NY136: The Death of ReaperCharlie (GAME OVER, Town win!)

[petroleumjelly]

FoS: Yosarian2

. Long post ahead.

1.)

I was not particularly impressed with your “scum have to rolefish” argument against Meransiel/MagnaofIllusion on Day One. I agree Meransiel’s role-fishing was

bad

(i.e.,

antitown

), and it was enough reason for me to at least pressure him.

But you seemed to go so far as to say it is always a scum tell. Despite the fact that Meransiel was not being the least bit subtle about it. Even to me, it was a pretty weak case for rolefishing. It’s hard to put this in the right words, but essentially: it feels like you took an exceedingly easy-to-defend policy (rolefishing is bad), and that you nevertheless took it

too far

and without good reason. I’m not completely sure I believe you would buy what you’re selling. Meransiel's rolefishing was so very blatant that I'm still surprised you never seemed to acknowledge it over your extended analysis on the subject.

2.)

I was similarly not impressed when you had a strange argument with MagnaofIllusion about whether he was assuming Meransiel was Town. I never once got the impression that MagnaofIllusion assumed any such thing. MagnaofIllusion's statement:

If

Meran is Town then at least 1 scum jumped on this easy wagon. Role-fishing is one of the easiest accusations to make that seems like a good scum-tell but rarely is.

…. quite clearly assumes no such thing. Which is why it contains the word “if.” In fact, I really can’t differentiate it from your first substance of the game:

However, Shanba's defense of Hydra looks pretty town (unless Hydra flips scum, of course.)

Flip these words around, and you have “

if

Hydra flips scum, then Shanba does not look pretty Town.” Playing mafia is

all about

“if X, then Y,” even if not used in those exact words. And furthermore, your attack on MagnaofIllusion for that statement has continually felt off since in the

exact same post

, you said the following:

I've also got a weird gut feeling about you, mostly because of your attacks on the neighbors.

If all 3 neighbors are, in fact, town

, then posts like [insert MagnaofIllusion post] make me think that you might be a scum who's trying to chain multiple mislynches off of setup speculation and attempts to outguess the mod.

For the record, I do not buy into your “explanation” from Post 175, which attempted to differentiate MagnaofIllusion's use of the word "if" from yours. It looks to me like you were doing the exact same thing MagnaofIllusion was doing.

3.)

Although you admittedly asked why you would “sheep” my vote and vote for Meransiel, your answer (that I’m one of the “top five” players on the site) continually feels to me like it is a bit gratuitous.

4.)

I didn’t like your first response to Meransiel in Post 188. Essentially, Meransiel was continually being asked to explain something, so he eventually said that he could not explain it any further, and that people should not expect “hidden layers of undisclosed logic.”

And

your

response was basically, “who said anything about hidden layers of undisclosed logic?” That has always struck me as a bad a response.

Meransiel

said something about hidden layers of undisclosed logic. I make those kinds of statements all the time when I've explained myself and somebody asks for

more

explanation.

5.)

This statement rubs me the wrong way:

Also, the way people seemed to jump right to the conclusion that one of them must be scum and let's start lynching them bothers me.

I know that I, as town, would not jump to that conclusion without some reason, but I also know that I, as scum

, would be incredibly tempted to try to subtly plant that idea in the heads of the town if it wasn't actually true.

6.)

I think you might have been fudging statistics with this gem:

(shrug) If there's a 50% chance that there's 1 scum in the group of neighbors, and a 50% chance that there are zero scum in the group, then that means that any given neighbor has a 1/6 chance of being scum. Which is significantly lower then a random lynch, which in most games has about a 1/4 chance of hitting scum.

This is just dumb, but I didn’t think it was worth belaboring the point on Day One. In my opinion, the Neighbors are

just as likely to be scum as anybody else

. So trying to use math to say that lynching a neighbor is “significantly lower than a random lynch” is just an absurd conclusion to come to.

7.)

Finally, I was

not

impressed with your response to Meransiel asking people to answer his question about why he would want the neighbors to fully claim:

One obvious possibility for someone to ask that question would be if you are scum, trying to figure out who to kill. It's also possible that you really believed what you said, and really thought that one of the neighbors was going to claim a power role and that would somehow prove that one of the other neighbors must be scum, but that never really made a lot of sense to me.

