Newbie 1675: Resolution Mafia - GAME OVER!

[Drixx]

VOTE: KickAssAndGiggle because that red avatar border totally makes his posts look sinister.

---

IC Introduction:

Hello everyone. My name is Drixx and I am your IC for this game. IC is a bit of humor, standing for Inexperience Challenged. The IC is a volunteer position served by experienced players who wish to help newer folks have an enjoyable experience in their first games, and to help teach some of the basics of the game and answer any questions of mafia game theory which may arise. There are also SE players in the game, which means that they have played a certain number of games including at least one outside of the Road to Rome. SEs are not obligated to answer questions, nor are they obligated to answer honestly should they choose to answer any questions.

The IC position is not at all indicative of role or alignment, so anything I say using this color should not be used to judge my alignment. This also means that you can trust me to always be honest with you concerning questions of mafia theory, as I understand it, when I speak in this color as the game's IC. Some areas of theory are always evolving or have several viewpoints, and while I will do my best to be thorough, I also will try not to leave you with novels to read. If there are differing views, I will explain the ones I am familiar with and which particular part I agree with.

Please be aware that while I shall not lie to you in my role as IC, you should consider me just as likely as any other player in the game to be on the scum team. The roles are assigned randomly. This also means that while I will always be honest and helpful with my posts and answers about the game, you should be careful as sometimes an honest answer can be very misleading. Mafia is a game with many facets, and deception is one of the most valuable; especially for the scum team. As the game's IC, I have a private topic where I can post thoughts about the game as it progresses, and should there be any time where I choose to play differently than I would otherwise play, because I am the game's IC, I will make a note of it there so you can see after the game.

As a start: Since it takes only 5 votes on day one to lock someone, you should think carefully before placing a vote that might allow the scum team to lock a player. As the days move onward, the number of votes required lessens and placing a vote is something you will want to think about carefully. You can always state that you suspect someone. Generally this is done by using the acronym FoS, which means "Finger of Suspicion". If you place a vote that puts someone one vote away from being lynched, it is generally considered good form to put a bold warning that the player is at L-1 (Locking Votes minus 1). If a player is already at L-1, generally you should state an intent to vote and allow them time to give a final defense, reads, or make a claim.

Finally, there is plenty of time in each day phase, so be sure to discuss things with the rest of the players, ask questions, respond to questions from others, and check back in as often as you have the time. An active game is a great deal more fun than an inactive one.

Please do remember to keep things civil. A little humor never hurts, so long as it isn't in the form of a personal attack against other players. Mafia is a game that can sometimes inspire emotion, and if you get frustrated with another player, remember to attack the play and not the player. That's about it for my introductory post. If you have any questions for me, please bold them and put them on a new line starting with @Drixx or @IC to make sure that I see them, and I'll do my very best to answer it as quickly as possible.

I work as a professor in real life, so please feel free to ask as many questions as you would like; I really don't mind answering them.

Let's have a great game guys!

[Drixx]

VOTE: Drixx

Didja miss me?

Of course I did. Love that avatar!

[Drixx]

Also LOL at this IC thing. I guess I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

You're in an (SE) slot. That just means you have some experience on site. You aren't obligated to do anything special.

[Drixx]

Oh hey, I missed this game when I posted a V/LA request. I've been quiet because I've been unwell. Feel free to check my recent posts and you can confirm that easily.

For me, low activity only comes in three cases:

1.) I'm sick
2.) I'm super busy with other things
3.) I have a reason to avoid interjecting into an ongoing discussion and I want to read without interfering with what's going on.

In this case, it's because I'm sick. Anyone still concerned about my activity can check Newbie 1663(scum) and Newbie 1666(town), my two most recently completed games, and you will see that for me activity isn't tied to alignment or role. That's how I would suggest all players approach the game, by the way. If your activity level is noticeably different when you are a PR or when you get assigned to an anti-town or neutral role, then people will notice the difference. You should not let roles or alignments you are uncomfortable with affect your activity at all.


Now to say something in regards to the current discussion: When I first read that question, I made a mental note to come back and write an IC response about why lynching is (almost) always the correct move for town. There are very few cases when town should consider not lynching, and in newbie games the only time it should be considered is if the game is in MYLO and the town's chances of figuring out scum will increase by analyzing the night kill (or analyzing the no kill if scum choose that route) as well as just because of the numbers. One less person makes it more likely that any given living person is scum, so it might be wise in that one situation to no lynch. In any other case it's not at all wise. The scum already have the advantage of being informed, and the town can only win by lynching scum.

To lynch scum, we first have to find them, and that is where analysis of how people reacted and how mislynches arise can be greatly helpful. None of that is available if we don't lynch. So ... for a variety of reasons, the town should always lynch, even though the odds on day one are significantly tilted towards a mislynch, unless scum make some kind of horrible slip.

Speaking of slips, I'm not super sure that there really is one. I've seen basically no resistance to the push which suggests scum are fine with it. Given that my first thought to that question was to answer it in IC colors, I can't really condemn someone for viewing it as a town slip. I would be nearly certain if Pignash just brushed it off and went about discussing other things. I mean ... he's not even the person who concluded that Christopher was town because of the question. How can he possibly answer it? It's like asking someone to intentionally give the Amished Tell to push him over something another player said.

