Newbie 1449: Return of the Van [Game Over!]

[fferyllt]

Scum-paranoia is a thing. You'd be amazed at all the stuff I find to be paranoid about when I'm scum. :/

My post wasn't a trap, and I thought Grim's question was a good one, and that he was mostly trying to figure me out.

I felt like the game was basically missing an IC at that point. I posted a lot more general strategy and tactics info than I usually do, though I tend to get a little pedantic in newbie games.

The comments about me being a waller amused me until I ISO'd myself. I have a longstanding reputation as a somewhat terse player. I've been doing more quotestripe cases recently, though, and even if my own content is pretty short about each quote, the post itself becomes pretty long. I prefer to play mafia in conversational mode rather than leaving a long reply for people to go through piece by piece a day or two later, but I've adjusted somewhat to MS realities.

[Nobody Special]

I'll also say that with less than 2 days to deadline, I feel like if NS is scum he could be waiting it out before posting (and maybe fake-claiming) so that town doesn't have a lot of time to consider what to do.

Also, let me tell you right now: Nobody Special lurks.
I guess his quest as an IC is to make people familiar with the concept of a lurker. Not perfectly sure how that is helpful, but that's what you'll be getting. His promise of catching up "in the late afternoon" and then dissappearing for a couple of days is perfectly normal behavior in his case and a null-tell. Good luck figuring that one out but when you find yourself at a loss of clear scumreads it's Always a good idea to put your vote behind his name.

Even as scum, I can be very paranoid. These two posts for instance.. I read it and thought that it was a trap. Tell me, was it really you giving your opinion or did you post that with the intention to see how people would react to it.

I can't speak much to ffery's post, but Grim's is spot-on. I do lurk. I try really hard not to lurk as an IC, because that's just bad (which is why I mostly don't IC anymore). But this game, circumstances, etc. so I wasn't at all a beneficial town player.

[fferyllt]

Yeah but hayato's counterclaims did NOT match his in-thread play. And WDO's did. That's a huge hell-no to me because especially newbscum don't usually set up a fake claim well from the start of the game, and also aren't that great at

picking through their earlier stances to piece togather a narrative after the fact

.

But I was doing just that. I realized that I have failed to provide suspicions towards you on D2. So, I pretended to have fabricated suspicion towards you. So, basically, I faked being a cop, who "had an 'innocent' investigation on you and was forced to provide suspicions when you promted me to do so in order to survive the day".

You left no crumb about me though. I'm probably not the best person to give lessons on crumbing, but a cop needs to leave something unambiguous but subtle about their investigations. Something that scum will miss but will be obvious to town after the fact if you die without claiming or if you claim and town have counterclaims to sort.

In some games, multiple town players will leave what could be an investigation crumb in an early post each game day. scum have to decide who is faking them out and which crumb is real.

[fferyllt]

Scum-paranoia is a thing. You'd be amazed at all the stuff I find to be paranoid about when I'm scum. :/

My post wasn't a trap, and I thought Grim's question was a good one, and that he was mostly trying to figure me out.

I felt like the game was basically missing an IC at that point. I posted a lot more general strategy and tactics info than I usually do, though I tend to get a little pedantic in newbie games.

The comments about me being a waller amused me until I ISO'd myself. I have a longstanding reputation as a somewhat terse player. I've been doing more quotestripe cases recently, though, and even if my own content is pretty short about each quote, the post itself becomes pretty long. I prefer to play mafia in conversational mode rather than leaving a long reply for people to go through piece by piece a day or two later, but I've adjusted somewhat to MS realities.

I skimmed over Grim's post. I thought it was his Plan B post you were talking about.

Now I'm not sure why you thought that could be a trap.

[hayatoBL]

You left no crumb about me though. I'm probably not the best person to give lessons on crumbing, but a cop needs to leave something unambiguous but subtle about their investigations. Something that scum will miss but will be

obvious to town after the fact if you die without claiming

or if you claim and town have counterclaims to sort.

Hmm...what kind of crumb could serve as that? How would you have done that, fferyllt?

Grim has taught me his soft-claims. But that can only work if he is alive to point to those soft-claims.

