Mini 679 - BSG: The Basestar (Game Over!)

[destructor]

.::] Vote Count [::.

iamausername (2)

- andersonw, Awesome Pants

KingEnigma (1)

- MacavityLock
*

Flask of Pestilence (2)

- Farkshinsoup, iamausername

Farkshinsoup (2)

- Rishi, KingEnigma

forbiddanlight (1)

- Elmo

Tarhalindur (1)

- Flask of Pestilence

Elmo (2)

- Tarhalindur, forbiddanlight

Not voting (1) - Grimmy

Seven

votes to lynch.

[Tarhalindur]

Now that we have a replacement for Timeater (hi Patrick, hi Incog, good to see you again), it's time to switch back to the best wagon.

Unvote, Vote: Flask of Pestilence

[Rishi]

Gotta catch up again... I lost track of this thread halfway through the Elmo/forbiddanlight argument.

Will catch up in the next 24 hours or so.

[forbiddanlight]

I still wanna lynch elmo, but if deadline approaches (since it got extended), I'll accept a Flask of Pestilence lynch.

[Elmo]

Unvote

:

forbiddanlight

,

vote

:

Tarhalindur

. 291 is terrible.

* I didn't show why then because I didn't understand how it could be contradictory, and he'd provide detail if he cared.
* I don't see what more detail on the FoS is needed: if you genuinely thought my lurking was scummy, you'd follow it up; you didn't. I think you were creating an avenue to throw suspicion on me later, so could push my lynch if it became convenient without looking opportunistic. On a basic level, I'm very surprised you said it out loud; if I was scum, I'd immediately stop lurking, you wouldn't have any kind of tell, and I know you're smart enough to see that. It seems to be more rhetorical than anything.
* That's a difference of stated opinion, not misrepresentation. I thought my vote being on her was a major factor in her attitude towards me. That's OMGUS.
* Like I already said, I think anyone pushing "OMG SO ANTI-TOWN MUST LYNCH" from a few hours of bored posting is far more likely to be scum looking for an easy lynch than genuinely suspicious. If I wanted to not do anything, I'd just lurk. I could maaaybe see her OMGUS-ing, but I think the way you jumped on it is awful.
* There is no double standard because, uh, what it says - he's said people should give reasons, so he should give reasons. I haven't said anything on that note.
* I'm not dodging the question, it's self-evident that I wasn't trying. That was the whole point of what she's been posting. This attack strikes me as disingenuous.
* You hadn't posted since I FoSsed you - exactly what follow-up are you looking for? Predictably, I don't buy your excuse. I think you'd have been far more poky at me if you thought I was scum, considering the game you're so keen to reference.
* I'd like you to justify the idea that I wouldn't have played like that if I were town. It seems quite probable to me.
* Your assertion we should be policy lynching me

even if I was confirmed innocent

for a relatively useless 9 hours of play is probably the scummiest thing in the game thus far. How can you possibly expect anyone to buy that?

Reasoning I can extract from 200:
* Tim sidestepped Tar's question in 83 with an attack. I think his answer there is reasonable; there was little to go on at the time. I don't agree with but don't have a problem with the attack, I can imagine Tar's demeanour there being off-putting.
* Tim's post 104 is attacking Fark for bad reasons, which is OMGUS and deflection. I haven't found anything specific about what's bad in this post, and I don't see anything objectionable. If I remember correctly, he's expressed suspicion of Fark before, so I don't think it's opportunistic.
* A strawman in 121. He's not strawmanning, he even said "please clarify if that's not what you meant". I had a similar reaction to his, but discarded it after some thought.
* Bad reasons for a vote. I am guessing this is 146 instead of 154. To a limited extent, I can see what you mean about "anyone but me", but I think that attitude is null (and it logically should be). He admits in the same post that it's a lazy-but-safe vote, so I have even less of a problem with it, I could easily see a townie doing the same thing.

Possibly (probably?) I'm missing something. I imagine you'll say OMG YOU'RE STRAWMANNING/OVERSIMPLIFYING. No, that's just how I read your post, correct me if you're inclined. It's somewhat hard to figure out which of 200 is 'core reasoning' and which are just small observations. But basically, I have a very vague weak town read on Tim and nothing anyone's posted has changed my mind; the case seems somewhat like weak agreement with the majority opinion. No-one seems to scrutinize people as long as they're agreeing with you, heh. I find that somewhat scummy.

By process of elimination and eenie meenie minie mo, I'm okay with lynching Tarhalindur, forbiddanlight, Grimmy or KingEnigma. I am going to deeply enjoy watching TarScum fail at justifying a Flask lynch. Hey, Awesome Pants, what do you think of lynch all lurkers, right now?

[Flask of Pestilence]

DAMMIT. I think Patrick must have passed out from exhaustion while watching one of his shows. I wanted to post tonight too. =(

We'll probably get our first game-related post in tomorrow after we converge (I'm done with my read, and I think he is too). I got some juicy stuff that you just might be interested in reading too.