For my own thinking; Christopher has been on site for like a week. Alt accounts are not allowed to sign up and pretend to be newbies, so that seems like a legitimate question to me. Unless Christopher says/does something super scummy, I'm inclined to view that as a town oriented question from a new player. It's not even really that bad a question. The site I came from (where I played for nearly a decade off and on) frequently had games start with a twilight and then go into a night phase before the first day, and you can probably easily imagine how many other parts of the game that change in mechanics would impact. There was quite a learning curve when I first came here to play.

@Mod - V/LA 24 hours

[Drixx]

My vote changes from RVS to legit vote. Putting someone at L-1 and not asking them to claim or anything else is sort of pointless. There's no intent to hammer. It seems like KickAssAndGiggle is just going through the motions here.

I re-iterate my point that there is literally nobody opposing this wagon (except me, I suppose), and that is almost always a bad sign. The fact that literally nobody was opposing it is what makes me question it, and then that L-1 vote with the reasoning of "Well, I said I would vote in 24 hours if he didn't show up" while quoting him having showed up and said he was busy with work and would post later (which he did) ... that really rubs me wrong.

So yeah ... my vote isn't RVS anymore.

[Drixx]

Going to unashamedly copy Bellaphant's reasoning here, that town read seemed a little too fast to come out. Especially with daytalk.

Why does the game having day talk affect your thinking here?

votes are on me because:

1. My predecessor handed out a town read too quickly (I agree that he did that, and I am less sure of Christopher than he was.)

and

2. I haven't posted very much yet. Big boss was at work yesterday and I didn't have the time I thought I was going to have after work. Sorry, but I am reading.

I don't have much to say regarding those otherwise. Wagon on me is interesting.

Yep ... he totally didn't show up later and post.

[Drixx]

Oh ... you should be aware that cherry picking little pieces of someone's post is a really strong scum tell. If you cannot respond to the entirety of my post, which strings together multiple points to arrive at a conclusion, but instead have to cherry pick little pieces of it to try and make me look bad ... I think that sort of speaks for itself.

Even more so when one of your cherry picked things to try and make me look bad turns out to be flat wrong.

[Drixx]

Oh, so your definition of later includes "the next day".

Mine doesn't.

And by his own admission, he's reading but not posting...that's more suspicious than not being around at all...

You're defending him pretty hard...too hard.

The next day is by definition later than the previous day. I'm not defending him: I'm attacking you (and the others on his wagon). You're literally prosecuting someone for an off hand comment that

another player

made. Nobody knows what Lowell was thinking or how serious his comment was. It could have been sarcasm, for all we know. The guy replaced out. How on earth does a new player on the slot defend himself from that? By definition, he's already giving the Amished tell by making the attempt.

It's a shit wagon driven for shit reasons putting a player in an impossible situation, and literally nobody stopped to wonder why there was no protest at all to the wagon until I got well enough to catch up and realized it was a shit wagon without any resistance. Alarm bells should be going off in any town player's head when they see a player wagoned for something a

different player

said, right at the start of the game, and literally nobody is even questioning it.

But you get the award for being the one who wants to make an issue of it. Thanks for biting.

[Drixx]

I've played enough mafia to know what a tell is, thanks.

I wasn't wrong...you even quoted pignash proving it:

I didn't have the time I thought I was going to have after work.

Nice try though!

And yet he still came and posted as promised. You are literally prosecuting the guy for having a real life now? Seriously?

Drop the snark. It's not at all helpful and it will just end up escalating. Cherry picking is scummy, so don't do it.

Since you claim to know so much about tells, please explain to the game what the Amished Tell is and why it's important to the current discussion. Bonus points if you realize why it completely destroys any way to read Pignash based upon what Lowell posted. I'll wait.

[Drixx]

My vote changes from RVS to legit vote. Putting someone at L-1 and not asking them to claim or anything else is sort of pointless. There's no intent to hammer. It seems like KickAssAndGiggle is just going through the motions here.

I re-iterate my point that there is literally nobody opposing this wagon (except me, I suppose), and that is almost always a bad sign. The fact that literally nobody was opposing it is what makes me question it, and then that L-1 vote with the reasoning of "Well, I said I would vote in 24 hours if he didn't show up" while quoting him having showed up and said he was busy with work and would post later (which he did) ... that really rubs me wrong.

So yeah ... my vote isn't RVS anymore.

Who thinks that role claims now is a good idea? What town thinks that? We absolutely should not get a role claim from him now. How will that help anything when the majority of us don't even know the full setup? Furthermore, a role will be useless because he has done nothing to back up anything he could claim. You even think that he's more likely to be town because of the lack of opposition to his wagon (although would a scum member really be that worried when town are extremely unlikely to hammer early?) yet you still push with this obviously anti-town plan of role claiming early.

The main reason he's up there is because of one slip that his predecessor made. Yeah sure, he might be scum, his posts have not been spectacular, but the current argument against him is piss-poor if we're looking to lynch. Nobody has even bothered to question him further or engage with him to try and glean more clues about his alignment.

I'm suspicious that people want role claims this early...on Day 1, nonetheless. Seems like scum trying to TPR-hunt to me.

