Newbie 1378 - Game Over! (Town Wins)

[mastin2]

Hi, guys. Now, I'm just going to give you a warning upfront--as far as players on the site go, I'm a bit of an abnormality. Including my methods of teaching. Most ICs start the game with a big rambling posts about in general the fundamentals of the game. The way I figure it, though, is that most of you probably have a fair deal of mafia experience elsewhere, and any who somehow

don't

have mafia experience likely fall under the category of newbies who read the wiki, memorize its contents, and treat it like a bible. (There's typically at least one in your average newbie crop. Don't get me wrong, the wiki's still useful for a lot of things, but the site meta is ALWAYS evolving, so most stuff on there is dated. In fact, the very act of publishing some sort of strategy/tell helps influence the site to make said strategy/tell no longer work. Some stuff is timeless, other stuff not so much, and knowing which is which comes with time, experience, and some guidance from me.)

So instead of making some general post which you probably don't need, I'm instead going to ask all of you what your mafia experience is--where have you played? Describe what the play is like there. (Links are nice and all, but I'm an incredibly busy guy so I don't actually have the time to check them out--text descriptions are better, and the more detailed your description is, the better understanding I'll have of how to help you adapt to MS.net.)

As a warning, mafiascum.net is...different from most sites, significantly so. A fair number of sites have lynches on D1, but others (mainly, EpicMafia-inspired ones...and trust me, in your average crop of newbies, there's typically at least one EM or former-EM player ) expect to no-lynch. (No lynches are considered, nine times out of ten, to be the worst possible case scenario on day one. Worse even than lynching a town PR to some, though this delves into MD theory.) And a lot of sites know about the concept of random voting D1, which is how most games on mafiascum start.

What many aren't prepared for is other things, like deadlines (see that deadline counter? That's two weeks. That's a typical day on a mafiascum game, and we use almost every minute of that time more often than not), PR usage, and scumhunting techniques, which is largely what my job will be. These are all things which you develop with time, and it's a largely individual process, hence why I want to see where each of you come from.

As a warning--know that play in each section of the site is going to be different; an open is vastly different from a micro which is vastly different from a mini which is vastly different from a large and those are vastly different between normal and theme. However, newbie games typically stand out as being even more abnormal compared to other sections of the site, so play in a newbie might differ slightly from play elsewhere. Furthermore, each game is different just as every player is unique, so a strategy working one time might backfire the next. Thus, note that I will likely be distinguishing between site-play, newbie-play, and this-game play.

Feel free to ask questions of me that you may have.

[mastin2]

I'm one of the SEs, which means I'm good at Mafiascum.net. If unsure of how to win game, follow what I say.

VOTE: Uctriton00.

Not random. I'll explain after everyone's checked in.

[mastin2]

My experience with Mafia games is in real life versions I've played at conventions. This is my second game on the site, I lost my first game as a vanilla townie to a perfect mafia victory.

Should I random vote now?

A helpful hint an old MS friend of mine shared: he was an expert at the real life game, but had trouble at first adapting to the site. However, he did eventually do so, by adapting tells in real life to tells online--there's usually an equivalent. You can ask me about tells you use in real life (I don't have much experience with it personally, so I don't know them by memory even though I'm familiar with them), and I can generally give you an online equivalent.

As for random voting--as I said, most games do in fact start with one. It's typical play across the site, in general. It's so standard that not doing so becomes an abnormality. So while it's not required to random vote, you will draw attention to yourself if you do not. I, personally, have a distaste for it, and prefer to exit it as soon as possible. Uct's post has given me such a method.

[mastin2]

I play RL mafia, but i tend to read body language over tells from what people say, just a habit i guess, but it's harder to find an online equivalent due to the lack of emotion in posts etc.

Actually, there

is

an equivalent, of sorts--tone. Reading the tone of a post is an artform, but not one impossible to master. (And, by the way, all those players who swear by AtE disagree with your statement about there being no emotions in posts. )

And body language can also partially be translated into posting habits--activity (or lack thereof) in the thread, for example.

Ucrit is sort of too scummy to be scum to my sensibilities right now.

Never assume a player is too scummy to be scum,

least

of all a player like utc, who I know to be better than that.

As I said, after we have more people check in, I will explain.

[mastin2]

UNVOTE: uctriton00.

Okay, so I'll explain the vote, AND the reason for the unvote, after more people have checked in.

As I will for this:

Vote: Lucky2u

.

[mastin2]

Mod:

I'm showing signs of a fever, so I might be knocked out of commission tomorrow. Add in weekend V/LA and Memorial Day weekend, and I might not be able to post until Tuesday, so

V/LA until Tuesday, May 28th

.

Will be getting back to you guys in a sec.

[mastin2]

As promised, my explanation--I'm actually surprised that I'm in a newbie game, because quite frankly you guys read my play like a book.

I voted uctriton for post six, for the exact reason Jason would later use--because I found post six to be an attempt to manipulate the newbies to his side.

Thus, uctriton was the scummiest player to have posted, and most deserving of my vote.

Jason pointing out my point before I could make it, therefore, means that he's become my strongest townread.

However, I unvoted uctriton because uct is also a townread of mine, for the way he handled the debate. The Jason vs. uct debate feels like town vs. town, but what really sold uct as town is this:

I don't mind being the topic of conversation Day 1.

Bringing attention to yourself accidentally is a bit of a scumtell, but bringing attention onto yourself as town can be a

brilliant

move; I know that in my arrogant youth, I did that sort of thing all the time--always as town, never as scum.

This is something unique to me, but I used vote/unvote tags for uct, and only bold tags for Lucky. This is meant as a tipoff to the strength of my read. Uct was a serious scumread, but reversed to a serious townread, hence the vote/unvote tags. Lucky2u is a minor scumread, for post 7, where he ASKS,

Should I random vote now?

I felt that as town, it's more likely to just do it than to ask for permission to do it. However, this is clearly not as strong as what my uct scumread had been, hence the mere vote.

The lack of explanation comes from two reasons. The first I was surprised to see Lucky2u nail, in that it's to gather reactions. (That insight is something I find slightly more likely to come from scum, so my vote will be staying.)

The second reason is that--as the IC--I want to encourage players to think for themselves as much as possible. As a newbie, there's a large temptation to just sheep the IC, with the thought, "oh, hey, that guy's clearly better than me", and/or "I think his logic is strong, so I'm going to follow it".

Don't get me wrong, occasionally sheeping someone is a good thing, especially if you're not confident in your own reads, but I don't want to encourage that behavior as your teacher. Instead, I want players to think for themselves. They can analyze things themselves and make guesses as to why I'm voting, which forces them to think for themselves.

Also, by not revealing my reasons, the discussion can shift in a direction which it otherwise would not have. Had I revealed my reasons, we'd have been focusing primarily on uctriton/Jason and Lucky2u still, whereas without the explanation, other players have also come under the spotlight.

[mastin2]

As for other reads I have, Nul is another strong townread, right up there with Uct and Jason. His insight into Lucky2u is solid, as is his analysis on other players. I have a bit of a minor suspicion on radiant cowbells myself, though not as strong as my Lucky2u suspicion. (Which, itself, is not as strong as I'd prefer it to be. )

I don't really have enough content to get a strong read on any other player, but I do have a slight townread on crazzygoat. (Which, when put into words, means I've basically only not got a read on two players. I have strong townreads on Nul, uct, and Jason, a scumread on Lucky2u, a weaker scumread on radiant cowbells, and a weak townread on crazzy. That's 6/9, which including me is 7/9.)

Also, since my last message was at the bottom of the page, making sure the mod sees it:

Mod:

I'm showing signs of a fever, so I might be knocked out of commission tomorrow. Add in weekend V/LA and Memorial Day weekend, and I might not be able to post until Tuesday, so

V/LA until Tuesday, May 28th

.

V/LA noted.

[mastin2]

Unvote

. Eh, still minorly suspicious of Lucky, but it's at this point largely based off of gut, not logic.

As such, not really comfortable leaving my vote on him when someone else has also done so. (See also--quickwagons are bad. )

Not exactly feeling so hot (or rather, am feeling significantly more hot than I should be feeling ), so probably leaving soon to rest.

[mastin2]

/back on page three.

Sorry to have been gone for four days, butyeah. Needed really, really badly to beat the sickness I had. Coulda killed me if I didn't get the bed-rest I did.
You guys are near the top of my priority list, soyeah. Will get to you after my modding stuff, since modding a game which has 24 playerslots (and a little more than that player-wise) and a co-mod is a liiiiiiiiiittle bit more important to me than a newbie with 8 other players and the mod (for 9 total).
Apologies. But I'll be getting to ya soon enough.

[mastin2]

/back on page three.

Sorry to have been gone for four days, butyeah. Needed really, really badly to beat the sickness I had. Coulda killed me if I didn't get the bed-rest I did.
You guys are near the top of my priority list, soyeah. Will get to you after my modding stuff, since modding a game which has 24 playerslots (and a little more than that player-wise) and a co-mod is a liiiiiiiiiittle bit more important to me than a newbie with 8 other players and the mod (for 9 total).
Apologies. But I'll be getting to ya soon enough.

I appreciate you checking in... but I kind of feel like a kid who's dad just said "I'll play with you in a second slugger, I just gotta finish this big boy's work first."

More or less, yeah.

Sorry for that. When I left, though, I actually got much of a sense that you guys were largely not actually needing my teaching. You mostly seem to have grasped things already.

[mastin2]

Is this really a smart thing to do though; people who agree with you are automatically townie to you?

Dude, he parroted me before I got a chance to post my reasons. Really, the reason my post wasn't much longer is that Jason stole much of my thunder and made my points

before

I could.

That he was on the same wavelength as me so easily is why he's such a strong townread.

/is in a bit of a hurry, so I'm mostly going to be posting as I read along. Sorry. (Hectic life.)

[mastin2]

Brief IC hat--
There's been a LOT of attacks (mainly from Lucky2u) aimed at the person...not the player.

You need to know the difference.

The person is a person. They have no alignment, because in real life good and bad are generally mixed together.

The player has an alignment. Town or scum, and it's your job to find it.
Attacking the person is not only bad practice (some mods even flat-out forbid it), but also detrimental to a town wincon, since you're eliciting a response which is identical from either alignment, and therefore cannot be read.

Attacking the player is what you want to do.[/IC]

Still, though,

FoS: Lucky2u

.
Somewhere on page 5, and still catching up.

[mastin2]

Gonna stop at ~120 from now, but still kinda seeing Radiant-Lucky as a scumteam. Will elaborate on my return.

[mastin2]

I am here just a bit confused. I had played one mafia game before but it had a storyline intro. I am guessing we just randomly vote for someone and let it go from there?

Some mods like to have stories, some don't. In all forums except Mini Theme and Large Theme (you might wanna wait a while before going there, but by the sounds of things, you'll enjoy 'em), the flavor is forbidden from influencing the game. Flavor, therefore, is largely optional when it comes to mafiascum.net.

Normally, yes, we'd have a random voting stage, and to some extent we did, but you came in late, and we've already begun debating.

Right now, looking through it is hard to pinpoint anyone.

My vote is going to someone who seems to be trying to deflect votes from another memeber.

Vote: crazygoat.

This is actually an excellent start, but it's one of the reasons I am actually suspicious of Lucky2u, who seems to have done the same. That said, however, scumhunting purely off of interactions with another is a bit of a tricky business. I definitely advise it for players who need to step up their game, but for newbies who haven't developed a scumhunting strategy, I'd actually advise against it; you've got a 2/3 chance of being wrong.

Instead, look for scummy things which have been said and analyze them--think if they're more likely to come from a town player (there are plenty of scummy things which in practice are actually townie things), or a scum player. Do the same for statements you see as town. You might have already picked this up, in fact, that plenty have said, "*player*'s posts look like they're town, but they might be scum because they're faking looking town", or things to that effect. That's actually a very, VERY solid scumhunting method, once you refine it.

[mastin2]

/caught up.

My mind is

still

on a Lucky2u-Radiant scumteam, but I'm far from positive about it. There's a lot of words, and quite honestly, I skim walls. Seriously, how can you make a wall out of so few pages?

IC hat time, by the way:
If your case against someone is longer than a screenwidth, you're doing it wrong. Almost nobody's going to read it. Summarize, and only provide the detailed version on request.

And mafiascum has these nice, neat spoiler= tags to use.

Code: Select all

[spoiler=this is what the code is]to hide a wall of text]

Spoiler: it looks like this

to hide the text

So when you

must

wall, at least wall with those, 'kay?

[mastin2]

Oops. Messed up the [/spoiler] in the code part. End all the spoilers, else they don't work.

[mastin2]

Clearly he is good, or he wouldn't be an IC.

Well, yes, I am good, but this is a faulty assumption.

Literally the only thing you need to become an IC is five completed games--that's it. You can still be a newbie in skill level, and yet be teaching others to play. (Scary stuff, I know, but for the most part, that doesn't happen.)

You also assume that more words = better.

We have a saying around here. Succinctness = Pro-town. More words is just more problems. I'm good

specifically because

I learned to skim walls.
I'm good because I learned not to wall when making my case.

Believe me when I say that. Nobody reads walls on mafiascum.net. Bit of a history lesson for ya, but my first account wasn't mastin2; it was Mastin. If you search for a game with that name, you'll see I have the title of "Unabridged". You'll see massive wall posts.

...And you'll also see my reads completely and totally ignored, with me frequently being mislynched in early day phases. There IS a strong correlation, there. That's one part of the site meta that's timeless. So nobody knows better than me the damage walling can do. Which is exactly why I said you need to stop it. The behavior I show is not atypical of the site--in fact, it's the norm. Nobody except the crazies will read an entire wall; it's a credit to your writing skills if you can get someone doing more than just a skim, and even then, many skip walls altogether.

Cut the words down and you improve the efficiency and effectiveness of scumhunting drastically. Less is more. [/IC]

[mastin2]

@Mastin, just why exactly is your read on Lucky only weak? Look at all his posts!

He hasn't been doing anything.

He has not been scum hunting. He has not addressed the recent case against him. He has backpeddled half his scum reads which were OMGUS. All he's done is talk about the probability of randomly voting scum and some other anti-contributive mumbo jumbo.