[hayatoBL]

Scum-paranoia is a thing. You'd be amazed at all the stuff I find to be paranoid about when I'm scum. :/

My post wasn't a trap, and I thought Grim's question was a good one, and that he was mostly trying to figure me out.

I felt like the game was basically missing an IC at that point. I posted a lot more general strategy and tactics info than I usually do, though I tend to get a little pedantic in newbie games.

The comments about me being a waller amused me until I ISO'd myself. I have a longstanding reputation as a somewhat terse player. I've been doing more quotestripe cases recently, though, and even if my own content is pretty short about each quote, the post itself becomes pretty long. I prefer to play mafia in conversational mode rather than leaving a long reply for people to go through piece by piece a day or two later, but I've adjusted somewhat to MS realities.

I skimmed over Grim's post. I thought it was his Plan B post you were talking about.

Now I'm not sure why you thought that could be a trap.

Because it felt like he's observing whether Scum would react to that. Maybe If I were to vote for NS directly after he said that, he would point me as scum.

No it's earlier than that. Early D2 I think.

[fferyllt]

You left no crumb about me though. I'm probably not the best person to give lessons on crumbing, but a cop needs to leave something unambiguous but subtle about their investigations. Something that scum will miss but will be

obvious to town after the fact if you die without claiming

or if you claim and town have counterclaims to sort.

Hmm...what kind of crumb could serve as that? How would you have done that, fferyllt?

Grim has taught me his soft-claims. But that can only work if he is alive to point to those soft-claims.

As cop, my strategy is to claim immediately and out my results if I get a guilty. My shelf life in most games doesn't extend past day 1 or 2, unfortunately. If I get an innocent, my reads list will reflect that. I may or may not post something else indicative in my first or second post.

If I'm another sort of investigator I usually don't have enough info to unambiguously say town or scum, but if I get a result that is incriminating (say I track a player to a corpse one night) I have never let the next game day end without claiming.

As far as soft-claiming goes, I don't follow site meta, I guess. I learned mafia in an environment where people didn't crumb their roles, and where players developed skills at reading PR tells rather than looking for crumbs. I'll crumb results, but hardly ever crumb my role. I hydra a lot, and my hydra partners often drop role crumbs even when I don't. I should make a new years resolution to crumb more.

[hayatoBL]

hey, thanks for the lessons. I'm playing with you in the next Normal game. I hope I'm town in that game. Played scum two times in a row. Playing as scum is damn tiring. Not only you have to "scum-hunt", you also have to becareful with what you say.

[Grimgroove]

It was coming from a guy who speed-voted himself with an air of arrogance of knowing the setup.

Enjoying your vindication?

[SafetyDance]

No, I was wrong. But seeing as you couldn't (still can't) come up with anything worthwhile to the points I made, I don't really feel terrible about it. It takes two to tango after all.

[SafetyDance]

Yeah but hayato's counterclaims did NOT match his in-thread play. And WDO's did. That's a huge hell-no to me because especially newbscum don't usually set up a fake claim well from the start of the game, and also aren't that great at picking through their earlier stances to piece togather a narrative after the fact.

Why? He did ignore your slot after all which you yourself mentioned. WBO's play matched up to his previous stuff even after he claimed, in short he was only consistent in averageness, I mean it helped that his n1 investigation died, that was amazingly convenient and he didn't change or start trying to press/sound convincing after the fact.

You left no crumb about me though. I'm probably not the best person to give lessons on crumbing, but a cop needs to leave something unambiguous but subtle about their investigations. Something that scum will miss but will be obvious to town after the fact if you die without claiming or if you claim and town have counterclaims to sort.

In some games, multiple town players will leave what could be an investigation crumb in an early post each game day. scum have to decide who is faking them out and which crumb is real.

As I said in game, what crumbs did WBO leave as well? He came in late Day 2, there was nothing in his early posts even mentioning Zipper at least...

[fferyllt]

Yeah but hayato's counterclaims did NOT match his in-thread play. And WDO's did. That's a huge hell-no to me because especially newbscum don't usually set up a fake claim well from the start of the game, and also aren't that great at picking through their earlier stances to piece togather a narrative after the fact.

