Mini 1699 - #swag wars: THE empire strikes back (swaggedout)

[implosion]

That does make sense. And it definitely makes sense as an option for scum-pie to follow. But what I'm saying also makes sense as an option for scum-pie to follow because it allows her to focus more on whatever mislynch she thinks will happen today, or possibly just a series of two other mislynches that she thinks she'll be able to pull off today and tomorrow.

I'm not saying that it's the only thing that scum-pie possibly could have done, I'm saying it makes sense for scum-pie to have done and that it didn't feel like it was done genuinely.

[implosion]

That does make sense. And it definitely makes sense as an option for scum-pie to follow. But what I'm saying also makes sense as an option for scum-pie to follow because it allows her to focus more on whatever mislynch she thinks will happen today, or possibly just a series of two other mislynches that she thinks she'll be able to pull off today and tomorrow.

I'm not saying that it's the only thing that scum-pie possibly could have done, I'm saying it makes sense for scum-pie to have done and that it didn't feel like it was done genuinely.

I feel like you're talking about some hypothetical generic scum player who could have done x or done y from both a scum or town motivation.

This isn't a hypothetical player. It's pieguyn, who has ingrained town and scum behaviors.

Well 1, with me having no good sense of pieguyn's meta, her incarnation as scum isn't particularly differentiable from generic scum player in my head, so I'm not sure what you're getting at there. 2, I'm giving that kind of argument because that's essentially the level of abstraction that I need for that cog in the logic of my argument. I'm not trying to say that the behavior of flipping on ns was indicative of scum. I'm trying to say it

can

have a simple, direct motivation as scum (which I have more trouble seeing for Nacho's claim, which is what started this discussion). This possibility of being scum-motivated is irrespective of pie being the player in the slot. I'm further saying that the way in which it was done is what looks scummy, not just it having been done.

[implosion]

It basically comes down to this:

That level of dedication to the scumread doesn't feel like something that pie could just sleep on and suddenly be over.

Pie was all-in on the notscience read all the way up until she slept on it for one night and said she didn't think ns was scum, citing posts that had already been made when pie continued tunneling ns. Pie's posting gave me a feeling that she was absolutely, nothing will ever change her mind convinced that ns was scum, and her posting gave me that feeling right up until the point where she flipped. It just seems way too sudden for such an entrenched read to spontaneously evaporate, especially from a player who is being described as very logical. Someone who has been reading pages upon pages upon pages of content from ns and has seen essentially the entire corpus of his posting as super scummy suddenly flipping over having thought about it for one night makes no sense whatsoever to me unless, as I mentioned/asked, pie had doubt for a long time and just was ignoring it in her in-thread posting, in which case I wonder why she hadn't expressed that doubt.

[implosion]

I think I half-read half-skimmed it last night. I actually have no memory of why I was calling Nacho's posturing town.

To further elaborate on why I'm inclined to say that Nacho's claim is town after further thought: what scum thought-process would have led to scum-nacho claiming backup rolecop? I definitely don't think it would be him actually being a mafia backup rolecop, I think he'd realize that we'd say it could be a scum role and be disincentivized from it because of that. So he's doing it for towncred, right? He's switching from a vt claim to a backup rolecop claim for towncred. In what world is that actually going to work? I know that me typing this IS that world in one sense, because the claim has made me think that he's town. But more generally backup rolecop is not an extremely believable claim. I guess thinking about it on another level the only way it reasonably makes sense is if he wanted to claim backup rolecop as a springboard to getting me mislynched, since he figured that we'd just auto-lynch from VT claims+RC with the three claimed power roles seeming like a very reasonable setup. I guess I could actually see that making sense.

Nacho

: since you didn't claim your role during the massclaim, did it ever cross your mind that you'd be scrutinized for that? Did you think to drop some kind of crumb so that we would know that you aren't just making up the claim post-massclaim because it's scumvenient? Did you think that we would just believe you when you claimed, and so didn't feel the need? Or did you just not even consider it?