My read's only weak because I can maybe see a town mindset.

Maybe

. I'm waiting for a while to see if it is or not.

[mastin2]

Mod:

Note my standard weekend V/LA.

Will see about getting a post here in a couple hours.

[mastin2]

@Mastin, just why exactly is your read on Lucky only weak? Look at all his posts!

He hasn't been doing anything.

He has not been scum hunting. He has not addressed the recent case against him. He has backpeddled half his scum reads which were OMGUS. All he's done is talk about the probability of randomly voting scum and some other anti-contributive mumbo jumbo.

My read's only weak because I can maybe see a town mindset.

Maybe

. I'm waiting for a while to see if it is or not.

Can you point out where exactly you see a town mindset in him? You're not really contributing your thoughts here.

I can, but I'm choosing not to, for obvious reasons. (Oh, wait. Newbie. Might

not

be obvious reasons. )

Basically, if I point out the maybe-town stuff, any hope I have of getting a stronger read one way or the other has been lost. I'm intentionally holding back on my thoughts to see how he posts.

[mastin2]

How 'bout Monday? That work?

[mastin2]

Something should be done about mattel too. 5 posts in 10 pages is disgusting.

Fuck sake. I am new. I am trying to learn and watch as I go along. Sorry if I dont spend 24 hours a day on my pc. I voted and I am watching. If I need to post 20 times a day I shouldn't have signed up.

No, your posting rate's fine. However, I would highly recommend being less passive with your posting.

Me, I've largely been passive because as the IC, being active can strangle newbies, 'specially given my normal playstyle. So this is one case where I can't lead by example and show you what you should be doing via my actions.

What I will say, though, is that you

should

be actively pursuing your read. Explain why you have it, ask questions about it, see what others think about it, and if they don't address you, put pressure onto them until they do. Posting your thoughts as you have them also helps a lot, and basically, posting on average once a day will do wonders for your ability to play.

The more you're posting, the more you're improving. (Okay, so that doesn't really hold true at a certain level, but for a newbie, it definitely is true--activity breeds learning.) So I would highly recommend a change in approach to the game. Passive, minimal posting is looked upon unfavorably. There's no official rule against it, obviously, but people largely think it to be negative to the game environment, and not entirely unjustifiably so.

[mastin2]

SO I thought the newb game was for people to find their way and to help get advice.

Seems most everyone in here is experienced in the game play.

Let's calm down here a bit. I am really new at this and have never play a game where it is not storyline driven. This is absolutely new to me.

Newb games are for people to find their way and get advice--that's largely my job, in fact, to help you. However, you're quite correct--this game seems to be an abnormality, in that the players here have a greater deal of experience than in an average newbie game. Basically, I believe that overall, this specific game is holding a higher standard than most newbie games do, a standard closer to that of the rest of the site.

For the purposes of learning how the rest of the site plays, this game's going to be good. For the purposes of adjusting to how the site plays, not so much. It would appear to largely be "sink-or-swim" in its approach. (Or, in this case, "adapt or be lynched". ) I am, of course, against this, both as a player and as a teacher, since that will potentially drive away newbies.

Guys, From the sounds of things, mattel's on the verge of giving up on mafiascum.net. WE DO NOT WANT THAT, EVER. So put things aside for a minute, and let mattel adjust. He's already doing a good job--by calming down and not rushing, he's taking his time to get things right. A step in the correct direction, but he needs that shove, to also push things more aggressively, so to speak. (And by aggressive, I don't mean, "YOU ARE SCUM!" or "This player is scum, so sheep me." or such. I merely mean pursuing every aspect of the read to the fullest, as I described earlier--posting about it, explaining where you're coming from, asking others to comment and analyze your reasons, and working from that.)

[mastin2]

(Also, will be doing scumhunting stuff later today. Got other errands to run.)

[mastin2]

You are a good man, Mastin.thank you.

You can thank me by following my advice and telling me more of your thoughts.

[mastin2]

Spoiler: all the posts Lucky2u has made which have townie stuff in them

Regardless of what you think (due to your shallow reads), I'm voting Mastin.

Vote: mastin2

Am I missing something here? Who is that "regardless of what you think" aimed at? Are you playing this game on drugs?

Giving in to pressure to contribute information to town? You act like it is a bad thing.

I think Radiant said it best "...I've found that whenever I'm talkative I get lynched or pushed on immediately...". So yea it can be a bad thing. That's why one scum strategy is to lurk, they know by speaking up it does exactly what you are doing to me.

So you think I'm a townie yet somehow we aren't on the same team. Right. Freudian slip, anyone?

No, it's called a sense of humor, not Freudian slip. In order to fully understand, please kindly bend over, reach around behind you, then remove stick from ass. Also, it is possible to not be friends and be on the same team. Have you never had a job? or been put in a group for a school project? or played a game of Mafia in RL?

--------------

I want to vote for Jason because his crazy aggressiveness will end in a scum victory, regardless of whether he is scum or not. I pray that some of you see that too, if not, I'll join the paradigm wagon. If you insist on voting for me, make sure you take a close look at Nul in the next day, since he is the one leading this wagon.

I really feel like I'm getting no where in going back and forth against Nul. His last few posts show that I can keep it up but I'll never change HIS mind. If anyone else is looking for answers from me, feel free to ask and I'll reply.

UNVOTE:

We are so scattered in our votes right now that I think who ever we end up on, it's going to be more luck than anything. The odds are not in our favor and regardless of "tells", all current evidence against everyone is weak and circumstantial. Radiant is on Crazzy, Nul is on me, Jason is on Radiant, Paradigm is on Mastin, Ucrit is on Jason, I was on Nul, and two people aren't voting, one who is V/LA. It's all a mess right now and if you look at it visually we are all standing in a circle pointing in random directions. I know some of you are going to read this and chastise me again for "not contributing" or say that this doesn't help us, but I think it does. Seven town and two scum, with everyone so wildly different in their votes. This means that whoever you are voting for, probably isn't scum. So follow me down this thread for a second. With my vote removed, there are five people with votes on them. Me, Mastin, Radiant, Crazzy, and Jason. The people voting for those people can't ALL be right, but you could ALL be wrong. We have nine days left, which is good because we aren't even close. I'm putting myself back at square one and going to redo my reads, because something is wrong.

Sure probably, but if that's the WRONG thing to do, what's the RIGHT thing? Put yourself in my town shoes and rewrite that post better.

That does not seem like a good plan moose. If I went to three votes and then started scum hunting, wouldn't the response from either Radiant, Nul, or you moose, be that I was trying to divert attention? If anything, me calling anyone scum at that point would raise the question why did I ignore my own accusation and start finger pointing.

Quick question: What is HAM?

Also, I already OMGUS voted for Nul, and to be perfectly honest he is probably my highest town read, despite everything I've said. I voted for Jason before too, when he voted for me for having a light scum on him. That got us nowhere. Jason is too experienced to make an easy scum mistake, though he is suffering from the Pro vs. Noob frustration. By which I am referring to the phenomenon when a pro plays a noob and the pro gets thrown off by the noob not playing by pro player common sense and can't adjust. (That happens alot in poker and chess)

As for you... Judas. I read you slightly scum before but after the recent events. I don't think your scum either. Why? You me and Paradigm were the most likely to get a wagon started on them. I think you sensed that and threw onto me because it was easiest (Jason followed you happily). Your a townie who got scared that Jason was about to make a good case against you and switched to the person who you knew he'd accept as a subsitute.

Your reads are still mastin and ucrit after me? Radiant doesn't even come up on your radar? Is he a null read to you or a town read?

Views change, things happen. I may have been under the assumption he was a noob when I said that stuff. (I still think he is borderline crazy, he hit me with an inflatable hammer)

We agree on Mastin but not on Radiant. I've given my reason for Radiant, why did that not raise a flag for you? What did he do that makes you read town?

For quick reference. I'll explain soon enough what the maybe-town parts in each of these are. (That said, I think I mighta missed some, thanks to me pulling these up in iso. To get the full amount, I'll have to do them in-context.)

[mastin2]

@Mastin, instead of trying to prove Lucky is town, I think you should try to prove why he is not scum.

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure that he's not. He could be, but I'm not convinced one way or the other.

[mastin2]

Actually, I feel confident enough to do this.

Vote: RadiantCowbells

.

[mastin2]

Mastin, why?

I did an iso and I find it pretty dang likely that--regardless of Lucky's alignment--Radiant is still likely to flip scum. I can't really see anything town in Radiant's posting, but I do see plenty of scum therein. Radiant has an overall appearance of a scum mindset; do an iso of Radiant yourself and tell me you disagree.

I'll of course explain in a bit.

[mastin2]

You see i'm not liking all this "i'll explain in a bit" it's coming out way too fucking much

Admittedly yes. The first time I had a good reason. I also had a decent (albeit not great) reason the second time.

But all the times after that have mainly been that it takes time to set aside and show, time which until now I lacked.

[mastin2]

At Denny's, I order a sampler with a side of fries, 100% of the time. Delicious stuff, absolutely great to eat. My drink can vary, as can whether I have dessert or not, but the point remains, "what the hell is this fluff for?!?" To entertain you, of course. And to give you a sample.

Ucrit is sort of too scummy to be scum to my sensibilities right now.

VOTE: ucriton00

Still looks scummy to me.

I read Ucrit's previous games and I don't think the too scummy to be scum defense applies in this situation.

It's a subtle thing, but look at this reversal of opinion. "(1)uct isn't likely to be scum...(2)but wait, he is. (3)And this is why I think that." Basically--Radiant went from thinking that uct couldn't be scum to voting him as scum. Then, AFTER this, he explains the why immediately. This reads to me as him realizing he reversed his opinion and that he needed to cover it up.

This is also backed up by the timing. When Radiant defended uct, uct was under some amount of pressure, so that Radiant could gain town credit if a wagon on uct went through and Radiant defended uct. Then, only after the wagon had died down a bit (but critically, WAS STILL PRESENT! With Radiant's vote, it could have gone further!), Radiant joins in.

As town, I would expect the third post to come second. "Hmm...uctriton can't be scum for being too scummy... *does research* Actually, after having done the research, he COULD be... You know what, screw it, he actually is scum." is much,

much

closer to the town train of thought I'd expect to see. Instead, we got, "uctriton can't be scum for being too scummy...uct is scum!...errm, to explain, I did my research and found my first statement to be wrong."

Paraphrased, of course, but you get the idea.

This sampler should hold you long enough for me to figure out how to type a concise case.

[mastin2]

This reads as an excuse to lurk. It also largely doesn't match with Radiant's play. If Radiant were scumhunting, I'd have expected much stronger posting. Instead, we get a lot of filler. Radiant consistently says the same things, that he has no strong scumreads, and that he'll continue lurking.

He does nothing to obtain a strong read, though. He doesn't follow through on his uctriton read at all, merely stating that uctriton is a slight scumread, not even saying why. In fact, he does the opposite of following through--he drops it entirely to OMGUS a player, not even saying if Crazzy is scum.

The first thing resembling content is a massive post entirely dedicated to Lucky2u. It's apparently his strong scumread that he promised, and yet here he calls Lucky town.

When under pressure, Radiant didn't claim, but when Lucky was under pressure, Radiant wanted Lucky to claim--this shows a double-standard. And then, there's his heavy pushing on Mattel, quoted below.

I agree Mattel's vote is shit, but I'm not attributing that to being scum right now.

Mattel, why do you gotta be like this?

IMO Jason's actions towards mattel were unnecessary, but he's right in principle.

Sorry. The case when I thought it up was stronger than this. (This case is mostly circumstantial evidence, regrettably.) There were more points than this, but I currently can't remember them. I'll post any that I think of.

[mastin2]

Question... what happens if we don't reach a consensus by the deadline?

A no-lynch, which is pretty much the worst thing which can happen on D1 for a town. Many, MANY towns have lost the game because they failed to obtain the info from a D1 lynch.

[mastin2]

Ucrit is an idiot and I don't want to continue discussion until we get a votecount and an extension.

It's little comments like this contributing to the scumread on Radiant.

For Radiant to call uct an idiot, he has to think uctriton is idiot-town pushing his slot, which ignores the potential for uct to be scum.

[mastin2]

.....Da f is this game. So many ATe. I skim through all the shits.

Radiant is town. How is he scum. WTF?

Lucky does nothing ALL GAME. I need to rethink abit about his slot. Too much ATe makes my brain hurts.

Jason, what was the jump wagon shit? If you have some reason spit it out. Actually i think you have. Just say it.

If i have time tomorrow, i will try to reread the thread in more details. If not i will just get information via interacting. Skimming 13 pages is tiring, not to mention reading. Sorry for my coarse language. Its just that this game has too many Ate that it makes my brain hurts. I will say this here:

DONT PREDICT THE NEXT GAME ACTION. A LYNCH WILL GIVE US ALOT OF INFORMATION AND I CAN SAY A SIGNIFCANT AMOUNT OF YOUR READS WILL CHANGE. ESPECIALLY ON DAY ONE WHERE THE SCUM LYNCHING RATE IS ABOUT 10-20% I SUPPOSE? A DAY ONE LYNCH IS FOR INFORMATION.(Although catching scum is very good), but the main purpose frankly, is to give information so that on our second day, we can do our scumhunting with some solid information. And you giving up doing all the ate stuff and i will self-hammer if you all will lynch him tomorrow aren't gonna do shit and give us no information.

GET IT?

Hmm. enomis might be scum in place of Lucky2u.

Anyway, as an IC, I should say that enomis is not entirely correct. I hold a golden rule: "reads to fit the evidence, not evidence to fit the reads", which basically means, don't get confirmation bias. Essentially, my rule is to constantly update your reads when new evidence comes to light. Thus, after a lynch and whatever comes of the night, you have new information to update your reads--however, this does not mean you cannot make predictions. You can make accurate predictions, and sometimes, you only get one chance to do so, dieing via lynch or nightkill. Thus, there is no harm in predicting the future, and in fact, I encourage people to do so--so long as they're willing to leave some room for uncertainty.