Why? He did ignore your slot after all which you yourself mentioned. WBO's play matched up to his previous stuff even after he claimed, in short he was only consistent in averageness, I mean it helped that his n1 investigation died, that was amazingly convenient and he didn't change or start trying to press/sound convincing after the fact.

You left no crumb about me though. I'm probably not the best person to give lessons on crumbing, but a cop needs to leave something unambiguous but subtle about their investigations. Something that scum will miss but will be obvious to town after the fact if you die without claiming or if you claim and town have counterclaims to sort.

In some games, multiple town players will leave what could be an investigation crumb in an early post each game day. scum have to decide who is faking them out and which crumb is real.

As I said in game, what crumbs did WBO leave as well? He came in late Day 2, there was nothing in his early posts even mentioning Zipper at least...

Two points:

- He came off much more newb in this game than hayato did. My expectations of his play reflected that.

- Why in hell would a cop crumb a result on a player who died? It's useless to the game state and could alert scum on the lookout for PRs.

With hayato there was a constellation of behaviors that I pointed up on day 2 and that should have been taken into account when he used my fosing him for not suspecting me as evidence of his cop result.

Anyway, you play the game with the skills you've got and the evidence you can collect.

I thought all three new players did well at lylo. lylo is tense as hell. And the mafia QT was a very interesting read. Those two put a lot of thought into their kills and into their plans for the next day. That really impressed me.

10/10 would play again.

[Grimgroove]

Trisiana and Hayato both played well, especially during the first two days, but normally would have ruined it for themselves during Day 3.

Hayato's counter-claim was too sloppy. The narrative of "pretending to suspect someone" is just nonsense and shouldn't have held up, no matter how arrogant I am.

Trisiana's claim was not bad, but could have gotten him into trouble. Claiming a VT in his place would have been a better choice I think. If WBO would have died during Night 3 suspicion would definitely have been cast on Trisiana for that, but keeping WBO alive was not an option either.

[Trisania]

@fferyllt:
Thanks for the compliment!

@Grim:
I knew that too, but if hayato had been lynched D3, I would have opted to keep WBO alive. I'd kill you instead, because at least WBO suspects SD.

[Grimgroove]

That would have been a mistake, because WBO would have an objective check-result enabling him to make the correct decision + be safe in Safety Dance's eyes, making you a sure-fire lynch.

[Grimgroove]

Your best option would have been in that case to kill WBO after all and state you were blocked by the roleblocker (that doesn't exist, but what does town know).

[hayatoBL]

@fferyllt:
Thanks for the compliment!

@Grim:
I knew that too, but if hayato had been lynched D3, I would have opted to keep WBO alive. I'd kill you instead, because at least WBO suspects SD.

Trisiana and Hayato both played well, especially during the first two days, but normally would have ruined it for themselves during Day 3.

Hayato's counter-claim was too sloppy. The narrative of "pretending to suspect someone" is just nonsense and shouldn't have held up, no matter how arrogant I am.

Trisiana's claim was not bad, but could have gotten him into trouble. Claiming a VT in his place would have been a better choice I think. If WBO would have died during Night 3 suspicion would definitely have been cast on Trisiana for that, but keeping WBO alive was not an option either.

I agree with you Grim. I knew it was sloppy before I posted it. But I don't think not fake-claiming would make our situation better. If I didn't fake-claimed, then Tris and I would be conf-scum in SD's eyes. Now, that is ALOT worse then only me being conf-scum in WBO eyes. SD is much more experienced than WBO. If he knows for a fact, that Tris and I were scum, then who knows what he would have done to get us lynched.

So, whether to fake-claim or not to fake-claim was out of the question. The only question was, as which PR should I fake-claim and who should I target? I have thought ALOT about that. And none other makes more sense than the one fake-claim that I have presented. What would you have done in my position, Grim?

[Trisania]

Since WBO claimed, there was no other move but to fake-claim a non-existent Doc. And since hayato told me he can't claim the role because of how he questioned Grim with it, I knew I had to be the one to do it.

It was painful waiting for that one anti-town vote by another town.

[fferyllt]

Yeah but hayato's counterclaims did NOT match his in-thread play. And WDO's did. That's a huge hell-no to me because especially newbscum don't usually set up a fake claim well from the start of the game, and also aren't that great at picking through their earlier stances to piece togather a narrative after the fact.