-Incog1337o

[forbiddanlight]

* A strawman in 121. He's not strawmanning, he even said "please clarify if that's not what you meant". I had a similar reaction to his, but discarded it after some thought.

O rly? It sounded more like a rhetorical please clarify. It's obvious what he's trying to push there.

* Bad reasons for a vote. I am guessing this is 146 instead of 154. To a limited extent, I can see what you mean about "anyone but me", but I think that attitude is null (and it logically should be). He admits in the same post that it's a lazy-but-safe vote, so I have even less of a problem with it, I could easily see a townie doing the same thing.

Why should it be? Scum have far more reasons not to die than townies. It sucks to be lynched as a townie, but you can still win and your lynch at least gives info that might help town. Anyone but me is a HORRIBLE way to play town. And just because someone admits they did something scummy you let them off? Please clarify if that's not what you meant.

Tar's PBPA of Tim is a better case than what I can bring up, to be perfectly honest. But my observations are more sound than you seem to be giving them credit for. As far as I can tell, you are just dismissing every scumtell in the book because you think Tim is town and want to OMGUS me.

Though to be fair you've moved to Tar for what appears to be more weak reasoning.

* I didn't show why then because I didn't understand how it could be contradictory, and he'd provide detail if he cared.

Except you still explain things when you do them or it's scummy.

* Like I already said, I think anyone pushing "OMG SO ANTI-TOWN MUST LYNCH" from a few hours of bored posting is far more likely to be scum looking for an easy lynch than genuinely suspicious. If I wanted to not do anything, I'd just lurk. I could maaaybe see her OMGUS-ing, but I think the way you jumped on it is awful.

Lol wut? So we shouldn't lynch anti town people? Um...except for the fact that scum can act anti town to push their own agenda, sure! GREAT IDEA! LET'S MAKE THIS THE NEW META!

* That's a difference of stated opinion, not misrepresentation. I thought my vote being on her was a major factor in her attitude towards me. That's OMGUS.

When did you...oh yeah, CDB. I actually didn't realize you were voting me when I started attacking you for your blatant scumminess. You see, the thing about OMGUS is...it doesn't apply when the target that you are attacking happens to be voting you but acting scummier than...something scummy...yeah...

* I'd like you to justify the idea that I wouldn't have played like that if I were town. It seems quite probable to me.

I personally think the burden of proof is on you. I've never played with you, so I have to use baseline scumtells. Guess what, you are filling them.

Essentially, fine with a Flask, Elmo, or KE lynch.

[Elmo]

He's not strawmanning in 121. You cannot seriously believe he said "Fark was saying he was deliberately remaining neutral on the wagon so he could follow people's votes" there.

If you're town, you're 0% likely to be scum; a random person is much more likely. In KingEnigma's case, he might think it's quite high. It's always better for them to be lynched than you. It doesn't matter whether it's good play or not if townies are still liable to do it. The fact he was up-front about his vote being lazy makes it much easier to call him out on it later if it leads to a mislynch; scum are reluctant to do that.

But my observations are more sound than you seem to be giving them credit for. As far as I can tell, you are just dismissing every scumtell in the book because you think Tim is town and want to OMGUS me.

Your reasoning is backwards. I don't believe he's dropped any scumtells, which is a pre-requisite for believing he's town. I'm not giving your observations as much credit as you do because I disagree with you. Sidenote, I'm fairly sure you have no business calling my attack on you OMGUS, given I killplz'd you before you attacked me.

Lol wut? So we shouldn't lynch anti town people?

Intentional or not, this is a strawman; my point was the disparity between the strength of what I did and you/Tar's stated bloodlust. I think anyone pushing something relatively minor that hard is more likely to be scum looking for an easy lynch than town genuinely trying to find scum. Or would you say what I did was an extremely strong tell?

I personally think the burden of proof is on you. I've never played with you, so I have to use baseline scumtells. Guess what, you are filling them.

That was addressed to Tar. This doesn't work: If I say that I think making posts like 200 is a scumtell, and the burden of proof's on you to show you'd do that as town - well, if you're town, you would do that, because... you would. You cannot say "a priori X is scummy, Elmo is doing X, therefore Elmo is scum", you need to show both that X is scummy generally and that me doing X here is scummy in this specific situation.

I remain curious as to what scumtells I'm supposed to have dropped other than being bored, or indeed (really) any explanation of why what I did was scummy beyond you thinking it's anti-town.

[Elmo]

This is going to degenerate into multi-page quote war posts, isn't it? Oh dear.

[Flask of Pestilence]

Ok, I've read the game. I usually do player by player when replacing in; but in this case I've only done half of them so far. The players I talk about in this post are the ones that caught my attention the most; I'll probably comment on others tomorrow but none of them look urgently scummy. (This post is 99% from me, Patrick).

So, thoughts:

Tarhalindur

: A great deal of what he's said seems way off base to me. I don't really agree with his first vote for KingEnigma, who I thought took a clear enough stance on Elmo's "bullying" to not be wishy washy. But I guess it was early in the game, so this vote was acceptable. His next post about KingEnigmna is a bit odd - seems like he corrects some of the guy's logic without really showing why he's scummy.

