NY 174: Oldy Mafia 2 (Game Over)

[mathcam]

Chill, ABR. I know it's annoying, but can we just wait for MBL to claim before we lynch me?

[mathcam]

I'd rather keep MBL and assume he'll be back in a couple of days once he remember to check the site than start the replacement process, even if it takes a few more days.

In any case, I think it's time to move on. Obviously this is contingent on MBL's claim (and this discussion could therefore affect this), but my curiosity was piqued when I couldn't conclude who the vig was based off the two extra nightkills. There were people I thought might

plausibly

have committed one of the two vig-kills, but no one seemed likely to have done both. ABR was the closest, but he's claimed town. And in particular, I don't see a pro-town MBL offing GC last night. I'm therefore suspicious that our second kill is not a vig slot, but a mafia power role. This also fits my notion of balance for the game -- 5 out of 22 is about right for a completely vanilla (do people use the word "mountainous" any more?) game, but we've got 3 masons and a vanilla cop on our side. It does not seem implausible to me that scum might have a tad extra power as well.

(In fact, now that I've brought this up, I've become a little paranoid that it's still

possible

that there's 4 scum remaining, especially if they're vanilla, which would put us in lynch or lose...please be careful with getting bandwagons to half-mast).

So I'd like to hear discussion on this theory. And that, undo, is why I thought the reveal was so crucial. If we agree that the extra kills might be coming from scum, this is a potentially huge new source of information for us, and we can go back and use the two extra kills to see if we can deduce which potential mafia might have feared, e.g., GC the most.

The only other option I see is that a pro-town vig thought the massclaim was a bad idea and lied to the town to protect him/her-self. If that's the case, I think you've made a very bad play.

[mathcam]

Gotta say, poro's looking more pro-town than at any point in the game thus far.

Now I'm starting to get paranoid about 4 scum left. You

sure

you want your vote there, undo? If you're sure, fine. If not, it's not like you can't put it back later.

[mathcam]

So do you think MBL is the vig, or do you think townie vig is lying?

[mathcam]

No, no, I wasn't suggesting that there would be 6

and

extra powers. But I think one or the other is not only more than reasonable, it's likely. If we have 5 vanilla scum (even with the possibility of a godfather, which is kind of silly in a game apparently without a true cop), don't you think they're completely underpowered against 17 town, including three masons, a vanilla cop, and a vig? Same question for you, Spyrex.

If we have a vig and they don't want to out themselves, they probably have more shots.

Because their shots have done us so much good thus far? Vigging GC was such a bad call I'm suspicious of the motivations. In any case, back in my day, you didn't lie to the town except in

extreme

circumstances. DGB lying about her role could have totally misfired, and I thought it was a bad play. I think the vig lying now, if that's what's really going on, is a bad play. If we decide that the extra information we get from knowing who the vig is outweights the merits of another vig kill (which have thus far been 2 out of 2 townies), then I don't think it's the vig's call to countermand us. Of course, if no buys the argument, my point is moot, but if there's any merit to what I'm saying, then a pro-town vig is endangering him/her-self, and thus the town, by carrying an increased risk of being lynched for previously lying to the town if/when he/she reveals him/herself.

Scum motivation for the GC kill is obvious, no? There was a wide collection of people who thought him obvtown. This is the same issue I ran in to with CTD/UT -- It's hard to know exactly, since we don't know who the vigkill was, but I didn't see anyone in the game still alive who I thought was so adamantly anti- either of those players to have performed a pro-town vig kill.

[mathcam]

Okay. Due to lack of support, I retract my hypothesis.

Someone else propose something to do next.

[mathcam]

ABR: In the past, you've seemed to find scummy anyone who has even slightly hinted that you might be scum (including, once, voting me because I did not defend you staunchly). How did porochaz managed to escape your wrath?

The scum team is mathcam, VitaminR, and Bookitty.

Are you going for shock value, or do you sincerely believe that's even remotely plausible? Haven't you been pro-BooKitty forlikeever?

[mathcam]

BooKitty: What do you think about chamber's last post?

And what about the fact that an essentially-confirmed vigilante would mean one more townie's arguments we could be sure were town-oriented as we make our last vew lynching decisions?

I'm starting a major re-read. I'll keep you posted.

[mathcam]

Spyrex, you got anything beyond poro-hate? How about a possible scumteam?

[mathcam]

I'm very happy to see that, MBL.

I guess I'd like to ask you for a claim, but apparently these days that means "Claim if you want, or lie to the town if you think that would be better." So at the very least do that.

BooKitty: I see your points, but I'd say it's even more nuanced than that. If there's some possibility that the vig is a scum role (I know I've been shouted down on this, but it's not clear to me why it's so outrageous a suggestion that scum gets a couple of 1-shot kills), then some of that privilege about staying hidden has to go away, at least in a near-lynch-or-lose context. There's also the benefit that if the vig claims and we find the claim plausible, we can make heavy use of the knowledge of one extra fairly certified pro-town voice, not only for the value of not lynching the vig, but also by having increased faith in their suspsicions. It's also true that optimal vig actions, near the end of the game, are occasionally subtle to deduce, and not every vig is up to the task (this in regard to directing vig actions, not our particular claiming situation). But honestly, I guess I'm just most bothered by how cavalier it appears we've become about lying to the town. I'll let it go and end my tangential rant here, but I think it's a bit of a travesty.

I owe you (and me) a comment on VitR: I plan on really looking into him again, but the most lasting impression in my brain right now is the time several dozen pages ago where I remember being convinced that one of VitR-CES were scum, since I couldn't see both of them being town and buddying the way they were. If we can get that out of everyone, then even if we lynch wrong today (and there's three scum left), we may have a chance of picking much more informedly tomorrow.