Why? He did ignore your slot after all which you yourself mentioned. WBO's play matched up to his previous stuff even after he claimed, in short he was only consistent in averageness, I mean it helped that his n1 investigation died, that was amazingly convenient and he didn't change or start trying to press/sound convincing after the fact.

You left no crumb about me though. I'm probably not the best person to give lessons on crumbing, but a cop needs to leave something unambiguous but subtle about their investigations. Something that scum will miss but will be obvious to town after the fact if you die without claiming or if you claim and town have counterclaims to sort.

In some games, multiple town players will leave what could be an investigation crumb in an early post each game day. scum have to decide who is faking them out and which crumb is real.

As I said in game, what crumbs did WBO leave as well? He came in late Day 2, there was nothing in his early posts even mentioning Zipper at least...

Two points:

- He came off much more newb in this game than hayato did. My expectations of his play reflected that.

- Why in hell would a cop crumb a result on a player who died? It's useless to the game state and could alert scum on the lookout for PRs.

With hayato there was a constellation of behaviors that I pointed up on day 2 and that should have been taken into account when he used my fosing him for not suspecting me as evidence of his cop result.

Anyway, you play the game with the skills you've got and the evidence you can collect.

I thought all three new players did well at lylo. lylo is tense as hell. And the mafia QT was a very interesting read. Those two put a lot of thought into their kills and into their plans for the next day. That really impressed me.

10/10 would play again.

There was something I meant to add to this reply and forgot. If scum can't find a PR on day 1 (and it can be difficult in the setups where there is only one PR), the next best target is someone you think a PR may investigate, because you can hopefully cut down on the rising tide of cleared/semi-cleared town that way.

I didn't see that as part of their strategy for targeting Zipper in the QT, but it was an unintended benefit and something to actively think about in future games where they draw scum.

[hayatoBL]

There was something I meant to add to this reply and forgot. If scum can't find a PR on day 1 (and it can be difficult in the setups where there is only one PR), the next best target is someone you think a PR may investigate, because you can hopefully cut down on the rising tide of cleared/semi-cleared town that way.

I didn't see that as part of their strategy for targeting Zipper in the QT, but it was an unintended benefit and something to actively think about in future games where they draw scum.

I understand the why, but I don't get the how. Why kill someone who may be investigated? To kill conf town before the next day, thus render the cop's investigation useless. I get it.

But how do we do that? Isn't the target of an investigation the preference of the investigator? To know who would be targetted by the cop, we need to know who the cop first. WBO-cop would investigate ZF on D1. But TCGW-cop would perhaps investigate Cervantes.

[hayatoBL]

But seeing that WBO investigated ZF on D1, scum was really lucky to kill ZF.

Otherwise, scum would have three conftown on D3.

[fferyllt]

There was something I meant to add to this reply and forgot. If scum can't find a PR on day 1 (and it can be difficult in the setups where there is only one PR), the next best target is someone you think a PR may investigate, because you can hopefully cut down on the rising tide of cleared/semi-cleared town that way.

I didn't see that as part of their strategy for targeting Zipper in the QT, but it was an unintended benefit and something to actively think about in future games where they draw scum.

I understand the why, but I don't get the how. Why kill someone who may be investigated? To kill conf town before the next day, thus render the cop's investigation useless. I get it.

But how do we do that? Isn't the target of an investigation the preference of the investigator? To know who would be targetted by the cop, we need to know who the cop first. WBO-cop would investigate ZF on D1. But TCGW-cop would perhaps investigate Cervantes.

If you don't have a clue might be cop, tracker or JK (the three roles likely to find scum outright, or clear/partially clear town) then all you can do is think about who a generic PR would find suspicious. And you also want to think who a generic PR would find worth protecting. I noticed in the QT that you guys thought I was doc because in my final sentence about who to JK/doc I was thinking only about protecting, not blocking. That's because unless I have a really strong scum read (and sometimes not even then), I treat the JK role as a protect until I'm down to about 6 players to choose from. Somewhere around 8 or 9 players, I start to think in the "asset if town, dangerous if scum" zone.

As town, I like the JK role a lot better than a pure roleblocker.

[Mina]

Goodbye.