Mafia is in part a science, and scientists always speak in terms of uncertainty. "We think this is what's going on, and we're reasonably certain that it's what's going on, because of *evidence*. It could also be *countertheory*, but we feel it isn't because *reasons countertheory is less probable*." And the like. You've probably been exposed to scientific theory, so when making predictions for mafia games, apply that model.

"I'm reasonably certain X is scum, because of *evidence*. X could be town, because of *counterevidence*, however, I feel that X is still scum because *reasons counterevidence are less valid than evidence*. So, please lynch X." is closer to what a prediction should be like.

[mastin2]

Spoiler: uct's teachings

This is the IC's job, but I'll give a non-cuss word laden explanation of what we think just happened.

RadiantCowbell claimed to be a doctor (who's ability means they can protect anyone they want at night, and hopefully stop a townie from being killed). Radiant is so sure that Jason is scum, that Radiant killed themself, to prove a moral point.

There are many things wrong with that:
1 - As townies, we can't afford to "give away" our teammates. If you think someone is scum, you don't kill yourself, you should vote the other person. It's counterproductive. What happens if you're wrong? Then you lost yourself, and that person you thought was a scum.

2 - RadiantCowbell has no solid proof on Jason being scum. He is just going off his own theories.

Cops can investigate player roles at night time, and as such, can provide proof of someone's identity by saying the next morning, "hey guys I did an investigation on Player X, and he turned up scum, let's get him!". That's an example of hardcore, undeniable proof.
Doctors can provide proof of townies, by saying "I protected Player Y at night, and nobody died in the middle of the night, so therefore he must be town". (There are things called no-kills, but that's irrelevant to our conversation at the moment).

RadiantCowbell can't have proof for two reasons:
1. He just told us he's a doctor and not a cop
2. There hasn't even been a night phase, so he couldn't even provide proof if he wanted to

Summary:
If RadiantCowbell just indeed killed himself, then he just screwed over the town.
- Killed one of us
- Killed one of our possible Power Roles
- Pointing a scum finger at Jason, who RC can't even prove is scum, any better than anyone (like myself!) coming up with a theory and people crapping all over it

Note, this isn't illegal at all. You can play Mafia any way you want, as long as it is within the rules. You just develop a bad rep and nobody will want to play with you. In fact I just came from a game where our own doctor suicided himself, and then trolled all over the thread claiming they were here to ruin the games, and called everyone on the website an idiot for having no screening process.

Eh, my wording might be a bit different and I might think of something post-game to add to this, but for now, uct's SE teachings are accurate enough that I don't need to address this as the IC. It's similar enough to what I would say had I gotten here first to say it, albeit with different wording choices. (Again, I'll see if I can flesh it out post-game.)

[mastin2]

VOTE: enomis.

[mastin2]

Followthrough from yesterday.

[mastin2]

Unvote: Enomis

.

Eh, he

could

be scum, still, but his handling of Jason makes me think otherwise.

On the other hand...

Vote: Lucky2u,
FoS: mattel

.

Their

handling of Jason is anything but town.

[mastin2]

Mastin I'm curious. Yesterday you thought Lucky was town based on a number of his posts, and today you vote for him because of the way he handled Jason. Is that the only reason for your vote or is there more to it than that?

I didn't think he was town.

I thought it possible he was town. Though I did, in fact, lean that way, his attitude this day combined with his overall play has tipped him

well

into the scum pile for me. So, no, his handling of Jason today is not the only reason for the vote.

Also, the argument against Jason is full of holes and the argument against Lucky is looking increasingly solid.
When other duties are not taking my time away, I'll explain.

[mastin2]

Vote: Jason

.

"Wait, what, reversal in reads?"

Yes, reversal in reads. Total reversal, in fact. Not sure who's scum with Jason, but Jason's scum.

[mastin2]

Actually, it might be Lucky. From the mouth of the scum himself,

i have a tendency to bus as scum, but no don't even think on that

Thoughts?

[mastin2]

Another candidate is uctriton. If Jason's as fond of bussing as I think he is (I fully believe him), then if you look at the distancing between uct and Jason early-on, it'd make sense.

Also, uct unvotes Jason when he's at risk of being lynched.

Both of these combined might mean that uct's the other scum.

Anyway, if it wasn't clear already,
-Jason's scum.
-I'm convinced enomis is town.
-mattel is town.

That leaves Linxie, uct, and Lucky. I currently suspect uctriton more than Lucky, and Lucky more than Linxie. (Linxie is a null-leaning-town read.)

[mastin2]

wait... nevermind. recounted and ucrit would just put me back at L -1 right?

Correct, but you should still be giving us your thoughts anyway.

I have you as nullish-town at the moment, with more null than town. (Lixie is nullish-town with more town than null.) So your input would be helpful in solidifying my reads.

[mastin2]

VOTE: uctriton.

My reasoning for this is the same as yesterday. Their interactions

scream

scumbuddies. uctriton and Jason started with an early distancing act, where they attacked each other to look good, but later this pressure on one another pretty much entirely vanished. Only in day two did it resurface, in a similar (but stronger) fashion. As soon as the pressure made it look like Jason might be lynched, uct bailed from the wagon and joined the counterwagon--had I not unvoted, he would have hammered Lucky2u. And it was only

after

I called him out on this that he switched back onto Jason, as the hammering vote.

As far as a scumteam goes, that's pretty dang condemning.

[mastin2]

But hammering his buddy? That's pretty strong bus claim mastin

Yes, which is precisely why it's supposed to be so effective. A huge part of scum play is risk-reward analysis. What risk was there of hammering Jason? There was some, yes, but very little.

What reward would there be in hammering Jason?

Exactly the reaction you're giving. "He wouldn't hammer his scumbuddy, would he?" Except he is perfectly capable of having done so, and thoughts to the contrary have led to MANY town losses. Again, as far as risk-reward goes, uctriton hit the jackpot and is cashing out on it.

[mastin2]

I quick hammered on Jason because Mattel claimed cop and I had to QH to end the day ASAP, before everyone else figured it out.

Unfortunately Jason role fished and baited Mattel into stopping the role fish, which Jason immediately outed him.

This was a trust exercise: I had to trust mattel's claim. It was day 2, and if I got the wrong hammer, then obviously a fake claim happened. To me it was completely worth the gamble. I've said that ad nauseum, that this isn't a game breaking LYLO decision and we can be wrong if needed. I didn't want to live with the extremely hard to read Jason and have to. If Jason was the real cop, I would have easily killed Mattel for the fake claim. And I sincerely believe that when a town self hammers, you don't ignore it. Unless they were trolling, and RC being an experienced player, I wanted to give him a listen.

But here is what we also got day 3: an EXTREMELY OMGUS MASTIN saying that I've bussed my partner.

I am town beyond god damned belief, and I tried my best, my sincere best, to draw the night kill. I wanted to be a VT who died in place of mattel's claim, had it been true. I used all the pomp and circumstance to boast I'd break the game open. Unfortunately Mattel was caught dead.

Mastin's omgus seals the game and the victory for us. You've slipped, bud.

OMGUS my ass.

You

are the one OMGUS'ing

me

, not vice-versa. As for the cop thingy, I will accept that you figured it out eventually (he did end up dead, after all), but I'm calling bullshit on your explanation. I find nothing wrong with your statement that you found it worth the gamble (it definitely was worth a try, triton), but that you hammered despite apparently also being aware of Jason's breadcrumbs is proof that everything you're saying is a lie. If you saw 'crumbs from Jason and saw 'crumbs from mattel, you would

wait until they had claimed

, not immediately hammer. Look at things from a you-as-town perspective. You see both 'crumbing. You might be the only one who sees both have crumbed. You, not knowing which is real, hammer. And get things wrong. The scum nightkill you. And bam. Both scum are alive, and if you were the only one who picked up on the 'crumbs, then you have no way of finishing the 1v1. You-as-town would realize this, and not rely on ambiguities.

I figured out mattel's claim (hence my reversal onto Jason), but I had no clue Jason was 'crumbing cop at all. But had I done so, had I known, I would have done the town thing and waited to hear both sides before making an educated decision. That decision would likely have been to lynch Jason, after analyzing the strength of the claims and figuring that mattel's was much stronger. As town, that's what a person does when they see two players counterclaiming. They don't know which is real, so they try to figure it out.

As scum, you already knew Jason was fakeclaiming. Heck, he might have even told you he was going to 'crumb cop in the scum QT, specifically so that you could see it and use it if you chose to. So as scum, you didn't need to figure out which claim was true. You voted Jason for the towncred which would be gained from it.

Double checked, mastin went into deep hiding during twilight

And this is the final nail in

your

coffin, triton. Simple meta research will show you that as town, I never take part in wifom-laced twilights. As scum, I'm right there discussing like a champion, to induce the wifom. The fact that I was absent proves that I am town, because I specifically avoided trying to contribute to the wifom. I specifically avoided trying to give the scum more info. I specifically avoided trying to make this game more mindscrewy.

[mastin2]

And because I know triton's going to attempt to bring up PyP as an example of me talking in twilight, let me show you the posts there and how carefully they are worded.

Spoiler: Proof of this

UNVOTE:
VOTE: FuzDuzN

Alright, I'll vote him too

FuDu - 7 (Siv, Fuzzy, AP, me, PimHel, Bacde, KBW)

Pretty sure that's a hammer.

No comment on the hammer, no comment about the circumstances of the hammer, just pointing out that there has been a hammer. I intended for this to be my last post of the day. However, scum-AP in twilight baited me into a small conversation. Even so, I was careful that my response pertained only to me, and was me clarifying my own stance, giving NOTHING about other players. Shown here:

mastin lightly distancing from the lynch is noted.

Lightly?

Lightly implies I'm hiding the distancing from the lynch.

I've explained my stance. FuDuzn was more likely to flip scum than not, but I'm showing far less conviction on the lynch compared to before. I'm still on it, and a member of the wagon right in the middle, because overall I still support it, but I don't like the wagon as much as I did when I hopped on it. Can't get more blatant than that.

Again, that was purely about me, with no commentary on others--not even the lynched player, FuDuzn! I didn't say if FuDuzn was scum or not, merely that I believed before the hammer that he was more likely to be scum. Admittedly I might have still given the scum a little too much info, but the point is, I deliberately was avoiding wifom-laced conversations. My next post is a followthrough on that, and nothing more.

Especially as the only ones who voted FuDuzn after Mastin and before he made this post were me and Bacde.

Actually, AP voted in that timeframe as well.

Essentially--though I had a scumread on FuDuzn, I had a looooot of bad names on the wagon, comprised of my scumreads, null-reads, and some of my weakest townreads, with the exception of you.

There were other things to comment on at the time, if you read the game and see the posts during that timeframe. But I-as-town made the

conscious decision to ignore the WIFOM

and wait for the flip.

[mastin2]

In fact, I think I can elaborate further.

As scum, after the hammer, it'd have been pathetically easy to gain some cheap towncred.

Knowing

Jason is scum, you can fake NOT knowing Jason is scum, via comments to the extent of, "okay, speedlynching mattel D3" and the like. You can get cheap towncred by asking questions of Jason and why he didn't claim sooner. You can gain cheap towncred by looking like town unaware that Jason is actually scum. But it's all exactly that: WIFOM-induced cheap towncred. Thus, as scum, I milk it for all it's worth. I make those kinds of comments, I fake being town who doesn't know the truth, because experience has taught me that's a GREAT way to fake being town.

However, I KNOW better than to do this as town. It gives the scum info they may not have had, and it creates extra wifom. As town, I know that after the hammer's been dropped, everything being said will be laced with WIFOM, and it is a very bad idea to comment during that time. You need only look at mattel. If my theory about triton is correct, that he actually didn't know that mattel was the cop until twilight, you can see the damage which was done by twilight talk. (Damn you, Stephanie Meyer! )

[mastin2]

despite apparently also being aware of Jason's breadcrumbs

When did I ever say that?

Here:

This was a trust exercise: I had to trust mattel's claim. It was day 2, and if I got the wrong hammer, then obviously a fake claim happened. If Jason was the real cop, I would have easily killed Mattel for the fake claim.

Your logic for explaining the hammer on Jason relies on information which was only available after the hammer, UNLESS you picked up/knew about Jason's crumbs before-hand.

[mastin2]

Warning: wall follows. Apologies, but it's more convenient than dividing into separate posts. Sorry.

The hammer was a trust exercise. I trusted mattel's claim that he was a cop, so I hammered based on his result.

If mattel wasn't a cop (

and Jason was being truthful in that he said we just killed our own cop

), then mattel would easily be killed for fake claiming.

What about that means that I ever believed Jason was a cop? (Before Jason told us he was a cop)

"Believed" Jason was a cop, no. Knew that he was crumbing cop, yes. THIS VERY POST I AM QUOTING IS SHOWING THAT.

Again. This doesn't get much clearer than this. Your logic for hammering Jason relies on events which happened after Jason was lynched. Thus, your logic for hammering Jason cannot be true. If your logic for hammering Jason were true, then your argument would be made entirely from things that happened before the hammer (maaaaaaaybe with an aside-comment to the effect of "and as it turned out...", but that's about it), rather than almost entirely of things after the hammer. Huge difference.

Can you point these crumbs out for me?

As far as me calling you OMGUS, it's because you're upset I killed your scum buddy Jason. To be honest I wasn't sure who the partner could be (all the boasting that I did during twilight was a bluff in an attempt to draw the night kill), but then seeing you vote for me right away looks like someone who is out to avenge their buddy.

I cannot point out the 'crumbs since I never saw them. I can maybe guess what they are based off of others having said they saw them, but really, the people you should be asking are the people who saw said 'crumbs in the first place.

As for the OMGUS accusation...

Another candidate is uctriton. If Jason's as fond of bussing as I think he is (I fully believe him), then if you look at the distancing between uct and Jason early-on, it'd make sense.

Also, uct unvotes Jason when he's at risk of being lynched.

Both of these combined might mean that uct's the other scum.

Anyway, if it wasn't clear already,
-Jason's scum.
-I'm convinced enomis is town.
-mattel is town.

That leaves Linxie, uct, and Lucky. I currently suspect uctriton more than Lucky, and Lucky more than Linxie. (Linxie is a null-leaning-town read.)

