum today.

I'm saying. We need more information before we Lynch scum today

and

so we can be sure we Lynch scum today.

Does this make sense the fourth time around or should we get someone else to explain it again?

My point was that you seem to be more concerned with generating content than with actually hitting scum, which is the sort of thing I'd expect scum to say when they're thinking too hard about trying to blend in. In your quote, the part I have italicized is obvious and isn't the point you were making in the earlier post. The part I have underlined is that point you were making in the earlier post, where it sounded like you had some sort of page count quota before we were allowed to lynch. I've seen games with 9 people end at 10 pages because the scum had been found so quickly. There's no reason to shy away from this (nor is there a reason to quicklynch if you HAVEN'T found scum, so stop trying to say I'm arguing this) and I feel that fact would be self evident to a townie.

In #218 are you trying to argue that because I happen to think Bub is town now that lynching him on page 3 would've been bad if you (or anyone else) had thought they'd had scum dead to rights at that point? Because you're making a grossly inept argument if that's what you're saying.

To reiterate, just because there wasn't sufficient reason to believe Bub was caught scum on page 3 doesn't mean that we shouldn't have lynched him IF we had him totally nailed at that point (via a scumslip or series of townslips or whatever).

Reads change with time, but they don't always get BETTER with time. If I turn out to be wrong on Bub and he IS scum do I get to use that point against you to say "haha told you we should've lynched him on page 3"? (hint: no).

I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to say in 219.

[borkjerfkin]

Anyone else notice that JOH has left?????

Question to all:

If I flip town, does that make JOH scum???

Not necessarily. The inverse and converse are both true though.

And you haven't exactly been a font of activity yourself. Has he been posting in other games?

Also: who else is scum besides johhog?

[borkjerfkin]

You really think this is bussing?

[borkjerfkin]

Now answer me this, how does a series of townslips possibly lead to a lynching?"

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=23001
(PoE)

[borkjerfkin]

BTW the game I linked is NOT ongoing, even if Quadz never updated it to reflect as such.

[borkjerfkin]

Why is lack of content scummy?

[borkjerfkin]

Lucky, you really need to proofread your posts before you make them, both for content and grammar.

What exactly do you expect Mehdi to say to your question? You're not really making any sense.

[borkjerfkin]

Lucky is exhibiting, and I hate to use this term because it's insulting, "VI-like behavior". Having no coherence isn't much of a tell either way.

@zab: Who's doing a crazy reach?

[borkjerfkin]

@Lucky: you have need to proofread because I, at least, can't discern a mentality from you, and transparency is pretty much half of being a good townie.

That and you haven't really said anything original. Do you actually have reads on Mehdi/Ree? Because it sounds like you're just sheeping me there.

[borkjerfkin]

You realize that at this point this is going to be less about who is scum and more about who's better at arguing, right?

[borkjerfkin]

Refer to #213 for me -- not a whole lot has changed since the joh/sala quotewalls.

I'm still at (from scum to town)
SS - Mehdi
WS - Sala, Ree
N -- Lucky
WT - Joh, Zab
T - Bub
ST - Godot

[borkjerfkin]

Lack of scummy interactions really, and he hasn't really pushed the VCA thing since early game, which is good because vote analysis is dumb pre-flip when nobody knows anyone's alignment anyway.

Mehdi, why are you not voting Lucky if he's your top scumread?

[borkjerfkin]

VOTE: Lucky
THAT'S L-1. And you knew that you were at L-2 the whole time (there's a vote count on the previous page), so I'm not buying this fake 'oh you mean I'm still alive?' stuff.

Lucky needs to be able to claim before a hammer, so please STATE INTENT so it gives him opportunity to do so.

[borkjerfkin]

That was a pretty blatant misstep. Do you honestly think he's been paying so little attention that he thought he was hammered with 3 votes?

[borkjerfkin]

I thought Mehdi had voted me before since Mehdi had me as his top scum read. I wasnt sure if anyone else had voted, I was just trying to post in case I had been lynched to post before the mod ended the day or if I was at l-1 before someone hammered.

I don't buy this, but most people have been unwilling to comment. Sala says it's plausible. Anyone else?

Again, believing lucky because he is in the same hole I am, town players getting outsmarted by smarter players.