Wait a minute... you're summarizing game events and not actually saying who you think is scum? Information Instead of Analysis, anyone? FoS: Timeater

This is provably false. Timeater took several distinct stances in his post - he likes Elmo, doesn't like Tarhalindur, says iamasername is a little overzealous and says Elmo is reading too much into KingEnigmas's refusal to random vote, which was one of the major issues in the game at the time. No idea what Tarhalindur is on here.

Tarhalindur suspects Elmo, which I don't really agree with, but I'll cover more in my Elmo section. Then follows his massive attack on Timeater. The latter never responded to the pbp, and whilst I can't tell what my predecessor was thinking, I'll comment on some of the parts I think are most noteworthy.

1) Fishing is bad, mmkay?

2) Your "seriously considering voting for you" sounds like you're trying to leave yourself a way to wiggle yourself out of the logical conclusion (yes) if you came under fire for it.

Where was the fishing?
Point (2) is a reach. Many players, especially inexperienced ones, are conservative with their votes. He's made his feelings clear about your alignment, I don't see why he needs hassling to vote immediately. At most I could see a playstyle lecture along the lines of, "you should always have your vote somewhere, it's your best weapon, use it etc etc." but I don't see how it's scummy. I myself don't often take a while to decide where to put my vote.

Then why didn't you vote him in this post? I know from your later posts that you wanted to wait for a few other players to post, but are there any other reasons why you wouldn't vote for him (since he did seem to be the player you thought was most likely to be scum) while you were waiting for other players to post? (Note that I have difficulty accepting "I'm waiting for other players to post" as a valid defense for not voting - it's too easy for scum to use that loophole to just avoid taking any positions at all.)

Same sort of thing. The guy took a position; he said there's a good chance Fark is scum. And yet, it's obvious he was considering you for a vote as well, as we can see from his comments the page before. I don't see why he has to decide on a vote yet. "Taking no positions at all" doesn't apply.

Why is it that when Elmo asks questions, he's being proactive, but when I ask questions I'm divisive and scum?

This is a fair question that I don't think Timeater responded too. It's clear that he had some reasons to dislike you that didn't apply to Elmo.

Farkshinsoup offered a qualification/explanation for his answer that does a good job of showing why his earlier actions were pro-town. Not only do you fail to show how his explanation is invalid, you instead simply attack him again for the original attack when he had already shown how that attack was invalid. That's not scumhunting, that is throwing dirt... and that's scummy as all hell.

I don't jive with Timeater's attack of Fark either, although I think this accusation is overblown.

Also, I can't really accept your argument that the game should be "fair" when there is an inherent reason why some players will be singled out (namely, that they are acting scummily and thus more likely to be scum), and I don't see how game balance concerns affect that fact. If we treat all players equally, how are we supposed to have better-than-random odds of lynching scum?

Is this an attack?

Ok, I'm going to leave the pbp for now since I want to get onto other thoughts about Tarhalindur and then other players. It might be necessary to come to it if there's something else that needs addressing.

Tarhalindur reading iamusername as strongly protown is interesting. Knowing Tar's busing/distancing tendencies as scum, I'd say these two aren't scum together.

I think Tarhalindur's stance on not wanting to lynch Timeater without a claim is reasonable. It's what I'd do there as well. I think his pbp of Elmo is nitpicky and insubstantial; Tar is an experienced player, and I can't believe Elmo's actions there could seriously set off his scumdar that much. He says he can't imagine why Elmo-town might act like this; I can think of one protown explanation for Elmo's actions and one neutral one, and the suggestion of policy lynching nearly always pings my scumdar. Overall, lots of his suspicions and stances look off base and scummy to me; the only thing that really gives me pause is that Tarhalindur's play isn't similar to his play in Mini 594 where he was scum, and played a lurky and on the sidelines type of game. He's more active here. Still bothers me though.

forbiddanlight

: Starting with CDB, there's not much to comment on. His early vote for fark seems a little off for a player of CDB's experience, but again, it's early. He then flakes away, which he does very often, so not real read on that.

Enter forbiddalight. I'm not really wild about her suspicions; it seems like most of her points are borrowed from someone else, and her suspicions roughly follow most of the popular currents at the time. I think Incognito might have a metagame note to add about forbiddanlight also.

What sticks out the most to me, though, is her recent attack on Elmo. I remember looking at this from outside the game and thinking she was scum, and it looks no better this time round. It just looks really contrived to me - isn't forbiddanlight experienced enough to know that protown players often have very good reasons for holding back their reasoning? Her use of the term "strawman" for one of Elmo's posts looks like an attempt to make her argument stronger by using something from the wiki; I thought it was fairly obvious that Elmo's post was said in a light hearted way due to the smiley in it. I just have a hard time seeing this attack from FB as genuine, and notice she switches over to Elmo immediately after Tarhalindur voted Elmo. Again, this attack on Elmo almost looks pulled out of a scum textbook. Really not liking her play so far.