You're ignoring this post I made yesterday. Where I clearly laid out

precisely

why I feel that you are Jason's scumbuddy. Well before your hammer, so well before I could be out for alleged revenge. The more you try to use that buzzword, the worse it's going to backfire on you, triton.

---

@Ucrit and Mastin: When did you all first find mattel's breadcrumb. Point it out to me.

I figured out mattel's crumb the moment I switched my vote off of Lucky, so that'd be right here.

@Mastin: Do you think your call on Ucrit is enough motivation to force him back onto the jason's wagon if he is scum.

Hell

yes. Triton fears my talent. He'd want to avoid being caught by me, and as such, needed to do his best to shake me off his trail. It didn't work, but it'd certainly explain his jump back on.

---

Mastin for many reasons. His blaming ucrit kind of makes sense but why am I even a possibility? The two top wagons yesterday were me and Jason. In the scenario that I am scum, me and Jason were spending the whole day trying to bus the other. His arguments today have all been to sow the seeds of doubt about ucrit, because he hammered but has said little to nothing about linxie and enomis. Also look at the attitude change. Is this the same IC who was so calm and collected before?

You are a possibility

precisely because of

being the lead wagon competing with Jason. I believe firmly that triton is the last scum, which would make you town, but it'd be sheer arrogance to not recognize that I

could

be wrong, that it COULD be someone else. (It's not.) And IF it was someone else (it's not), it'd be you. (But you're not.) The reasons for this are simple, actually. Jason's fond of bussing. Voting you as a bus makes sense, since as the scum PR, him living is actually more important than you living. A cop guilty threw a wrench in his plans, but you should be able to see where I'm coming from; there's plenty of reason for it to be done. But this is mostly a tangent, null-and-void, because while it's POSSIBLE for you to be scum, it's not PROBABLE. Triton's the far better candidate.

The reason I have nothing to say about linxie and enomis is because I have full confidence they're both town. I can't remember my reasons off the top of my head, which means I can't give you the strength in my townreads, but basically, I can't see either of them as being scum. As for my attitude change, I'll admit that it has, and I do apologize for it--it is my emotions shining through. But those emotions are not rage. As scum, I'm actually never calmer and more collected than when I'm alone. (So if you see me going back to being calm,

then

you can try calling me scum. ) The emotions you see me displaying are

excitement

and

anticipation

. I'm having fun right now, more fun than I've had in ages, because I'm dueling a worthy adversary. Most of the times I fight against a player, I'm either vastly outclassed or vastly outclass who I'm fighting with. Here, I consider triton to be an opponent in skill equal to my own. And today's the critical day. You know why? Because...if I get triton lynched, we win. If triton gets me lynched, he can nightkill literally anyone, and get away with it, because he can talk his way out of being lynched, and induce paranoia in the surviving two about each other. If triton gets someone else lynched, he can nightkill me, and then he's in the identical situation.

Basically--today's the day that decides the fate of the game. If I can convince the rest of the town to lynch triton, we'll win. If I can't, if I fail, then we're near-guaranteed to lose. And that's a thrill-ride. I'm having an adrenaline rush. Which is why there's been a change in attitude, but I still feel as if I should apologize for it.

[mastin2]

Just remembered the reason for my townread on enomis.

Enomis yesterday held the hammer when both wagons were at L-1. If he so chose, he could have lynched Lucky2u. He could have gotten away with it, too, because there were a fair number of points against Lucky2u, and he could claim ignorance to mattel's cop guilty on Jason.

He did not.

The very act of not hammering made me think he was town. He was analyzing things, considering them carefully. He was doing much as I'd expect a town player to have done in that situation, which made his position much stronger overall. All from yesterday.

On a purely personal note for today, he could have hammered me--and gotten away with it. As scum, him hammering me would not look bad, because there are plenty of points which can be used against me. They may not be accurate, but they (so to speak) "look good", in that they look like reasons that a town player

could

be suspicious of me. And then, he could have killed, say, Linxie, or maybe Lucky2u, and then used MY reasoning to mislynch triton in lylo, or mislynch Lucky2u, or mislynch...well, anybody, really.

I find it INCREDIBLY unlikely that he-as-scum would not do the above, and since it wasn't done, that SIGNIFICANTLY increases his likelihood of being town.

...Also, triton's scum, there's only one scum alive, so by default, everyone else is town.

[mastin2]

Alright. So I was 95% certain triton was scum before. But now?

500 posts in

mastin votes,

me
lucky
radiant
enomis

if you two guys (enomis and lucky) are indeed town, doesn't it look awfully suspicious that he gets on all of us?

Now I'm 100% certain triton is scum, off of this. This is a scum SE, appealing to newbie logic. This logic of "voting everyone" appeals to newbies. It's the exact kind of argument a lot of newbies make. But triton--as an experienced SE--KNOWS better than this. He KNOWS that over the course of the game,

reads evolve

. In fact, I even put this in a lecture near the beginning of the game. One of my VERY FIRST IC POSTS was telling players to let "reads fit the evidence, not evidence to fit the reads", my golden rule. As new evidence was brought up, my reads changed accordingly.

Yes, I have voted lucky, because I had a scumread on him off of his posting. Yes, I have voted enomis, because I had a scumread on his posting. Yes, I am voting triton, because I have a scumread on his posting. But those reads have evolved as new posts were made and things came to light. The number of posts isn't important. (Heck, even the amount of time isn't that important, but it's certainly more important than number of posts.) The CONTENT of those posts is what's important.

This is as close to a scumclaim as you can get from triton, an experienced player, who is now manipulating newbies.

[mastin2]

Missed this gem.

if you two guys (enomis and lucky) are indeed town, doesn't it look awfully suspicious that he gets on all of us?

He's saying that I'm scum. For me to be scum, he has to BY DEFAULT believe that enomis and lucky are town. Note also the careful wording: "awfully suspicious". Instead of "look like scum". He's preparing to justify my townflip. He's preparing to cover his tracks, to go, "oops, he was just a scummy townie", and from this, I'm guessing nightkill linxie and leave a 3P lylo consisting of Lucky2u, enomis, and himself. Which is perfect for him, because look at that "if you two guys are indeed town" bit! It leaves him open to considering either of you scum, which is quite convenient considering that you two had already been at each other's throats before. In lylo, he could see that as an easy win. His only obstacle is me.

You keep putting words into my mouth.

"Triton KNOWS...."
"He KNOWS...."

If this isn't some form of manipulation, then I don't know what is.

But the things I'm saying you know are things you, as a damn-good SE with multiple games of experience ALREADY WOULD KNOW. For instance, you can ask any IC. LITERALLY ANY IC. It doesn't even have to be a Thor or Nacho-level IC. Ask them about the argument triton is presenting in 653. UNANIMOUSLY, you'll get the response that it doesn't hold water. You'll see consistently across the board them saying the same thing, that it's the content of the posts that matter, as reads evolve naturally. Their wording may be different, but the conclusion is the same. Heck, you can even browse MD for stuff like this. Though the exact topic is never brought up, by simply looking around you can find plenty about it, and again, they're consistent. Reads evolve naturally as the game progresses.

As new evidence was brought up, my reads changed accordingly.

I sincerely was ready to ram Lucky and Mattel into a train, until we got evidence from the Jason flip and the Mattel flip.

Do you honestly think I am "not evolving my reads"?

First off, this is proof that triton's story is full of holes. He's flat-out admitting that he was lying with his reasons for hammering Jason, here. If he was truthful in wanting to lynch Lucky and mattel, he

would have waited

, rather than voting for Jason.

Second-off, no, triton's reads have not evolved organically. The switches were abrupt and poorly-reasoned, if reasons were given at all. For instance, his scumread on me coming into today, was that I was out for revenge. What does he do when I prove this to be false? Ignore it, and continue pushing me. He tries to find new angles. He violates that fundamental golden rule. He's looking for evidence to fit the read, rather than having a read fitting the evidence.

[mastin2]

You know why I also think you're scum?

You're trying to play a very controlled, even, level headed game. Screw the fact that you're an IC; you're not going on gut wrenching benders. You're playing like a defense lawyer, presenting evidence and being as professional as possible.

And this is yet another nail in triton's coffin. His argument for thinking I'm scum is that I'm

being logical and rational

.

That's it. Seriously. Read this. Tell me it says anything other than that. Tell me it says anything other than, "Mastin is scum because he's using logic".

As valuable as gut-reads are on MS.net, though...triton should know better than this. On mafiascum.net, we're

supposed

to use logic. We're seen overall as being a highly-rational site, with arguments supported by facts.

[mastin2]

Spoiler: triton's newest post

Also mastin, here's another problem i have:

you keep bringing up labels.

"newbie".

You're manipulating people. You're trying to paste the word newbie on people's foreheads. You're being rather pedantic, almost trying to talk people down from a pedestal and saying "you guys don't know what's going on, so you newbies, let me spell it out for you". Again, forget that you're an IC (in fact, nothing in the IC guidelines says to remind people about the word newbies). I'm tired of you always trying to fit everyone into these pegs you want people to be in, and you're saying "stop manipulating the newbies", "stop lying to the newbies", "stop controlling the newbies".

It's a form of manipulation, and I see you being scum for it. Everyone is their own player, we all have our town cards. You're trying to take your *position* of an IC, and trying to control the flow of the game.

Me? I'm playing from my gut. My gut that thought RC was scum, but was wrong. My gut that thought it was Lucky all along, until Mattel said he's a cop, so i followed Mattel. My gut that was right to trust Mattel. My gut that it's you Mastin, based on my gut of how you've been voting, how you've been playing. My gut that it's not Lucky based on how he interacts with people. My gut that it's not Linxie based on twilight. My gut that it's not enomis based on his replacement play, and his play today even.

Funny that triton accuses me of manipulating people and using my status as an IC to my advantage, considering

that's

exactly

what I've been accusing him of doing

. It's also blatantly false. In fact, it's the ultimate insult. I've not IC'd many times, but the few times I do IC, no argument ticks me off more than "He's using his status as an IC to manipulate people". That goes against every single code of ethics I've been risen with. It goes against the "Being a good IC" guideline page. It goes against my

fundamental nature as a person

to manipulate newbies with my teachings. It's not only unethical, but also immoral.

I make DAMN sure as the IC to keep my teachings separate from my play. Whereas triton? Triton's been exploiting his status as an SE from his

very first post

that I called him out for.

This is more than enough proof for why triton is scum. I can continue, and maybe bring up even more new points, but there comes a point in time where I feel as if I've brought TOO much info to the table and it could overwhelm ya. So I'll probably be stopping here for the day. Needless to say, I've hammered in point after point showing why triton is scum (and will likely summarize 'em all tomorrow), so now it's your job to read 'em and analyze my reasons.

[mastin2]

I am focusing on Jason because I know he is scum. Take that how you will.

This was the post that tipped me off to mattel being the cop. That's the universal signpost for "I have a guilty, you morons!"

When I saw it, I went, "waitwhat, did I just see what I thought I saw?", did a quick crosscheck of mattel's posts on D2, and then, " Oh, man, Mastin, you're an idiot. How'd you miss that before?" And that's when I switched my vote.

[mastin2]

Bit emotionally drained for the offense front at the moment, so I'll have to settle for defense until I've recovered.

VOTE: Mastin

He is getting as angry as Jason was before we lynched him

*ahem*

As for my attitude change, I'll admit that it has, and I do apologize for it--it is my emotions shining through. But those emotions are not rage.

As scum, I'm actually never calmer and more collected than when I'm alone

. (So if you see me going back to being calm,

then

you can try calling me scum. ) The emotions you see me displaying are

excitement

and

anticipation

. I'm having fun right now, more fun than I've had in ages, because I'm dueling a worthy adversary. Most of the times I fight against a player, I'm either vastly outclassed or vastly outclass who I'm fighting with. Here, I consider triton to be an opponent in skill equal to my own. And today's the critical day. You know why? Because...if I get triton lynched, we win. If triton gets me lynched, he can nightkill literally anyone, and get away with it, because he can talk his way out of being lynched, and induce paranoia in the surviving two about each other. If triton gets someone else lynched, he can nightkill me, and then he's in the identical situation.

Basically--today's the day that decides the fate of the game. If I can convince the rest of the town to lynch triton, we'll win. If I can't, if I fail, then we're near-guaranteed to lose. And that's a thrill-ride. I'm having an adrenaline rush. Which is why there's been a change in attitude, but I still feel as if I should apologize for it.

Am I emotional, yes. Am I angry, no. Stop saying that. The only thing to be angry about this game would be triton's blatant abuse of authority and having the audacity to say that *I* am the one abusing my authority.

---

Linxie part one--guess I misremembered the timeline for that. The exact point I was making may not hold, but the general point I was making (calling triton out) overall holds truth. Triton's reversal into hammering did not at all look like, "oh, I saw the cop!". It screamed "crap, that Lucky vote looks scummy-as-hell".

When not drained of energy, I'll elaborate if necessary. As for meta--yes, meta changes, but it does give you a background. For instance, a fact that I've avoided bringing up so far is the fact that I

hate

bussing, and took a vow not to bus. It is possible for me to break that vow, but it's definitely not something I'd do trivially. The repercussions of having broken the no-bussing vow are enough where I've developed a strong habit of not bussing.

Basically, a combination of two factors. (1) Though a player can change their meta, oftentimes, they don't

want

to. And (2) sometimes, they might actually know about a difference, but be unable to control it.

Look at things from a you-as-town perspective. You see both 'crumbing. You might be the only one who sees both have crumbed.

You, not knowing which is real, hammer. And get things wrong. The scum nightkill you. And bam. Both scum are alive, and if you were the only one who picked up on the 'crumbs, then you have no way of finishing the 1v1.

You-as-town would realize this, and not rely on ambiguities.

RE: Bold & Underlined
When you die, your alignment and role is shown, so am not sure what you mean here. Scum wouldn't be able to claim, so the crumbs would be useless.

I'm not sure what you're

not

getting. It's fairly clear what I was saying? Triton-as-town sees a 'crumb, and hammers recklessly, hoping to catch scum, but hammered wrongly. Triton-as-town gets nightkilled, with no other plays having seen the 'crumb. Triton-as-dead-town has no way of telling the town about the false-crumb, so the scum get away with it.