How are you sure of this? Does lucky have a habit of playing sloppy as town? Show me.

[borkjerfkin]

It still makes no sense to me that Mehdi would say that Lucky's his biggest scumread (#289) and be on the other competing wagon, especially when such a vote would not have hammered Lucky or even put him at L-1 (since it was before Godot or I voted).

I'd still lynch him over either Lucky (who I'm ok with lynching now) or Zab (who I don't want to lynch).

[borkjerfkin]

Mehdi, Lucky, Sala, [Ree] are all on the table for me, in that order. I'm actually feeling a little better about Ree lately so he's a very distant fourth.

Deadline is Tuesday -- keep it in mind.

[borkjerfkin]

Here's an opportunity:

VOTE: Mehdi

[borkjerfkin]

(Claim: Not Jailkeeper)

No reason to try to second guess Mehdi's claim D1, although if he is what he says he is than he isn't what's making this game just "Mostly" Normal.

UNVOTE:

Sala isn't a bad lynch -- he's one of my scumreads, and has a lot of interactions with about everyone in the game.

Intent to hammer

[borkjerfkin]

(I'd like Sala to say whatever he has to say -- that's all I'm waiting for.)

[borkjerfkin]

So I have been answering anything that comes for me.

This is basically the writing on the wall here. Your primary motivation is defensive and it comes off hard in that post.

@Godot: No reason to hammer before people see his latest post.

[borkjerfkin]

Mehdi's playing JK correctly.

===============[]

VOTE: Sala

[borkjerfkin]

It's my birthday -- I'm hammered. I'll catch up tomorrow.

[borkjerfkin]

I am considering Ree on the Sala wagon in spirit. @Ree -- would you agree with this?

His "I know for a fact that I'm not scum so why does it hurt anyone to focus on the wagons" is a misguided sentiment and a null tell (no one else is going to take for granted that you're town but I see town go down this road often).
The assumption that scum are split on the wagon is mildly scummy at best because it seems like an easy way to set up a mislynch. It's also super WIFOMy since he (and Bub, earlier) were talking about it on D1; on the other hand, noob scum do this all the time.

I am surprised by the sudden clarity in Lucky's argument -- I can actually start to see the thought process for Lucky here. That's actually slightly scummy to me because it makes his D1 play (and especially that AtE) seem more like a facade.

Zab's #397 seems weird that he'd think that scum would've formed or changed their plans just based on townZab's remarks. On the other hand, if he's scum, he'll be definitely trying to WIFOM the nightkill speculation to his advantage so I see that post more likely to come from scum than from town.

Joh's still weak town to me. His D2 play is reasonable.

@Bub -- Your argument is a bit flawed, but I wanna hear from Ree before I say why.

[borkjerfkin]

Ok. Bub, the reason that your theory is wrong is that it makes no sense for ScumRee to put himself off the wagon for terms of wagon analysis; as scum he's going to try to put himself into the biggest group possible to widen the number of people we'd have to potentially mislynch before we were sure he was the scum on the wagon, whereas if he tries to pawn himself off as off the wagon, it'd be just between Lucky and him.

@Godot: what are you trying to say here:

That and he isn't alive to use this nugget of insight courtesy of Bork.

That he's dead cause I hammered him? He was the better of the two wagons, and I don't have the benefit of hindsight to guide my decisions. Do you think Zab is scum and I should've hammered him instead?

[borkjerfkin]

@Ree -- here's where I'm at. I actually started off with Zab below Johhog but during course of posting, flipped them, mostly due to 417.

S
Lucky -- Mostly the weak AtE end of D1 and his total 180 on D2.
^
(about even)
v
Ree -- I think my biggest problem with Ree is that he has pretty much no transparency, and his thought process doesn't mesh with mine at all. His method of scumhunting is just to demand content from people, which doesn't leave him with anything he has to defend most of the time. I will say that Bub's reason for voting Ree is bunk, like I previously mentioned. If Lucky flips town, #392 makes Ree look pretty bad.

Zab -- 397 was the first legitimately scummy thing I've seen from him. Is 417 prepping to bus?
^
close
v
Johhog -- He's been really awkward on D2, which I guess is understandable when his biggest scumread flipped town. Could be scum that doesn't know who to fake a case against...or town that doesn't know who to make a case against. Really unsure about him.