VOTE: Drixx

Nice mis-rep. I said that putting someone at L-1 and then not asking for a claim or putting any pressure on them is pointless. You seem to agree with me since you said "Nobody has even bothered to question him or further engage with him..."

But thanks for making it easy. Heat get a little too hot on your partner KickAssAndGiggle, did it?

[Drixx]

EbWoP: I could quote from literally hundreds, if not thousands, of completed games the same exact thing: Someone gets put at L-1, then someone applies pressure by stating intent to hammer and the person is asked to claim and defend. That's site meta. You've been here for all of two weeks so perhaps you weren't aware. Do try and actually read what I'm saying though. When you are blatantly taking someone's comments out of context and mutilating what they say in order to mangle it into what you want it to say so you can vote them ... you're probably not being honest in your approach.

[Drixx]

I'll wait while you two talk in the scum PT about how to counter my points. How about I give you awhile?

[Drixx]

It's like smacking my head against a wall here. I'm saying that there's literally nothing being accomplished. Great ... Pignash is at L-1. Now what? Nobody is applying any pressure.

How can anyone apply pressure? How can Pignash speak for Lowell? It's the very definition of the Amished tell for him to even try. So he's being wagoned for something he literally cannot at all defend. He can't possibly articulate anything about his predecessor's thoughts. Beyond that, being wagoned for town reading a dyed in the wool newbie for asking a theory question is pretty weak in the first place. And all of that comes before the fact that not one person in the game stopped to wonder why nobody was bothered by a super weak wagon rolling for a page 1 comment in RVS.

What we have here is a weak town who isn't plugged in or evaluating the game as a whole, at all, combined with scum in control. That's a bad combination. If you're town, kindly re-assess your priors and help me get something productive done. There's literally nothing else to do with Pignash at this point other than lynch him or move on. He's given the only answer he can give for the wagon on him. My personal approach in situations like this is to let the replacement player get his feet under him. What he does will tell us what we need to know. If he just lurks and tries to avoid being lynched ... then he's either bad town or scum. If he gets engaged in the game and moves beyond trying to defend the indefensible, then he might be town.

It's simply absurd to be focusing the entire game on a single comment made by a player no longer in the game. It's seriously time to move on.

Unless you have some other reason to push him?

[Drixx]

My vote changes from RVS to legit vote. Putting someone at L-1 and not asking them to claim or anything else is sort of pointless. There's no intent to hammer. It seems like KickAssAndGiggle is just going through the motions here.

I re-iterate my point that there is literally nobody opposing this wagon (except me, I suppose), and that is almost always a bad sign. The fact that literally nobody was opposing it is what makes me question it, and then that L-1 vote with the reasoning of "Well, I said I would vote in 24 hours if he didn't show up" while quoting him having showed up and said he was busy with work and would post later (which he did) ... that really rubs me wrong.

So yeah ... my vote isn't RVS anymore.

Who thinks that role claims now is a good idea? What town thinks that? We absolutely should not get a role claim from him now. How will that help anything when the majority of us don't even know the full setup? Furthermore, a role will be useless because he has done nothing to back up anything he could claim. You even think that he's more likely to be town because of the lack of opposition to his wagon (although would a scum member really be that worried when town are extremely unlikely to hammer early?) yet you still push with this obviously anti-town plan of role claiming early.

The main reason he's up there is because of one slip that his predecessor made. Yeah sure, he might be scum, his posts have not been spectacular, but the current argument against him is piss-poor if we're looking to lynch. Nobody has even bothered to question him further or engage with him to try and glean more clues about his alignment.

I'm suspicious that people want role claims this early...on Day 1, nonetheless. Seems like scum trying to TPR-hunt to me.

VOTE: Drixx

Nice mis-rep. I said that putting someone at L-1 and then not asking for a claim or putting any pressure on them is pointless. You seem to agree with me since you said "Nobody has even bothered to question him or further engage with him..."

But thanks for making it easy. Heat get a little too hot on your partner KickAssAndGiggle, did it?

You ignore half of my post to make a defensive reply, which is similar to how you're responding to KAAG. You conveniently ignore the fact that none of my post made any reference to your spat with KAAG in an attempt to discredit me. Do you have any evidence that I'm scum with KAAG aside from having me vote you over a separate issue that I had with your post?

There are a million other ways of applying pressure and determining wherever someone is town without resorting to role claims (which I almost-always see done near the end of the day). I personally never role claim on Day 1. The fact that you considered it as an option this easily is lazy and doesn't take into account anything else but what role they claimed, as if that is the only thing you care about.

Can you kindly explain how wanting a role claim (you considered it in your response) is helpful to town? Preferably without being snarky about it.

Let's try this again: I. Didn't. Ask. For. A. Role. Claim.

I said that putting someone at L-1 and not applying further pressure {intent to vote, asking for claim, asking for defense, etc..} is pointless. And it is pointless. It's doubly pointless in this case because just the act of trying to defend what a predecessor on your slot said or did is by definition viewed as a scum tell. So we have a wagon at L-1 right now on a player who literally cannot say anything at all to stop the wagon. How on earth is that productive?

We're not even 100 posts into the game, and instead of exploring the various things that people said in RVS and having different lines of communication, we're really going to sit and pick at on off hand read made by a player who replaced out? That's the best we can do?