Elmo

: I'm a little back and forth on whether I consider his early KingEnigma vote to be a stretch or not, but decided it's acceptable so early in the game. I think his Post 138 is spot on and not opportunistic, which I like. His play following this is rather lazy, though unlike Tar I don't think it strongly resembles his play in 594 as scum, where he was more opportunistic and waffly than this. His later, "Kill [forbiddanlight] plz and FoS: Tarhalindur has been labelled contradictory by some, which puzzles me, just looks like he's expressing multiple suspicions. I don't think his unhelpfulness following this is scummy at all, but hope he drops it because I think he's likely town, and we could do with a few stronger posts from him right now.

Farkshinsoup

: Overall I get a fairly protown vibe from him. I haven't really seen anything that pinged my scumdar, nor do I agree with any of the attacks on him. He seems to be actively looking for scum.

MacavityLock

: I don't like this from MacavityLock:

I think on the Fark vs Tim debate there's a nice thin haze of scumminess from both of them. However, the hypocracy as pointed out by username, as well as a pretty heavy effort to tie Tim to Elmo make me come down on the Fark-is-scummier side.

Feels like fairly lazy throwing suspicion on both sides of the big debate, and his comment that Fark is trying to tie Tim to Elmo shows he's only skimming, since Fark clarified that he wasn't doing that at all.

His FoS of Tim soon after doesn't smell very good either. Someone can be OMGUSing you even if you weren't voting them before, and I think he's reaching here to turn it into a point against Timeater. That said, his later clarifications make me feel a little better.

I don't like his stance on Timeater's self vote. Fishing for a claim is bizarre, and I don't like the FoIrrationality: Timeater. I think he might have been trying to avoid giving a definitive stance on Timeater until it was forced out of him, and now that he's given it, I'd like a reason for why he feels the self vote stunt was majorly scummy. Because in my experience, you see this alot more from townies. I don't really like this play tbh, I could see him as scum trying to passively support the bad wagon.

Rishi

: I don't really agree with his suspicion of Farkshinsoup's early play. Other than that, he hasn't stood out to me much. He's playing fairly cautiously which I know to be his playstyle, and hasn't done anything especially scummy. I'm neutral on him.

Awesome Pants

: He doesn't seem to be doing much. I've read him in another game and am quite sure he's capable of producing better than this, which is disconcerting. Also would like him to explain why he found Timeater's self vote scummy. Not a top contender, but needs to stop coasting.

That's where I cut it off (and don't feel like analysing more at 3 am). As I mentioned above, none of the players I've left out struck me as urgently scummy, and some read as slightly protown. I'll probably add some comments about these players tomorrow, but this post covers my main suspicions.

This post was written before the latest posts by Elmo and forbiddanlight btw. I've spoken to Incognito and happily we largely agree with each other's suspicions. My top 3 are probably forbiddanlight, Tar, MacavityLock in that order; Incognito is similar but has some extra stuff he wants to post about Mac and a possible Mac/Tar connection.

Hi Elmo

[destructor]

Prod-count-immune-prods are about to be sent to everyone who hasn't posted in the last 24 hours.

The

deadline

is just under 7 days away.

[Elmo]

Flask is .

1) TarScum would be different here. The playerlist was probably more intimidating in Satin Doll; the flow of the game is different, too, it got off to a good start and was actually pretty tricky to do a damn thing as scum in that game. Here, not so much.
2) The KE thing was, unfortunately, the best thing going at that point. I feel it's valid albeit really weak. This game seems to suffer from invitational syndrome, you kind of do what you have to on page two.
3) MacavityLock seems townish if guarded to me. Apparently it's like his second game. I'll read.

He says he can't imagine why Elmo-town might act like this; I can think of one protown explanation for Elmo's actions and one neutral one, and the suggestion of policy lynching nearly always pings my scumdar.

I KNOW, RIGHT? I'm thinking surely anyone past a raw newbie can come up with those two.

[iamausername]

Woo, prodded.

I've fallen behind on this game a little, shall be catching up ASAP, given the imminent deadline.

[Flask of Pestilence]

k. Incog here to go into a more specific case on the person who I have the biggest gripe with: MacavityLock. See below:

First, MacavityLock is currently my (Incog's) preferred lynch for today:

I’m actually surprised that Tarhalindur in particular never called MacavityLock out about that good ol’ Information Instead of Analysis tell that he seems to know and love so much. Starting from page 2 we get Post #44 from Macavity:

Yeah, at this point, I think these are mostly votes to see peoples' reactions. I also think we're seeing some rather interesting reactions.

He mentions that the reactions that he’s noticing during the early voting stage are "interesting" but doesn’t expand on what it is in particular he means by this. He does absolutely nothing to push forward the discussion -- he just points out something that is probably a given.

Purely information and absolutely no analysis

. And Elmo in particular actually called him out about this to which MackLock provided a single example: KingEnigma’s reaction that, might I add, happened to be receiving the brunt of attention at the time. Macavity doesn’t even take a leaning scum or leaning town position on Macavity’s supposedly interesting reaction. He says “it’s not necessarily scummy… just ‘pushy’”. So what? What exactly does pushiness tell you about a person’s alignment? You said people’s reaction

s

(I'm noting the usage of a plural noun here) were interesting but you’ve only pointed out one. Which other ones were particularly interesting in your opinion?