^
(fairly far away)
v

Godot -- His D2 play reads a little weird but his D1 play is why he's down here.

Bub -- Look who morphed into my best read. I really can't even say why, other than he hasn't really done a single scummy thing after that RVS issue with Lucky.
T

[borkjerfkin]

V/LA Sat to Tues for the holiday weekend.

I'll be here today and I anticipate SOME access, but just a heads up.

[borkjerfkin]

Hey guys -- still alive but still on vacation. I'll be back very late tonight.

From just skimming the thread I think the best point was made in #432 about Ree's fairly abrupt flip flop after he left the door open for one in #408. A distant second from that is Johhog's sudden refusal to play ball at all -- what gives? Are you taking your ball and going home for something that can hardly be considered a personal attack (#445)?

I'll give a more thorough read/analysis when I get home, probably tomorrow.

[borkjerfkin]

I've got an issue with the following:

Which means you pointed your finger at everyone except yourself, Bork and Godot. I don't think any honest town player can have that many scum reads.

I feel like you're trying to pin Ree changing his mind as some sort of scumtell, especially since you're taking quotes all throughout the game and are painting them to look like some sort of collection of flipflops. Why is adjusting reads over the course of the game (and let's face it, the range of posts you quoted was pretty much from the entire game) a bad thing?

I'll agree with this though:

And his only (vague) explanation is that he's getting "bad vibes" out of Zab.

This IS true. Ree's said he's gonna explain his scumread on Zab, but between 317 and 434 he really didn't address how that came to be (#408 touched on it but he really let it drop after that.)

[borkjerfkin]

@Joh -- #482 is borderline against site rules --
"Do not bring outside influences into the game - this includes

threats

, bribes, wagers,

promises

, alliances, etc. Using knowledge from previous games is perfectly acceptable, but try not to carry

grudges

from one game to another."

Other than that, the AtE is pretty null in and of itself.

@Ree -- I like the amish tell point -- there's no reason for town to contradict or even quote one of his predecessors posts. They should just be confident in the knowledge that they have no reason to (and really no way to) explain their predecessor's behavior. This is a pretty decent scumtell.

I honestly think a lot of the other stuff you typed is confirmation bias because I don't agree with a good chunk of it.

...I think you believe what you're typing, even if a lot of it is wrong.

Johhog, you should claim.

p-edit -- lol weird that you'd prod me just as I was posting.

[borkjerfkin]

Lucky could be his or (anyone's partner) just due to playstyle -- he's avoiding the fray and that doesn't rule him out as anyone's partner. I still think Bub, Godot are town, so it's either a weak bus from Zab or you're pulling one over on me.

[borkjerfkin]

EBWOP -- I still think Bub, Godot are town, so it's either

Lucky,

a weak bus from Zab or you're pulling one over on me.

[borkjerfkin]

@Bub -- of course tells are wrong sometimes -- that's not the point. As I've been saying the whole game, we should be interested in the likelihood of scum doing what he did (quoting and disagreeing with his predecessor) vs the likelihood of town doing what he did. I think the former, in this case, is much more likely. It's a conscious scum trying to fabricate reads vs a subconscious town having it never occur to him to look at DJD at all.

@Ree -- I have at least mild suspicion on everyone else due to derpy day 2 play. I don't have such suspicion on Bub -- I can see exactly where he's coming from, I just think his reason for tunnelling you on D2 is bad.

VOTE: Johhog

[borkjerfkin]

Rereading in light of those flips (I'm assuming Zab was town -- anyone who thinks otherwise better have a damn good reason).

@Ree -- this should be good. I assume another case is incoming?

[borkjerfkin]

ah. you're vague fakeclaiming. That makes this easier.

VOTE: Ree

[borkjerfkin]

Back tonight after the bengals game

[borkjerfkin]

I had to look this up.

A Friendly Neighbor can target a player at Night to tell them that they are Town. The target will receive a message saying that the Friendly Neighbor is Town. This role does nothing else - the Friendly Neighbor does not know the alignment of the person who got the message.