Come on now.

[Drixx]

I don't know why you are acting like I think pignash's lynch is a good thing. I literally said that I agree that pignash's case is dumb, as you noted yourself. I'm one of the few people who is doing something that isn't focused on pignash. I'd make some suggestions as to what to do to get more intel from them, but you know more than I do so I won't embarrass myself there.

tl;dr, I agree with you about pignash, I just don't like the way you're doing it. Your post is just dismissing the entire town (despite knowing a lot of us are new to this site?) and getting worked up over a small deal. Seeing as you are experienced, I am skeptical that you are actually as irritated as you are making yourself out to be. Unless you have a link to a game of yours where you were town and acted in a similar manner, I'm inclined to think it's fake-outrage from you.

People getting angry/ passionate too easily is considered a scumtell around here, right?

There's fake frustration and anger, and there's real frustration and anger. Real is generally viewed as town, in my experience. Feel free to peruse my other games if you put any stock in meta-analysis of people. I don't put any stock in it. There's a prohibition against talking about ongoing games, so I can't really point you directly to why I'm actually so irritated. Suffice it to say that it has very little to do with this game, and that's all I can really say.

You keep going on about the Amished tell (i.e. scum has more reason to go back and defend his predecessor's tells because town KNOWS they're town).

I'm not ASKING him to defend his predecessor's tell, I'm asking him to get involved more. Hence pressure. Had a 3 man wagon formed on Spader, I'd have joined that too, same reason. But as others started it rolling on pignash, I leapt on.

I, for one,

haven't

read pignash as scum for sure, its just FOS. As it is on you, now you've been so desperate to push us off him.

Don't mistake my frustration with what I see as foolishness as desperation to defend someone. Attacking a bad wagon is not the same thing as defending the person being wagoned. Pignash hasn't said enough in the game to warrant a read either way, let alone a defense. A posited scum!me would have to be completely and ridiculously insane to defend a posited scum!Pignash, so that theory is dead before it even gets going.

If you want to see for sure that what you're seeing from me is being caused by something other than this game, you can check Newbie 1663(scum) and Newbie 1666(town).

Since we all seem to agree that this wagon is silly, can we maybe go back and evaluate the RVS and coming out of RVS stage and find something else that's actually worth our time to talk about? While we're at it, could we maybe try and get the six other people involved in the game? Those things would probably help. We're sitting here arguing in circles about a wagon we all seem to agree isn't productive or useful.

[Drixx]

Pignash needs to be pushed. Period. Just lurking isn't going to cut it.

My problem with his wagon as it stood yesterday is that it was pushed for terrible reasons (something his predecessor said super early in the game that Pig can't answer for and we don't even know enough about Lowell to know that he actually meant what people were saying he meant: i.e. - that person = town to me all game because of that question, as I understand the accusation). The secondary problem is that literally nobody was questioning the wagon, which is always a super bad sign. When literally nobody is questioning a wagon, it's almost always something scum are good with. Finally ... there was nothing useful being done. Hooray, we put a replacement at L-1 and then ... nothing. If you're going to put someone at L-1, then push them to give content so you can properly get what you are after (a read one way or the other) or move on.

The frustration in my posts was largely a product of other influences, and it just came through here.

In the intervening time ... Pignash has gone deep (Submarine metaphor). That's not exactly a great sign for him. He needs to show up and get into the game. If he doesn't, then it starts to seem plausible that maybe Lowell actually did hilariously scum slip on the first page by jumping at the chance to "town read" someone. If that's the case, then I would expect that someone driving his wagon decided to bus in hopes of gaining enough town cred to win out. I've seen that happen a few times with 2 person scum teams, but almost never in newbie games. There is generally too much of an experience gap and the experienced players can easily sort new town and PoE from there.

I am a little confused by Pignash going dark. The longer he stays down, the more foolish I feel for saying anything.

[Drixx]

Beellaphant ... it's not about who looks townie. My job isn't to look townie. My job is to figure out who is scum. I find that working on figuring out who town are helps a lot. When I see things that don't make sense, I generally probe them.

But the last thing any townie should be worried about is

looking

townie. It's way more important to actually figure out the game than have everyone like you.

The biggest reason that worrying about "looking townie" is a terrible agenda is that there are by definition people in the game who are going to latch onto anything they can to push the narrative that you aren't town. The trick is to discern between the town players legitimately trying to figure things out and the scum who are trying to set up narratives to lead to mislynches.

If you understand what I'm trying to explain here, then you'll understand why a wagon with no resistance is a gigantic blinking neon sign screaming "something is wrong".

[Drixx]

Do you consciously realize what about Kosc's post is weird and making you feel uncomfortable Accountant? I have a theory but I'd sort of like to see if you're on the same wavelength.

[Drixx]

It's a lot more than white noise...why is Drixx so eager to throw shade on your wagon, but without explicitly defending you?

I think he is trying to save his mafia buddy, i know that might be too obvious but i`m sticking to this for now.

Why does he seem unsure of what a day 1 wagon is for?

I don`t know how to answer this.

Who came out of this looking more towny?

For me KAAG seems the most town.

There's no such thing as a move that scum won't make. That said, it would be a really bad strategy to do what you are suggesting since if I were scum I could just walk Pignash through how to ride out the wagon on him in the scum pt and have no need to bring up the fact that the unopposed wagon gave me the heebie jeebies.