3. People need to vote now. I recommend ABR, I have a case which he has poorly responded to. People, ie, chamber, spyreX, undo, bookie, vitaminR need to be doing something, whether thats agreeing with me, agreeing with ABR on mathcam or something else, can we get on with it? Hell if you want to pull my case to pieces (SpyreX, Im looking at you) do so.

I share your frustration with the pace -- to me, Day 1s are always a little painful, and it takes me a while to get up the energy to really care about what's going on. But near-lynch-or-lose? Come on, people! This is where the fun's at!

That said, I'm not sure "everyone vote now" is a good idea. I personally would really like people to put forward their candidates for the most-likely 3-person scum team. I think I've asked a couple of people to do this already, and have been summarily ignored. Putting together this list is a very hard thing for scum to do at this point in the game, since they have to make a very careful decision about how many scumbuddies to put in their list.

[mathcam]

I forgot the other major reason to ask for an honest vig claim, indeed a motivating reason for this claim: By claiming now when there's no lynch pressure, you take away the scum's ability to make that claim later, and possibly get the vig lynched. Or if there's an immediate counter-claim, then we get the luxury of debating who's the more likely vig without the pressure of a deadline or near-lynch scenario with 1/3 of the players being scum.

[mathcam]

The masons are not all dead, and have certainly not been infallible (nor consistent) in their reads.

[mathcam]

I've finished a semi-thorough reread. I'd like to hear from MLB first, then I'll spill my guts about my current theories.

[mathcam]

My, aren't you two buddy-buddy!

I think ABR is townish despite his suspicion of me.

Wow! Did you guys set this up overnight? That you were going to retcon an imaginary feud between you two? Look through ABR's page 3 of his posts. The number of times he's declared you 100% unquestionable town is off the charts. He throws you in

one

scumset of three people, at a time when a mafia victory is guaranteed after two wrong lynches, and now you're finding him townish "despite" these suspicions? How forgiving of you!

I'm also not crazy about the snarky comment about ABR coming in and saying he knew CDB was town all along; it doesn't sit right with me because voting for someone less-than-gladly to achieve a lynch (something ABR has done several times) is supposedly what mathcam was doing with those hammers too.

To be fair, you're apparently not a fan of any of my snarky comments. One can only imagine how much you'll like the previous paragraph!

I feel like he just goes with the flow and votes however the majority wants.

Only once a near-deadline consensus has been reached and there's no sense in delaying the inevitable. I think if you look through the logs I've been frequently advocating wagons that were not the town favorite.

I'm at L-2. If I'm the lynch for today, fine, but if you're town, at least let me post my final thoughts before dropping the hammer. I'm hoping MBL shows up soon, but I'll bypass him if necessary.

[mathcam]

Okay, forget MBL -- I'm going to bed and don't want to risk waking up to find I missed my chance. Here's what I've got:

I believe MBL and Spyrex to be town, for reasons I've enunciated previously. Yos once pointed out that I was being too open-minded in accepting remote scum possibilities into consideration, so I'm going to follow my gut and just ignore, for today, the possibility that either of them is scum. undo is town. I will treat myself as town for the sake of the argument below.

This leaves the set {chamber ABR poro VitR Boo} for the remaining scum. After doing a re-read, I believe I can eliminate a small number of pairs from being plausible. My list was Chamber-VitR, poro-ABR, and ABR-VitR, but I am willing to debate these (for discussion's sake, I would also eliminate ABR, poro, and Boo as possible mathcam-scum pairs). Very conveniently, this leaves only four possible three-person scum-teams:

1) {ABR Boo Chamber}
2) {VitR Boo poro}
3) {VitR Boo chamber}
4) {Boo chamber poro}

I went into this post (or at least, the work that went in to this post) sure I was going to vote VitR. But this list of four most likely scumteams leaves little room as to my best choice, as there's only one person on every single such team.

Vote: BooKitty.

It's just hard to imagine too many scumteams without her. Even if I delete the most borderline of the eliminated scumpairs, chamber-VitR, I'm only left with two additional pairings,

5) {chamber VitR poro}
6) {chamber VitR Boo}

one of which still has her on it. And if the scumteam turns out to be {chamber, VitR, poro}, then I'll take pride in my "clique" comment from earlier in the game and hope we can pursue one of them tomorrow. I have a couple of hesitancies with my vote -- one is that chamber is also on 5 out of the 6 teams listed, even though two of chamber's I find less likely. The other is that Boo hasn't done particularly much that's individually scummy, though I've disagreed with her plenty over the course of the game. I thought her "despite" comment about ABR felt a little forced, and is reminiscent of something she did with CES earlier in the game:

I think CES is town. (Yeah, I know he's voting me, which makes him wrong, but it doesn't make him scum.)

It just feels like somewhat awkward buddying. Still, the previous two versions of this post had me very confident about who I was voting for at the end of them (I had one where {ABR, Boo, VitR} was almost certainly scum, before I forgot that I had overlooked eliminating ABR-VitR}). I'm less enthusiastic about my BooKitty vote, but I think it's the town's best play.

undo

: I'm at L-2, and I'm strongly implicating players that are not currently voting for me. If you're interested in hearing this discussion get any airtime, you might want to consider temporarily unvoting. If not, at least I got the message out. I would appreciate your feedback.

ABR/Chamber/VitR/Poro/Boo

: I'm not sure who of you I'm talking to, but to those town among you, you're in the minority of that group, and need to try really hard to distinguish yourself as such.

MBL/Spyrex

: If you guys end up being anti-mathcam, then I can give up and die in peace. Just hurry up about it. Otherwise, I'm awash in a sea of people I'm potentially attacking (and the perentially anti-mathcam undo), and could use some support.

[mathcam]

There's a whole series of posts debating the wiseness of the move, and how legitimate it is to claim townie. I guess I'd rather let you read those and see if you had questions. I think there are several benefits, others thing there are some cons.

