Open 193 - Friends and Enemies: It's over!

[VP Baltar]

worried?

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

worried?

Not in the slightest, very curious however.

[Vi]

I'm also interested in hearing this DDD case.

[hitogoroshi]

Obviously I'm gonna need a lot of thought to try to get the idea of Albert-mason in my idea of the gamestate. The first thing I'm wondering is why both Zorblag and Vi are alive. I suppose maybe Sando and ABR dropped some huge mason tells that I just dunced out and missed, but barring that I have to wonder why the scum would want to leave two players who virtually no one has expressed interest in lynching alive.

If they're both town, then DDD and VP are the scum. Could they count on Zorblag to get me? Probably. So this isn't a 100% unfeasible scenario or anything.

If Zorblag is scum, and Vi is town, then it's basicially scenario one only with 'could zorblag and {DDD, VP} count on {VP, DDD} to get me?

If Vi is scum and Zorblag is town, that's a bit iffier. If she's scum with VP, they'd probably be going for DDD. If she's scum with DDD...probably DDD would try to get VP to vote me, and Vi would have to hammer. Or they could try to get me on VP.

If both Zorblag and Vi and scum, that's the worst. They could have Vi hammer me like I said before, or try to get me to vote DDD or VP. (Or pass me entirely and get VP or DDD to vote for the other).

[Vi]

Hey hito, what are you going to do to find out which of those is the case?

[hitogoroshi]

I think I'm happiest calling you town, Vi. The reservation I have doing this because it's primarily in your interactions with me (that is, the worry this is just my self-centered viewpoint) is mitigated by Albert also calling you strong town.

If I walk in with that assumption, the scumteams would be:

Zorblag/DDD
VPB/DDD
VPB/Zorblag

which means that what I should be working on doing is finding the least probable of those associations, because if I can find one grouping that I'm convinced isn't a scumteam then the person not in that grouping is scum. It's not a foolproof system because a.) it obviously doesn't work if Vi is scum and b.) there's nothing to say the two scum aren't good at distancing, but I think it's a great place to start.

Let me make up a quick bit of notation here: two names in [bracket's] will be the scumteam I'm discussing the feasibility of and name 1 > name 2 will be describing names 1's interaction with name 2. This should be kinda obvious but may as well get it down.

Let me start with [Zorblag - DDD].

For DDD > Zorblag, there's Iso 22, Iso 33's 'Nothing of importance to say'...and that's it.

For Zorblag > DDD - generic question in ISO 6, call out of his playstyle in ISO 9, ISO 10's "I don't disagree with VP on DDD (hey VPB, could you let me in on what exactly he was agreeing with? It's hard for me to tell because I wasn't there.)

His ISO 14-16 are interesting. He points out that if Vi wanted to vote DDD for lurking, her previous votes don't make sense in that context. This makes sense both as a townie trying to nail people to viewpoints and as a scum trying to point out the weakness of a case on a buddy; I'm unsure which one makes more sense.

ISO 19 is just a general call out of DDD. But ISO 23 says he has no interest in lynching DDD. It also shows his first major swipe at Reck, and I'll admit I didn't remember it being so early. (What I'm saying here is that everyone should look at ISO 23 and look at when it happened, because it's easy to forget these sorts of things.)

ISO 27 says he's still not interested in lynching DDD, and still not interested in giving reasons.

Doesn't bring up DDD again until D3, at my prompting.

And then, nothing.

Y'know, that's kinda weird to me. The early game is DDD, DDD, DDD, DDD. And then suddenly he decides to stop mentioning him (to make the mason suspects he's avoiding less obvious, if I'm reading his post right) and that ends up being what, three silent days?

This is wonky enough that I'm certainty not going to say it's a scumpair I can't see happening. However, I'll admit that after seeing how early his case on Reck started I'm not so sure I can really see Zorblag scum. It feels far too easy to say 'VPB and DDD are the scum' but that's what this chain of reasoning seems to be leading up to.

I have other things to do right now but I'll look at [VPB - DDD] next when I get here.

[VP Baltar]

I'm working on my isos of everyone right now. Not particularly enthused about mafia at the moment, but I'll put in some work because I'd actually like to win this game. DDD is the first of course:

First thing that stands out to me is DDD's iso 7 after I asked him if he'd be using his trend analysis this game:

I like to think I've gotten better at scumhunting and since that development coincided with the trend analysis I conflated the two so it'll pretty much be business as usual since then minus the trend analysis.

Which is fine on its own, but I don't know if I particularly feel like DDD has been "business as usual" this game or shown much for scumhunting. He excuses himself from having to contribute much in iso 8 because "VPB, Vi and SC (amongst others)" are here and he therefore he doesn't "need to push the pace". This is also the post where he says he's waiting for something scummy to run with. While I know DDD can be lurky regardless of alignment, I question whether or not he's actually run with anything this game? Why say that's what you're going to do if you really have no intention of it?