An interesting theory.

I delayed the wagon, and only jumped on reluctantly due to pignash failing to post when he stated he would.

said he was busy with work and would post later (which he did)

He most certainly did not...don't know where you get that from.

Putting someone at L-1 and not asking them to claim or anything else

You think I should demand a claim on Day 1 just because he's L-1? What could he claim that wouldn't be anti-town? A genuine PR just gets a bullseye on his head despite having no info yet and a VT claim is about as much use as a chocolate teapot (because town won't read it either way, and if he IS VT, just makes it easier for scum to narrow down PR).

Claiming on D1 = last resort, when someone has declared they are prepared to hammer. Therefore, no point in me demanding a claim.

Regarding the

anything else

The reason is, as I feel you know, to pressure him to add content, so we can get reads. I think it is crucial that Spader also gets involved for this reason, but the "quick clear" by pignash's predecessor simply made this wagon easier to get rolling (not that I started it rolling mind, I joined it).

By definition, cherry picking is taking a small portion of what someone says and isolating it apart from its context. You clearly did that here. Whether your intent was scummy or not, I haven't made up my mind yet. You clearly were trying to interpret my post with a bunch of connected thoughts in a way that would allow you to pressure me. I can see town doing that if they want to get a read on me, but I much more frequently see scum do it to make it easier to make someone look scummy.

[Drixx]

@KaaG - The site rules prohibit me from pointing out the influences that had me wound up. You pushing me for them puts me in a position where I cannot defend myself, and if you know the site rule against talking about ongoing games, then you know you are dumping a case on me that I can't engage with. Also, you can see me quote where you cherry picked. It's pretty open and shut that you did it. You're free to argue semantics, but you took what I was saying out of context and I frequently make posts which have several premises or points that contribute to a conclusion. When you strip out the context and respond to a tiny portion, you are by definition not actually addressing what I said in a truly honest way.

I'm reserving judgment for the moment, but right now you are doing things which strike me as objectively scummy.

[Drixx]

Every time someone quotes and answers the relevant points, but not the fluff, you call it cherry picking?

That's a fallacy, pure and simple.

The problem is that you ignored the collective point of the post and cherry picked out one part where you could make a reply and make me look scummy. Specifically the part about claiming. My point was very clear: there isn't any point to taking someone to L-1 and then just leaving them there without putting pressure on them. Site meta here frequently applies that pressure (yes, even on day one) by someone giving intent to hammer and forcing the person being wagoned to talk in defense, and the site meta also generally expects people to claim when intent is given.

So it actually is scummy when you cut something out of context so it looks like I was fishing for a claim or suggesting we ask someone to claim on day 2 or something. It's even more bizarre that you would think that considering that until I said something (and drew an absurd amount of attention to myself), nobody was really even thinking about the wagon, the fact that Lowell replaced out and we can't actually get any answer about the post he made, the fact that Pignash can't answer for it even if he wanted to, and nobody was at all giving any resistance to the wagon.

In point of fact, I found the town read, if serious, to be way premature. I would probably sort a true newbie as lean town for a question like that, but I would also be watching carefully to see if the player slipped and revealed that they weren't quite as new as the post indicated. I've seen scum do that quite a lot in newbie games here. It's so frequent that I have to stop myself from just assuming that players with recent join dates are overselling their inexperience and newness.

So put yourself in my pace for a minute, yeah? I'm the IC and so part of my job is to talk about and teach theory. I see something that I have learned from experience is a bad thing (a wagon going without any resistance) and so I question it. The fact that I also felt like the post was something to wonder about just reinforced to me the fact that literally nobody was questioning the wagon. It remains a distinct possibility that it really was a legit scum slip on the part of Lowell ... but if it was, then there's only three possibilities for what we've observed:

1.) His partner viewed the slip and replace out as too much to overcome and decided to bus and is among the folks who were pushing the wagon early and hoping to gain town cred.
2.) His partner was staying out of it (I would have to go look to see who is in this category)
3.) His partner would chainsaw defend him (which is what Kosc has posited)


There's also the complete opposite possibility. Lowell could have been town and either just posted rashly or didn't mean for us to take that as a firm "this guy is town forever in my book" sort of thing. If that's the case, the scenarios that come to mind are pretty simple:

1.) Scum was happy to see the wagon build and would have been fine with the lynch happening and were on board the wagon.
2.) Scum was happy to see the wagon and weren't on board, hoping it would go and leave them blameless.
3.) Scum might chainsaw defend the slot so that it flipping town would potentially give scum town cred (this would be the corollary to #3 above).


In both cases, the 3rd option would be really sub optimal scum play in a game with daychat. One need only look at Newbie 1663 to see my most recent completed scum game. If you can look at me playing scum there and tell me with a straight face you believe I'm scum that is either A.) Chainsaw defending my partner or B.) Chainsaw defending someone I know to be town ... well I just don't think anyone could say that with a straight face. Obviously, what I said earlier about there being nothing that scum won't do is a thing, and there's a bit of WiFoM, but at some point you have to choose where to get off the WiFoM merry-go-round, and I think the exit is probably not the one that posits me playing as if it were my first ever game of mafia.