Triton-as-town would realize this, and not immediately hammer. Triton's claimed logic relies on (1) mattel being a liar, and (2) (this is a critical one) triton

surviving the night

to point out mattel's false-crumb and lynch mattel. Triton's death in this triton-as-town scenario, therefore, would ruin his whole "trust plan". I'm not sure how that can be more clear.

[mastin2]

I understand what you're saying but remember that A) Triton wasn't the only one to pick up on the Mattel crumb and B) you're focusing on a scenario which doesn't apply. Mattel was town and Jason was scum. The flip revealed that... also I'm pretty sure that had Jason flipped town and Triton died instead of Mattel, Mattel would have had major pressure from you since you picked up on Mattel's crumb as well.

Linxie, you're applying future knowledge to the past.

Go back to that time period. Ignore the flip we had later. Think of that time.

triton wouldn't know anybody else had picked up on the crumbs

. (Almost) everyone said they picked them up on day three, but NOBODY had made it clear they saw the crumbs on day two.

A triton-as-town at the time would have had no way of knowing he was not the only one to have seen them

. That is something which was ONLY clear come day three.

And this is the more critical par you're missing.

Triton-as-town WOULD NOT HAVE KNOWN that mattel was town and Jason was scum

. The ONLY way triton would have known mattel was town and known Jason was scum is if he were scum with Jason. This is exactly what I've been arguing. Yes, as it turned out, mattel was town and Jason was scum. So yes, I'm arguing about a scenario which ended up not applying. But go back to the time--A TOWN TRITON HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING IT WOULDN'T HAVE APPLIED. That is something

only

possible from a scum-triton.

[mastin2]

This is why context is important, by the way. In the current context, we know that mattel's town, and we know Jason's scum, and we know that almost everyone picked up a 'crumb from mattel.

But go back to the context at the critical time we're talking about. None of that knowledge exists to a town player. To a scum player, yes, they know mattel's town. Yes, they know Jason's scum. But a town player wouldn't.

[mastin2]

Ok I get what you're saying, but you picked up on Mattel's crumbs before hand, that's why you unvoted Lucky and voted Jason instead. Your argument here is that "what if Uct died and couldn't tell anyone about the crumbs" so if he died, you'd still be alive to point it out. This also means that your second paragraph applies to you as well since you picked up on Mattel's claim first.

For the first half--again, triton had no way of knowing I had picked them up. I had, but how would he have known that? He wouldn't have.

For the second half--unlike triton, I had zero doubts on mattel's claim. Triton's claimed logic is, "oh, mattel claimed cop with a guilty, so let's lynch Jason; if Jason flips town, I can lynch mattel tomorrow".

My logic was, "derp, mattel has a guilty." I did have a brief thought about "how legit is it?", but it was just that: a brief thought. I checked his posting history on D2, and found literally every single post telling the same thing. I also thought about mindset (and, critically, newbie mindset--mattel's not a veteran player, and vets have a fundamentally different approach to the game), and that was the thought: "What's the scum motivation for heavily 'crumbing a guilty against a player, when it's not lylo and you're bound to be counterclaimed?" As a vet, I can maybe think of a reason or two. From the perspective of a newbie who has no on-site gaming experience, I can't. A newbie doesn't take that kind of gambit, at least, not when they're under zero pressure. Maybe,

maybe

if mattel were the leading lynch candidate, but he wasn't.

Oh. Ucrit is most likely town.
due to this when isoing Jason:

VOTE: uctriton00

Because a quick look over your other games show's you RVS half the time and i don't like that, either RVS or don't man.

I find it hard to believe that scum would look over their scum buddies past games in their first post.

Enomis, you've got that backwards: Why would a scumbuddy look over a random townie's first post? He could just as easily look over the post of any other player; why single out triton?

Hint: he wouldn't. It's a very, VERY frequent part of scum QTs, to have the scum talk about some of their past games, past experience, past voting histories, and (this is the vital part) what to expect in their play, especially early in D1. "A quick look over your other games" was probably done, yes...but much earlier, after a scum-triton linked Jason to some of his past games.

[mastin2]

If it weren't lylo today, I would be self-voting. >_<

I'm town. I swear I am, but I understand if you think I'm not. I'll take full responsibility for the loss. There's a lot against me, including triton's death and Lucky's townflip. Because contrary to Lucky's claim that I was town for not voting him...well, he was my alternative choice for scum to triton, so instead of it being a mark in my favor, it's actually a mark against me. I was absolutely sure it was him. And now...not only was he town, but he flipped town, too, and quite frankly, I'm at a total loss right now. I could see enomis as scum, I could see Linxie as scum, but the problem is that I haven't seen either of you as being scum.

Needless to say, I'll be rereading and reanalyzing things, to hopefully get a direction again, butyeah. I blew it.

[mastin2]

Let's go bit-by-bit.

Oh please mastin. Please stop the hypocritical act. Even if it wasn''t LYLO, you wouldn't be self voting.

Yes, I would be. I was dead-certain that triton was scum. It was pretty much a 1v1. I was wrong. If the town player voted me today, it wouldn't be unjustifiably so. I may make small screwups all the time, but entering a toe-to-toe fight with a town player is just about as big a screwup as I can make. I'm a man of my word, and on several instances have done exactly that: self-voted for being wrong.

If i recall, you was only convinced that i was town and linxie was a null/town read for you.

Golden rule: reads to fit the evidence, not evidence to fit the reads. I never,

never

rush into lylo with a vote. And there is plenty of evidence suggesting you-as-scum. I dismissed it in favor of you-as-town and triton-as-scum, but his townflip made me re-think things. If you are seriously trying to use this point against me, it applies just as much to you: you had a townread on me, and now you don't. Which would make this hypocrisy. In fact, let's look at your wording:

I really regret not hammering you in day 3 and was blinded by the fact that Lucky was so scummy/ you had some post which has the same mindset as me.

This is the exact thing you're accusing me of doing. You're faking shock at Lucky flipping town.

When you unvoted Lucky, to vote Jason, it was a perfect opportunistic vote. Lets take a look at the situation: Lucky and Mattel was voting for Jason. Ucrit,Linxie and Jason was voting for lucky. And you did not say anything. You just vote Jason and left your vote there.

The reason I voted Jason was

there was a god-damned cop guilty on Jason

. Of course that's opportunistic. And of course I "left my vote there". I couldn't reveal the reason for my switch was that I had picked up on the cop; had I done that, mattel would have been doomed to die. I

intentionally tried to limit the information available to the scum

. If Jason had been hammered earlier, then the scum might have never picked up on the 'crumb.

From your join date and i have the impression that you are quite an established player on site, I think that these arguments are really weak and you are not even scumhunting.

Which fallacy was this? Oh, yeah. Burden of Proficiency. This is the exact tell pointed against countless ICs throughout the years. Heck, it was the argument put against me the last time I was an IC, which set me up as the scum's mislynch in 3p lylo. It's called a fallacy for a reason: because it relies on a player being better than they are. I am an excellent theorist. I am actively involved in Mafia Discussion, I can teach fairly competently, but I am no master scumhunter. My joindate is actually a year earlier in 2008 on the exact same day; mastin2 is an alt of Mastin. Does that extra year make me any more of a competent player? No, it doesn't. Age != skill. Skill = skill, and I've never so much as been

nominated

for a scummy. Why not? Because I'm not even close to that good of a player. I'm a mediocre-at-best player. I'm good enough to have picked up on mattel's 'crumbs, and good enough to not rush into lylo carelessly, but a master scumhunter, I am not.

There's a damn-good reason why I-as-scum wouldn't kill triton: in a 1v1 against him,

I could win

. He's a player roughly equivalent to my skill level, yes, but he legitimately was in a much,

much

weaker position than I was. Heck, his hammer vote on Lucky was scummy-as-hell. There's a damn-good reason why you-as-scum would kill triton, too: because you didn't want to be trapped in a position where you had townreads on both me and triton. Triton and I had seen the other as being scum on D3, but we're both competent players, who know not to rush lylo, to reassess the situation and analyze if maybe--just maybe--we were both being kept alive to crossvote each other for a loss in lylo. If that happened to you, you'd be screwed. You couldn't risk that, so a Linxie kill was out of the question.

You COULD kill me, yes, but Linxie thought triton was town and I was scum on D3. (Seriously, Linxie, tell me I'm wrong; I'm not--you thought I was scum, and it was clear from your posts. If I died, would you have reversed your read on triton? I don't think so. Instead, you'd have gone straight to enomis.) That would put you at the disadvantage coming into lylo. But with triton dead? Use triton's arguments against me, JUST LIKE NUL'S ARGUMENTS WERE USED AGAINST LUCKY. And best yet, you've already got Linxie (a less experienced player) likely to back you--Linxie (unlike triton and myself) is more likely to not change opinions come lylo, and thus, it's a reasonably safe bet that Linxie-in-lylo is voting me.

Who would I-as-scum kill? Not triton. He'd be my very last choice. As scum, my first kill choice would be Linxie. ("What? Not enomis?" Yes, not enomis.) I have a little saying: "the only thing predictable about newbies is that they are unpredictable". In lylo, that's a liability to me-as-scum. I can't predict the actions of a newbie, and I have trouble manipulating them. Both from a moral perspective (it goes against my beliefs to manipulate newbies to my advantage), and from a player perspective (it'd be difficult to know for sure if my manipulation would actually work). Triton, I could appeal to his paranoia. Enomis, I could appeal to with logic (because my argument against triton

was

strong, even if ultimately wrong).

A triton kill makes zero sense from a scum-Mastin perspective (it leaves me with nowhere to go, and no options available), and complete sense from a scum-enomis perspective.

You are also scum because you have rushed. As a reasonably-experienced player, you-as-town would not be so sure, so confident, come lylo. Note how Linxie and I both came in with doubts for lylo? There's a damn-good reason for that, because IN NO OTHER TIME IS IT AS VITAL AS IN LYLO than to ask yourself, "Why?" Why am I alive, why are they alive, why did people die when they did, what caused their demise? I had my doubts. As you can tell from the above argument, there's plenty which showed you could be scum, but was I convinced you were? Hell no.

1) He did not hammer Mastin and chose to vote Lucky which is a fking awkward situation. Minus that Ucrit hammer which was totally unexpected. He could have hammered Mastin and not get any scuminess at all but he did not do that. Then he could tunnel on Ucrit the last day.

On the contrary, Linxie-as-scum would know there would be a tomorrow. Hammering me would end the day prematurely. Letting me live could earn him some cheap towncred, especially from me. I had said that you not-hammering Lucky made you town, so why not Linxie not-hammering me? My point precisely. You-as-town would consider this, and not instantly come to the conclusion it makes him town. You-as-town might have it in your analysis, but you wouldn't show such absolute belief in it.

3) His, "i need to check something before i vote". He was under the impression if everybody voted and if no majority was reached after everybody voted, it would go to a no lynch which is a standard epicmafia situation. I think he came from there. Therefore, i think this consideration is very significantly pointing that he is newb town.

And this is another point for enomis-scum. Why newb-town? Why not newb-scum in the same situation? It's certainly a sign of being a newb, but what in this makes it newb-town? Absolutely nothing. The only way for it to instantly be newb-town in enomis's mind is if enomis is scum already.

A final point against enomis: ALL OF THE ABOVE LOOKS LIKE IT WAS TYPED OUT IN ADVANCE. Enomis looks like he was preparing this exact argument during the night, inside the mafia QT, and merely made small modifications in order to match the two posts before-hand. Enomis was banking on Linxie's read remaining the same, and a swift victory.

There's probably more if I was given time to reread, butyeah, needless to say:
VOTE: enomis.

[mastin2]

Sorry about this, this is my first lylo and it's stressful that I'm holding the hammer

Know that feeling aaaaaaall too well. It's a self-feeding loop: I hate being in lylo because I suck at it, and I suck at lylo because I try to avoid ever getting in it.

Butyeah, have a request: could you hold off on the hammer for a little while? I was eating breakfast this morning, when suddenly, it all clicked into place, and I realized exactly why enomis would do what he's been doing as scum. Everything from day one to today. (And also, remembered some more reasons why I'm not scum.)

[mastin2]

(But it's going to take a while to type. )

[mastin2]

Hey guys. As you can tell, I'm new to Mafiascum, but have fairly some experience with mafia games. I played mafia several times on another gaming site and that's where I truly learned the game. I never read any games here, so I can't point references to anyone's play style. People change their playstyle often in mafia to keep things fresh, so referencing playstyle isn't always accurate. I hope we have a good game people!

Small thing, but pretty much everyone at this point was trying to contribute. Paradigm (enomis's slot) sticks out, by not having contributed anything during what I consider the most vital stage of the game.

It's a natural response from a scum newbie--a fear of doing something wrong in the RVS, and thus, a desire to not do anything during it. It's not a strong point, but it does contribute.

Jason pretty much picked out the rest of the details. USUALLY though, those who appear to be scum on Day 1, usually isn't. Just saying. Mastin could be trying to sheep us too with his IC, but it's obvious he isn't being a try-hard with it.

In this post, Paradigm was sheeping Jason--it'd make sense for a newbie to do this to their experienced scum-mate. Note also that Paradigm left the door open: he scumread triton, but gave a way to back out of it. He gives me a free pass, so-to-speak, but leaves the door open for a reversal.

Ironically enough, Jason points this out:

First post was pathetic and at best fluff.

Second post is a poor attempt to do the following
a) set up to sheep me
b) set up to lynch Mastin based on being an IC

This is very easy to be in-thread coaching, as a "Don't do that, you idiot!" moment.

Note that--at the first possible moment--Jason immediately gets his vote off of Paradigm. This reinforces the image I present above: Jason wasn't voting Paradigm to lynch him; Jason was voting Paradigm to let him know that he was being a stupid fool who could bring their entire scumteam down.

Paradigm takes the hint and doesn't sheep Jason, but follows through with a reasonless vote on me. Lucky2u is the one to point this out.

Am I missing something here? Who is that "regardless of what you think" aimed at?