Pages 5 and 6

really

set off my scumdar. This is the area of the thread where both my predecessor (Timeater) and Farkshinsoup begin to lock horns. He begins by asking a completely irrelevant question to Timeater about his knowledge of the BSG theme in Post 103:

Timeater, how much BSG have you actually watched? Yes, this is a serious game-related question.

BTW, this is my first theme game. Is it reasonable to ask how much knowledge a player has of the theme?

Timeater responds and Macavity mentions that there was something in Timeater’s post 85 that made him think he didn’t watch a particular season. And your point is? How exactly is that a serious game-related question? What did you hope to draw from Timeater’s answers that could have moved the game forward in any possible way?

Post 124 was really, really bad:

Wow, this game got quiet fast. Maybe now would be a good time to talk about what to do about lurkers. I say we airlock 'em!

I think on the Fark vs Tim debate there's a nice thin haze of scumminess from both of them. However, the hypocracy as pointed out by username, as well as a pretty heavy effort to tie Tim to Elmo make me come down on the Fark-is-scummier side.

I'm still on the Enigma wagon. I don't see how he's being helpful and I think he specifically posts things in a confusing manner. At the very least, he needs to start scumhunting.

I can’t help but get the feeling here that Macavity was trying to take some kind of position on one side of the fence of an argument that most likely was between two townies (my predecessor and Farkshinsoup). Not only that, he makes reference to his vote remaining on the KingEnigma wagon mentioning that KE hasn’t done any scum hunting when Macavity himself hasn’t done any scum hunting himself either. Pot calling the kettle black?

So what does Macavity do at this point? He doesn’t ask any questions to his top suspect (i.e. MacLock continues his lack of scum hunting), he doesn’t try to probe into the conflict being had between the two main arguers (i.e. MacLock is sitting back waiting to see which of the two comes out looking worse before taking a position), and he calls everyone out on lurking when his posts up until this point are the equivalent of active lurking. Yeah, major, major scum vibes here.

Page 6 gets even better. /sarcasm

He calls out my predecessor (Timeater) in post 129 for probably the single, weakest point raised against him:

Thanks for the vote count, destructor. Without it, I wouldn't have noticed this:

lol, an OMGUS vote, surprise surprise (didnt see that one coming!)

This was in response to Fark placing a vote on Tim. However, Tim didn't have a vote on Fark at the time. In fact, Tim didn't have a vote on anybody at the time. So why are you calling out Fark for an OMGUS vote when it couldn't have been OMGUS? You may have been attacking him, as is your right as a scumhunter. But still, the way I see it, Fark's vote was not OMGUS, and you intimating it was is scummy.

FoS: Tim

And, not only that, ladies and gentlemen, he doesn’t even bother to vote him. He merely FoS’s! Questions MacavityLock:

• Why does an OMGUS vote
  always
  necessarily have to come after a vote that has been placed by a person on one other person?
• Why can’t an OMGUS vote come after a person points out a few things said person doesn’t like about another person?
  
• And more importantly, in your own words, what would be the scum motivation for a hypothetical scum to call something “OMGUS” the way Timeater did, especially after he just finished laying out a fairly detailed case against the person he thought was most scummy at the time? If Timeater went so far as to already outline a fairly lengthy case (and it was fairly lengthy considering it was page 5 and all), do you really think his “intimation of an OMGUS reaction coming from Fark” to his case really is scummy too? Wouldn’t the case nicely outline his suspicions well enough?
  
• What exactly did you think of his case against Farkshinsoup anyway?

Post 134 was pretty silly. Awesome Pants questions Macavity about what good points in particular he thought Fark raised with respect to Timeater. He points out one of them:

Can you post what points that [Fark] made about Timeater that you like?

Yes. The following is a good point:

(directed at me)I'd like to hear your answers. You seem evasive.

I like how he doesn't bother answering the said questionaire himself but wants to hear my answers and goes on to state I'm being evasive. That just irks my scumdar. Its like one of those oh-so-subtle pot-shots scum take at townies for anything, ANYTHING, that could be construed as scummy. Those little, sometimes innocent seeming "pot-shots" are a great scumtell imo (and I've had alot of success with recognizing them).

This is ridiculous. Tarhalindur explicitly directed his questions to YOU in post 82. (and to KE in post 81). Why would I answer the questions? Please feel free to point out where I have evaded questions DIRECTED TO ME in this game. This is the scummiest thing I've seen in this game so far.

…but doesn’t in any way elaborate on what it was in particular he thought was the good point about it. He goes forward to explain why someone saying someone else "OMGUS’ed" them is scummy but his explanation doesn’t seem convincing in the least.

There are other points that follow these points above, but I think pages 5 and 6 for Macavity are particularly damning. If I recall correctly, he kinda disappeared for awhile too while the game slowed down a bit following these two noteworthy pages.