YMMV, of course.

[Drixx]

Note: I would be very uncomfortable with a lynch on EITHER Drixx OR pignash until Spader's replacement gets involved.

This is a very good point.

[Drixx]

@Accountant - Just because I mentioned recently that I also found Lowell's post odd doesn't mean that I only thought that recently. I thought it from the moment I read it. I chose to say something when I realized that literally everyone was sheeping on that. As I said ... absolutely no resistance to the wagon is a bad sign. Accept for a moment the premise that I also found Lowell's post to be off. In that case, we had the entire game (save one slot which has been replaced by AI) all lined up and scum reading the slot. That means that either the inactive slot plus Lowell's slot is the scum team, and game solved (super unlikely on day one, but possible)

or

it means that scum are perfectly happy with the wagon, which means it's not a good wagon.

So I got involved and drew the entire game's attention to me. That's either a hilariously ballsy move or a hilariously stupid one (or both) if I were scum.

As for what I thought might be bothering about that post, it was that the first word was "Honestly". There are some people who use that as a way to emphasize things or to say that they are just being way more blunt than they would otherwise be; however, there is also a large portion of people who psychologically say things like "honestly" or "to be honest" or some similar phrasing when they are subconsciously concerned about the fact they know they are deceiving. It's more common for it to be a scum tell with newer players than more experienced players.

[Drixx]

Oh and I think I'm just going to squash this whole theory of me being scum with the Lowell/Pignash slot. I could make a case for why a scum me would do what I've done today, but the current idea being pushed by a couple people that I am scum with that slot is bad, most especially in a newbie game where there is little margin for error. Let us suppose that we lynch the Lowell/Pignash slot and it flips scum. That's great, as it's half way to winning, but then the current idea would come after me and that would be a mislynch. That's not the end of the world because any town player in a newbie game, including any of the possible PRs, should be happy to trade 1-for-1 for scum. It works out to our favor any time.

The problem is let's suppose we lynch the Lowell/Pignash slot and it flips town (or my slot and you see me flip town) ... the current idea to me feels like people are certain one or the other of us must be scum, and if the Lowell/Pignash slot is town, then lynching us both is going to put the town in LYLO. Given how almost the entirety of the game has been focused on the Lowell slot (and then me once I started questioning the wagon), I'm not sure town could recover from that scenario.

So as a preface, I want to say that in general I'm not a big fan of meta analysis. Any sufficiently experienced player with even a little self awareness should be aware of his meta and can change it at will. That said, my observation is that almost all mafia players have certain tendencies that they stick with, so there

can

be some value to analyzing how a player has played in other games (generally you want to be look as close temporally as you can to the game in progress since people will naturally evolve and change their playstyle over time. Looking at a game from a year ago would probably be useless for most active players, for example).

So with that preface out of my way, I would invite those who are currently pushing the idea of the Lowell/Pignash slot and myself as scum together to just go read my last two newbie games. They were Newbie 1663 and Newbie 1666 and I was scum in one and town in another, so you can evaluate pretty well. What I expect you to find is that I generally play with purpose and generally I value subtlety and posts that have multiple purposes. When I'm trying to get reads on people, it's not always obvious that's what I'm doing. So you are free to read me however you like, but I think if you evaluate my most recent completed newbie games you can see really clearly how I approach things.

You will also see me make some really bad plays as town in Newbie 1666, which have impacted my approach to this game. I think once you go look, my posts talking about what you do when you have someone at L-1 will make a lot more sense.


Anyway ... I'm anxious to see what the replacement has to say. After I sleep I will probably do a thread re-read and see if I can find anything that merits talking about besides what has been the main conversation all day phase thus far. We're only ~120 posts in, so I'm not super optimistic, but I feel like spending the whole day in our current rut isn't really useful. I also need to evaluate Pignash and see if he's lurking strategically or what's going on in that slot. I would like to see a lot more interaction with the game from him.

[Drixx]

however, there is also a large portion of people who psychologically say things like "honestly" or "to be honest" or some similar phrasing when they are subconsciously concerned about the fact they know they are deceiving. It's more common for it to be a scum tell with newer players than more experienced players.

This is a sketchy tell at best. Lots of people, especially young people, use it habitually. Look at a chat exchange betweem two teenagers and it's not uncommon to see "tbh" and "honestly" flying all around.

Yeah. I pointed out that it's not a reliable tell. It is something that will ping the "gut" or subconscious mind though.

The thing to watch if you want to decide if that is a tell is whether the person does it habitually or whether it only shows up infrequently. If it only shows up infrequently, pay attention.

[Drixx]

This is probably my earliest read list on this site. I guess players like Ranger influence me.

Why do you feel self conscious about it? Your play will develop as you play more. It's going to happen. I'm confused that you're talking about players not in this game though. Strange post, especially when you know I'm going to bloodhound you this game after what you managed in 1666. It was especially irritating since I realized the guy was legit town and had lost confidence in myself and didn't fight the wagon hard. I hated that I refreshed and the game was over and I knew the second I saw your vote it was a scum win.

Seriously ... are you like trying to goad me into attacking or something?

[Drixx]

I get the pressuring thing, but to say that there is zero chance of him being hammered is clearly false. Some people quickhammer without explanation. Unless you know everyone extremely well, you can't say that nobody will do it.