Get rid of the ego, man. on post #59, I gave my reads on Mastin before you made that post.

Note how he addresses the Crazzy FoS (who we all know to be town via it being Linxie's slot), but critically,

doesn't address Jason's FoS

. Additionally, 59 does not give reasons on me; it gives reasons on triton. The one bit in there that could potentially have been directed against me simply doesn't apply, as I was not using my status as an IC to my advantage; I was doing the opposite.

Paradigm THIS IS FOR YOU

And Jason was once more quite unhappy with Paradigm's posting. To me, this is a sign that Jason was trying desperately to get his scumbuddy into top-shape, so-to-speak, and to stop dragging their team down. Compare the way he treated mattel, treated Lucky, and other such players: he was far more blatant in his coaching. He was coaching town players, so his coaching was obvious and meant to clearly be coaching.

But when it came to Paradigm, his coaching was more subtle. He wasn't telling Paradigm what to do (as he was for Lucky2u, mattel, and others); he was instead only implying what should be done. In fact, from the words of Jason himself:

I'd Coach a lot of townies as scum <3, and if we were both scum i'd probably not coach and just push him in front of the bus

This is exactly what he did. He didn't coach Paradigm, he put Paradigm in front of the bus, and was clearly hoping that Paradigm would improve with his push.

Now I realize that enomis isn't Paradigm, but they share the same slot and therefore have the same alignment. So they

do

contribute to why enomis is scum.

And there is some D1 content showing why enomis is scum.

Radiant is town. How is he scum. WTF?

Yes, Radiant

was

town, but there was plenty of evidence against Radiant. It had already been laid out by that point to some extent, so the burden of proof laid not on those voting Radiant (who had already said why they felt Radiant was scum), but on enomis who had a mysterious unexplained townread on Radiant. Going back to then, enomis admitted he had only skimmed--what made Radiant so strongly town to him? There was nothing. Yes, ultimately, Radiant was town, but how could a town-enomis have gotten such a strong townread on Radiant from just a skim, when pretty much everyone else had a scumread on Radiant?

Also, this interaction enomis has with Jason looks like a scumbuddy talking to a scumbuddy:

Jason, what was the jump wagon shit? If you have some reason spit it out. Actually i think you have. Just say it.

Plus, Jason's response to enomis is identical to how he was treating Paradigm:

Plus how is Radiant town enomis?

Jason wasn't coaching enomis, he was bussing enomis, and ready to do the coaching during the night. (Enomis's eventual response, "Iso seems genuine", did not warrant the strength of enomis's townread; enomis himself admitted as much when he said he'd need to meta Radiant in order to be sure.)

That's day one. Consider this part 1/3. (I'll lump the bits from D4 into the ending of D3.)

[mastin2]

Fine i will humor you. Give me some examples where you self-voted for being wrong. Recent games please.

I was going to save this for part 3, but I guess I might as well do it now. Right here,

Iff Darthe flips scum then mastin will be the next lynch, amirite?

If Darthe flipped scum? Yes. Go ahead. Lynch my ass.

(Darthe Flipped scum, soooo...) The followthrough was here. A night-lynch, but still technically a lynch. Now if you extend the time limit back a bit, I'll show you a previous instance of that exact same promise, but an identical inability to fulfill it: start reading from here. I entered into a 1V1 with Ludi. Here is where it got serious. And Here is how I reacted. I was town then, as I am town now. There are probably plenty of others, but these two are the ones which popped most immediately into my mind; I have a history of self-voting or wishing to self-vote after screwups.

You had me as confirmed town because of myself. You had linxie as confirmed town because Ucrit is scum. So when Ucrit died, your confirmed town status on linxie should be gone. So your statement should be something like:"Oh shit, linxie may be scum. But i will need to reevaluate and iso enomis too" something like that. And not "Oh shit, both of them are my confirmed town reads, gg, i would self-vote if there weren't lylo." --< this reaction is simply fake and does not follow your flow of logic because linxie is not your confirmed town read if Ucrit died.

The problem with this logic is that it once again is entering into lylo with a bias. EVEN IF I WAS ALIVE WITH TRITON, I wouldn't instantly vote him. I would have that suspicion, yes, but I would evaluate. Just as I did. And as you can see, I had plenty suggesting that I needed to re-evaluate. The triton kill could have been performed by Linxie, but it made more sense coming from you. I needed to evaluate, and was in the process of doing so, when you immediately jumped onto me without hesitation. I am not fond of entering lylo at all, but when I do, there are rules I enforce on myself. Among them is to above all else keep that golden rule in mind, and ask myself, "Why did the night go the way it did?" I came into today realizing that you

could

be scum, and that Linxie

could

be town. I came into today knowing that you could still be town, and Linxie could be scum,

but I wasn't going to let my bias interfere with making an educated decision

. If you had asked for percentages, they wouldn't have been 50/50, no. They probably would have been 55/45 Linxie/enomis. But that's not the confidence level I'd need to make a decision right out of the gate in lylo. In lylo, I need a minimum of 80%. (If I do make a decision off of less than that, it's out of pure sheer desperation, such as being the night of the deadline. ) Yes, I had a townread on you yesterday. But I didn't bring it into today because I second-guessed myself. I re-evaluated my stance, thought about it, and saw a potential scum connection, one growing stronger once you made your vote.

Nope, after you supposedly saw the bread crumb and switched over, whats the situation? Do you see any signs of player moving over? None. How do you suppose Jason would be hammered. YOU DID NOTHING. It is only after the 3rd and 4th again and again plea by mattel that Ucrit quick hammered Jason. And you did not do anything to push the wagon IF other people did not see the claim.

I will be addressing this in Part Two of my case against you.

You go iso yourself and read. Or you could ask linxie. Read through your day1,2 and 3. Were you scumhunting? No. All i see are unconvincing cases/weak.

Like hell they're not scumhunting. On Day One, I was laid back in my scumhunting, but it was there. I put off explaining things thanks to time constraints, but I pointed out the things which made me get the reads I had. I failed to explain why those things gave me my reads, yes. But again, that was out of time constraints, time constraints which were consistent across the site if you cared to check my activity at the time. On Day Two, I continued my scumhunting, and explained my stances in all instances except for one: the switch onto Jason. And Day Three was the strongest scumhunting I've ever done in my career. I'll probably give some links to some recently-completed town games of mine to show it beyond what you've already seen, but the simple fact is, I've never made a better case in the entirety of my mafiascum career than in this game on day three.

You are giving false information. He was not in a weaker position and he is winning you on day 3. Remind me who has 2 votes on him and almost got hammered? You could also ask linxie and he could tell you that your argument are as WEAK as hell. His hammer vote on lucky could be scummy yes, but after looking at his whole day play, you could probably attribute it to his playstyle?

I was in a stronger position. Argue all you'd like that I got more votes than Triton did, but my argument was stronger than his. His was backed by random pieces of nonsense. Mine was backed by logic that I had shown on Day Two, and continued to show throughout Day Three. Like all cases, mine was imperfect. I misremembered details of the game. (For the record, this is something I don't do as scum. As town, I rely on my quite-clearly imperfect memory. I might look things up after the fact, but I generally tend not to look at the facts in advance. As scum, I need my cases to be airtight, so I make sure that there are no factual errors that'll cause me to be accused of misrepping my opponent.) And triton ended up being town.

But my argument was stronger than his. I was in no danger of being lynched. "But you were! You were on the verge of being lynched!" The votes and the intent to hammer might have seemed that way, but that was because I was letting my offense go down. I was kinda burned out, 'cause I felt I had the perfect case. When you make the perfect case against someone, what can you do after that? Not much. That's how I felt at the time, hence the focus on the defense, but if I felt that I was in danger again, I'd be motivated to bounce back, counter triton's case, and show how he had NOTHING against me and I had everything against him. As for triton's hammering--both are from this game. If both are from this game, it's alignment-dependent. If he had a habit of hammering as town (one which I don't remember him having), THEN you could argue playstyle. And now that we know his alignment, YES we can argue playstyle. Off of what I had, you cannot.

Anyway, as you can tell--I'm going to go into a lot more details in parts two and three of my case. Things to look forward to:
* A proper explanation of my stance on triton.
* A proper counter to triton's case (which I never felt was worth countering).
* A detailed journey, describing the events showing why enomis-as-scum would do as he has, and detailing why Mastin-as-scum wouldn't have done what has been done.
* Some meta on me, in lylo as town and lylo as scum. (Short version--this is not the first time I've been in lylo as the town IC. Last time it happened, the scum ALSO immediately voted me and ALSO used points nearly identical to what enomis used. Sadly, the entirety of the game was lost in The Rollback, so you'll have to take my word for the description. Also, as scum, the last time I was in lylo, I rushed in and almost immediately voted for the person I had marked for a mislynch. The tl;dr version is that as town in lylo, I am cautious beyond all other times; as scum in lylo, I hop in immediately and go for the win as soon as possible.)

[mastin2]

Small correction. (This is what I get for not checking the facts before-hand. )

On Day Two, I touched upon my reasoning, but I was still short on time (as checking my site activity would confirm), so I didn't get to go into as much of the details as I had wanted to, similarly to D1. Post 509 is a fine example of this, where I laid the base of the foundation for triton being scum with Jason, but didn't flesh it out 'til D3.

[mastin2]

I opened day two by voting enomis, following through on what I saw as potentially-incriminating evidence.

I was distrustful of mattel and Lucky2u (causing me to drop my enomis suspicion), because they looked like a scumteam jumping on triton's logic, in order to try and mislynch Jason. They could place the blame of the mislynch on triton, while having gotten away with a nice, quick, and simple lynch on town.

Jason's defense to the points against him was similarly solid. In essence: the case against Jason was mostly crap, and Jason's counter-case was fairly well-reasoned. This is why I felt Jason was town, and Lucky/mattel were a scumteam pushing his mislynch.

I touched on this in 443. I never got to explain in detail why it was so, but I think you can actually tell. Mattel had no case against Jason. How could he? He knew Jason was scum via his result, but he couldn't think of any solid logic for it, because there really wasn't any. Jason was outplaying him, and he was becoming increasingly desperate as this became evident. His one true case was "Jason's scum because I'm the cop and got a guilty on him", but he didn't want to say that. (As the day progressed, he slowly but surely said it more and more strongly as desperation grew, but he didn't want to.) In hindsight, this is obvious as a town-player being frustrated that they can't beat the scum-player, but at the time, it looked like the opposite: that mattel was a scum player, unable to beat the town Jason. So close to a "mis"lynch, but unable to obtain it.

Important: At this point, Jason was at L-1. Enomis couldn't vote Jason without hammering him, nor did he have any desire to. But he was clearly considering it:

Hey Jason. Convince me you are town.

...As this demonstrates.

Note that I said I felt enomis's handling of Jason made him doubtful as being scum? That relied on Jason being town. With him being scum, enomis's actions make perfect sense coming from scum.

When I voted Lucky2u, enomis held the chance to hammer Lucky at any time. Now, I

thought

this made him town, but think about it: had enomis hammered Lucky, that quick wagon on him would have looked (justifiably so) scummy-as-hell, going into lylo. IF they managed to figure out mattel was the cop, they could block/kill him, but that'd leave two competent players (myself and triton) alive to have figured out that mattel had a cop guilty on Jason, and enomis's quick-hammer of Lucky was scum-motivated.

Let's say that instead of killing mattel, they take out one of the competent players. Same scenario happens--they've got a cop with a guilty, and at least one competent player who knows how to analyze these situations. Probably me, because triton was against Jason and triton wasn't on Lucky's wagon at the time. In fact, check out enomis setting me up for lylo:

I guess i can leave him today.

He was literally admitting that I was mislynch bait come lylo.

But as I demonstrated eventually on D2, I would have believed mattel over Jason, and instantly singled out enomis as Jason's scumbuddy.

In short, enomis

could

have hammered Lucky, but had he done so at any point, it would have disadvantaged their scumteam significantly--not knowing who the cop was, and going into lylo with at least one capable player who would correctly point out the scum intent behind enomis's hammer.

Essentially, enomis had no choice but to NOT hammer Lucky. Why? Because with him not hammering, the above scenario is averted. He becomes the voice of reason--by not hammering either wagon, he gains the reputation of being a player analyzing the situation carefully to make a conclusion. He also gains Lucky's trust, which can be harvested against him. (And ultimately, WAS used against Lucky! Though that was my fault, admittedly. )

Thus, enomis's lack of hammer on D2 which I had given him towncred for was in fact at

best

null, if not scum-motivated.

Now, keep in mind...it's quite probable that the scum discussed Jason's 'crumbing before-hand. Jason apparently entered D2 'crumbing strongly, as Linxie and enomis both claimed to have seen it. So enomis would have know that eventually, Jason would counterclaim a town cop. enomis set himself up so that he could side with Jason.


And let's skip ahead to the critical point: my reversal in reads. Analyze the position from a scum-Mastin point of view. The ideal scum play as Mastin is

not

to vote Jason, but to keep my vote on Lucky2u. Linxie was going to place his vote back, and triton would have hammered in post 518. Know what would have happened? mattel's stronger crumbs which happened later in the day never would have existed. (Check the chronology yourself. It would have been two posts too late; mattel's strong 'crumb was in 520, and the vote on Lucky which would have hammered was in 518.) The day would have ended with a lynch on Lucky. And then, we could kill or roleblock mattel (whichever we deemed more convenient), and be in an excellent position to win. I would have clearly been on Jason's side, and we'd have an easy lylo win.

Even if we didn't get the lylo win, even if Jason was lynched in lylo, that'd just place us in the exact situation we're in now, just with the chronology shifted a bit. In other words, by not switching to Jason, my chances AT WORST would be identical to what they are now, but could be significantly better than they are. Meaning, with me-as-scum, I would have stayed on Lucky2u. It'd put me in a far-better position overall.

The problem is, I'm

not

scum, so when I saw mattel's crumbs, I couldn't ignore them as I could as scum. I knew they were there, so I had to obey them.

In short: enomis as scum couldn't have played any differently on D2. Mastin as scum could have and would have played differently.