Is this what you're claiming? How does this tell

you

anything? It should only tell your

target

something.

This seems like a poorly thought out fakeclaim.

[borkjerfkin]

Wait wait wait.

I initially thought you were some fakecop/fake investigative role fakeclaiming a guilty on me, hence the random flip flop of me from your towniest read to your vote. This is cause of

hammers

? 2 days before deadline on a weekend? are you high?

Who did you send your messages to? Can they verify you? I'll unvote you immediately if they can.

I was pretty transparent on all of my read changes so I'm not even going to attempt to rejustify them -- read my ISO.

I don't know what to make of this at all -- I'm a

little

less sure about Reescum than I was a few hours ago but this is truly bizarre behavior.

Bub, you were here and had nothing to say at all other than you were right?

[borkjerfkin]

EWBOP -- besides Godot (I assume that was N1?)

[borkjerfkin]

Well we can shut that down real fast:

Ree's target needs to verify Ree's identity

.

Ree has

no motivation

to hide his targets; he can confirm himself as town by revealing them.

This doesn't necessarily clear anyone he targeted -- not killing Ree as scum who received this message is prone to WIFOM and serves to establish town cred at LYLO for NOT killing him. But we CAN and SHOULD still clear Ree right now.

If Ree's target claims he did not get a message, that at least proves that at least 1 of Ree, person who Ree claims he sent a message to is scum.

[borkjerfkin]

Also UNVOTE: till we get that sorted out.

[borkjerfkin]

Also, why would I claim friendly neighbour when it's a role that doesn't really tell me any info other than if I don't die then they are probably town.

Specifically so you could put forth that question: WIFOM.

Is there two people out there who know his identity?

Why is this even relevant? You sending a message to someone tells us nothing about his alignment (unless you're BOTH scum, but unlikely unless you're claiming one-shot or something), only YOURS. I want you either clear or obviously lying so we can move on from this.

This isn't particularly hard to comprehend.

@Godot, Lucky, Bub -- did you get a message from Ree or did you not? If you did, what night did he send it? If you didn't, and no one else can corroborate his claim, then we're lynching him.

[borkjerfkin]

I'm not buying it --

Ree's incremental release of information about his claim is scummy -- there's no reason to pussyfoot around this particular role claim. The fact that no one can confirm him speaks for itself.

Bub's still town, Godot is (probably town). Ree/Lucky or an outside shot at Ree/Godot.

VOTE: Ree

[borkjerfkin]

Actually Ree -- I did misspeak, there still IS a shot at you both being town:
Here are the possibilities as I see them
1) You're totally telling the truth and Mehdi blocked you N1 and you targeted Zab N2, therefore you have no viable targets to confirm you. Godot could be whatever.
2) You're telling the truth and Godot DID get your message but claims not to have. Godot is scum. This is an outside shot, I think -- I don't see any evidence from his D2 play that this had happened. If he were smart and it did, he'd have dropped suspicion on you quicker than [insert analogy here].
3) You're lying and you didn't send anything to anyone hence no confirmation. Godot is still whatever.

I think that 3) is the most likely scenario by far, simply statistically speaking -- the odds of both Mehdi having blocked you AND you sending a message to a dead guy are just low considering your reads at the time.

If you flipped town, my projected scumteam is Lucky/Godot (not that it would matter at that point since we'd have lost).

Bub is town because of his solid day 2 play -- he didn't pussyfoot around with his reads and gave succinct and transparent reasoning behind his scum read on you. I consider his D3 read swaps a PoE thing. Also the more I read #187 the more I feel like he was on the same wavelength as me early game, and that's pretty hard to fake as scum.

[borkjerfkin]

All you're saying is that if we believe you're scum we're better off lynching you then trying to guess the scumteam. Derp.

@Lucky -- if I believe Bub is town, and I'm leaning Godot town, guess who that leaves?

[borkjerfkin]

I explained why I think Bub is town in #533.

And think about what Ree is saying. He's saying "you have better odds of winning if you assume that I'm town because of what I could do for you tomorrow" which is totally skewing the situation -- the fact that if Lucky, Bub, Godot, or myself DOES think that Ree is scum, we're basically damning ourselves by letting Ree off the hook -- all we have to do is mislynch one more time and if Ree is scum it doesn't matter HOW he can supposedly prove himself at this point. If we had a mislynch this would all be relevant and we could test this.