I could think of other possible motivations, but rather then speculate, you could just tell us.

Basically, you take the opportunity to make a backhanded comment that Meransiel was scummy. More importantly, you said you were

not going to speculate

. But then you IMMEDIATELY POST THIS:

Actually, another motivation just occurred to me. If you're claiming you have some kind of role info, Mer, I'm fine with having the neighbors fullclaim first before you get into any specifics.

Multiple problems with this post. FIRST, you just speculated. After you said you wouldn’t speculate.

And SECOND – and perhaps most ironically – you basically ROLEFISHED from Meransiel. Which is pretty damned funny since you spent practically all of Day One arguing how rolefishing is scummy.

[petroleumjelly]

@MrBuddyLee

, I want your opinion on Yosarian2.

[Parama]

@Parama

, you haven't done an ounce of scumhunting in your last 22 posts.

Not that YOU'VE seen.
I refuse to post my entire wall of "scum just lost this game" until:
A. I'm completely caught up and the wall is complete
B. I've been lynched and there's no reason not to post what I have

FTR I started on page 12 and went through page 16 yesterday but I started kinda late yesterday. At the rate I'm going I'll probably be finished sometime tomorrow.

[Amrun]

Mod

: Please prod kondi2424 and earworm. The

dead

players have literally posted more recently than they have.

They are both scheduled for prods at ~6pm this evening. Per request, I will do it now.

[Yosarian2]

FoS: Yosarian2

. Long post ahead.

1.)

I was not particularly impressed with your “scum have to rolefish” argument against Meransiel/MagnaofIllusion on Day One. I agree Meransiel’s role-fishing was

bad

(i.e.,

antitown

), and it was enough reason for me to at least pressure him.

But you seemed to go so far as to say it is always a scum tell. Despite the fact that Meransiel was not being the least bit subtle about it. Even to me, it was a pretty weak case for rolefishing. It’s hard to put this in the right words, but essentially: it feels like you took an exceedingly easy-to-defend policy (rolefishing is bad), and that you nevertheless took it

too far

and without good reason. I’m not completely sure I believe you would buy what you’re selling. Meransiel's rolefishing was so very blatant that I'm still surprised you never seemed to acknowledge it over your extended analysis on the subject.

Eh? Of course it was a fairly weak example of rolefishing. You'll notice I never voted meransiel over that, even though I wasn't voting anyone at all at the time, which I obviously would have if I thought it was a strong scumtell.

What I was really trying to get at was an explanation from MoI about his odd post there. His sentence, which was:

Role-fishing is one of the easiest accusations to make that seems like a good scum-tell but rarely is

was just bizarre. Rolefishing is one of the most reliable scumtells there is, because scum have to rolefish.

What I was trying to get out of him was exact ally what you just said: I wanted to know if he was defending Meransiel was because he thought it wasn't a good example of rolefishing, or because he actually believed rolefishing wasn't a scum tell for some reason, or that he had a pro-town read on him from somewhere else; or, if he was doing what he was doing for a more scummy reason. MoI's post there seemed off to me, so I poked at it to try to get him to explain himself.

2.)

I was similarly not impressed when you had a strange argument with MagnaofIllusion about whether he was assuming Meransiel was Town. I never once got the impression that MagnaofIllusion assumed any such thing. MagnaofIllusion's statement:

If

Meran is Town then at least 1 scum jumped on this easy wagon. Role-fishing is one of the easiest accusations to make that seems like a good scum-tell but rarely is.

…. quite clearly assumes no such thing. Which is why it contains the word “if.” In fact, I really can’t differentiate it from your first substance of the game:

However, Shanba's defense of Hydra looks pretty town (unless Hydra flips scum, of course.)

Flip these words around, and you have “

if

Hydra flips scum, then Shanba does not look pretty Town.” Playing mafia is

all about

“if X, then Y,” even if not used in those exact words. And furthermore, your attack on MagnaofIllusion for that statement has continually felt off since in the

exact same post

, you said the following:

I've also got a weird gut feeling about you, mostly because of your attacks on the neighbors.

If all 3 neighbors are, in fact, town

, then posts like [insert MagnaofIllusion post] make me think that you might be a scum who's trying to chain multiple mislynches off of setup speculation and attempts to outguess the mod.