Next, Vi brings up DDD as lurker scum in Appenine Mafia and DDD makes this comment in his iso 12:

And you're one of the two people who should know best that after the apparently defining game that was Appenine Mafia I changed my playstyle to account for that, three words - Mafia of Order.

This didn't stick out to me as particularly relevant initially, but now that I read it again, I'm not sure what this means. DDD, are you saying that you lurked in Mafia of Order so you could compensate for Appenine and lurk in the future like that?

The case against Amished is trumped-up beyond what it's worth. If you're going to be suspicious of someone over calling the team, try Sando, who tried to sway ABR into "calling the team" by asking if char/DDD/Amished were group scum.

Umm, agreed about Sando, but I can only reply to something after it’s been posted and I was using my time last night to reply to those people who were expecting a reply. My next available opportunity to comment on it is now, where I’m agreeing with you about how it’s bad.

This comes after DDD's exchange with Amished, which was indeed pretty weak. Something about this has the air of being willing to follow now that his argument with Amished hasn't yeilded anything, which I don't like considering how convinced DDD seems to be about Amished in their back and forth.

Now, I of course had some early suspicion of DDD, but then he had this quote:

No, lurkers you can't get a read on hurt games. If you can get a good read on a lurker then there is no need to care about their activity status.

Well, I don't think anyone is reading you as town atm, so....

Nonsense, there's certainly several individuals who know I'm town.

Which I kind of thought was him breadcrumbing mason. Now I have no clue what he was doing.

And again I have to reference this:

By day two however things have happened, people are almost invariably dead with connections that can be made and I can start making reasoned, rational arguments. So in a game that I don't think needs me producing outstanding content, I tend to lurk and just hope for it to be day two already.

I really don't think this was delivered on at all this game. Much like Appenine Mafia, there is the promise of scumhunting but no delivery.

re: DDD voting RECK early - In hindsight, this actually looks like a good move for DDD if he's scum. Charlatan was already at L-2 and certainly wasn't gaining any traction against his lynch. what is slightly questionable about DDD here is that he's agreeing with Amished, who was previously his top scum suspect. I saw no apparent change in opinion on Amished at that time, so why would he suddenly agree with him? I know when I have someone high on my scum list, I certainly give their opinion much less credence than I would if I thought they were town. It doesn't make much sense to me.

Additionally, DDD contributes pretty much nothing for the rest of the day, not that he had given a lot before that.

Day 2 starts with DDD voting Reck again, while tempering it with Sando as his number 2. Nothing outstanding about that.

I'm not really a fan of DDD claiming credit for the Reckoner wagon in iso 29:

I started the wagon on Rec today that's got him up to L-1, no credit for that? I mean I could've made loud noises and repeated things from yesterday and called it a case, but I think it's fairly obvious that the facts speak for themselves considering how the wagon has come together.

Everyone else did the work and I don't know what things he'd be repeating from Day 1 considering he never actually gave a reason for being on it.

Additionally, in the same post he says:

I've tried to question ABR, but he won't answer my question, no credit for that either? The only way I know to possibly get him to engage me is to repeat the question (which I've done) and try and bandwagon him except I believe voting for Rec to be a better course of action which doesn't leave me with much recourse.

Which is conflating his efforts more than a touch, imo. He asked ABR a single question about a side-issue that he never pushes in any kind of serious way.

One thing that I do notice in DDD's iso is that he does seem to be buddying me at times, which I don't know what to think about. It's not so much that he's agreeing with me (even though people don't usually trend toward that), but that he takes it in the most extreme cases to infer scumminess. He does it with ABR-mason by saying that he's not responding to me or himself and he does it with Oj-mason, saying that me pointing out here "wishy-washy positions" makes her likely scum. I dunno, particularly in Oj's case I think he's going farther than I was on my own words.

What also is weird in DDD's iso is that he wanted to seriously lynch all of the masons at one point or another. Doesn't necessarially mean anything, but worth noting.

And rec continues to try and hurt the town by securing posthumous town lynches.

I think I brought this up before, but this doesn't make sense and also sounds like DDD is just too sure that Reck will flip town.

---

Ok, sadly that's the shortest of the isos and it took me most of the day because I keep walking away from my computer. Oh well, this game doesn't have much of a deadline threat, so I guess I can take my time.

Overall, I think there are some scummy things there and DDD's awareness of his own meta early on makes it null. He could very easily be abusing his lurking as a tool to gather town reads this game.

I think I will try to do Troll next since if I was committed to DDD scum, my gut says Troll is his most likely partner.

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

Had to cut things to try and make sure it was readable and that all the key parts were still in it, but the essence of VPB’s crappy arguments should still be in there.