But to address some additional concerns:

-

"How do I know you saw a 'crumb from mattel? How do I know you didn't just switch over for the opportunism?"

That's not something I can BS. The evidence is right there in the suddenness of my switch and my inability to explain it, just as mattel was unable to properly explain Jason being scum. BECAUSE I had nothing, you can tell it was real. If I were scum who switched over for opportunism, I would BS some scumtell, like "Jason said X, which makes him scum". I didn't, though, because I wasn't switching over for the scum opportunism. I was switching over because I caught wind that mattel had a guilty.

I can't really do much more than that. What proof is there that triton saw mattel's 'crumb? Only his flip. Before that, he could have been lying. There's zero way to prove it one way or the other, so you have no choice but to take my word on it, just as you took his word on it. There's no way to prove I saw the 'crumb except for my flip, but unfortunately, my flip in lylo would be a scum win.

-

"Why didn't you push stronger?"

I've touched upon this in the above and elsewhere: how COULD I? The entirety of my reason for thinking Jason was scum was that mattel had a guilty on him. I had nothing else against him. He looked town to me, his posts throughout day one and two resonated fairly well with me. I couldn't lie, now, could I? A lie as town is more devastating to the town than pretty much anything else I could do. If I lied about my reason for thinking Jason was scum, the result would be sabotage of the Jason wagon. Nor could I tell the truth, either. Not without exposing mattel. He ended up exposing himself, yes, but I wanted to prevent that.

-

"Okay, but why didn't you do more than you did?"

I did as much as I could. I continued scumhunting and tried to draw attention away from mattel and onto myself. Know how? Because I treated Jason-as-scum as being an absolute. I started hunting his scumbuddy. Basically, I tried copying mattel's approach, to help mattel to blend in. Note how I was hunting Lucky and hunting triton. Note how I listed mattel as town, along with enomis. Note how I was scumhunting off of that. That's the best I could do.

What would

you

have done? Claiming to be the cop yourself wouldn't be possible, both because votes don't support it and because mattel wouldn't be likely to pick up on the fact that you were gambiting. Invent some BS? Only slows the wagon on Jason down, because BS is BS, be it from town or from scum, and reeks equally as either alignment, deterring people from voting Jason. Flat-out tell mattel to claim? And then, with the doc dead, any chance of mattel getting a second result is lost.

I did everything within my power that I possibly could to lynch Jason while protecting mattel. Tell me I'm wrong, that I could have done more. Because I'd love to know how; I'm just as stumped now as I was at the time.

In short, enomis's point that I did nothing doesn't hold water; I did literally everything I could.

[mastin2]

That's part 2/3, which I think answers just about everything from day two, unless I'm missing anything.

[mastin2]

Mastin, I'd like to see part 3 before I comment any further.

Can it wait 'til Monday?

It's going to be long, and now I need to address enomis in addition to that, and a LOT of my time has been eaten up already, and I have to terminate my time on MS.net early on Fridays for personal reasons, and am busy on weekends (in particular,

this

weekend; I have a promise to keep and MS.net is a distraction I cannot afford to have in order to uphold it).

[mastin2]

I'm here, it's just that it's taking me longer to type than I anticipated.

When I said I had a

lot

, I meant I had a

lot

. It's going to be long by necessity.

[mastin2]

You writing a book or what? hehe

Only a novella.

But seriously, still working on it, yet have to ask:

You haven't already made up your mind, have you?

That is, it's not a situation where I'll post it, you'll read/skim it, go, "Oh, that's nice", and type "Vote: Mastin", are you?

If you are, I'd rather not bother finishing the wall; it's a lot of effort to be wasted if you're 90+% sure it's me, since as skilled a debater I am, my wall's likely not the type to cause a total reversal in a read.

[mastin2]

I just realised i never did get to part 2 of mastin argument. I will get into them tomorrow.

Good Night.

I'll wait to finish my wall 'til after you do so. For two reasons, mainly. (1) Neatness, to get it all done at once, which helps to cut out the repetition. (In theory, anyway. ) But mostly... (2) I'm dead tired* from having struggled to meet a deadline I had (not mafia-related).

*Mostly my fault, for cumulative sleep deprivation. There's only so many nights that the body can take having half its normal amount of sleep.

[mastin2]

.... Linxie just hammer. Mastin is never gonna post his wall.

Yes I am. In two hours (well, probably four, given how long it takes me to type flavor... ), I'll have zero obligations other than right here. That's plenty of time to finish the wall up, especially given a Monday deadline. That will give Linxie plenty of time to read.

That said, obviously, if he's 80% towards lynching you, of course I'd prefer him to hammer ya; less work for me. All my wall would do is close the gap and make 80% become something like 98%.

[mastin2]

And 15hours later...

Technically, I said I was beginning to work on it after those hours were over. Which was true.

And Linxie was right in one way--I

was

stalling, but not for time: for Linxie to come in and give me as many hints as I could get on how to best sway him, as detailed in the scum QT. Stalling for time is stupid when I'm going to be the one lynched. Stalling for time is only a valid strategy when you are

not

being lynched.

The truth is that I fell asleep (again from exhaustion) before I could get it started, but was coming to this thread today in order to work on it. (I was serious when I said I had no other obligation, but I didn't say it'd be posted Friday. Just that I was beginning to work on it then, and

that

was true; if you read the timestamps in the mafia QT, you'll see that every time I claimed I was working on it, I WAS...via my detailed descriptions on how to best manipulate Linxie.)

Anyway, writeups in a bit.

[mastin2]

WTF. Why is the scum qt filled with mastin walls. I don't even want to read it. Mastin, what you doing with the scum qt?

Teaching. Ranting. Rambling. Strategizing. Take your pick.

They're good reads for the most part, though. While I

was

incredibly

manipulative with my posts in-thread, you can see a lot of the true thoughts in the scum QT, and get an insight into my mind, and why I did what I did, along with nuggets of wisdom for newbies, some of which will be in my writeup.

And, triton, were you serious in that had I not killed you, you'd have voted with me? I picked up a comment of you lynching the survivor of Linxie/enomis, which'd mean you'd have sided with me. I killed you specifically because I thought that you'd stick to your guns and

not

do that.

[mastin2]

As promised, the writeup:

Radiant:

Get your emotions under control, and you can actually be a decent player. This game would have been a complete town steamroll if you had lived and been able to protect mattel, but your "sacrifice" ended up crippling the town.

I have to give credit where credit is due: you managed to correctly single out a scum player, but know that suicide runs will almost never work in your favor--the ONLY reason it worked this game is because there was a cop guilty on Jason. That guilty being absent would have caused you to be totally ignored, and allowed Jason to get away completely and totally unharmed.

What you need to do in order to make sure your target gets lynched is not to lynch yourself, but to be a little manipulative. I don't mean "play PR like you'd play scum" manipulative, but what I mean is generally, you need to
-Keep calm.
-Keep yourself rational. Logical's a bonus, too.
-Bargain with players.
-Talk to them.
-Which, boiled down, is basically using charisma.

You need to try and get your scumread lynched

first

, not yourself. There

is

value in letting yourself be lynched to cast suspicion onto a strong scumread of yours, but it's basically a last-resort, and you never want to self-hammer. You cut discussion of the day short with your self-hammer, discussion time which could have been used to
-Talk your way out of a lynch,
-Give more reasons why Jason was scum,
-Give you more chances to talk with other players and--critically--what their reads would be after your townflip,
-And, basically, to do the bartering you tried to do after you had self-hammered.

You need to recognize that most players on the site won't so much as glance the iso of lynched town, least of all, self-hammering lynched town. :P In order for the sacrifice to be worth it, you need to make them think that--despite being lynched--you were on to something.

In essence...you had the right idea (that you can get your reads applied after your death), but the wrong execution.

For instance, at L-1, if you claimed doctor, you'd have instantly held leverage over others. You could have exploited that. You could have maximized your towncred from it, and made those on your wagon (both scum were present!) look like scum. But your self-hammer removed that.

Also, you might want to tweak your logic. Town players (even veteran ones) will see other town players as scum, since townies say scummy stuff. It's

generally

a safe assumption that a near-lynch wagon on you contains scum, but it's far from assured.

I'd instead recommend that you look into the mind-set of the players voting you. Why was I voting you? (Well, 'cause I was scum and needed a lynch. :P But you'd have to consider why I was on there.) Why was Lucky on there? (He had a scumread.) Why was triton on there? If you can get into the mind of the player, you can get a better grounding.

Basically, Jason was scum on your wagon, but not "because he-as-town would know better". A more accurate version would be "his logic for thinking I'm scum is weak and inconsistent, and I think he's scum wanting a mislynch" or something to that effect. (If you look, Jason's posts involving you waffled a lot. There's town waffling, and scum waffling, generally boiling down to that same concept: mindset. Town-waffling is fueled by self-doubt and paranoia. Scum-waffling is fueled by opportunism. Compare Lucky's posts with you to Jason's. Lucky's have doubt, Jason's have a more sudden switch.)

Sorry that I don't have more concrete advice, since, well...you died early. I can give you some pointers, but I didn't get a solid chance to nail down your posting.

Nul:

There's a reason we killed you N1, and that's because you're a damn-strong player as you are. :P

You were being logical, rational, and (a biggie) you were looking at interactions between players. As scum, this is something that I fear more than almost anything else; having the wrong interaction with a player can make the difference between victory and defeat, if a player's looking at interactions, which you were.

I do have one piece of advice: there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance. Confidence is having the facts on your side and displaying them with energy. Arrogance is assuming your viewpoint is infallible and that there's no way you could be wrong. :P

Basically, my golden rule: the reads should fit the evidence, and the evidence shouldn't fit the reads. You displayed some minor confirmation bias with Lucky, and basically the entirety of your iso was devoted to him being scum, when ultimately, he wasn't. This had an incredibly damaging effect on your reads, because you were actually dangerously close to getting things right.

Had you stepped back from things, re-evaluated them, and considered things, you stood a real chance of catching us. (Hence, why you died. :P) You were right on your townread of Radiant, but you were focused so strongly on Lucky that it made it much easier for Jason and I to escape your scrutiny. You had an FoS against me, which was pretty much entirely forgotten, and the reason is people would skim your iso and think, "Oh, it's all saying the same thing, that Lucky is scum; there's not much else to see", when there

was

.

Essentially, you need to use your attacks in moderation, and be a little more open to alternative points of view.

Jason:

Again, sorry for the bus, mate. :P It was, in hindsight, a big freakin' huge mistake, butyeah, I think you played excellently overall. Pretty much the only piece of advice I have is that if you're going to 'crumb being a cop, make sure you're 'crumbing harder than the

actual cop

. :P
And I guess also watch the wifom after your lynch. I didn't need that--I knew mattel was the cop, so didn't need you to draw him out. Your wifom actually helped triton more than it helped me, giving him ammo to make himself appear town.

mattel:

What can I say, you played well. You were two-for-two investigation-wise. Okay, I guess I do have pieces of advice:
-If you're going to claim cop, claim cop. If you're going to leave breadcrumbs that you're a cop, make them subtle breadcrumbs to you being the cop. Don't try to take a middle ground where you're blatantly obvious to the scum as being a cop, but not to the town. :P As you could tell, that gave me a fair bit of ammo to use in my defense and attacks, because I was able to position myself favorably thanks to the way you had claimed.

If you had actually claimed cop, my switch to Jason would have been seen as null, if not scummy. Or if you had 'crumbed more subtly so that I couldn't tell you were a cop, you could have positioned yourself far more favorably, where you could have, say, dodged the nightkill and in lylo spring a double-guilty, along with all your breadcrumbs to show you had it.

-We have a rule against talking to players outside the thread. Even when one player is dead. It can still end up compromising games, and it's not something allowed without explicit moderator permission to do so, and most moderators will tell you not to; it's a site-wide rule.

Lucky2u:

I'm not really that qualified to tell you how to improve. I didn't really have much suspicion on you in the game. Most of the "suspicion" on you came from the things Nul pointed out, in combination with how Jason interacted with ya. If I was town, I suppose it's possible I'd have paranoia about you being scum at some points, but I most likely as town would have had you as a townread. :P So I can't really point out much for your improvement.

I guess I think one of the main things is focus--you're, ah...kinda chaotic and unorganized with your posting. While there

is

a certain value in "stream of consciousness" posting (in that it helps make your thoughts look genuine), it often has the unfortunate side-effect of making you be a much harder to follow.

Essentially, some level of editing in your posting process would probably help you. If you can minimize your fluff and increase your focus, you'll be able to better hone in on key points.

Basically, my advice to you is opposite my advice to Nul--whereas Nul needs to look at things a little more generally, you could probably benefit from looking at things a little more specifically. I think one thing leading to your mislynch was that your posts didn't have a lot of staying power. They didn't have much of an influence.

So, I think that if you manage to assemble your thoughts and structure them in a way others can more clearly follow, you'll be able to make a stronger impact.

Among those things being not allowing yourself to get distracted on the defensive front. There's value to defending yourself (especially in lylo--see also, why I lost this game :P), but it should be done INCREDIBLY conservatively. You don't want to ignore a player, but you don't want to spend all your time defending yourself from them.

I can sum this up with one piece of advice: redirection. You want to address the concerns of those who are suspicious of you, while also showing where you stand. It's similar to the advice I gave Radiant in that regard: talk to them, see where they stand, and see if you can compromise and get to a common ground.

Triton:

Not really much to say to ya, buddy. You played well, and are already a fairly good scumhunter. I do think you could use a tweak in your technique, though. Your case against me on D3 was essentially "gut plus OMGUS" (later added "Mastin lied!", though as I pointed out, it wasn't a willful lie; I truthfully just misremembered). While gut

is

a valuable tool (and was correct), you can't rely on it. If you made that argument in a game with more experienced players, they'd be likely to ignore you or even lynch you.

What you really needed to do is explore

why

you had that gut feeling I was scum. I touched upon the subject in the mafia QT, but generally, gut and logic are far closer related than people think; there's typically a damn-good reason your instincts tell you something, and you'll be a much, MUCH better scumhunter if you can hone in on exactly what that is.