For the record, I do not buy into your “explanation” from Post 175, which attempted to differentiate MagnaofIllusion's use of the word "if" from yours. It looks to me like you were doing the exact same thing MagnaofIllusion was doing.

Meh. There's nothing inherently wrong with a conditional statement. But the way MoI was going about that was just weird. There's nothing wrong with say "A's attack on B is scummy, unless B is scum" when the attack *itself* seems scummy. But Shanba's attack on Meran didn't seem at all scummy; in fact, it made perfect sense to me at the time.

Again, what I was *expecting* to happen was something like MoI saying "I was thinking Mere was probably town because of" (whatever). Or "I think that attack on Meren was bad because" (whatever). I just wanted him to explain his logic. Because without some kind of reason that either about the attack being scummy or about the person being attacked seeming town, "X is bad for attacking Y if Y is town" is basically a meaningless sentence.

Both of those examples of mine were attacks that I specifically disliked for a specific reason.

3.)

Although you admittedly asked why you would “sheep” my vote and vote for Meransiel, your answer (that I’m one of the “top five” players on the site) continually feels to me like it is a bit gratuitous.

(shrug) I made an offhand comment about how I'd normally like to sheep on you, but I couldn't here because I didn't agree with you. Someone asked, so I answered. Sorry if compliments make you uncomfortable, heh.

4.)

I didn’t like your first response to Meransiel in Post 188. Essentially, Meransiel was continually being asked to explain something, so he eventually said that he could not explain it any further, and that people should not expect “hidden layers of undisclosed logic.”

And

your

response was basically, “who said anything about hidden layers of undisclosed logic?” That has always struck me as a bad a response.

Meransiel

said something about hidden layers of undisclosed logic. I make those kinds of statements all the time when I've explained myself and somebody asks for

more

explanation.

Did you actually read the conversation in context? This seems like an odd comment on your part.

I said that you attack someone so you an figure out their alignment. He said "You don't have to lynch someone to figure out their alignment." I explained that that wasn't what I meant, that how people respond to being attacked, how they react when they're pressured, can give you a good read on their alignment. He then went into this weird tangent about "hidden layers of undisclosed logic", which didn't really have anything to do with what I was talking about.

5.)

This statement rubs me the wrong way:

Also, the way people seemed to jump right to the conclusion that one of them must be scum and let's start lynching them bothers me.

I know that I, as town, would not jump to that conclusion without some reason, but I also know that I, as scum

, would be incredibly tempted to try to subtly plant that idea in the heads of the town if it wasn't actually true.

Huh?

Isn't that how everyone scumhunts, is you figure out what you would do as town and what you would be tempted to do as scum in any given situation?

6.)

I think you might have been fudging statistics with this gem:

(shrug) If there's a 50% chance that there's 1 scum in the group of neighbors, and a 50% chance that there are zero scum in the group, then that means that any given neighbor has a 1/6 chance of being scum. Which is significantly lower then a random lynch, which in most games has about a 1/4 chance of hitting scum.

This is just dumb, but I didn’t think it was worth belaboring the point on Day One. In my opinion, the Neighbors are

just as likely to be scum as anybody else

. So trying to use math to say that lynching a neighbor is “significantly lower than a random lynch” is just an absurd conclusion to come to.

I don't think that, in a vacuum, a neighbor is as likely scum as anyone else, because of the reason I gave. That being said, when a neighbor is acting scummy, you lynch them for acting scummy. You just don't lynch them for being a neighbor, though.

7.)

Finally, I was

not

impressed with your response to Meransiel asking people to answer his question about why he would want the neighbors to fully claim:

One obvious possibility for someone to ask that question would be if you are scum, trying to figure out who to kill. It's also possible that you really believed what you said, and really thought that one of the neighbors was going to claim a power role and that would somehow prove that one of the other neighbors must be scum, but that never really made a lot of sense to me.

I could think of other possible motivations, but rather then speculate, you could just tell us.

Basically, you take the opportunity to make a backhanded comment that Meransiel was scummy. More importantly, you said you were

not going to speculate

. But then you IMMEDIATELY POST THIS:

Actually, another motivation just occurred to me. If you're claiming you have some kind of role info, Mer, I'm fine with having the neighbors fullclaim first before you get into any specifics.