WRT the stuff you said about you pie, yeah, I guess it makes sense but I still have some waffles. Idk. Gun to my head I guess I'd say os/wicked/ffery at this particular juncture in time. This game still sucks in terms of getting any theories to stick. Granted I wrote this paragraph before the above. I might be more willing to see scum nacho now.

I still think nacho/os probably aren't scum together.

[implosion]

Actually the problem is that I can't think of any way Nacho can answer that question that doesn't sound scummy. Like he's good enough to know that he can't just get away with something like that as someone already under significant suspicion. Unless he did drop some kind of crumb he hasn't mentioned.

And yet I really, really, really don't want to unvote oversoul right now if for no other reason than out of principle that he's started lurking hard at a crucial time. I need to ponder this more I guess. And oversoul needs to fucking do stuff.

This game still sucks.

[implosion]

And then there's that evil voice in the back of my head. It says that RC is playing a really convincingly town game and that I should be scumreading him for things like the "I'm nakedly town right now" post, even though I'm heavily townreading him for it. And then I think about his claim and a full look at the surrounding shit and I just can't see him as scum. And I'm going to be so goddamn pissed if he's scum. Like if he's scum it essentially breaks everything that I use to read people in mafia. If he's scum he's outplaying me right now really goddamn hard and that's annoying. But god this player list is so small and there are so many scum. And I still just cannot see him as scum. argh.

[implosion]

Tammy if you have time can you give comments on my thoughts on this game to whatever extent you can? I feel like we worked well together last time and this game I've just been completely ignoring you because I haven't had a lot of strong opinions to throw at you like I did last game.

Thanks.

[implosion]

Oh the irony. The post that I'm remembering in particular is one of me telling you to squash any paranoia you have about Nacho, which IIRC was entirely because of what he had claimed...

[implosion]

I'm not really sure what my scumgame would look like after the year-ish long hiatus I took. I was gonna say I don't think it would look like this but aspects of it probably would, like the focusing on core townreads/waffling on others part, which is mostly because I've trained myself to do that as scum because I always wind up doing it as town. But I think my thought processes right now are not things that I would be able to fake here as scum.

[implosion]

That's a pretty reasonable concern to have. It just happens to be wrong. It's ultimately a matter of me repeatedly trying to get stronger/more entrenched reads, and then someone going and saying something that ruins that. Over and over and over again.

I could be more fine in my sorting of people into buckets of town/scum but it ultimately is true that I could imagine myself voting anyone other than tammy/ns (and probably rc) tomorrow. Which I will be the first to admit is a problem. And it's a problem that I keep trying to solve.

[implosion]

It's not my willing-to-lynch pile. It's the pile that I could imagine entering that pile. I don't really have an explicit willing-to-lynch pile right now. I guess in theory that pile should be {you, wicked, os, nacho} right now (gut would put pie as townier than you or wicked right now... but again everything is in flux pretty constantly in my head). And os/nacho are not in a sense "willing to lynch." I'm still trying to figure out which one of them I want to lynch, because I think it is one of them but not the other. In practice that pile does not exist. "Willing to lynch" is not a paradigm that I'm using to evaluate this game right now.

And yes. I see how that stance would be immensely convenient to me as scum. Especially if nacho/os were both town. But it's the way things are.

[implosion]

I mean, I haven't done in-depth analysis of 3-person scumteams. There's nothing strongly blocking the possibilities of you-wicked-os or you-wicked-nacho in my head. There are some weak mental blocks (like your self-commentary on the way you'd been acting towards the vinkah slot making you+os less likely) but none of those are particularly strong. If there's something in particular that you want to point out that makes some particular 3-person team less likely that's fine but I'm trying to not think on the level of a 3-person team primarily (I know I've mentioned a lot of teams but I ultimately know that trying to actually call a team is wishful thinking).

[implosion]

implosion, what did you think of not science's read change? While it wasn't as abrupt as pie's, it was also pretty radical.

As I've said, I found it very natural-looking and it's one of the bigger reasons I'm townreading ns.