The crumb is fakeable. I can troll the wiki for an uncommonly used role, crumb it, and if other power roles get outed pre-LYLO just ignore the crumb later. Would any of you have caught this if Ree himself hadn't called attention to it?

It's like a cop in LYLO saying "you should trust me because if I'm town I could confirm people on day 4" -- it's the sort of thing that happened in my first newbie game, and the cop turned out not to be a cop, and there WAS no day 4.

Ree/Lucky scumteam is out of the question. They would have simply hopped aboard Bub's vote on Bork since both of them posted after that and the game would be theirs by now.

Is this a "I know scum have daytalk" slip? How else would they be able to coordinate a double quickhammer (neither of them had voted yet) ?

FOS Godot

[borkjerfkin]

Come on dude:

Bub votes.
Ree or Lucky (or you) votes.
Bub unvotes.

Scum found.

Why would scum assume that their partner would post before the original voter again unless they were sure because they have daytalk?

UNVOTE:
if this is Godot/someone that isn't Ree (although I doubt it), I'm concerned about daytalk.

[borkjerfkin]

I'm talking about someone voting

with

Bub. I hardly voted for myself. Stop being dense.

[borkjerfkin]

And my previous comment explained WHY they didn't -- two scum cannot guarantee a quickhammer UNLESS they have daytalk -- they can't guarantee Bub won't unvote in the middle of the two votes, and the one that would've voted would be hung out to dry.

[borkjerfkin]

I refuse to believe you believe this. Plans can be made yes; plans can just as easily fall apart.

Daytalk is the only way scum can be 100% certain that both are on at the same time.

Why did you ask mod to confirm daytalk/no daytalk and then suddenly not care about it?

[borkjerfkin]

I actually did -- I couldn't find whether or not that was explicitly normal or not. I've read normals where it was being speculated about, although I don't know whether or not that speculation was warranted.

[borkjerfkin]

Missed this:

Why do you think I started the day off voting for you? To see if anyone else would jump on. Nobody did.

You admit you could've interrupted a quickhammer, but Bub and I can't both be town cause there would've definitely been a quickhammer if we were? You're basically admitting there's inherent risk in attempting to quickhammer at 5p LYLO (unless there's daytalk), which was

my entire point.

[borkjerfkin]

Been meaning to get to this -- I overextended myself in games. I'll have my updated reads by tomorrow.

I'll admit I was wrong on daytalk -- the only remaining viable daytalk team is Godot/Bub and that just is super improbable.

[borkjerfkin]

Allrighty -- I'm not gonna go through a "What-if" thing on every player. I don't think that's particularly productive and I think would "muddy the waters" as Ree put it -- I'm instead going to touch on what I think are the most likely scenarios.

Bub

Bub is starting to worry me a little -- Day 1 and Day 2 play are town, through and through, but his Day 3 play has been pretty much "throw a vote down and coast" which is undermining the previous two days. If he is town, and my gut is still saying he is, then the scumteam just has no stones and don't think they can coordinate a quickhammer before Bub gets back and busts them. This probably means Lucky is on the scumteam, since he's much less consistently around than either Godot or especially Ree. Thus I will say that if Bub is town, Lucky is definitely scum.

Lucky

The chameleon read -- my read on him has mostly fit around how I feel about everyone else since he has so little content. I will say this though -- he looks like he's looking for an easy out on D3 with Ree -- he's got little oomph behind his suspicion (unlike myself). I thought I had him dead to rights on D1 with his ill-timed AtE, but his head kind of stayed in the clouds and I don't have the benefit of past play with him besides Micro 3 which barely got off the ground before town won to see if he's BSing me. I will say that #569 is a bad, bad post -- you specifically are trying to get me to keep all my options open and undermine my read on Bub.

Godot

Good D1 play. Slightly reserved D2 play. Has received essentially no pressure throughout the entire game -- fine in and of itself, but the minute I exert any, he seriously starts to overreact and start pointing at me. Seems like you're more upset that I swapped a read on

you

than that I swapped a read.

Lashing out today when he had me down as town for a while doesn't help that out.