That won't happen, because that person knows he will get lynched.

Sadly I hammered two townies sooner than I should have in Newbie 1666. To be fair, I did give them both warning that I was going to do it, but nobody ever lynched me for it.

[Drixx]

I can buy that might be an overreaction. Let's see what we see:

Unvote

VOTE: Bellaphant

[Drixx]

Someone else who has spent time on LessWrong?

You are right to be wary of AI. He managed to fool me until nearly the end of a game, and while I'm probably nowhere near the best player on the site, I am not easily fooled. Mafia, by definition, are always spinning a story into the thread. That story is how I catch them. It inevitably has to change when different flips make it more or less likely that the targets they are setting up for mislynch change in status. All it takes is one innocent result to force the narrative to change without any town logical reason, and you generally have someone worth investing in a good gambit or push.

I dislike that you still view the Lowell/Pignash (soon to be a 3rd player's?) slot as linked to mine. You might want to re-evaluate your priors, because that looks a lot like tunneling. The longer that Pignash continues not to engage with the game actively, the more foolish I feel for questioning the wagon on him. I'm getting fairly close to suggesting we put that pressure back on and see what we see.

Thoughts?

[Drixx]

Welcome, Radical Rat. Thanks for jumping in feet first.

[Drixx]

@KAAG - I think I already talked about meta-analysis and its flaws before, but my day one is generally trying to think up ways to get reads. I run gambits when I see an opportunity, but otherwise my particular approach to mafia (rational analysis using logic, a modified bayes theorem and modified timeless decision theory for game theory) suffers on the first day from lack of any actual objective information. I know what is in my Role PM. Anything else is based upon what I can get as reactions or responses.

Combine that with my profession (I teach at University: Koine Greek and a couple of classes for the Law School), and the fact that the IC position is generally supposed to help by acclimating people to the basic principles of the game and the specifics of how things are done on this site, along with generally being expected to keep the game flowing ... and you end up with what you've seen from me today.

And I think that questioning a wagon that wasn't being opposed was very productive. I've got a pretty good sort on people who seem interested in figuring things out as opposed to people who just seem content to lynch without any real interaction with the slot. That's not nothing. Sometimes the strongest way to scum hunt is to town hunt so that you know where to spend your effort. It also helps with PoE.

[Drixx]

I'm trying really hard not to give a biased town read to Accountant after #210.

[Drixx]

Radical Rat town.

Twice in one game? Really?

AND

the Amished tell a couple posts later?

*sigh*

[Drixx]

That might be the most bizarre back and forth I've ever seen. You realize he's saying you're scum, right Radical Rat?

[Drixx]

I'm sorry ... I totally mixed up Nictherat and Radical Rat.

I'd be super interested in how you got there via PoE on day one. I like to think I'm fairly good at this game but I frankly don't see it.

[Drixx]

I'm really curious to see what AI has cooking here.

[Drixx]

@Accountant - Didn't I ask if you spent time on lesswrong earlier in the game? I totally feel like I saw you say something that made me pretty sure you were quite familiar with the site.

As far as the Amished tell goes ... the thing is; it's not in the wiki. It has a name but it's a bit tongue-in-cheek. It's called that because there was a player named Amished and apparently he replaced into games a lot (which is a super high utility thing to do on this site; good replacements rescue games from apathy), but he drew scum repeatedly, AND he would replace into slots that were being scum read and try to defend the actions of the prior player(s) on the slot when he replaced into scum slots. The problem is that it's literally impossible to defend the thoughts/actions of a prior player because the replacement isn't that person.

That's why when I replace into games I just don't pay any attention to the status of the slot when I get it. It's all about MY play.

Anyway ... the tell is remarkably accurate, and generally people don't know what it means. It took me a long time to find out what it was after it was first brought up in a game I was playing in.

[Drixx]

Post #273 doesn't look like it was written by someone who doesn't already know that town lynches every day, even day one. That's pretty damning, imo. That's exactly the sort of thing I look for when someone opens the game pretending to know nothing about how it works. Wow.

[Drixx]

Just be careful of reading too much into it AI. I could show you plenty of places where I made a Freudian slip as town and posted something that could be viewed the way you are suggesting in #279. You might be right, but it would be a lot better to have other reasons than that.

[Drixx]

Yeah, the "slip" was just icing on the cake, though. His emphasis on him being a newbie is more important.

Okay, but Christopher opened the game with a question that could only come from someone with extremely limited experience (or no experience) with forum based mafia. The subset of situations in which town should give up the only power we have and choose not to lynch is tiny, and it never includes day one. He asked, and implicit in that question is him representing himself as not knowing.

Then he makes a post just recently where he displays a much higher level of understanding of the game.

That

is the contradiction that I'm currently considering. There's so little else to judge him by that I'm a little worried about just jumping to the conclusion that I'm seeing a legitimate contradiction and that it is automatically scummy. There exists the possibility that he picked up a lot just in the game so far, or did some reading in the wiki, or whatever. That's why I commented/questioned and I'm still trying to figure out if his reaction to that is genuine townie "I'm doing what you asked, what the hell do you want from me?" kind of posting, or if it's faux.

I would appreciate your thoughts, if you want to look at what I'm pointing out.