I don't live in order to "prove myself", implosion shoots me and if I don't die he's scum.
The great thing about having a vig in these sorts of situations is that if the vig is coexisting with someone he's not supposed to coexist with and he's not a lying scumfuck, he can just... shoot them.

There are so many problems with this.

1) You having pushed this angle throughout the entire day even throughout my own townreading you, even when I'm your primary target to be pushing, which completely ignores the fact that I wouldn't shoot you since you were a townread.
2) Actually I remember thinking Nacho wouldn't possibly beg to be shot so strongly as scum earlier, but now that I take more than three seconds to look at it, it reeks of scum with a doctor on their team wanting to set up fake scumcred on me by forcing me to shoot him and forcing that shot to fail.
3) The above is compounded by the fact that so many people have speculated about a mafia doctor, and Nacho has engaged in setup speculation and made no mention whatsoever of those suspicions. I suppose if he thinks I'm scum there isn't a doctor most likely; however, those allegations are still relevant because it means his attempt to set up "i die tonight or implosion dies tomorrow" is flawed.

Actually, there is one question I have. implosion, have you told us who you are shooting tonight?

I hadn't though I have been thinking about it. I was thinking recently (as in, past couple days) a nacho shot would make sense in the case of oversoul flipping town (although it's risky obviously but whatever, we need to take risks I guess, as always open to input). This is because my thinking has shifted towards thinking one of the two is scum. Worst case scenario is that we lose, but I don't think we're all that likely to win if nacho is town (read: there's no way in hell) if we wind up lynching oversoul and he flips town. Best case scenario is that he dies. Probable case scenario is that nothing happens because he has a doctor on his team. I guess in that sense it isn't actually all that risky.

The obvious flaw in this plan from scum!Nacho are all of those bullets you supposedly have.

Again ignoring my play the entirety of today and the possibility of a doctor.

Sure it did! I didn't really feel the need because the main line I expecting was "lying is scummy!!!" and that's a ridiculously bad line to push and thus easy to defend against.

That's a really damn unbelievable expectation for a player list like this to go LaL and not scrutinize the claim on a deeper level than that.

holy shit does this look familiar
if the mtgs isos weren't utter shit, there's a great quote of me in response to tammy when she asks me why i'm not scum (or maybe vi or something) and i think i said almost these exact words with different specifics.
I said it because I couldn't really point to actions in my play that made me town/scum and I thought that sort of partial honesty (I could fake everything I've done here as scum except for unmentioned subtleties) would look good. Tammy, do you remember that?

If someone had asked me why I wasn't scum directly then I'd have given a different response than that. That post was a response to ffery saying she found everything I posted scummy; it wasn't a direct question.

[implosion]

If we lynch Nacho and he flips town: I'm probably going to shoot unpredictably because I don't think people are going to believe me the next day unless my shot actually goes through, so if scum have a doctor I can't just say I'm shooting x. Whereas if I do this I could hit the doctor as well.
If we lynch Nacho and he flips scum I have no reason to shoot.
If we lynch Oversoul and he flips town I'll shoot Nacho.
If we lynch Oversoul and he flips scum I guess I'd rather not shoot but I could shoot Nacho if people wanted me to. I am starting to think that OS is town and Nacho is scum though.

[implosion]

And then suddenly my push on you gets more aggressive and you're confident that I'm scum.

I became more confident that you were scum a day or two ago. And yeah, you're making shitty points.

yeah i'm sure there's a doctor on a mafia team to counter a two-shot vig while there's also a town jailkeeper

You're ignoring so much setup spec here as if it never happened... and yes this still makes sense, sarcastically implying that it does not make sense does not make it actually not make sense!

[implosion]

Giving a false innocent to the rolecop doesn't really make sense unless there's two, which, um.

Oh my god. I mentioned a game I played that had recently completed that had a town rolecop + a scum doctor + a 2-shot vig (note: no backup rolecop, and there was one mafia member who would have essentially been a guilty, third was a goon). Your response to that post was to call it useless. Your setup spec is absolute garbage.