Multiple problems with this post. FIRST, you just speculated. After you said you wouldn’t speculate.

And SECOND – and perhaps most ironically – you basically ROLEFISHED from Meransiel. Which is pretty damned funny since you spent practically all of Day One arguing how rolefishing is scummy.

Wrong on both counts.

The first response was me answering his question directly, to see where he was going with this. So of course I was going to mention both the possible scum motivation, and the possible town motivation behind his action. I had already talked about that yesterday.

What I realized right after I hit sumbit was that the reason Meran was asking that question was that he was about to claim tracker, or something like it. I decided I wanted the neighbors to claim after they knew he was the tracker, but *BEFORE THEY KNEW WHO HE HAD TRACKED.* I wasn't rolefishing, i was trying to *DELAY* Meran claiming the rest of his role. I wish he had listened to me there; if they had claimed before Meran claimed his action last night, they might would have been scared into being honest, and I would have loved to hear what Parama and DH's response would have been (especially if it was going to be "well, I targeted the guy who died last night, but I did so because..." (insert weak excuse here). )

Fixed a tag. -Amrun

[Iecerint]

People like to post walls in this game.

I wish MBL would just go ahead and post them, too, because I remember reading his walls way back in Wheel Of Time when I first found the site, and I liked them.

[petroleumjelly]

There is a lot I could respond to from Yosarian2's post, but I'm going to focus on the biggest:

What I realized right after I hit sumbit was that the reason Meran was asking that question was that he was about to claim tracker, or something like it. I decided I wanted the neighbors to claim after they knew he was the tracker, but *BEFORE THEY KNEW WHO HE HAD TRACKED.* I wasn't rolefishing, i was trying to *DELAY* Meran claiming the rest of his role. I wish he had listened to me there; if they had claimed before Meran claimed his action last night, they might would have been scared into being honest, and I would have loved to hear what Parama and DH's response would have been (especially if it was going to be "well, I targeted the guy who died last night, but I did so because..." (insert weak excuse here). )

No. No, no, no.

No.

No!

If you're claiming you have some kind of role info, Mer, I'm fine with having the neighbors fullclaim first before you get into any specifics.

First

of all, this is fishing for whether Meransiel has "some kind of role info" to begin with. Because no matter what answer Meransiel gives you, you learn something about his role. What if Meransiel was actually a Townie? Then his response of "no" would have told you something. In other words, that in itself was fishing for whether Meransiel had information pertaining to the neighbors. The simple question of asking whether somebody has role information is the very

definition

of fishing.

Second

, you advocated having

all

of the Neighbors claim if Meransiel had information. Emphasis on

all

the Neighbors. As to opposed to, you know, the

particular

Neighbor Meransiel

might

have had information about.

Third

,

after

all the Neighbors full-claimed, you were advocating that Meransiel should claim directly afterwards.

So in other words, if Meransiel did not have information, you would narrow down his role -- because you fished. And if he did have information, you were essentially advocating that

four players

role-claim. If that's not fishing, then I apparently don't know what is.

The fact that you are trying to spin this is almost flabbergasting.

[Yosarian2]

First

of all, this is fishing for whether Meransiel has "some kind of role info" to begin with. Because no matter what answer Meransiel gives you, you learn something about his role. What if Meransiel was actually a Townie? Then his response of "no" would have told you something. In other words, that in itself was fishing for whether Meransiel had information pertaining to the neighbors. The simple question of asking whether somebody has role information is the very

definition

of fishing.

It was obvious that Meran was about to claim to have an information role. Once I thought about what he was doing, I could see that he was very clearly setting up for that. I mean, come on. I was just trying to say that if he did have information about the neighbors, that they should claim first, before he does.

Second

, you advocated having

all

of the Neighbors claim if Meransiel had information. Emphasis on

all

the Neighbors. As to opposed to, you know, the

particular

Neighbor Meransiel

might

have had information about.

YES. Of course I was. Get the neighbors to claim in a situation where they know that someone may or may not have tracked one of them. They'll either be forced to tell the truth, or to lie and risk being caught.