Which is fine on its own, but I don't know if I particularly feel like DDD has been "business as usual" this game or shown much for scumhunting. He excuses himself from having to contribute much in iso 8 because "VPB, Vi and SC (amongst others)" are here and he therefore he doesn't "need to push the pace". This is also the post where he says he's waiting for something scummy to run with. While I know DDD can be lurky regardless of alignment, I question whether or not he's actually run with anything this game? Why say that's what you're going to do if you really have no intention of it?

I got behind Amished’s theory pretty much as soon as he promoted it; I tried to get him back on that wagon when he left it for the D1 mislynch. As soon as D2 began I jumped back on the wagon and unlike others never wavered; I’m not sure how I could’ve run with that idea more than I did. Even if we exclude that I think I’m hardly alone in being more than a little uncertain and indecisive in this game.

This didn't stick out to me as particularly relevant initially, but now that I read it again, I'm not sure what this means. DDD, are you saying that you lurked in Mafia of Order so you could compensate for Appenine and lurk in the future like that?

As the numbers from Apennine showed there was a significant gap in my meta. I would’ve been a fool not to fix the gap. Since it was easier to slow down my activity to my scum level than ramp up my scum activity to town levels that’s what I did. I’ve never denied that and I’ve never used meta as a positive argument except to counter those trying to make the argument that it indicts me.

This comes after DDD's exchange with Amished, which was indeed pretty weak. Something about this has the air of being willing to follow now that his argument with Amished hasn't yeilded anything, which I don't like considering how convinced DDD seems to be about Amished in their back and forth.

So when I found something and ran with it overconfidently that’s scummy; except earlier I was being chided for not running with anything. If you want to get on my case about the argument with Amished being poor that’s fine because it was poor, but your arguments about not running with anything versus being convinced are at cross-purpose and are absolute nonsense.

Which I kind of thought was him breadcrumbing mason. Now I have no clue what he was doing.

No shit I was breadcrumbing mason. I was using that to try and get suspicion off my back and to try and draw a NK away from the real masons. I was successful on the first front, I was not on the second.

I really don't think this was delivered on at all this game. Much like Appenine Mafia, there is the promise of scumhunting but no delivery.

Whatever chief; in Appenine I whored myself out to whatever lynch we could get and get quickest. In this game I’m the only person who hasn’t been voting confirmed town at deadline: you, Vi, and Zorblag were all on the D1 mislynch, PCE was on another town wagon; I was voting for scum. Vi was also voting for a pro-town player on D2 while I helped lynch scum. And on D3 Hito was voting a pro-town player; while VPB, Vi, and Zorblag all contributed to the mislynch. Scumhunting is just the tool to find and lynch scum and by that standard you have absolutely no place to chide me. For all your “scumhunting” you’ve lynched more town than scum; the same cannot be said about me.

re: DDD voting RECK early - In hindsight, this actually looks like a good move for DDD if he's scum. Charlatan was already at L-2 and certainly wasn't gaining any traction against his lynch. what is slightly questionable about DDD here is that he's agreeing with Amished, who was previously his top scum suspect.

I saw no apparent change in opinion on Amished at that time, so why would he suddenly agree with him? I know when I have someone high on my scum list, I certainly give their opinion much less credence than I would if I thought they were town.

It doesn't make much sense to me.

I have yet to see someone burn their own tells by abusing them as scum. Amished's point does seem valid

Additionally, in the same post he says:

I've tried to question ABR, but he won't answer my question, no credit for that either? The only way I know to possibly get him to engage me is to repeat the question (which I've done) and try and bandwagon him except I believe voting for Rec to be a better course of action which doesn't leave me with much recourse.

Which is conflating his efforts more than a touch, imo. He asked ABR a single question about a side-issue that he never pushes in any kind of serious way.

I had one post between my question for ABR and this post; basically the sole content in that post was to agitate for ABR to answer my question. It appears I was batting a thousand on following up on that one.

And rec continues to try and hurt the town by securing posthumous town lynches.

I think I brought this up before, but this doesn't make sense and also sounds like DDD is just too sure that Reck will flip town.

So your argument here is that I’m too confident that the player who flipped SCUM would flip TOWN and that’s why I’m that player’s scum partner.

At least you made it obvious that you’re blatantly making shit up with that last one. Really trashes the positive read I had on you from the rest of the game.

[Zorblag]

I'm just done with an unexpectedly pleasant (if internet-free) weekend. I'll need to take a new look at the game as a whole now that we've got the information that we do.

Here's a quick question for now though.