[implosion]

It turns out

saying "x does not make sense" without any reasoning

DOES NOT make x not make sense!!!!

That's the only reason why a pre-massclaim crumb would have been necessary.

Not even vaguely. There's a fucking reason for massclaim: it 1 allows setup spec to actually work since everyone has claimed, and 2 locks scum into their fakeclaims. There's a goddamn reason beyond just "they lied" to find someone scummy if they change their claim post-massclaim, and crumbing the role beforehand would massively mitigate that concern since town would know it's not just being made up on the spot.

Will get to the other question next post because it's going to be a bit more detailed.

[implosion]

Why aren't you scum?

Alright. I remember back in the epicmafia days when people always thought self-description was pointless but I'd always disagreed with that. So let's see...

1) The vig softclaim & claim. If I were scum, from an outside point of view, I would have had to be planning a vig claim from day one since I breadcrumbed it. I would have had to have the creativity to crumb it when something relevant to me faking vig had been said. I don't think I would have been able to come up with that as scum. There's exactly one game that I can think of as scum where I made a really ballsy fakeclaim, and I did it basically because I was entirely on my own (it was a 9p game and I was replacing into a slot whose scumbuddy was pretty much going to be the d1 lynch, and wound up being the d1 lynch) and it was the only way I could imagine winning. I'd have no reason to set up a vig claim of all things as scum who doesn't know the setup on day one. I'd be setting myself up for certain death if there was actually a vig. I'd be setting myself up for certain death if vig doesn't fit the setup (which it does, because we already have claimed/dead investigative and protective roles to go with it). I constantly *CONSTANTLY* told the town throughout the entirety of day two that they could direct my shot if they were mistrustful of me. That would be absolutely suicidal as scum.

Most of the rest of what I can say is meta-specific, i.e. it's just a description of my town and scum playstyles and how this does not fit my scum playstyle. And this is somewhat difficult to do since, again, I can't remember the most recent scumgames I've played well since they were a long time ago. I certainly would not be switching to townreading you for the sake of getting you to townread me back; that doesn't work in practice and like I've said, my style as scum is to mostly go with genuine reads as much as I can. Why would I as scum give that much of a shit whether or not you in particular townread me? You're one of the most widely scumread slots in the game; if I were scum I would not need to devote particular attention to your slot.

If you were asking me this question and were actually interested in the answer I could ISO myself and give more. But that isn't really worth it.

What was the game?

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=62685
Town: 2-shot vig + rolecop + gunsmith
Scum: goon + doctor + watcher variant (automatically watched the scumkill if they made it)

[implosion]

GOD DAMMIT WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THINGS NOW

[implosion]

I head back to college in two days and i felt like i rapidly lost motivation after os flipped town.

bleh.

I'll probably be relatively inactive in a couple days at least for a day or two. Possibly not.

[implosion]

I guess bleh, at least we have flipped scum now... and i guess scum have no doctor. Not that that really matters.

My immediate thoughts are pie/wicked. But that's very much spur-of-the-moment. Will look more at stuff probably right now.

[implosion]

I am fine with no-lynching especially since I could actually still somewhat-reasonably be a serial killer from a neutral pov.

Certainly though I want to get my thoughts straight first. I'd guess it's me or notscience that would die. But eh.

[implosion]

Does anyone alive think you're scum? RC just said his immediate reaction was that i could be scum.

[implosion]

Yeah, couldn't actually really get to this today since last day before leaving and packing and whatnot.

I'm more or less v/la until Monday at least.

[implosion]

I think tomorrow if I can find time I'm basically going to put together the best case that I can for RC being town, for public scrutiny, because I still have trouble getting over my townread on him. Still pretty low on time because seeing friends for first time since before summer.

Apart from that I really don't have a ton to input here - I want to look at the possibility of a wicked/ffery team a bit.