[mathcam]

MBL, I think you're intentionally being difficult. And to be honest, it's not clear that indulging you is in the town's best interest -- everyone else answered without a discussion of the repercussions of the claim. It is a mark of my opinion of you as townly that I'm willing to indulge you in this. In any case, I don't think there's anything in this answer you couldn't have read yourself over the last page.

Here are the possible scenarios we're in:
1) The person responsible for the kills is not actually a pro-town vigilante but rather a scum role that has some mechanism for getting extra kills. (Others find this implausible, perhaps correctly. I persist on maintaining it as an option until eliminated).
2) MBL does not claim vigilante, and a pro-town vigilante exists and has chosen to remain hidden.
3) MBL does claim vigilante.

There are slight variations in these scenarios. Your claim will narrow down the state of this ambiguity to some subset of these three situations and their variations, and the direction of the day could be influenced (I think heavily) by your claim. For example, a vigilante claim from you that subsequently went uncontested would have many benefits -- we would have one more pro-town vote to rely on, we have refined information about possible sum teams and partnerships, and we would prevent the potential confusion of a near-deadline vig claim and counterclaim.

And so on. I think it would be wise for me not to detail any more opinions on what would happen with other scenarios until you actually claim.

[mathcam]

I would consider VitaminR (and did, at length, for that matter). My only hesitancy is the possibility of an BooKitty-chamber-{ABR/poro} scumteam. I had BooKitty-chamber as a very slightly unlikely scumpairing, thanks to chamber's occasional mild attacks on Boo, but it still lingers there in my mind as a possibility.

But really, I'd like to process as much information as we have at our disposable as we can, first. Of all the days

not

to speedlynch, this is it.

[mathcam]

If I'm the vig, I really don't want to get NKed tonight for claiming, so I should claim vanilla.

I believe that the merits of having you as a confirmed vig, as outlined above, outweight your inevitable eventual demise. (But I'd maintain you almost certainly shouldn't be killing anyway, and so your role would be just as good a mason, who will die if no other option presents itself. What's the difference between the mafia having one obvious target tonight and having two obvious targets tonight? Why not reap the benefits of your townliness before you go?). From my point of view, there's also the remote possibility that a sumvigmbl (I know, I know, but I like to keep things open) is being put under pressure here to make a difficult decision.

If I'm vanilla, I want to get NKed tonight, so I should claim vig.

What?? No!! We've already got undo as an automatic target for the mafia. And heck, the vig's been doing their work for them -- they might want to keep him/her around! Do not not not not lie to the town because of some perceived benefit to the gaming of the mafia's choices. And what if the real vig counter-claimed right afterwards? Now we have two immediate lynches which we perceive as containing one guaranteed scum which actually loses us the game outright.

Boo, Poro, VitR, undo, Spy, do you guys want me to claim? And do you want me to claim truthfully?

To partially answer your question, Boo has already made it clear she's okay with you as vig lying to the town and claiming vanilla. I obviously disagree, but I now kind of agree it might be informative to see who thinks what.

[mathcam]

I have to agree -- If you're not going to be back until the 10th, then it's going to be at least a few more days on top of that before you get caught up, etc. We're looking at two more weeks. Still, sorry this is happening at an awkward time for your schedule.

In any case, regardless of when you go, I'd like to put in another vote for you weighing in on those two.

[mathcam]

I personally would really like people to put forward their candidates for the most-likely 3-person scum team. I think I've asked a couple of people to do this already, and have been summarily ignored.

Boo, any chance I can get you to indulge me here?

[mathcam]

Boo: Thanks!

I think it's probably best that I don't claim, then. Most of you seem to be fairly confident that I'm town, and thus claiming would have at best marginal benefit. If you disagree, I'm glad to discuss.

Okay.

[mathcam]

Boo: I'm intrigued that you would think mathcam-Poro plausible. Perhaps this looks different on the outside, but to me, I've been at points literally the only person pushing for his lynch, and doing so non-trivially. I've slightly moved him in the townish direction today, but I think there were points where I was the most significant force in getting him almost-lynched.

And you missed ABR?

This is an interesting catch. Boo, is this because you find ABR pretty incontrovertibly town?

[mathcam]

I've been finding the end of day 4, in which we had the STD/DGB claim/counterclaim twilight speak for several pages, very interesting. In particular, I'd like to think about chamber here for a minute.

Here's one line in particular that doesn't make any sense to me, and might indicate a chamber-STD pairing:

Which is why you have to give me and ABR time to fake the counterclaim, obv.

The context is that Yos was explaining how DGB counterclaiming was in fact a good move (there was brief discussion about whether or not she could've kept the counterclaim quiet), with the line "Town probably wouldn't have been willing to lynch a claimed doctor without a counterclaim." chamber's quote above is his response.

I'm trying to understand what you were trying to get at here. It seems to me, and maybe I'm reading this incorrectly, that you're saying you were

so

sure that STD's original doc claim was false, that you would have lied to the town about being a doctor in order to get STD lynched?

Because to me, that doesn't sit very well with how weakly you seemed to be supporting the STD wagon. You voted him (post 2892) at a time when there was no one else on his wagon (relatively little danger of lynching him), and even weakened this further by announcing you'd be willing to vote anyone in {Yos, Boo, STD}. You were hardly a cheerleader for the wagon from then on, either (you mentioned it a few times, but nothing I think I'd use to eliminate an STD-chamber pairing). How did this evolve into the anti-STD bravado that post 3426 above alludes to? And why did ABR get mentioned in the same breath?

[mathcam]

Ah, crap. I just noticed that scumteams (3) and (6) from my possible scumteams list on page 170 are the same. I'm not sure what effect this has on my thinking, but it changes some numbers.

Unvote: BooKitty

until I sort it all out.