@hitogoroshi, did you have any strong guesses for who the masons were? I ask because it's interesting that with your initial post today you seem to be assuming that the scum didn't which seems a bit unlikely to me. For what it's worth I have been thinking about the masons for most of the game and Sando's flip didn't surprise me too much based on what I'd seen; I don't know that he would have been my first guess but he certainly wasn't a bad one based on everyone's interactions. Once he was a mason I was pretty sure it had to be either Albert B. Rampage or Debonair Danny DiPietro as the third (I could rule out you, Vi and VP Baltar from strong negative interactions alone.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[VP Baltar]

Troll iso is going to have to be delayed a day most likely. I have to do a radio program tonight and will probably be tired afterward. Apologies.

[Vi]

Once again I'm going on extended V/LA during LyLo. Pastel me thrilled.

I'm keeping quiet because I'm waiting on everyone else to finally arrive at their positions before bringing out my own conclusions. Of course, this only really works if everyone actually posts.

I should have very sporadic Internet access through the rest of the week and I can PM myself my notes, so I shouldn't be completely out for five days.

--

Whatever chief; in Appenine I whored myself out to whatever lynch we could get and get quickest. In this game I’m the only person who hasn’t been voting confirmed town at deadline: you, Vi, and Zorblag were all on the D1 mislynch, PCE was on another town wagon; I was voting for scum. Vi was also voting for a pro-town player on D2 while I helped lynch scum. And on D3 Hito was voting a pro-town player; while VPB, Vi, and Zorblag all contributed to the mislynch. Scumhunting is just the tool to find and lynch scum and by that standard you have absolutely no place to chide me. For all your “scumhunting” you’ve lynched more town than scum; the same cannot be said about me.

That's a strange way of presenting yourself as holier than the thous down here...

Let's turn that around. Why

weren't

you on the other wagons?

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

Whatever chief; in Appenine I whored myself out to whatever lynch we could get and get quickest. In this game I’m the only person who hasn’t been voting confirmed town at deadline: you, Vi, and Zorblag were all on the D1 mislynch, PCE was on another town wagon; I was voting for scum. Vi was also voting for a pro-town player on D2 while I helped lynch scum. And on D3 Hito was voting a pro-town player; while VPB, Vi, and Zorblag all contributed to the mislynch. Scumhunting is just the tool to find and lynch scum and by that standard you have absolutely no place to chide me. For all your “scumhunting” you’ve lynched more town than scum; the same cannot be said about me.

That's a strange way of presenting yourself as holier than the thous down here...

Let's turn that around. Why

weren't

you on the other wagons?

Because the Charlatan wagon sucked (I think the wagon and his lynch were caused because of him targeting power brokers like SC, VPB, and ABR more than really good points laid against him) and because I really liked Amished's policy point against Rec. And then on D3 SC finally started posting in a fashion consistent with my town meta of him while Hito's arguments and activity seemed forced to me and PCE had been one of my scummier reads on D1. So I wasn't on those wagons because they weren't good ones and better ones also existed.

[Vi]

And then on D3 SC finally started posting in a fashion consistent with my town meta of him while Hito's arguments and activity seemed forced to me and PCE had been one of my scummier reads on D1.

When was this decision made?

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

And then on D3 SC finally started posting in a fashion consistent with my town meta of him while Hito's arguments and activity seemed forced to me and PCE had been one of my scummier reads on D1.

When was this decision made?

Going back I had them on fairly equal footing on P39/961, but by P42/1040 I told ABR that I was not inclined to jump on the SC wagon. So that decision was made between then.

[hitogoroshi]

hitogoroshi, did you have any strong guesses for who the masons were? I ask because it's interesting that with your initial post today you seem to be assuming that the scum didn't which seems a bit unlikely to me. For what it's worth I have been thinking about the masons for most of the game and Sando's flip didn't surprise me too much based on what I'd seen; I don't know that he would have been my first guess but he certainly wasn't a bad one based on everyone's interactions. Once he was a mason I was pretty sure it had to be either Albert B. Rampage or Debonair Danny DiPietro as the third (I could rule out you, Vi and VP Baltar from strong negative interactions alone.)

I suppose I never thought about "if Sando's a mason, who's the third?" in that dead spot from D4 to D5. Now that I think about it, it does make more sense that the scum targeting Albert thinking he was a mason. I'm still not sure if the Sando targeting was noticing a mason - though come to think of it, perhaps Ojanen's mason flip confirmed a line of thought that meant the scum had all three mason's pegged at the start of day two. I wonder what that would mean, wagon-wise...? Would they try to hold off on a mason lynch and wait for the night kill, or try to get the masons lynched right away?

Also now that the drama is ongoing I'm going to switch the order a bit and do [DDD-VP] later to factor in their interactions.

So it's [VP-Zorblag.] VP posts a metric shitton and it's going to take a lot of time for me to get through that (as well as motivation; I'm tempted to forgo comment on the ISO's entirely) but I can at least get Zorblag > VP done quick.