[implosion]

I think I probably wouldn't go for a vig claim as a SK. I'd probably just kill someone who was suspicious of me but I don't remember being under any suspicion at that point in the game, so I guess I'd just kill a generic threat like ffery.

Gonna try to get to formulating the RC thoughts in probably an hour.

[implosion]

I think I probably wouldn't go for a vig claim as a SK. I'd probably just kill someone who was suspicious of me but I don't remember being under any suspicion at that point in the game, so I guess I'd just kill a generic threat like ffery.

Why would you consider this optimal?

I wasn't really thinking particularly far. If I wanted to give an actually accurate answer to this question I'd need to look at the end of day one, but I'm not entirely sure if that would even be accurate because I have no idea what my mindset would be going into a game like this as a serial killer.

With regards to RC. The first thing to discuss is his claim. He's been falling back a lot upon the laurel that the rolecop confirms his role, i.e. the existence of a rolecop should make his role more reasonable to exist. While this is not strictly true, it is somewhat true that a rolecop makes more sense with a miller in the game. Jailkeeper isn't a particularly useful role to find because it can easily be scum; vig is a role that confirms itself anyway. There isn't a whole lot of utility for a rolecop in this game with only vanilla townies alive other than myself, even if there's some scum who gives a positive.

Next there's the claim itself, i.e. the whole "i'm not a vt" debacle. That way of claiming just adds obstacles as scum - if he gets lynched that day, he has to explain why he wasn't nightkilled or why nothing else strange happened because he's obviously going to claim that he was trying to draw a nightkill.

His Vinkah/OS tunnel comprises literally the entirety of his d3. It's either town who was just caught in what turned out to be a bad tunnel, or scum resting on their laurels. I guess he could have been trying to defend Nacho from being the next likely lynch target but I don't feel like defending Nacho would be super high priority for the scum at that point. I think the tunnel seems more likely from town given that he had a very detailed case at the start of the day - I can see it as very reasonable for town to have tunneled that deeply, but I think RC-scum would have given himself at least some outs. If OS is lynched and flips town of course that makes RC look bad. If Nacho were lynched and flipped scum, that would also make him look bad even though he'd been putting some suspicion on Nacho because he'd been tunneling the other wagon so hard. It just doesn't make that much sense.

Another thing that pinged town was the series of posts from 2124-2130. The emotion felt genuine to me and it did feel to me like that particular series of posts made him look like very clear town at least at face value, so 2129 in particular felt genuine to me. The posts after that where he's mocking OS about his miller claim too. His overall attitude in that exchange just feels like it comes from town.

[implosion]

I still don't see anything that makes me thing RC isn't scum :/.

I'm probably willing to go for Wicked (if for no other reason than I don't think winning seems particularly likely if wicked is town given the ns-ffery-pie reads). But I don't see any reason not to no-lynch just to put the game in odds.

I still want people to comment on what I said on RC unless I missed something.

[implosion]

er. Typoed first sentence. Don't see anything that makes me think RC is scum.

[implosion]

@notscience: RC claimed miller before Tammy claimed rolecop. Why would he claim miller anticipating a rolecop? Claiming miller in anticipation of a rolecop would be purely suicidal; it's literally doing nothing but asking to be investigated.

[implosion]

I mean it might make sense if he has a godfather on his team (he would have to be not-the-godfather for it to make sense). But then again if there's a godfather, I think a miller also makes sense to compliment it in this setup.

[implosion]

but I think its more likely a check for the vig/sk chance and the one scum.

Like I mentioned, vig doesn't need anything to confirm it... how is a role whose purpose is to investigate a single person in the game particularly useful?

The not-a-vt claim is *sort of* wifom but it does in an objective way add obstacles for RC-scum. The utility of the claim just seems extremely low as scum - he loses a TON if night passes without him fullclaiming or anything like that happening, and he *maybe* gains some wifom-towncred.

(see, the current debacle we're in: if you still had a shot, we could lynch RC, if he flips town you can shoot wicked and that leaves one scum left in 3p lylo)

This is just bad math, if I still had a shot then we'd be in 7p-3scum instead of 6p-2scum. I can very much see RC changing to a Nacho bus.