[mathcam]

I really don't get the flack I'm getting for the hammers. The two days I hammered look to me like this: There's some number of weeks of "Let's do this. Ehhh, nah, let's do this. Oh, now I'm V/LA, la la la. Hey guys, I'm back, did anything happen? Ehh..." Finally,

finally

, deadline nears, and we panickedly scramble to put together a lynch target. There is much compromising, or feigned compromising. Vote gets to L-1. We sit idle for a little while, despite the complete inevitability of the lynch. Mere hours before deadline, mathcam says "Ah, what the hell -- I suppose I can convince myself he's probably scum. Let's put this day out of its misery." He hammers, and the town reacts: "OMG! DID YOU SEE THAT? MATHCAM JUST HAMMERED AN INNOCENT! IF ONLY WE HAD HAD THE CHANCE TO SAVE THEM!", disregarding all of the content that led

up

to the L-1 situation, and collectively muttering not-so-quietly about the guy that actually did the deed.

Okay, there's some hyperbole in there, and not much fact-checking about how long the various parts actually lasted. Still, that's how it feels from my end. I deserve as much flack as everyone else on those wagons for being on those wagons, and maybe even a little less due to its inevitability, but certainly no more.

But this is mostly just a rant. If you're going to read one of my three posts, read the chamber one.

[mathcam]

Interesting.

I find it ridiculous that you say I wasn't a proponent of the STD wagon, I was probably the person pushing it 2nd hardest.

Perhaps. I admit I came to this conclusion only after ISOing you, a technique which I acknowledge deprives the reader of some context, and didn't feel much pushing going on. It's possible that in the context of everyone else's posts, your role was more significant. MBL has thought about these things more carefully than I - any input?

[mathcam]

(That "interesting" was in regards to the ABR vote. Have a nice trip, VitR).

[mathcam]

Spyrex -- Your replacement would likely not contribute until Day 8 anyway. There is essentially no amount of content you could provide that would be worse than getting replaced. I'd ask that you don't (I have to admint, the glibness with which people enter and exit games is starting to grate on me a little).

ABR -- Great, that's two out of three. Who's the most likely third, in your opinion?

[mathcam]

ABR: I suspect it was more characters to put "Already answered" than to answer the question, and force me to go look for it. Was it that important to punish me for not memorizing your recent tells?

Boo: Lol.

MBL: I for the mostpart agree, but I would put VitR way down that list. On rereading, I didn't find his attack on LML to be as strong as I once did, and his flipflopping to PJ occurred at times when there was hope of derailing the LMLwagon because of it.

[mathcam]

tells --> reads. Couldn't remember the word.

[mathcam]

The scum team is mathcam, VitaminR, and Bookitty.

I guess this is what you're referencing, though it seems at odds with how sure you are that porochaz is scum. So you now think porochaz is town?

[mathcam]

Gotta say, that chamber post looks pretty town (if not in maximally pro-town consequences, then at least in sincerity). If I believe chamber to be pro-town, then BooKitty and VitR are almost certainly both scum. I would vote for either, and I'm intrigued that two of my three coincide with ABR.

The one part I want to question again is Spyrex. I'm doing some re-reading and he doesn't strike me as stridently anti-STD as others have made him out to be. Also, while I'm here, this juxtaposition made me laugh:

mathcam can be boiled down to not agreeing with almost anything said

I feel like he just goes with the flow and votes however the majority wants.

[mathcam]

I basically want to know if there's a compelling reason NOT to vote for anyone that I've missed.

Wait, I thought your list was just for the

best

reason not to vote for someone. Are you just looking for all reasons not to vote someone? For example, I think the scarcity of plausible scumteams ABR could be on is a pretty good reason not to vote from him -- actually, yeah, moreso than your "townish tone" comment. More generally, since you're asking about methods for making decisions about what to do next, I'd like to hear your reactions to my recent post about possible scumteams.

FYI, Here's what I make the count as:

Albert B. Rampage (2) -- Porochaz, VitR
mathcam (2) -- Bookitty, Albert B. Rampage
MBL (1) - chamber

Not voting: undo, MrBuddyLee, SpyreX, mathcam

At the moment I'm planning to vote whoever of BooKitty/VitR has the most supporters (if any). I'm tempted to go back to BooKitty since VitR is absent for a bit, but VitR might have more support.

[mathcam]

Not to dismiss anything you're saying, chamber, but from a practical perspective, there's no way an MBL lynch is happening uniess you're willing to really ramp up the case. I'm certainly not 100% sure that MBL is town, but he's town enough to me that there's essentially no way I'll be voting for him today over BooKitty or VitR.

[mathcam]

chamber: Well, okay. It's your vote, you can put it where you want. Just as I can opine that I don't think it makes a lot of sense. I could plausibly see any of mathcam, poro, Book, or VitR getting lynched today. Much less so MBL (again, only talking about today).

MBL: How about responding to 4313? It's great that you have questions and all, but it doesn't do any good if you ignore the responses to them, and don't use the answers to those questions to help make arguments as to what to do next.

I'm also a litlte surprised at how much time you took to defend yourself against chamber's one lonely vote, especially given that he admitted frustration played a part in it. Why so defensive?

[mathcam]

chamber-ABR-cam-Poro-VitR-Boo
10 triplets.

Well, 20, unless you're pruning some away. But I can't imagine you can think I'm scum with ABR (to name one), and that alone knocks out 20% of the possible teams. Surely you must find some others unlikely (ABR-VitR? Boo-cam? poro-cam?). I realize I put my name there a few times, but I think one of the most compelling arguments NOT to vote for me not on your list is that it's much harder to find a plausible scumteam that I could be in. This is very directly related to your own thoughts on me from earlier in the game, given how many people had cast a vote for me in the relatively short time I'd been here. To your other points, I still lean toward ABR-Poro being a pretty good elimination, though I agree chamber-VitR was more borderline. In any case, thanks for the response.