He has a slew of posts at the begining regarding VP's interactions with Albert. Then silence until VP makes it on his no lynch list in ISO 20. In ISO 26 he says that he's with VP on why we should vote Reck, and in his next post he says VP is his strongest town read.

After that his mentions of VP are mostly 'I agree with''s or 'I don't understand suspicion on'.

Unsure of how to call this one. Guess I will have to look hard at VP > Zorblag after all.

[Zorblag]

Hmm, it seems that I'm not the only one having trouble finding time for mafia (or at least this game for some) at the moment. I still need to take a look at everything. My plan is to have time for that tomorrow.

@Vi, is there some reason that you in particular should be the last to share your conclusions? I know that to some degree someone has to but I find it odd that you've decided it should be you and that come out publicly with that as your plan.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[VP Baltar]

Yeah, I apologize for being so swamped lately. I've had time to make quick posts on MS, but not the length needed for the indepth analysis I need to do here. Today is looking better however, so here's to hoping.

DDD, I haven't missed your responses and I have things to say, but I think I want to get out this isos before I get sidetracked with any lengthy debates. I'll come back to you when I'm done.

[Head_Honcho]

The Just For Fun Votecount:

Not Voting(5): VP Baltar, Vi, Zorblag, Debonair Danny DiPietro, hitogoroshi
With 5 alive it's 3 to lynch.

[Vi]

@Vi, is there some reason that you in particular should be the last to share your conclusions? I know that to some degree someone has to but I find it odd that you've decided it should be you and that come out publicly with that as your plan.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

Of course.

I don't just accidentally wind up in LyLo, so I have some doubt in what I've dug up and would like to see what everyone else thinks before doing the usual Last Stand and impressing the benighted public with my views.
However, I don't know where anyone else stands right now... yourself included. Another reason for me to wait is to ensure that others' conclusions aren't being worked around mine. (Yes, I AM being difficult~)

But enough about me. How about

you

laying down some words to commit to?

[VP Baltar]

Zorblag

:

Well, Troll is always very good at appearing town as any alignment, so isoing him and having something stick out as 'oh hey, that's scummy' is going to be unlikely no doubt.

One of the first things I guess I personally would look at is the final votecount on the charlatan lynch.

End of day votecount:

charlatan(7):

SerialClergyman

, Zorblag, VP Baltar,

Amished

, Vi,

Rampage

, [coor=red]xRECKONERx[/color]
xRECKONERx(2): Debonair Danny DiPietro,

charlatan

PorkchopExpress(2):

Sando, Ojanen

Sando(1): PorkchopExpress

Now, considering how hard the charlatan vs. PCE debate went down, I have a hard time believing that there was only one scum on that wagon who was forced to hammer. I know that doesn't mean much to DDD or hito, but to me it means that at least one of Vi or Zorblag is scum. Consequently, it means at least one of hito and DDD should be town. Doesn't say a lot, but it's a good place to start for me and I desperately need to write down my thoughts in this game.

Moving on to the iso, Troll has words and lots of them. This is why I hate trying to get a read on him. He spends a lot of time using phrases like 'That's reasonable' and 'I certainly understand what you mean'...which makes trying to get a read nigh impossible because my senses are dulled from all the words and diplomat playing.

Early on, I notice Troll says this about DDD:

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, I do know that you're willing to hang back and let someone else drive the game; I saw that first hand in the game we IC'd together (I never got around to posting after that game ended by the way; nice work on finishing it up after I got night killed.) The trouble with that approach here is that it doesn't give the rest of us the chance to get a read on you along the way. In the newbie game I wasn't so worried about it as I had more pressing issues with simply making sure that the others knew how to play the game; they were going to look scummier than you by default whether you were talking or not just because they would make mistakes they didn't even know were mistakes. That's not going to come up here; we need your input not just for the sake of the input but also so that we've got a way to judge your play and the connections later on. Waiting till you've got something great to latch on isn't acceptable here.

Now, I want to keep an eye on how he progresses with this throughout the game because I still don't think DDD delivered on any of this and yet Troll was calling him town for a good deal of the game.

I will say that in iso, Troll's exchanges with charlatan do seem fairly genuine. However, in iso 11 he says this:

We're talking about this issue rather than the reasons that I gave for voting you because that's what you chose to respond to in your first post after I cast my vote.

You talked about the votes the others had cast for you but everything that you directed towards me had to do with your failure to answer my question. Why is it that you're trying to strawman me like this rather than asking me more about why I cast my vote?

The problem is that if we go back and look at the post where troll voted (iso 9), there really aren't many actual reasons for voting Charlatan there.

@charlatan, I don't know what your motives were which is why I asked. An answer of:

I was mostly curious to see if someone who wasn't really contributing otherwise would jump on the opportunity to attack erratic play that amounts to a nulltell, and whether they would do so in a thoughtful way or whether they would just be like "WTF lunch? Scum!!"