If we had done that, then I think we would know right now who, if any, of the neighbors are scum or SK who made a kill last night,

no matter if Meran had targeted them or not

. Considering that two of the neighbors are the town's #1 and #2 suspects (Para and DH), this would be very much worth the cost.

But all of that was contingent on Meran saying that he wanted them to for a role-based reason.

Third

,

after

all the Neighbors full-claimed, you were advocating that Meransiel should claim directly afterwards.

If he was going to demand that multiple people claim because of his role-based information, which I thought he was about to do, then of course he should claim afterwards. Once you've done that, you're basically claimed anyway.

So in other words, if Meransiel did not have information, you would narrow down his role -- because you fished.

Pfft. He would only have to respond to that post of mine at all if he was trying to demand that the neighbors claim. If that wasn't what he was doing, then he didn't have to share any information at all.

And if he did have information, you were essentially advocating that

four players

role-claim. If that's not fishing, then I apparently don't know what is.

Yes, if he had information about one of the neighbors, then yes, having all the neighbors claim before they knew which of them he had information on would have been pro-town.

[petroleumjelly]

Unvote: Parama, Vote: Yosarian2

.

[Yosarian2]

:eyebrow:

What the hell is wrong with expecting all the neighbors to claim if a tracker tracked one of them doing something suspicious? You do know that they're most likely either scum or vanilla, right? I can't remember ever seeing a neighbor with a town power role in a normal game.

[MrBuddyLee]

@MrBuddyLee

, I want your opinion on Yosarian2.

Possible scum. He settled for an AGM vote all day on the "one neighbor is scum chain lynch" reasoning, and was more theory than scumhunting D1. Didn't really assess Parama, saporo, Shanba, Hrez, PJ or me D1. Expressed willingness to sheep you on to Meransiel despite not really finding Meransiel scummy, which was odd.

He was fairly quick to clear kondi and Sens, which is somewhat townish behavior if kondi's town.

[petroleumjelly]

I am just going to paraphrase your interactions with Meransiel.

Day One

Meransiel

: I think the Neighbors should claim.

Yosarian2

: Rolefishing is bad. You should never rolefish. Rolefishing is scummy because scum

have

to rolefish.

Day Two

Meransiel

: Has anybody ever thought why I might have rolefished?

Yosarian2

: Oh! Well, first let us know if you are an informational power role. If you are, then sure -- let's have all the Neighbors claim ( even though I have no clue if you actually have any information pertaining to them)! Then you can claim, too!

If your attitude from Day One was its own player in the game, you would be attacking yourself on Day Two.

[petroleumjelly]

Oh, and by the way:

And finally, would they all claim VT NOTHING CHANGES.

You kidding? That's a HUGE change that would badly hurt the town. Every VT that's outed dramatically increases the odds of the scum killing the real power roles. (And, no, I don't consider a neighbor with no other power to be a "power role.")

Is a rather drastically different opinion from what you just posted:

What the hell is wrong with expecting all the neighbors to claim if a tracker tracked one of them doing something suspicious? You do know that they're most likely either scum or vanilla, right? I can't remember ever seeing a neighbor with a town power role in a normal game.

So

yesterday

, when you were arguing against Meransiel's fishing, it made a HUGE difference if the Neighbors claimed. Today, now that you are the one who advocated the Neighbors claiming, you are trying to persuade me that it doesn't really matter if you fish at them because they are most likely scum or vanilla.

Nice double standard, scum. Please die now.

[Yosarian2]

(sigh) What do you expect from me, consistency or something?

I never really attacked Meran directly for rolefishing, nor did I vote for him; I was more trying to get a read on MoI then anything, and I ended up not voting for him either. Still, "I've never seen a neighbor with a power role in a normal game" doesn't mean that you should go and ask people if they have power roles or not without a reason; just because something is unlikely, doesn't mean it's impossible; and if it was impossible then asking about it still doesn't make any sense. Plus, I was kind of hoping that the scum wouldn't realize how unlikely it was for the neighbors to be non-vanilla in a normal game, and trying to give the impression that it was more likely then it really was to hopefully throw the scum off and keep our real power roles safer.

Meran being a tracker changes everything, though. Even a chance at getting real role information from a tracker, and getting the best possible value out of that information, totally overrides wildly unlikely scenarios like "what if one of the neighbors is also a doctor". If I had realized on day 1 that Meran was asking for the neighbors to claim because of a role-based reason on his part, I would have handled that very differently.