Really? Please explain.

Well, just reading Spyrex's ISO, his one main point is that STD is being dismissive of DGB, and that the same was true of his treatment of Zorblag earlier. I mean

maybe

that constitutes a scum argument, but it's pretty mild, if you ask me. He also expressed some shock at the quick hammer. He self-proclaims his anti-STDness writ large (so to speak): "I wanted STD splatted against the wall from moment one.", but I'm not sure his actions fit that. On that same game day, he also voted CES, OGML, and Sotty. Even after STD's hammer which he found so surprising, he starts the next day with the option "I want STD or OGML blood today. No others." I give him pro-town points for his stance on STD, and I still have him in my most likely town category, but on a rereading, I don't find him as stridently anti-STD as he and maybe some others seem to think.

[mathcam]

Dear Vigilante,

I'm frustrated we don't know for sure who you are. I think I know your identity, but I feel very constrained in talking about it because clearly, for whatever reason, you do not want that information revealed. While I can understand the impetus for not claiminng, I feel that in the end this is hampering our ability to come to the correct lynch today. But maybe not! I can't know for sure. In lieu of debating the matter further in the thread, which may inadvertently expose your identity anyway, I will just leave you with the following public thought: Please revisit your decision process one more time. If you still believe your keeping quiet and depriving the town of this information for one more day, as we struggle to make an important correct lynch, is less important than maintaining your anonymity for another day, then so be it. I will trust your judgement and drop the matter altogether, and simply try to vote based on my presumption of who you are.

Best regards,

mathcam

[mathcam]

Woah there, Spyrex. My glibness quote was a cumulative reaction to a game full of a slew of replacements -- of course some of those replacements are completely unavoidable. I didn't research your replacement ratio, and I sure didn't mean to demand you explain your decision to replace. I enjoyed playing with you, and am sad your leaving. I hope things turn out well for you.

[mathcam]

Okay, the fact remains that without Spyrex or a replacement here by the deadline, we need 5 out of 7 players for a lynch (7 because I'm excluding the lynchee). It seems unlikely that any of ABR, Spyrex, and MBL are going to be lynched today, which is also means that VitR's vote is of no use to us, effectively leaving us with 5 out of 6 required. So it's basically the case that

five of the six non-lynchees in {ABR, Boo, math, poro, MBL, chamber, undo} need to agree on lynchee from {Boo, math, poro, chamber, VitR}.

Nobody from that list has any votes except BooKitty, who conveniently happens to be one of the two people I'm most interested in voting for today.

Vote: BooKitty.

We need two of {MBL, chamber, undo} to join us, and barring any major shifts in attitude or compelling new cases, I just don't see any other conclusion to this day.

EBWOP: Tempted to not vote to spite ABR, but meh.

[mathcam]

ABR: What's going on? Are you just testing the waters to see who people will vote for? I'm not sure that's either wise or effective. MBL's question is very good too.

Nobody from that list has any votes except BooKitty, who conveniently happens to be one of the two people I'm most interested in voting for today.

I am still voting you, so this is simply not true.

You're right -- my apologies. I was writing that sentence from the perspective of justifying my vote.

[mathcam]

mathcam voted Bookitty too easily. He's scum with VitaminR and Bookitty will be re-evaluated after they are both lynched.

Translation: Minor Reason found for not voting buddy. Vote someone else.

Cool.

vote ABR

Translation: Thin reason found for not voting for buddy. Vote for main tunnel again.

So let me get this straight. You both think that the other is scum with BooKitty, but neither of you are voting BooKitty? It seems like there's a particularly easy compromise there....

[mathcam]

The way that mathcam voted Bookitty does not point to her as a buddy.

That BooKitty and mathcam are not scumbuddies has been apparent for some time, imo.

[mathcam]

I've read your case, and I don't disagree. But BooKitty could be scum with almost literally anyone -- that can't be said of ABR.

[mathcam]

Are you not reading, or are you lying on purpose?

I'm glad to see I finally got some snark out of you.

But seriously, neither of those options is accurate -- one of us has grossly misread the situation. It's possible it's me. Here's where I got that:

Translation: Thin reason found for not voting for buddy.

How do you interpret this post? This came right after porochaz moved his vote from Boo to ABR. It sounds to me like ABR is accusing Poro of moving his vote off of you (the "buddy" in question). I'm having a hard time reading this in another way, so I think you might have to spell it out for me.

[mathcam]

It looks like you omitted this argument from your mathcam-STD compilation, MBL.

I'd argue that the real knock any theory that has a STD-mathcam theory scmpair is my argument (which played heavily into my willingness to lynch STD despite my erroneous read on him) is that one of LML's scumlist {mathcam, STD, Sotty} had to be scum. Just think about how silly of a move it would be to postulate that one of three people were scum, when two of those people were on my scum team (and the third on almost no one's top scum list at the time). Even with the inevitable WIFOM argument that a scum could make this move, I think you'd have to agree that there was no reason for me to, and doing so was done at the detriment of the scum.

I maintain this is a pretty strong argument in my favor.

I'm intrigued about your point about me voting before I went V/LA. Where does that train of reasoning lead when applied to VitR's vote on ABR before departing?

[mathcam]

Funny, I have the same train of thought with an opposite conclusion -- I view VitR as being possibly protective of BooKitty, but the argument only

really

provides what you point out. He didn't want to get in trouble with his vote during his absence. This may be for town reasons or scum reasons, though I lean the latter. Why do you think that vote is protective of

me

specifically?

[mathcam]

@Mathcam: Because VitaminR took his vote OFF you to put it on ABR.