Would have been all I wanted there. It's reasonable and I assume that you'd already gotten the reaction from me when you gave your "let me turn your question around on you" answer that you gave. Clearly I could make guesses about what you were up to but saying that I had already answered for you when I hadn't and being coy doesn't help us evaluate your play nearly as much as a straightforward answer.

Which is the thing he is saying charlatan chose to respond to rather than the real reasons. And the only other mention of charlatan is:

It's tempting to change my vote now to someone other than Ojanen that I want to hear more from but (PorkchopExpress and Debonair Danny DiPietro both spring to mind) but I think that's probably less productive than joining a charlatan wagon. This either of Albert B. Rampage or VP Baltar are his top choices is overly convenient and I think that they're both red herrings right now.

...Sooooo, what the frak were you voting him for an expecting him to respond to? This particular attack on Charlatan rings more than a little bit false to me.

Later after a few exchanges with Charlatan, Troll says he didn't really have strong reasons for casting it:

The foundation of the vote aside (I didn't have a particularly strong reason to cast it but this early in the game it was strong enough and it's cute that you make that attack now that I've said it was what I was initially expecting)

Which reinforces my point that Troll had no grounds to attack charlatan for questioning the only seemingly stated reason for the vote.

I'm not here to defend Albert B. Rampage's behavior but thus far I've seen plenty of scum reads on him for reasons that don't strike true and nothing to indicate that he isn't town. If a tentative read of town based on that isn't what you've gotten out of that from me then I'm not sure what to tell you.

If you saw "plenty" of attacks on him that didn't "strike true", then why were you not pursuing cases on those persons? Who were those persons attacking ABR that didn't seem honest to you?

Bleh, the more I read Zorblag in iso on Day 1, the more frustrated I'm getting because for all of his words he seems to be saying nothing beyond

1)Charlatan wrongly attacked me because he thought I was irritated
2)ABR plays erratically as town

See how easy it is to sum things up. You should really try to be more succinct.

Troll does give a light jab at DDD in iso 19:

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, I can't tell right now whether you're trying to draw something from a particular person or whether you're still using a more general stalling stance while you're getting general bearings. I'm not at all convinced that you would believe a number of the things that you've been saying so they really should be smoke and mirrors for something else. Would you be willing to elaborate at all on your PorkchopExpress answer or was that given mostly just to give an answer at all?

Mild following up on his earlier concern is good.

After xRECKONERx replaces in and Amished calls him out for what is proving to be a really accurate tell, Troll is perhaps the most vocal about it being null. He goes to a lot of trouble to cite examples and such. Troll, why do you cite examples from your games if you think that the tell would depend on the individual player involved?

More likely I think that the usefulness of the tell is going to depend on the person involved (and whether they're aware that others think it's a tell.)

In iso 20, which is Troll's first post after Reck comes in, he says:

Regarding my post 114, do you think that I should have thought that one of Vi or Scien was scummy based on their exchange? If so was it one or the other in particular that you expected me to go after? Is using a vote for pressuring someone who isn't participating in this game but is posting in other games something you think isn't worth doing? I'll be interested in hearing what you think of the other players who chose to make the "safe" votes on players who hadn't been contributing later on.

And, well, I guess Troll wasn't that interested because Reck never answers and there is no follow up that I see. So.....
Moving on.

I can also confirm that Debonair Danny DiPietro did do pretty much what he's explaining fits this situation in the newbie game we played together. I actually mentioned that game back when I said I wanted to see more content from him. I do still want more content but what he's doing here is consistent with what he did when I was pushing activity in the early game while he hung back.

Which is in reference to:

This sort of game is a game with players I generally respect and don't need to be herded like sheep. If I notice myself in an all sheep game (say a newbie game with no other IC and rubbish SEs or a mini game with no one I know in the game) then I get immediately aggressive pushing whatever looks like even a half decent argument so that the game has something to work off of. But I don't enjoy doing that and I don't think I'm terribly effective at actually hunting scum while I'm doing that, so when I can avoid doing that I do so. By day two however things have happened, people are almost invariably dead with connections that can be made and I can start making reasoned, rational arguments. So in a game that I don't think needs me producing outstanding content, I tend to lurk and just hope for it to be day two already.

And yet earlier you said:

@Debonair Danny DiPietro, I do know that you're willing to hang back and let someone else drive the game; I saw that first hand in the game we IC'd together (I never got around to posting after that game ended by the way; nice work on finishing it up after I got night killed.) The trouble with that approach here is that it doesn't give the rest of us the chance to get a read on you along the way. In the newbie game I wasn't so worried about it as I had more pressing issues with simply making sure that the others knew how to play the game; they were going to look scummier than you by default whether you were talking or not just because they would make mistakes they didn't even know were mistakes. That's not going to come up here; we need your input not just for the sake of the input but also so that we've got a way to judge your play and the connections later on.