Am I not supposed to reevaluate given all that's happened?
I

thought

I caught a daytalk slip from him, and I maintain that it was a reasonable thing for scum that had daytalk to say -- but it doesn't add up because any team sans Godot/Bub could've quickhammered me now with it (I'd been waiting for Lucky to post before I said this). His inquiry into Bub about the early game selfvote is silly and serves no purpose other than to fabricate a scummy interaction.

My "Mehdi quickwagon" as you want to put it wasn't a quickwagon at all -- I'd very noticeably been waving his flag all day; prior to that point, though, no one had been willing to run with me on it.

Ree

Uses a lot of logic that I don't agree with; see mostly his case against DJD early on. Seemed at least genuine when I pressed him on it. Was a little better D2 and caused me to side with him over Johhog who had a pretty weak case. His D3 claim was poorly executed -- the pro-town way to claim that role would've been to lay down the role name, what it did, and BOTH of your targets immediately. The more incrementally you do it the more I'm forced to believe that you wanted to gauge people's reactions before you decided what you're going to say. You can

say

you're reaction testing there, but the fact of the matter is that the more you say up front, the more likely people are to think that you're being honest with them and not changing your story based on how people initially respond to it.

Your suspicion of me mostly seems to revolve on the fact that I was the hammer vote on both Sala and Johhog and that I might've hammered to "stifle conversation". This strikes me as odd, considering how close we were to deadline, the fact that you knew exactly where I stood on the issues before I hammered, the fact that the other wagon was on YOU, and the fact that I gave people up plenty of time to chime in before I dropped it. The scum thing to do there would've been to shut up and hope for a No Lynch, thereby giving no one any flip info. I'm curious as to if you can adequately describe an alternate course of action there that would've been more pro-town or if you're just blowing smoke.

Overall, you're scummy, but not as scummy as Lucky or Godot. If your claim does turn out to be fake, I'm going to be really, really upset with myself.

HOS: Lucky
FOS: Godot (could easily flip but I have a hunch Lucky will get wagonned before Godot ever would today).

p-edit: figures someone would wall right as I was walling. haven't read it yet.

[borkjerfkin]

phonepost. wont be home till tomorrow night but I'm in for this.

VOTE: lucky

[borkjerfkin]

Mea culpa, Ree.

VOTE: Bub

[borkjerfkin]

What was I gunning for exactly? Ree to confirm himself to me? Well I'm pretty damn glad he did; even if I have to eat crow concerning

you.

It's odd how I went from your super town list to scum once you realized that Godot wasn't ever going to be lynched (#529/#539), especially considering that Ree's claim that he sent a message to Godot (although I now know that was true) doesn't do anything to clear Godot [even moreso with Godot's assertion that he didn't even GET the message] -- that's cognitive dissonance showing, due to you not actually thinking about what Ree's claim meant about Godot because you knew Godot was town from the get-go.

Also odd that you'd immediately go for me in #529 right off the bat instead of Lucky with your "PoE", who you had been leaning scummier on the previous day. You didn't want to bus unless you absolutely had to.

[borkjerfkin]

Lol.

Ree PMED ME LAST NIGHT. I have to flip-flop on you since he's 100% clear, meaning I just fucked up with my read on you. That's not at all analogous to what you did on day 3, which was subtly adjust your read on Godot for a flawed reason because you saw the tide turning on him/me.

And now your activity level skyrockets because you're up against a wall. Yeah.

[borkjerfkin]

I'd have gone for Lucky or Godot yesterday;

Lucky for his attempt to discredit my town reads (#569), his whole trying to get people to lynch you without really talking about why he didn't believe your claim (#534), and his end of D1 play.
Godot for his bad reaction to the first pressure he'd received all game by basically OMGUSing me, and misrepping what I did with Mehdi on D1 (#566).

[borkjerfkin]

So was I calling you town yesterday or willing to lynch you? It's apparently one or the other depending on what argument you're trying to make.