But the fact remains that he voted me in the first place. I know that can't stand for much by itself, but how can that be counted as more protective than his actions toward you?

undo: Who do you think my two scumbuddies are? I know we've been at odds all game. You've attacked me every other post for two months, and in terms of actions, I think you're the scummiest player here. I guess I'd just ask you/everyone to keep in mind that there are three scum here working together to accomplish a goal. I, on the other hand, haven't been able to get basically anyone to work with me on anything for even a moderate length of time.

[mathcam]

Translation: Thin reason found for not voting for buddy. Vote for main tunnel again.

@ABR: What did you mean by this, please? Mathcam is arguing that you think Porochaz-Bookitty-??? is the scumteam, if I understand correctly.

I'm still curious -- what did

you

think he meant by this, that you would be so vehemently that I was lying about something? Who did you think was the "buddy" in question? Because I'm starting to suspect that

you're

the one that's deliberately obfuscating.

[mathcam]

Okay. I now believe that we both have plausible interpretations of what ABR meant.

As to VitR's protection: Well, if you just look at all of VitR's posts and search for "BooKitty", there's quite a few positive references, including several times in which he raised an eyebrow at others' attacks on you: Just looking quickly, I see

chamber, what is your issue with Bookitty?

I'm still not really getting what's so scummy about Bookitty's recent posts

And this happened most recently in his post 4282 to me, which was probably when I starting really indulging my BooKitty-VitR thought process:

I don't think you're scum. mathcam could very well be, but I wish I could say I'm as convinced as you are. I don't like the hammers, and I'm not particularly charmed by the vote on you, but, like I said, he seems sincerely engaged with the game also.

[mathcam]

Well, but then there's the fact that he's never once voted for you, compared to:

Vote: mathcam

I'd be really surprised if he wasn't scum at this point, with those two dodgy hammers.

That wasn't a throw-away vote, or jumping on an inevitable wagon, and it came on a day when it was clear I'd be one of the top (but maybe not

the

top) candidate. Doing that to a scumbuddy is a risky move.

Nevertheless, I see your point as well. In fact, save for a couple of obvious stand-outs (ABR and Yos), VitR has not been at odds with almost anyone this game. I'll concede that I probably saw VitR's voting of ABR as buddying toward you predominantly because I was already on the lookout for evidence of said buddying.

[mathcam]

I have changed my mind many teams in the course over the last few pages over who I think is the most likely scumteam. For example, I have a flaw in my gameplay that makes me find inactive people scummier, so chamber is currently moving up on the list, and you are moving down for engaging in what amounted to a fairly even-headed discussion. This is silly, but I can't help it.

Wouldn't that argue that VitaminR is equally likely to fit into just as many hypothetical scumteams?

Yup, just about -- you can see my lists for yourself in post 4248 on page 170. I've been saying all day that I've been going back and forth between you and VitR. I dislike the way ABR is forcing the vote to go down this way, but if only to verify that I wasn't bluffing in that offer, let's go after VitR instead. If he flips scum, I look forward to re-engaging in the "Who was buddiest with VitR?" game with you again tomorrow, Boo. : )

Unvote: BooKitty, Vote: VitR.

MBL: Hey. What's up?

[mathcam]

You're the one derailed the BooKitty bandwagon (well, tag team with ABR). We literally need almost unanimous support among the active voters for a lynch -- if you weren't on BooKitty, it wasn't going to happen.

[mathcam]

I suspect nearly everyone of being scum. If I'm in the middle of a BooKitty push, and ABR thinks BooKitty and poro are scum, and poro thinks ABR and BooKitty are scum, then it has nothing to do with trusting suspicions -- just a matter of expediency. Clearly we have scum willing to accuse and vote for other scum somewhere in this picture, so I'm not about to let those two suspicions eliminate BooKitty as a target.

We've got three days left, but I'm already thinking we're perilously close to heading for a no lynch (or, more likely, an essentially-random last-minute townie lynching governed by the subtle movements of the scum votes).

All it takes is 2 people to declare they won't vote for someone before they're off the table as a possibility. It sounds like MBL, chamber (and Boo) won't vote for Boo, which completely kills that idea. chamber and poro (and, fwiw, the Spyrex slot) seem opposed to a VitR lynch. On the other hand, there is literally no one who has expressed any reservations at all about a mathcam lynch. Why that doesn't ring any alarm bells, I can't say, but as the inevitable draws nearer, just keep an eye out for whose votes end up having the most influence.

[mathcam]

I tried vigorously for a poro lynch the last two days, but despite my efforts, the wagons collapsed. I don't recall where that impetus came from, and am too tired to do so now, but I wouldn't mind following up on that. I also felt at the time of my most recent scumpairs list that poro couldn't be scum without it being with one of Boo/VitR. Given that poro-Boo looks somewhat less likely, his fate to me seems closely intertwined with VitR's. If there's the votes there for a poro-wagon, I'll be on it. I will say that poro's looked more town today than all prior days, though.

ika, you are an insane masochist, but we appreciate it. (And thanks, Patrick!)

[mathcam]

Important stuff you should know that I think is completely devoid of my own opinions and prejudices:

1) undo is essentially undeniably a pro-town mason.
2) There seems to be a strong belief that there are 3 scum remaining
3) There seems to be a strong belief that there is a pro-town vigilante.
4) There was an attempt at a mass-claim, in particular to get the vig to reveal him/herself. Everyone claimed vanilla townie.
5) There is a deadline in 3-4 days. VitaminR is V/LA up until the deadline.
6) If you can get caught up in that time frame, great, though it seems unlikely. Barring that, your vote might be most useful as a hammer, with the hope that it's town pushing us to L-1, at which point you could support those efforts.
6) Yes, there is much suspecting of people, but I don't think I can summarize that without bias.

Other people can add on to this or dispute anything I've said.

[mathcam]

I'm not sure I really believe in summiness as an independent, objective thing -- I see scumminess through relationships between revealed and remaining roles. That said, if there's one player who has repeatedly made plays that I can't possibly fathom a reasonable pro-town player, it's ABR. I do have a hard time extricating my scumminess feelings toward him from my frustration at his playstyle, but I think that's the most accurate answer to your question that I can give.