Waiting till you've got something great to latch on isn't acceptable here.

So at what point from what you first said that did it become acceptable for him to just lallygag in the background? I don't see how you viewed him as "pushing activity" in the least.

Then we have a brief drop off in activity and Troll comes back saying he'd support Charlatan, Reckoner, or PCE as a Day 1 lynch. While I dig what Troll is saying about Reck in his iso post 23, I do sort of question his charlatan (who hasn't been mentioned really since the weird vote earlier) and PCE preferences (which is apparently good because ABR is pushing it. There is also a brief mention of at worst supporting a Vi or Oj lynch, which I don't understand at all at that point.

Day 2 comes around and Troll is indeed consistent with his Reckoner voting and he once again has an unwavering read on ABR when others attack him. It worries me a bit that he could be THAT confident about someone and never seem to question them at all, but I guess it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Other than that, he's sort of a non-entity for that day, but I think he was pretty busy IRL, so meh.

Day 3, he attacks hito and Serial for decent enough reasons that are hard to argue with. One thing that does stand out to me is Troll's explanation for calling DDD town throughout the game:

@hitogoroshi, I am willing to talk about Debonair Danny DiPietro now, yes. He made my day one no-lynch list when I thought that Amished and VP Baltar were masons. I needed to have more names than just theirs to not talk about so that it would be a bit less clear why I didn't want to vote for them. I saw a few things that looked like Debonair Danny DiPietro might be trying to draw a mason-suspect night kill so I gave him the message in Post 404 which was potentially to let him know that others (Amished in particular) might either be masons or be faking it and to draw some attention to his joining my list. SerialClergyman was the other on that list because he'd drawn attention to the interactions in the first place.

Day two, when I made my statement, I still hadn't fully revealed that I had thought that Amished and VP Baltar were masons on day one so I figured I might as well keep holding over the not interested in voting status for Debonair Danny DiPietro and SerialClergyman.

And of course none of that tells you what I think of Debonair Danny DiPietro. My guess is that he's town. I like his vote on xRECKONERx going back to day one. I think that he's wrong about Albert B. Rampage now and that he needs to just forget the WIFOM thing from xRECKONERx (there's no need to try to outguess scum in this situation; we've got enough other evidence to look at that we shouldn't have to try to hit scum by figuring out the degree to which he'd lie when he knew he was going down anyhow) but I do think that he's doing more to help the town than hinder.

What strikes me as somewhat odd is that the first NK was Amished (though that could have just been for his Reck finger pointing) and that DDD was never taken out even though both he and Troll were allegedly trying to direct the kill in his direction. I know early on I felt that one of Troll or DDD was a likely mason, but apparently the scum in this game are very good at reading gambits...or one or both of them is scum. Not sure.

Most of Troll's Day 3 content looks ok to me for the most part.

@hitogoroshi, I've looked at your argument from Post 998 and thought about your mechanism theory. The trouble that I'm having is that I expect Albert B. Rampage to make the sort of switches in his calls that he's been making and I think that you're theory hinges both on that being scummy and calculated rather than being (as seems more likely) somewhat coincidental in it's timing.

It seems that it ignores how he's been doing it to others (e.g. Debonair Danny DiPietro and myself)

Troll, can you explain why you pointed to yourself and DDD as the most relevant examples here?

---

Ok, finished with the Troll iso. Apologies for the gigantic post again, but those are the relevant points I see.

Troll, could you also tell me how important you think it is for town members to figure out who the masons are in this game, particularly in relation to scum hunting.

As with DDD, feel free to respond to what you want for now and I'll probably end up coming back after I finish my hito and Vi isos.

[Debonair Danny DiPietro]

@Vi, is there some reason that you in particular should be the last to share your conclusions? I know that to some degree someone has to but I find it odd that you've decided it should be you and that come out publicly with that as your plan.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

Of course.

I don't just accidentally wind up in LyLo, so I have some doubt in what I've dug up and would like to see what everyone else thinks before doing the usual Last Stand and impressing the benighted public with my views.

However, I don't know where anyone else stands right now... yourself included. Another reason for me to wait is to ensure that others' conclusions aren't being worked around mine. (Yes, I AM being difficult~)

But enough about me. How about

you

laying down some words to commit to?

But in this game it's certainly possible that's exactly what happened. Scum had to use their night kills to eliminate masons; that meant they couldn't eliminate the usual townie looking townies. I've absolutely gone, "Why are Vi and Zorblag still alive when no one suspected them?" several times when I've tried to puzzle out the scumteam today, only to catch myself as I remember that scum had to try and kill the masons.

[Head_Honcho]

Zorblag and hitogoroshi have been prodded, those of you who don't post in the next 24 will meet the same terrible fate.