I think it's pretty obvious that Bub was off the table yesterday -- at no point in that first paragraph did I ever even intimate that I was interested in lynching Bub; even moreso considering that Ree WAS willing to lynch him. My point was that your contribution day 3 was essentially non-existent. Why is that? Did you figure this game was just going to roll into your lap due to the difficulty of 5p LyLo for town? But you're firing from all cylinders now, which indicates a difference in the likelihood of your team winning from the previous days, and lo and behold, we lynched scum yesterday for the first time and now that desperation is starting to show.

And yes, Ree was pretty scummy with the manner in which he claimed, but the last sentence in the second quoted paragraph is an acknowledgement that I was going to let that lie in favor of two scummier reads.

[borkjerfkin]

My read flipped on you, today, when I found out that Ree was town. That has nothing to do with the fact that your D3 play was passive and unhelpful, which I hadn't been expecting from you at the time. Just because I thought you were the towniest one around doesn't mean you were shitting rainbows the whole game. After my read post, there

was

no further suspicion on you D3 from my end, so you can claim that I'd have taken part in your lynch if it had been brought up again and have absolutely nothing to back that up. As far as my willingness to vote you (or lack thereof): you're conveniently ignoring the fact that Ree in fact DID vote you and I chose not to indulge.

Besides, even if I'd called you an unerring beacon of towniness yesterday and swore on my grandmother's gravestone, I'd still be sitting here, today, calling you scum because I now know that you are scum.

Your play was markedly different than mine as far as swapped reads. You said: "Ree's claim is believable, especially since he named off his targets. While he could be scum gambiting, I think it's most likely that he and Godot are town." There are two problems with this:
1) Ree sending a message to Godot says nothing about Godot, only about Ree.
2) Godot didn't even get the message, so even to try to argue, fallaciously, that the message somehow makes Godot town can't be done here.
You never came back to this point, not even once. You just saw that Ree didn't want to lynch Godot and realized that you'd be better served to try to get me lynched instead. When that failed you bussed.

There has been so marked a change in your play over the three days that it's worth noting here:
On Day 1 and 2, Bub posted little, but was concise and took stances on things.
Day 3 (5p lylo; heavily scum favored) was coasting and hoping a townie would take the second vote on me so Lucky could finish it.
Day 4 (3p lylo, momentum switching back toward town) is panic mode.

Overall, trying to smear me for swapping reads, rather than the manner in which those reads were swapped, makes it pretty obvious which one of us is thinking like a townie.

[borkjerfkin]

You called me scummy for swapping reads on you, and yet you did the exact same thing!!!

I did not do the exact same thing and I explained why. Shouting it again while ignoring my counterargument does not make it so.

Changing reads when somebody becomes confirmed town.

You did not do this -- Godot was never confirmed town. I did this, as Ree IS confirmed town.

BORK HAD NO TOWN READS D-4!!!

There was no way I was lynching you, and I was leaning against lynching Ree. You wanna get into semantics that I didn't call Ree town? Weak.

Also, if I'm scum with Lucky, then why did I come out of the gate and vote for him? And keep my vote on him even when a bunch of other people were calling my vote weak and saying that lucky was town?

Are you really trying to argue that scum don't ever distance in the early game? Especially when it becomes very obvious that no one's going for that lynch and therefore you don't have to bus?

Your calling me scum for changing my playstyle today, when today you have posted infinitely more than throughout the rest of the game.

Your D1 and D2 play was reasonable, but you basically were a non-entity D3 because you had no pressure on you and it looked like I might be a probable lynch target -- optimal scum play there is not to rock the boat.

I'll concede the D4 issue, your only hope now really IS to do what you're doing.

[borkjerfkin]

Now that's pure semantics.

This makes no sense to me. The motivations for changing my reads were far different than the motivations you gave for changing yours (you've still not addressed this). That's not semantics at all.

Please quote where you said that my lynch was off the table. And also, back on the last day when I voted for you and kept my vote on you forever, shouldn't you have thought I was scum if you were town? If you really are town, then you should have thought "man, scum hasn't tried to quickhammer, so Bub's scum since I'm town." But no, I was off the table.

I'm just going to respond to that with a previous quote:

If [Bub] is town,

and my gut is still saying he is

, then the scumteam just has no stones and don't think they can coordinate a quickhammer before Bub gets back and busts them. This probably means Lucky is on the scumteam, since he's much less consistently around than either Godot or especially Ree.