Because he could have (like ffery just said) had a gf on his team and been anticipating a traditional cop?

Yeah, this isn't what I was referring to, I was referring to your proposition that he could have been anticipating a rolecop. If he had a godfather and was anticipating a real cop, then we can in theory possibly eliminate or draw additional merit to that idea by lynching the other scum other than him and seeing if they flip godfather (no way that the godfather would be the one claiming miller). But IMO even if we saw a godfather flip... I still think the rolecop to have enough utility probably needs the miller.

[implosion]

To confirm it's a vigilante over a serial killer? Uh, yes it does.

Misunderstood this.

You don't want to come to me and try to convince me that something that would give scun wifomy towncred is something I shouldn't be wary about. ask fery if that's a good idea.

Scum could claim cop with two guilties at 7p with 2 scum alive and ask to be lynched to confirm their results for wifomy towncred. Doesn't mean they would. Doesn't mean you should be wary of them if some other claim gives you a reason not to lynch them if it would obviously have been complete suicide to do it at the time. There are limits.

[implosion]

Maybe I am being a bit lazy by saying I'm fine with a Wicked lynch but PoE is PoE. I might be going on different things but my reads on NS and RC haven't changed and I feel somewhat better about pie and ffery than Wicked.

And regardless, I still see no reason not to NL.

VOTE: No Lynch

[implosion]

(And ffery is right that this day is going in circles more so than previous days)

[implosion]

I think I'll eat a bullet but I want the game in odds so that someone will die the next night.

Honestly I'm a little bit checked out too because of real life. If I am in a position where I have to actually do stuff then I'm willing to put in the effort but going back to college means a lot more stuff going on in RL than before. There's a reason that I stopped playing on MS during school for the most part.

[implosion]

(to clarify, game in odds so that someone *of interest* will die the next night so that there's useful information going into 3p lylo if we get there)

[implosion]

implosion, we need you to hammer.

I know you're townreading him.

Right now, we have the three of us linked up.

I'm town, and if you want someone to explain why I am you can ask pretty much everyone.

pie is town because of the emotion she showed in that back and forth with me, and the tunneling here is more town-pie whereas scum-pie doesn't commit that hard to scumreads.

The reason I find fery town is that it feels like Nacho was trying to move around her- I noted the mirroring earlier, Then, and I know "effort isnt alignment indicative" her play today, her going over every single person in thsi game with a fine tooth comb, when she could easily coast with me and pie townreading her, shows paranoid town worried of fucking it up in lylo. What's scum ffery have to gain by reading through the game like this?

So, you're basically saying I have no say in this game anymore.

Which I understand.

But even if I thought RC was scum I'd still prefer a NL today. Given that you three have formed what seems to be a rock-solid coalition it's not like my being alive is meaningful apart from keeping the game in evens. In the event that any of you do wind up having any desire to rethink things at 3p it's better that it'd be 3p than 4p.

[implosion]

If I live then someone who could be scum dies.

I see no problem with that at all.

[implosion]

If your reason for lynching today is that we shouldn't re-evaluate because you're confident that you're right now then I have no idea why you think I should just blindly trust your reads over my reads other than a pragmatic argument.

I see nothing in what you're saying that mitigates the benefits of no-lynching other than you very strongly believing your personal reads right now and just trying to shape the gamestate into something where those reads in particular are the ones that will determine who is lynched, and that isn't exactly comforting to me.

[implosion]

Implosion, if we no-lynch and you are the NK who should be lynched tomorrow? If you're alive who should be lynched tomorrow?

I feel like answering this question doesn't accomplish a whole lot except for giving mafia a direct-as-possible guide on who to kill when.

[implosion]

Why anyone bought Nacho's claim is beyond me!
Would have left that day with 2 confirmed town + a free Vig shot if we just woulda lynched Nacho

GG though. Scum played well. Etc.