I’m noticing some really interesting things that are happening between Tarhalindur and MacavityLock too.

I know for a fact that one of Tarhalindur’s most used scum tells is that Information Instead of Analysis tell that I think is like his Tar standard tell number I in his Wiki. For him to completely miss out on this with respect to Macavity just seems extremely odd to me. In fact, the only time Tarhalindur calls Macavity out on anything at all is as of recent where he begins with an FoS and eventually escalates said FoS to an HoS.

To backtrack slightly, as I’m getting a bit ahead of myself as to why I’ve drawn this link, Tarhalindur’s early play didn’t really impress me much at all. I agreed with a lot of the points Patrick mentioned above in his partial player-by-player summary. And considering what I know about Tarhalindur-scum’s tendencies (he has a strong tendency to bus his buddies even early in the game – see Mini 594, Satin Dolls Showdown for a good example of this), I’m extremely leery of whether or not Tarhalindur might be planning some type of bussing strategy here considering the fact that his FoS and HoS seem like continuous late-day escalations that will most likely end with a vote, coupled with his repeated mentioning that he needs to look back at Macavity but still hasn't gotten around to it despite the fact that the deadline has been pushed back.

Questions for Tarhalindur:

• Tarhalindur, have you looked into MacavityLock as promised? If so, what do you currently think of him? You seem to gradually be progressing to a vote for him, but you’ve somehow become sidetracked by this case that’s appeared out of nowhere against Elmo.
  
• Do you think Elmo’s behavior or even my predecessor’s behavior is really more suspicious than MacavityLock’s?
  
• Have you not noticed that MacavityLock’s contribution to this game very much resembles IIOA? If so, why have you not called him out about it?

I'd appreciate any answers to any of the above questions. Thanks.

[MacavityLock]

I'd like to comment on two of your points:

MacavityLock

: I don't like this from MacavityLock:

I think on the Fark vs Tim debate there's a nice thin haze of scumminess from both of them. However, the hypocracy as pointed out by username, as well as a pretty heavy effort to tie Tim to Elmo make me come down on the Fark-is-scummier side.

Feels like fairly lazy throwing suspicion on both sides of the big debate, and his comment that Fark is trying to tie Tim to Elmo shows he's only skimming, since Fark clarified that he wasn't doing that at all.

I disagree with this. I was not just skimming. I think that clarifications can often just be someone stepping back from an "accidentally" scummy thing that they said. Please see my recent Fark-Elmo post for additional reasons why I think Fark is being odd.

I don't like his stance on Timeater's self vote. Fishing for a claim is bizarre, and I don't like the FoIrrationality: Timeater. I think he might have been trying to avoid giving a definitive stance on Timeater until it was forced out of him, and now that he's given it, I'd like a reason for why he feels the self vote stunt was majorly scummy. Because in my experience, you see this alot more from townies. I don't really like this play tbh, I could see him as scum trying to passively support the bad wagon.

I'd only been in 4 (now 5) mafia games, and only completed 2, but if there's anything that really riles me, it's people who play illogically. I cannot stand people who don't act towards their side winning. To my mind, a self-vote at the absolute top of the list is irrational things for a player to do. I clearly over-reacted, I'll admit that. But it just irks me so much that I want to never see that again, in any game.

I wanted to wait for an explanation from Timeater, but clearly we're not going to get that here. But the fact is that the sequence of events was as follows:
1) Tar had his vote on Tim for a while.
2) Tim does his self-vote "trick."
3) Tar moves his vote off of and immediately back to Tim, which reads to me like confirming his vote.
4) Tim uses this as an excuse to vote Tar.
That struck me as very scummy. I wanted Tim to tell us how his trick "caught" Tar. Because over that series of events, nothing changed except Tim's vote.

I've been in (and still am in) the middle of midterms. I haven't done enough close reads of the most recent stuff. I owe Elmo, forbiddan, and Tar a closer read. My vote's still on KE for the moment. He hasn't done anything recently, and I'm worried that he's skating by lurking.

[MacavityLock]

Well, I did not notice Flask-cog's post before submitting mine. Sadly, I need to finish up one of my midterms tonight and that was all the time I'd allotted to mafia today. I'll respond to this soon enough, and sorry I can't write up anything now.

[Farkshinsoup]

Thread explosion. I need to go back and re-read from the start. I may have been wrong about Tim/Flask. For now,

unvote

.

[Rishi]

Okay, caught up. Don't have time to write a whole lot, but using this post to kind of mark where I left off.

That whole Elmo/forbiddanlight argument was a whole lot of nothing. If Elmo was scum, he'd be making newbie-level scum mistakes. And I don't think he'd do that. In any case, both forbiddan and Tar got defensive at that point and started attacking Elmo. Then Elmo puts together a great post on Tar. But, I don't know about his case. It almost feels like Elmo baited Tar and then went after him for chasing the bait.

FoP is looking bettter than Timeater.

I don't like how Fark and KE have been lurking lately now that the pressure is off them. I also don't like IAUN's lurking, but nothing was ever really suspicious of him.