Underlined is where I say you're off the table.
As for the latter part of your statement, and I've already explained this yesterday -- I thought Lucky was on the scumteam and his inherent flakiness made it impossible for Lucky and his not-you partner to get a quickhammer going. Whereas you, in reality, just plopped the vote down since you knew that Lucky was unreliable for a quickhammer and hoped that you'd get one of them to buy in -- and they almost did.

And also, how does "I think Ree is scummy" translate to "I was leaning against lynching Ree"?

I'm not going to requote where I said I found Lucky and Godot more scummy than Ree; you know damn well where it is. You seem to want to suggest that the fact that I didn't have two separate definite town and definite scum buckets at all times to be some sort of scum indicator, when it's actually the opposite due to the guesswork that town has to do -- I'm not trying to pigeonhole people into groups despite my reads. If I think three people are acting scummy, I need to be willing just to lynch the top two of those people. If I'd have jumped on a Ree wagon after making that post and later said "Look I said he was scummy!" you'd have a point. I didn't and you don't.

On the other hand, you were looking ahead to today already and didn't have to guess to see what your optimal play was -- I was your best shot at a mislynch for D3 after Ree FoS'ed me, and if that failed, you'd look good after your backup-bus.

Are you really trying to argue that scum would come out of the gate D-1, vote their

only

scumbud, and keep the vote on that scumbud despite being called scummy for said vote?

Considering that you'd have looked worse if you backed down there, I am absolutely trying to argue that, yes.

So [you] concede that you were being hypocritical when you called me scummy for changing my playstyle in a 3-person LYLO?

Uh, no, I'm conceding that I was wrong to postulate that a sharp increase in activity when you're the only one left on your team is scummy -- it's actually null since inaction here basically loses you the game as either alignment. Nice misrep though.

[borkjerfkin]

I like mushrooms

[borkjerfkin]

[borkjerfkin]

yeah i'm not gonna bother rehosting that

[borkjerfkin]

Ive been pretty forthcoming about bub's moonlogic.

[borkjerfkin]

Nah you did good. i was on borrowed time.

[borkjerfkin]

Watch me gradually figure that out in the mafia QT:

http://www.quicktopic.com/48/H/uhQufYf9WF5

[borkjerfkin]

This wasn't a bad setup at all -- I kinda like it. Everything was going our way until that claim and that really threw me off my shit.

Here's the post that really should've won the game for us:

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 4#p4312814

I should've realized you were a PR from that and at least forced a claim from you. My play really deteriorated at the end of D2 just due to both entering too many games and having my free time go away on me.

[borkjerfkin]

On the mafia side of things with the Janitor the town won't have as clear of an idea as to how many PRs are in the game making that type of fakeclaim more viable.

I think the problem with that is that I also had no idea what Zabriel was when I killed him, so the only thing I could really use the janitor for is to weaken Ree's claim. No one really paid attention to it, though. I think the obscurity of Ree's role really helped cement it as a true claim.

[borkjerfkin]

Also this was a very enjoyable game for me because no one was a huge raging asshole during it like most every other game I've played here.

[borkjerfkin]

I had to do it honestly Lucky -- Bub and Ree both easily would've done it, and even though I was semi V/LA at the time, I'd have looked really shitty being off the only scum wagon when I was on every other lynching wagon.

[borkjerfkin]

Hey cheers man, you didn't do badly. At least you guys won

[borkjerfkin]

it wasn't scummy, at all -- I was being on the level when I said so in game.

[borkjerfkin]

I'm curious how this game would've turned out if Mehdi hadn't been a PR. I planned my tunnel on Mehdi to be obtuse as shit (I honestly don't think he was acting terribly scummy at all), hoping the wagon would fall apart, and I was gonna nightkill him anyway because he was super active, but if that lynch had gone through I may have had to play differently.

[borkjerfkin]

Also @Lucky -- reread your posts back to yourself. Do it multiple times. Ask yourself

1) does it make sense to me?
2) is it easy enough to follow for others?

Honestly if you can do these two things well, you'll start to do better all around.

Obviously after this point, the tips for whether you're town or you're scum diverge (such as "does this accurately represent how I feel" is something you need only ask yourself as town, etc.)