[mathcam]

That vote count is simultaneously amusing and demoralizing.

Come on, people!

[mathcam]

You're voting VitaminR with me?

Yup, for the time being.

6 (again?)

Oops.

Also, with regards to your first comment, ika, we have some explicit assurances from the mod:

Players are free to speculate about the existence of serial killers, lynchers and werewolves if they so wish, but these factions do not exist.

So there's that.

[mathcam]

Agreed.

chamber?

[mathcam]

chamber

: Momentum has swayed from porochaz, though I'm not entirely sure why. I've said my peace on him repeatedly, and I've never been able to get up sufficient enthusiasm from the town. So I await your vote.

MBL

: I get that you don't like to vote, but at this point, it's become deterimental to the town. If you're town, your willingness to let scum exert pressure on the lynch targets of the day without exerting your own influence has been a costly mistake. Please make a decision, or at least take a stand.

Look, I don't think I have it in me to give an empassioned plea to keep me alive. I get some of the reasons I'm a target -- I came down on the wrong side of LML, and it took me a long time to move away from seeing STD as pro-town. It took me a while to figure out how to play the game again, and my entry into the game started out pretty weak. But I think I ended up playing a non-trivial role in getting STD lynched, by virtue of heavily implicating the set {STD, Sorry, mathcam} as containing scum (admittedly, Sotty was my chosen target from that set, but still, it's a pretty silly move to make if STD and I are scum together). But I hope I'm not being too immodest in thinking that I also resurreced this game today. As scum, it would have been tremendously easy to ride the wave of apathy that was sweeping the game at the start of the day, and let town passively amble their way to a loss. Instead, I injected life, spent hours rereading everything, coming up with new arguments and cases, and pointedly not making any friends, being willing to attack or entertain attacks on almost everyone else. Finally and relatedly, I'd like to emphasize again how not-in-a-team-with-anyone I appear to be.

ABR:

You recently used a single vote on BooKitty from me to conclude that we were a more likely scum team, and voted VitR as a consequence. What does it tell you that, despite the absence of any serious articulated arguments against me, 0 out of 9 players have recently expressed any recent reservations about lynching me? It seems I'm on everyone's "Yeah, okay, I could do that" list.

In any case, the writing appears to be on the wall -- my goal at this point is to make it awkward for scum to justify voting me. And if I'm going out, I want my vote where I think I can be proud of it after the game. I'll

Unvote: VitaminR, Vote: BooKitty

, but happily confess I would vote for essentially anyone (especially from {Boo, chamber, poro, VitR}) in order to stay alive.

[mathcam]

Gotta say, a teeny bit surprised to see that, MBL. Oh well.

[mathcam]

As scum, it would have been tremendously easy to ride the wave of apathy that was sweeping the game at the start of the day, and let town passively amble their way to a loss.

In your opinion, what was the default lynch had you not participated today?

I'm not sure there was a default, but I think the closest was probably porochaz. I came in to the day sure he was going to be the next lynch. But my point was that the situation was easily influenced by scum, to maneuver just about anyone into being the target.

undo: Hasn't everyone alive evaded being lynched thus far? Despite your periodic sniping at me, I don't think I've been the target of a major bandwagon in a while. I'd say poro fits that description better than me. (ebwop: MBL just made that same point). Incidentally, what happened to all your BooKitty suspicions?

[mathcam]

Unvote, Vote: VitR

[mathcam]

I was under the impression that someone (mathcam, maybe?) told ika just to hammer today when someone got to four votes since he wasn't going to have time to read the game. Am I remembering that wrong?

Yup (though I don't think it was quite as dictatorial as all that). Just a possible use for his vote if he didn't feel like he could contribute with an informed decision:

Barring that, your vote might be most useful as a hammer, with the hope that it's town pushing us to L-1, at which point you could support those efforts.

[mathcam]

That deadline? Man, I've never felt like I had scum pegged down to so small a group and been so impotent to convince other people of it. How sad!

That said, my pro-town feelings toward MBL have decreased a little today. I think stalling for so long on expressing an opinion contributed to this disaster of a deadline lynch.

Good luck tomorrow! I can't speak to any of my individual scum reads being extremely strong, though I feel pretty good about the small groups I've clumped them into -- please do take into account my scum pairings post. I think there's some gold there.

[mathcam]

In the end, I feel pretty good about

And if I'm going out, I want my vote where I think I can be proud of it after the game. I'll Unvote: VitaminR, Vote: BooKitty

and for being the only one seriously pushing for the porochaz bandwagon for three days in a row, but I'll readily confess my suspicions wavered to just about everyone else over the course of the game. In particular, I had almost cleared Spyrex in my head, so there's that. I was also completely bamboozled by STD until the latter parts of his existence.

Boo: Grrrr. But damn, end of day 1 was well-played. Any time I really though you were 100% absolute scum, I went back and read day 1, and I couldn't see you and LML both scum. Really nice.

VitR: I

really

think not claiming yesterday was a mistake. I feel very confident we could've gotten the wagon to land on BooKitty had you not been a leading candidate, or at the very least could have made it mathcam vs. BooKitty, making her a much more likely target for today. But kudos to calling CES and chamber both town super early-on. Half the reason I suspected you at all was because I couldn't imagine someone town making a call with that much confidence so early in the game.

I thought the game setup was totally fine, and Patrick did a great job with a tough crowd. I think scum played really well, and I don't think there's anyone to blame for the loss except for scum playing well. I know there are lots of points where I messed up (some mentioned above, but I also got the vig wrong, which messed up a lot of other conclusions).