[iamausername]

I also don't like IAUN's lurking

Me either.

Read up on the recent Elmo spat, and I'm definitely falling on his side of the argument. Tar and forbiddan are both pushing the idea that there is no reason for him to do these things as town, and therefore he must be scum, without even vaguely considering the point that there's really no reason for him to do them as scum, either. I'm not sure I'm buying it as genuine suspicion from either one of them, it's just too much 'by the book', not enough gut.

In other news, Flask of Pestilence has compensated enough for Timeater to make me want to

Unvote

.

Gonna tentatively

Vote: KingEnigma

because I've still gotta have a vote somewhere and that seems as good a place as any right now, but I really need to do some reading in isolation and PBPAs and all that jazz, because I just don't have good enough reads at the moment.

[Flask of Pestilence]

I disagree with this. I was not just skimming. I think that clarifications can often just be someone stepping back from an "accidentally" scummy thing that they said. Please see my recent Fark-Elmo post for additional reasons why I think Fark is being odd.

I still think this was a curious interpretation. At the bottom of Post 102, Fark clearly states that he thinks Timeater might have some inside knowledge that Elmo is town. Then, when Timeater seems to wrongly assume that he was trying to connect them together, he clarifies it again in his Post 114. I don't see how that can be "stepping back" from something accidentally scummy.

I'd only been in 4 (now 5) mafia games, and only completed 2, but if there's anything that really riles me, it's people who play illogically. I cannot stand people who don't act towards their side winning. To my mind, a self-vote at the absolute top of the list is irrational things for a player to do. I clearly over-reacted, I'll admit that. But it just irks me so much that I want to never see that again, in any game.

I wanted to wait for an explanation from Timeater, but clearly we're not going to get that here. But the fact is that the sequence of events was as follows:
1) Tar had his vote on Tim for a while.
2) Tim does his self-vote "trick."
3) Tar moves his vote off of and immediately back to Tim, which reads to me like confirming his vote.
4) Tim uses this as an excuse to vote Tar.
That struck me as very scummy. I wanted Tim to tell us how his trick "caught" Tar. Because over that series of events, nothing changed except Tim's vote.

Hmm. I wish he'd explained it as well, but my guess is he decided to selfvote to see if anyone would attack him for it (didn't necessarily have to be Tarhalindur). If that was his plan, I think he was unwise to try it at that point, but I don't see why it's very scummy. And I don't think he needed an "excuse" to vote for Tar, given how much suspicion he'd expressed of him already.

(Patrick)

[forbiddanlight]

forbiddanlight: Starting with CDB, there's not much to comment on. His early vote for fark seems a little off for a player of CDB's experience, but again, it's early. He then flakes away, which he does very often, so not real read on that.

Enter forbiddalight. I'm not really wild about her suspicions; it seems like most of her points are borrowed from someone else, and her suspicions roughly follow most of the popular currents at the time. I think Incognito might have a metagame note to add about forbiddanlight also.

Only as scum. Not sure how I correlate with that :S.

What sticks out the most to me, though, is her recent attack on Elmo. I remember looking at this from outside the game and thinking she was scum, and it looks no better this time round. It just looks really contrived to me - isn't forbiddanlight experienced enough to know that protown players often have very good reasons for holding back their reasoning? Her use of the term "strawman" for one of Elmo's posts looks like an attempt to make her argument stronger by using something from the wiki; I thought it was fairly obvious that Elmo's post was said in a light hearted way due to the smiley in it. I just have a hard time seeing this attack from FB as genuine, and notice she switches over to Elmo immediately after Tarhalindur voted Elmo. Again, this attack on Elmo almost looks pulled out of a scum textbook. Really not liking her play so far.

How is it contrived again? And I have never seen good reasoning for holding back suspicions and reasoning for suspicions. Only scum need to hide such things since they usually lack it. And the explanation she did provide left a lot to be desired for "reasons to be secret"

Because it totally wasn't a strawman right? So, let me get this straight...calling people out on logical fallacies that they are engaging in is now scummy because it's too "by the book"? What the hell?.

Honestly, I am not going to assume anything game related is light hearted unless it's blatently obvious. That was far from it.

And I wanted to lynch Elmo before deadline. Tar voted her, so I thought MAYBE I could get a bandwagon going on her before deadline, because I honestly think she's going to become increasingly scummy while you all give her the burden of competency. Another wiki thing for you to look up.

As for borrowed points, well excuse me if by replacing in at Page 9, I find that most of the points on the scummiest person at the time (you) have been exhausted.

Also, while I agree that your post is helpful, it feels too much like a save my ass post. It works today, but I'll be on you and Elmo tomorrow. For now, I'm going to

Unvote, Vote King Enigma

Your reasoning is backwards. I don't believe he's dropped any scumtells, which is a pre-requisite for believing he's town. I'm not giving your observations as much credit as you do because I disagree with you. Sidenote, I'm fairly sure you have no business calling my attack on you OMGUS, given I killplz'd you before you attacked me.