Deadline is set for two weeks from today. (Saturday March 27 @ 11:59:59 PM PST)

That is all.

[Zorblag]

@VP Baltar, there are enough walls of quotes recently and your post about me is very near by so I'm going to address the major issues you seem to be interested in without quoting them. If anything isn't clear let me know and I'll clarify.

Re: voting for charlatan. My initial vote for charlatan on day one was a vote for reactions (his and others) as much as anything else when I cast it. The reason I gave for the vote, as you quoted, was that I didn't like the convenience of his top two targets (you and Albert B. Rampage.) At that point in the game I'd just decided that I didn't want to pursue several people that I had been considering previously and I didn't have a strong case on anyone. I expected him to say pretty immediately that my stated reason was weak and that we'd then move on. Instead he didn't address my reason for voting from the start but rather he invented a reason for me to have cast the vote (petty irritation over an issue that I had called 3 different people on thus far.) He seemed to be deliberately misrepresenting my play in a way that didn't make any sense to me. That reaction was then enough for me to be fine leaving my vote on him.

Re: Albert B. Rampage day one. Albert B. Rampage draws suspicion in the early game when he's town. I expect to see people who haven't played with him much attack him for reasons that don't strike true to me because I've got a different set of expectations for his play than they are likely to. Further, I expect town to be more likely to do this than scum on the first day. My general expectation is that scum who aren't used to him probably view Albert B. Rampage as a good mislynch target for later in the game. Town on the other hand, if they see his play as useless and distracting (which I don't think it is) are more likely to want to move against him from the start. As such I have no trouble pointing out that I don't find the arguments people are making against him compelling but not doing anything to attack those making the arguments.

Re: Debonair Danny DiPietro's contributions day one. You seem to have all the relevant posts listed there but aren't quite putting together what I was saying. I played in a newbie game with Debonair Danny DiPietro in which he hung back at the start while I did some overall pushing for activity (you seem to think that I've said he pushed for activity somewhere; I was saying that I was doing it in another game.) In that game we were both town so I've seen him act that way in the past. In this game, with more experienced players who I didn't need to get a basic set of reads on I was saying that I didn't want him to do that. I consistently (when I made statements about it) said that I wanted more content from him. If there was a time at which the lollygagging became implicitly acceptable (in that I didn't bring the issue up again after that) it was when I decided that he probably made a decent screen for the masons if he was town.

Re: Amished, xRECKONERx and the tell. Amished's tell strikes me as pretty counter-intuitive (as I said, I'm pretty sure that I'm more critical of the person that I'm replacing when I'm town than when I'm scum) so I was trying to understand exactly when he thought that it applied. It turned out that it was more subtle than I thought he was indicating with the start. I do think that tells of that sort (and most sorts really) need to take the individuals to which they're being applied into account but I was working out the degree to which that was true here.

Re: Albert B. Rampage's changes of opinions on day three. Day three Albert B. Rampage named at various times as suspects he seemed to be serious about Debonair Danny DiPietro, hitogoroshi, SerialClergyman and myself. Of those Debonair Danny DiPietro and I were the ones that hitogoroshi hadn't mentioned. I could have listed other changes in Albert B. Rampages opinions but those were the ones that had come up that day.

Re: The importance of the town knowing who the masons are. I suspect that I think it's more valuable for non-mason town members to have a good idea of who the masons are (or even better who they can't be) than anyone else in the game. It's a tool that we've got in this game in particular that helps give us a leg up on the amount of information we've got. The better we use that to keep the scum in the dark and to narrow the pool of candidates we have to consider as scum the better of we should be in terms of both immediate scum hunting and the long term position. In my experience I'm more likely to want to use leverage from game setups in that sort of manner than most other players (e.g. the chosen dynamics in Mini 817 and /in-vitational 2 or the role distribution and claim strategy in Open 111.)

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[VP Baltar]

I will probably get to hito iso today. FYI.

[hitogoroshi]

Hey, sorry about that drop-off. I was in a car most of friday and saturday and this is a hard game to causally pick up. I didn't V/LA because my other game is in night and I *thought* it'd be a shorter trip than it was.

I agree with DDD that after mulling on it, the scum seeing mason-tells is more likely than finding other reasons why Zorblag/Vi are alive. While I agree that it seemed very odd at the start of the day, it's what makes the most sense, I think.

VP, I know this is a bit late, but I'm a bit curious as to your thought process behind this:

I think I will try to do Troll next since if I was committed to DDD scum, my gut says Troll is his most likely partner.

I'm not really feeling the wallposting so much any more and I think I'm kind of missing the forest for the trees. It feels as though I'm missing some piece of information that would put this all in place and I need to be trawling the thread trying to find it (one scumteam I don't think is plausible, one missed associative tell with Reck, etc). Apologies if you'd rather see another giant block from me but that's not what I'm doing at the moment.