[mathcam]

ABR: I'm curious, who did you think the vig was? I thought it was clear that it was one of you or VitR, just by thinking of who could possibly have vigged GC, and your voting of VitR (and some comments you made about vigs all throughout the game) convinced me it was you.

[mathcam]

MBL: Yeah, I deleted my paragraph of not-so-nice comments (about whom shall have to remain a secret! ) In any case, nice seeing you again, MBL. As you know, I had you as pretty solid town up til the very end.

ABR: Ah. chamber's venomous rant at MBL for not claiming convinced me he wasn't the vig, and I didn't think he would have vigged UT.

I will admit that I only went hunting for the role-block breadcrumb after LML was lynched. I figured it was the only way to save my sorry hide after trying to save him all day one. :p It was just lucky that I was able to find something to work with.

No. Way. Then doubly well done. I think that one post instantaneously shifted like 5 people's opinions of you from almost defscum to obvtown. (Or whatever the right words there are). Someone give this lady a scummy.

[mathcam]

MBL: Yeah, I deleted my paragraph of not-so-nice comments (about whom shall have to remain a secret! )

You can send your complaints about me by PM if you prefer.

Ha! Not in the slightest, PJ. But I will send you a PM.

[mathcam]

ABR: Ah. chamber's venomous rant at MBL for not claiming convinced me he wasn't the vig, and I didn't think he would have vigged UT.

Yeah, I thought it was MBL after that, not chamber.

MBL has a hard enough time convincing himself to

vote

for anyone, I thought there was no way he would choose to unilaterally kill almost anyone.

[mathcam]

ABR's just trolling. He thrives on dissonance.

[mathcam]

I tried a new approach this game.. making cases but letting the rest of town tell me whether they were any good or not. chamber's early recognition of a case as a good reason to vote STD was my main reason for finding him town most of the game.

Just in case it wasn't clear, my comment there was not a criticism. I thought you made some very good cases this game, mostly convincing me that various people were town.

[mathcam]

LOL. I like that this game lasted so long we can now laugh and reminisce about the good ol' times from earlier in the game.

[mathcam]

Everyone remember when, back in the day, DGB didn't get the hickory dickory dock reference? Good times, good times.

[mathcam]

when I took on the ABR case I was able to turn away from the mathcam suspicion.

Yeah, I forgot to mention how cool of a play that was. Much like BooKitty's gambit day 1, this was the one thing keeping me from being sure you were scum. I think I even made a note somewhere to the effect of "That play doesn't make sense as scum. I kind of feel like poro knows this and is doing for that and only that reason, to appear town for doing something so unproductive as scum. But dammit...it's working! And indeed you looked less scum because of it." Double grr...

[mathcam]

I'll totally read a scumthread if there's one around.

[mathcam]

My feeling is that everyone's entitled to vent in private. I'm also fine not getting to see it, especially if some of the scum have reservations. Don't worry about it.

[mathcam]

Could scum daytalk? How did you manage to cast all three game-ending votes in less than a minute?

And I hadn't completely read through that last day until just now. Wow, ABR, wow.

[mathcam]

Ah, okay, thanks. I saw that and didn't know what it meant (and forgot we had discussed that earlier in the game). So if ika had died, daytalk would've died with him?

[mathcam]

me: im here, whos here?
boo: me
*no poro*
small talk
*boo and i leave*
*poro comes on*
*i come on but poro gone*
*sleep and get up at 730*
*we sync up at 740ish*
*time our hammer for 47*

its a good read and i chuckle at it

That's fantastic.

It even made me self reflect about why I play the way I do

Yeah, I did a lot of that this game, too.

[mathcam]

So, now at 187 pages...does this game rank near the top of the lengthiest page-counts? I'm sure it's not the literal top, but don't know how common these have become in my absence.

I'm pretty sure it's not even close to the longest game I've been in, in terms of real-life time elapsed. I have a vague memory of a game (run by....Darkblade?) that thanks to his constant disappearing acts, lasted for over a year.

[mathcam]

OMG Mathcam, now it's 188! What did you DO?!?

I know, right? Of all the posts that had to start a new page...

Here's that Darkblade game I was talking about

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=185

It does fall shy of Chess Mafia (wow -- and a mini at that!) at only 14 months, but it is striking that it was only 50 pages long. That means it accrued about 3.5 pages of game

per month

. We had about 50 pages per month here in Oldy Mafia 2. Also noteworthy is that I lost it for the town in 3-player lylo.

[mathcam]

Oh man, just read the first few pages of that thread. I'm laughing out loud at the memory. I'm sure the record has been broken since then, but at the time, that was the most unmitigated disaster of a modding job the site has ever seen.

[mathcam]

Ha ha ha ha ha. There should be a (good-natured) thread of these somewhere. I know I messed up some rather complicated nightchoice interactions once (Blind Mafia), and felt pretty horrible about it.

[mathcam]

Sounds like ika might.

[mathcam]

I thought the game was very well-balanced, Patrick, and hearing you elaborate on your decisions makes it doubly clear that this was the right setup. Kudos to a game well-run despite the numerous and persistent obstacles.

[mathcam]

Daaaaaaamn.

Mason thread: "mathcam is scum. Let's kill mathcam. mathcam is obvscum. We hate mathcam!"
Mafia thread: "LOL, mathcam is so scummy. Shall we get him lynched now, or save him for later. We love mathcam!"

Ouch.

[mathcam]

Scum
sotty7

LML

VitaminR

porochaz

Seol

3/5. Not a bad scum-detecting record based on Day 1 first impressions. People need to remember to trust those.

3/6.

FOS: KK.

Never believing you again.

[mathcam]

Eh, he was 0/2. I'm sure he doesn't feel particularly proud of his record, but it's not all that unexpected in a game with 5/22 scum.

[mathcam]

Oh. Damn. See my title.

[mathcam]

Well, if Yos2 had died, I would've had a much better idea who the vig was.