Also, don't use logical fallacies you know to be incorrect. :P There's a difference between "investigating why you have a gut feeling" and "BS'ing a justification for the gut feeling". :P In particular, 653 was pretty dang bad, and you should know it. STATIC reads are generally considered to be far more of a scumtell than EVOLVING reads, which are generally far more town in appearance. A much better argument to make is the REASONS I switched to those players in the 500 posts, which would be a much better basis because my switches were heavily opportunistic in nature.

That

argument would have been valid; vote switching itself is not.

Also also, you suck at reading emotions. :P As scum, I'm never more calm than during times when most scum are panicking. When things go WELL for me-as-scum, I panic. When things go POORLY for me-as-scum, I'm relaxed. Calm, cool, collected, though a bit excited and later totally enthralled in the game. (I meant it; I got an adrenaline rush every time I entered battle with you.)

Another piece of advice I have is to try and talk more to others. You were talking basically to thin air in the majority of your posts. You did make some remarks specifically to enomis, lucky, and linxie, but not nearly enough. Your approach to battling me gave enomis a way to read our fight as townVtown, something I WAS exploiting. (I knew that if I couldn't get you lynched, I could at least make damn-sure that I wasn't lynched because of you. Having our fight perceived as townVtown was one way of accomplishing that, and it worked; instead of the game ending with my lynch, the town mislynched Lucky.)

enomis:

A good call to make in lylo, but your handling of it was rather reckless. This is one instance where thinking like scum would have been helpful. Going into the day, I was something like 55/45 or 60/40 on who I was planning to attack, in LINXIE's favor. Imagine if Linxie and I had crossvoted and you were as sure as you were that I was scum. BAM, instant town win. Instead, you jumping in and carelessly voting me helped to extend the battle and give me quite-justified leverage against you, especially since Linxie came into the day with a scumread on me and you voting me is exactly what a scum-enomis would have done given Linxie's read on me.

Overall, your approach to the game was good! You were cautious, you were logical, and you were rational. But in lylo, you threw that all out in favor of a reckless gambit. It paid off this game, but if you acted like that in most lylo games, it'd end very badly for you. So my one piece of advice would be to maintain your (quite solid!) approach throughout the game. The inconsistency gave me ammo, after all, to use against ya.

Linxie:

You have a good gut. Trust in it a little bit more is about all I can say. My advice to triton using his gut applies to you as well; you may have a good gut, but when you're not the deciding vote as you were this game, that gut of yours won't do much to convince other players that you're right.

So, like with triton, my advice is to try and figure out

why

you have the gut read you do. Don't invent explanations for it. Try to figure out and rationalize what could be causing your read, and then do a mental evaluation of what you've found. First off, ask yourself: "Is that really the reason I have this gut read, or am I just BS'ing myself?" If the former, proceed to this: "Does it have merit to it?" And if so, "How strong is it?" And such. If not, evaluate your gut: is it wrong (and if so, evaluate why--it is often confirmation bias), or is it just that what you thought was the reason you have it, not actually the reason you have it?

That's why I say that gut and logic are intertwined entities. When in lylo, the final decision is largely gut-based, because there's a lot of logic on both sides, which you evaluate, and then make a final decision on--said final decision is generally not based on what you think, but what you feel. When looking for reads, gut is a strong tool for getting them, but you need logic to hold them.

Ultimately, I see my golden rule as a way of holding them in balance: the reads should fit the evidence, and you shouldn't warp evidence to fit your reads. If your gut is guided by that metric, it'll generally serve you well.


Sorry that I don't have as much to say as I'd like. (Well, I'm

saying

a lot, but I'm not sure how much of this is actually going to

help

is the problem. :P)

[mastin2]

I can sum up my lessons to most of the town in a single word: presentation.

I would recommend that to all of you, in various different ways described in the wall; one of the main reasons this game was as close as it was is because most of the town players didn't present themselves as well as they needed to, whereas both Jason and I have had a

lot

of experience presenting ourselves favorably as both alignments. You don't want to structure yourself so much that your posts look artificial and hollow (that's a quick way to the noose), but you want to make sure that both you AND your reads are looked at favorably.

Basically, one of the main things is talking to specific players and working with them, coordinating not only reads, but also reasons. When you think you have something, present it to your peers and explain why you think it might be something, and evaluate off of their feedback how valid it is. You'll note that one of the main elements of my scum play throughout the entirety of this game is that I was talking with others and trying to work with them (except during parts of D3 where I was intentionally not doing so, in order to promote the "tVt nature" of my fight with triton)--as scum, this is to manipulate them so that they look favorably upon me. But as town, this is just as important a skill to master, because the town is the majority. You need other town players to obtain a lynch. Even if your reads are dead-on, they're worthless if you can't convince your fellow townies that you're right.

There's generally a reason I use phrases like "work with me, here" and the like, and I highly discourage players from antagonizing one another: because the town as a whole works best by working together, and to do so, they need to get that common ground. They need to hold an understanding of one another, and that's a key element of mafia games. (Also a huge reason why meta is so prevalent in the current site meta.) You need to be able to see where a player comes from, and explain where you come from, and be able to get towards a common ground. Mafia is a team game, and you can't fly solo. Not as town, and not even as scum. (It's easier as scum, but I lost this game whereas with Jason alive I probably would have won.) Both sides need to work as a coherent unit in order to win against the other.

If there's one lesson of mine that I'd value more than any other, it'd be that--to recognize that there's a grander element of mafia that extends beyond just yourself, and that you need to think of others.

[mastin2]

Do you know what the most awesome part about being a teacher is?
Sometimes, even

you

learn something new.

In my case, I think I finally understand why--in my case--logic is a scumtell:

It's because of what I mentioned above in my writeup notes about gut. As town, I use the exact methods I'm advocating, because I am a very strongly gut-based player. I can

guess

at the mindset and motives of others and rationalize them, but I can never

know

them until the game is over.

As scum, I'm a good enough player to have developed a pseudogut. Which means as scum, I can go through that same process of "trying" to rationalize it. But there's an extra element involved: because I already know the alignments of players, I already have a much greater edge over my town self in rationalizing my (pseudo)gut feelings. I might not know the full story (I don't know their role PM or meta), but I have far more information about them than my town-self would have. So, my conclusions become more grounded in reality, and as a result, more logical.

I've been struggling to find the answer to that for years, now; I've always wondered why I-as-scum make stronger arguments than my town-self ever could. And now I know. So as a result of this game, even I can perhaps better understand my own (scum)play and improve as

both

alignments as a result. (Another thing I recommend highly--it's common sense to incorporate successful elements of your townplay into your scumplay, but most people don't realize that incorporating elements of your scumplay into your townplay will make your townplay much stronger, too. My accuracy as a scumhunter increased after I got some scum PMs. My rate of being mislynched dropped dramatically after I got a few scum PMs when I had run a solid streak of town PMs previously. I attribute both to this reason, that I learned some new tricks as scum that saved my ass as town. )

[mastin2]

Love how my mastin advice is tiny compared to everyone else's.

Well, you were the one who needed it the least.

Remember that time when I said you were being manipulative

And you got mad at me

And then you admitted you were being manipulative

Different types of manipulation.

Manipulating a player (what I did) is part of the game. Manipulating a newbie by using logic appealing to a newbie which is entirely wrong to the site meta as a whole when you KNOW better (what I saw you doing) is not.

Actually I have a question to ask mastin. I actually am dumb founded at how you use wifom and how I never hammer lucky to suggest I am 100% scum. I actually really find that argument super scummy and illogical. I would like to know your logic behind the if possible :p

Short answer: It was a scum-motivated argument.

Long answer: The idea behind making the argument that you not-hammering made you scum is that you were going for the long-play, thinking ahead as scum and not getting caught up in the short-term. Scum

should

be planning for lylo, even before day one. If you read the mafia QT, you'd have seen Jason and I both strategizing ahead--not just for Day One, but also for up to day three, before the game had even begun. That's what a smart scum player does: plan for lylo, well before lylo.

The argument, therefore, was basically that you-as-scum passed up on the short-term gain of lynching a town-Lucky, in order to go for the long-term gain of towncred from having not lynched Lucky and not heavily associating yourself with Jason. In other words, planning not only for a 5p lylo situation, but also a hypothetical 3p lylo where Jason gets lynched on D3 or D2 (as he was). So the theory had merit. A smart scum player in your slot would have done something similar, and as I remarked in the scum QT, it's what I

should

have done (not switching from Lucky).

In practice, most scum are too stupid to think that far ahead. If you meet a player like CrashTextDummie, sure, that might work, but against your average scummer, they're going to go for the immediate reward rather than the long-term reward. So while in theory it's a solid argument, in practice it's at-best paranoid town, or in my case (at-worst), scum trying to induce paranoia.
Hence my short answer.

[mastin2]

By the way, Triton, overnight, I made a realization, so you need a new IC lesson:

Remember my advice about the difference between confidence and arrogance? You need that. Desperately. If it were just in-game, you can argue that you just crossed the line a little into arrogance when you meant to be only confidence. But it's not just in the game. Compare your post-game writeup to mine; there's a critical difference:
Yours has an ego attached to it. You might not read into it that tone, but it was present to me when reading it. The first time I read it, I just kinda shrugged it off; there wasn't anything harmful in it as far as I could see.

...But it

did

have that sort-of condescending attitude around it, whether you realized it or not. So it's not just something in-game; it's a problem you're beginning to have out-of-game as well. And trust me...this WILL destroy you. Yes, there are players who have made a living off of being arrogant pricks (Jason [no offense meant, mate ] is probably a good example from this game--there are people worse than him, but you can get an idea of what they're like based off of Jason), who've developed a reputation for their Higher-Than-Thou attitude, but I can tell you here and now...that path is an incredibly destructive one to walk.

While under the current site meta, there are plenty of people who'll allow that attitude to slide, MS.net is slowly,

slowly

moving away from that direction (this is a good thing!) and back in the direction where more, so-to-speak, rational players are having influence. Shouting arrogantly has been a great way to make yourself look better and to take control, but it's slowly losing its favor and is being increasingly condemned. (Not to mention, it has that same short-term/long-term thing attached. In the short-term, strong-arming your way through the game will make you look good. In the long-term, NOT strong-arming your way through the game will make you look good, and the people who had been strongarming lynches get themselves lynched. There's always exceptions, of course, but this IS the general trend in games. So while you'll look good in the early-game, the longer the game goes, the higher your chance is of being lynched, and as either alignment, that's bad.)

You might not think you're going down that path, but all the warning signs are there. Including, mind you, the "I-told-you-so" attitude. Trust me, I've been there. I've done that. My winrate plummeted when I let the power get to my head, and let the arrogance overcome my sense of rationality. It nearly caused me to leave the site because of how much I was harming games I was in. You might not think that you'll be that way, but I can tell you: neither did I, and yet, there I was, destroying games because my arrogance let me refuse to listen to common sense, and I lost games where I could have won.

So, take it from a person with first-hand experience: you need to be humble. You've got a generally-good approach, you've got a generally-good sense of gut. It served you well this game, and your "I-told-you-so" is not unjustified as a result. But trust me. You NEED to be careful. You're not a scumhunting god. You will make mistakes, and they WILL be damaging. The difference between them being minorly-damaging (easily healed; localized screwups--these last AT WORST a game, and at best, less than a single gameday) and majorly-damaging is often whether you recognize that the mistakes are your doing.

This is particularly true if you want to take up teaching. You've clearly got enough experience to IC, and I picked up the vibe that you might be doing so soon. But notice my approach? It's generally close to the approach most successful ICs will take. Whatever attitude they displayed in game, when it comes to the post-game, they instantly change their tune and go into teaching mode--not lecturing. Teaching. What each player did well and what they can improve on, along with a detailed map of your own actions in the game and an explanation for why YOU did what you did. (Particularly important for a scum IC, but just as important to do as a town IC.)

Your post-game notes whether you meant them to be or not sound more like a lecture than a teach. They're more of a chastisement than an effort to make players better. I'm fairly certain that was not your intent. But that's what they came across as--and as I said...you don't want that. Not as a player, and certainly not as a teacher. Which, again, is why I advocate being humble. There's a fine line between being humble and being doubtful (just as there's a fine line between being confident and being arrogant), but given the choice, I'll choose to be seen as doubtful over being seen as arrogant. Try to find that balance, triton, because right now...you don't have it. You'll be fine in the short-term if you don't change anything, but trust me, it WILL destroy you in the long-term. Especially as the site meta continues to shift against that style of play.

So, stop the arrogance now when it's still small, before it gets out-of-hand and becomes far worse.

[mastin2]

Fully agreed, triton! It was a blast to be in.

Speaking of this game, what I wrote here was inspired by this game, and it might be worth reading if you want more than what I gave in my IC teachings.

[mastin2]

If I have to listen to a mastin wall then RC should have to listen to one too

For the record, I could try, but generally, when it's clear that I'm talking to a wall, it's wasted effort. I can help a player improve, but for me to help, they have to

want

to improve. And I got the distinct impression that Radiant was as clear as day about rejecting my feedback. I was like that for a time, too, and in Radiant's case, the best teaching will be experience, as it was with me.

When I was in my MS youth back in early 2009, I carried with me a similar "screw you guys, I'll do things my way" attitude. I received multiple warnings from people about the path I was going down, even from some people who had been down that same path, and was told, bluntly, by them, "Mastin, I know you don't believe me, but the path you're walking is not a good one. I've been there, and it's not a good place to be." But, in my arrogance, I refused to listen, shrugged it off, and their words of wisdom were lost on me.

It was only through experiencing the horror of my actions repeatedly that I learned to repent. And if Radiant's like that, only Radiant can help Radiant. The best teacher of all is that harsh experience, and as the backlash against Radiant builds, Radiant will see where things went wrong. And then.

Then

I can teach Radiant. But again, for me to teach, I need to be speaking to someone who is listening, and Radiant is not.

Right now, Radiant is arrogantly assuming it's the town's fault for mislynching him. But the town is made up of a majority, and he is a single player. I strongly advocate for a 50/50 spread in blame, regardless of how true or how not-true that number is, just for the sake of admitting that it's not entirely their fault nor your fault, and that BOTH involved could do better. But again, that lesson falling on deaf ears is not worth giving.