[petroleumjelly]

@MrBuddyLee

, what's your take on Yosarian2

now

?

[Yosarian2]

@MrBuddyLee

, I want your opinion on Yosarian2.

Possible scum. He settled for an AGM vote all day on the "one neighbor is scum chain lynch" reasoning, and was more theory than scumhunting D1. Didn't really assess Parama, saporo, Shanba, Hrez, PJ or me D1. Expressed willingness to sheep you on to Meransiel despite not really finding Meransiel scummy, which was odd.

He was fairly quick to clear kondi and Sens, which is somewhat townish behavior if kondi's town.

I didn't "settle" for a AGM vote, I was really confident he was scum. His play didn't make sense as town. It wasn't just the "one neighbor is scum chain lynch" thing, it was that he was making that argument and trying to convince the town of it, and then refusing to follow through and then actually make a case on a neighbor, or even vote one. Felt like he was trying to plant a bad idea in the hopes someone else would do it. His responses to being attacked also seemed pretty bad. Yeah, it turns out I was wrong about AGM, but I still can't see where I messed up in my logic or where I should have gotten a town read off of him.

I did decide Parama was acting scummy towards the end of the day, and I said so. I also did specifically say that I thought Shanba was town early in the day.

[saporovirus]

saporo, why did you unvote?

He was at L2 when I counted. Too early for anyone to be this close to a hammer.

[saporovirus]

And finally, would they all claim VT NOTHING CHANGES.

You kidding? That's a HUGE change that would badly hurt the town. Every VT that's outed dramatically increases the odds of the scum killing the real power roles. (And, no, I don't consider a neighbor with no other power to be a "power role.")

Is a rather drastically different opinion from what you just posted:

What the hell is wrong with expecting all the neighbors to claim if a tracker tracked one of them doing something suspicious? You do know that they're most likely either scum or vanilla, right? I can't remember ever seeing a neighbor with a town power role in a normal game.

No.

[Amrun]

VC2.3

(1) DemonHybrid - Hrezs
(0) Earworm
(0) mastin2
(0) Iecerint
(1) saporovirus - Shanba
(5) Parama - mastin2, Hydra, Yosarian2, Meransiel, MrBuddyLee
(0) Hrezs
(0) Meransiel
(0) MrBuddyLee
(0) petroleumjelly
(1) Yosarian2 - petroleumjelly
(0) Shanba
(0) Hydra
(0) Kondi2424

Not Voting: earworm, Iecerint, Parama, kondi2424, saporovirus

With 14 alive, it takes 8 to lynch.

V/LA: mastin2, Meransiel

Deadline: Wednesday, July 20, 6pm EST

Spoiler: Vote History

DemonHybrid - mastin2 > unvote
Earworm
mastin2 - Parama
Iecerint - mastin2 > unvote
saporovirus - mastin2 > Parama > unvote
Parama - mastin2 > unvote
Hrezs - DemonHybrid
Meransiel - mastin2 > unvote > Parama
MrBuddyLee - Parama
petroleumjelly - mastin2 > unvote > DemonHybrid > Parama > Yosarian2
Yosarian2 - Parama
Shanba - saporovirus
Hydra - Parama
Kondi2424

If there are any mistakes, please let me know.

[DemonHybrid]

V/LA 7/12 - 7/20. I will be posting during those dates; however, they will be on my phone, so there will be less posting. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[mastin2]

Back, ish. Skimmed the walls, and say that Yosarian2 definitely came out of the losing end in the argument. Additionally, Demon's confirmed my SK read, which (by proxy) confirms my scumread on Parama.

[Parama]

yeah about being done by today
been kinda busy with other stuff, haven't read past page 20 BUT I'M GETTING THERE sorta. DH can vouch for me in the fact that I have actually written stuff, except he's on V/LA or something.

[Hydra]

Why don't you post what you've 'written' then?

[Parama]

no I am posting it all at once so your minds all get simultaneously blown

it's already 6 pages in MS word
no quotes because quote stripes died with moi

[Parama]

but I have posted everything I've done so far in the neighbor QT
even asked DH to clarify some stuff
his responses may be paraphrased in the final wall