Fair enough. It still fails.

Intentional or not, this is a strawman; my point was the disparity between the strength of what I did and you/Tar's stated bloodlust. I think anyone pushing something relatively minor that hard is more likely to be scum looking for an easy lynch than town genuinely trying to find scum. Or would you say what I did was an extremely strong tell?

Being intentionally unhelpful would seem that way to me. You can claim that no scum in their right mind would attempt that, but look at all the support you've garnered. It is a rather high implication that you are at least non town if you don't feel like helping the town, at least to me.

I remain curious as to what scumtells I'm supposed to have dropped other than being bored, or indeed (really) any explanation of why what I did was scummy beyond you thinking it's anti-town.

I could bust out a PBPA on you, but that will have to wait til tonight. I have to leave very shortly. I'll pull out everything you've done then. Who knows, maybe it will change my opinion. I was mostly posting in the moment since you seriously were pinging my scumdar.

[Flask of Pestilence]

Also, while I agree that your post is helpful, it feels too much like a save my ass post. It works today, but I'll be on you and Elmo tomorrow. For now, I'm going to

Unvote, Vote King Enigma

This is so epic phail.

Why wait until tomorrow? If you truly feel like one of Elmo and me are your top two suspicions, you'd be pushing for our lynch at this instant. And are you that confident that you'll even be around tomorrow?

Touching on my meta experience with forbiddanlight: I spoke with her directly after WOMAFIA where she was scum and I was town, and I remember her mentioning that she generally likes drawing scum roles better than town roles because she feels more assertive and self-assured with her suspicions. forbiddanlight-town, on the other hand, is slightly more wishy washy and unsure of herself. My general feeling about her in this particular BSG game is that her play here better matches her scum meta as opposed to her town meta, for whatever that's worth. I could draw from other examples of her town play if necessary, but I think the in-thread evidence in this particular game is telling enough on its own.

In fact, post 306 very strongly reminds me of a similar post forbiddanlight made here in WOMAFIA that addressed a defense ThAdmiral-town made against a case that I made against him in which she responded to his defense before I ever even got a chance to. I'm pretty sure Elmo's post 304 was directed at Tarhalindur, so I'm not exactly sure why forbiddanlight felt the need to step in and respond to it before he got a chance to. I'm not exactly sure what this suggests about forbiddanlight's possible relationship with Tarhalindur in this game though.

-Incog.

[Flask of Pestilence]

How is it contrived again? And I have never seen good reasoning for holding back suspicions and reasoning for suspicions. Only scum need to hide such things since they usually lack it. And the explanation she did provide left a lot to be desired for "reasons to be secret"

This is incorrect. It's not uncommon for protown players to hold back their reasoning. The two main reasons for that are (1) Accusations without stated reasons often generate better reactions, and some people find it fun to do, and (2) It often helps to hold back on what exactly you find scummy about a player so that you can observe them a while longer to see if their behaviour continues or whether it was just an anomaly. Stating reasons too early can sometimes alert scum to what behaviour they need to change.

Because it totally wasn't a strawman right? So, let me get this straight...calling people out on logical fallacies that they are engaging in is now scummy because it's too "by the book"? What the hell?.

Honestly, I am not going to assume anything game related is light hearted unless it's blatently obvious. That was far from it.

Yes, I definitely don't think it was a strawman. I think he asks the serious question of what smacks of scumminess about his attacks without explanation. I saw the second line as slightly more flippant but still don't see anything particularly wrong with it.

Also, while I agree that your post is helpful, it feels too much like a save my ass post. It works today, but I'll be on you and Elmo tomorrow. For now, I'm going to Unvote, Vote King Enigma

This backing away whilst throwing in a little swipe doesn't look too good. If you really find myself and Elmo scummy, I don't really see why you're leaving it for later; and it's not like you appear satisfied by either of our responses. I also don't like your characterisation of my post as a "save my ass post". I did post some defences because I feel the attacks on Timeater are largely overblown, and because I'm trying to discern who's genuinely suspicious of him and who's making hay, and my post contains a whole load of analysis and opinions on other players. I don't see anything wrong with that.

[Flask of Pestilence]

The more recent post is me (Patrick).

[KingEnigma]

I'm out for about half a week, a week at a time. So I'm not intentionally lurking, i'm actually not here.

I think when everyone goes "I'd vote for KingEnigma if it comes down to it" and then other people start voting for me. The people who voted for me, aren't the people who said they would be okay with a lynch. (Yes I understand they are okay with a lynch, if they are voting for me, but come on!) Yes forbiddanlight mentioned voting for me, but it was after it was popular, and seemed safe, might i add.

Its taking advantage of the situation and everyone knows it. This is the reason I don't say "I'm voting this way, but i'm cool with the following people: Blahblahblahalh and blah" because quite frankly I'm voting for someone and EVERYONE else is okay, if they are scum. When you give someone a name that you are "okay" with then you are giving scum a safe name. thanks for bringing my name up.

so bring on the votes, its okay, because everyone is okay with a KE lynch. its whats in.