[Drixx]

Yeah, the "slip" was just icing on the cake, though. His emphasis on him being a newbie is more important.

Okay, but Christopher opened the game with a question that could only come from someone with extremely limited experience (or no experience) with forum based mafia. The subset of situations in which town should give up the only power we have and choose not to lynch is tiny, and it never includes day one. He asked, and implicit in that question is him representing himself as not knowing.

Then he makes a post just recently where he displays a much higher level of understanding of the game.

That

is the contradiction that I'm currently considering. There's so little else to judge him by that I'm a little worried about just jumping to the conclusion that I'm seeing a legitimate contradiction and that it is automatically scummy. There exists the possibility that he picked up a lot just in the game so far, or did some reading in the wiki, or whatever. That's why I commented/questioned and I'm still trying to figure out if his reaction to that is genuine townie "I'm doing what you asked, what the hell do you want from me?" kind of posting, or if it's faux.

I would appreciate your thoughts, if you want to look at what I'm pointing out.

You mean, that he didn't know that No Lynch is objectively worse for town, and did know, for some reason, what the abbreviation FOS stood for?

I had to go look at the post again to see what pinged me. Too many buzzwords for someone representing himself as so new to the game he doesn't realize town always lynches on day one.

[Drixx]

287 is an overwhelmingly town reading post. Christopher is either really really good at this (if scum), or is being totally genuine there. I've been fooled too many times to assume the latter (*glares at AI*), but... I'm leaning away from Christopher today. I like that it didn't take a lot of pressure to get him to talk.

@Christopher - Can you give some thoughts on the other players in the game please? It would help to have an idea of what you're thinking about the rest of us.

[Drixx]

Blargh. I really wish I could scrub Newbie 1666 from my mind AI. I am seriously having a hard time reading you without viewing through that lens.

[Drixx]

I really want Bellaphant to show back up and talk to me. My vote is just sitting there waiting to be responded to.

[Drixx]

@Pignash -

I realize you asked him to claim and such, but please bear in mind that it is customary and expected on the site to make it extremely clear when you have put someone at L-1 so that nobody accidentally hammers unintentionally. Unintentional hammers can absolutely destroy a game. There's a very strong set of reasons for why we do things the way we do, and even if you don't see the point, please at least make an attempt to do so in games on the Road to Rome. If you choose not to do so in other queues, just be aware that people will very often scum read you for putting someone at L-1 without saying that you've done so.

[Drixx]

UNVOTE: Nictherat

Alright, Nictherat. Claim. Don't disappoint me with VT, though.

This is an absurd post, AI. Seriously. Consider the possible PR setups:

Jailkeeper
Jailkeeper + 1-shot BP
1-shot BP + Tracker
Tracker + Doctor
Doctor + Cop
Cop

1/3 of the time, there will be only one PR among 7 town. The other 2/3 of the time there will be two among 7. Even if we are in a two PR setup, the odds are stacked heavily against any particular person being able to honestly claim anything other than VT. It almost looks as if you are scum and were hoping to combine what you know with a PR claim to know the setup or something.

That's a seriously scummy post you made man. Wow.

[Drixx]

I agree with everything Drixx says there.

This Matrix6 setup thingy makes claiming on D1 anti-town in every situation as far as I can tell. Scum pretty much have to claim VT as a PR claim informs the real PR they're scum (only a 33% chance of claiming a PR that won't do that), and as every setup has more VT than anything, what do you learn? And if a PR claims, they better hope it's with a Doctor in the house. And what should doctor claim? Anything other than the truth and "lynch all liars" becomes an issue.

So we have pignash and AI asking for claim. On my original read list, that's most scummy and third most scummy.

Hmm...

I actually found AI's post way more suspicious than Pig's. They both basically asked the same thing, but you can see a clear difference.

As for your question:

If there's a doctor and they have to claim in a newbie game, they should always claim "I am either a doctor or a 1-shot B". The reason for this is because it won't cause any other townies to counterclaim and it has a 50/50 chance not to tell the scum whether they have a cop to worry about or not. If they just claim doctor and the scum has a role blocker, then scum know they have to worry about a cop. That's about the only time a town player should consider not being completely honest in a newbie game.

I really don't like the "Don't disappoint me with VT" post.

Felt like baiting a fakeclaim to me... Idk though, I still think AI is being too bold to be scum. Unless.... That's his sneaky scumstrat? But that gets WIFOMY really quickly.

This looks a lot like coaching. Radical Rat suggests that it might be an attempt to bait scum into fake claiming, and then AI shows up shortly afterward and goes "Yeah! That's totally what I was doing!"

Is it really that easy though? Is AI really making a super ballsy HiPS gambit play here?

[Drixx]

My last scum game has made Drixx totally paranoid of me.

Perhaps I should have been a little more careful with (not) triggering him.

I always think that when I am town it should be super obvious to everyone, but in practice this does not seem to be the case.

That's frankly why I feel like you might be trying to gambit by being so aggressive. You can say that you fooled me and I'm just being paranoid.

[Drixx]

Bellaphant is going to run out the clock on today. That's really irritating.

[Drixx]

I think either Nictherat or AI has to be scum. I don't think that what I saw earlier was coaching like I initially thought. I'm too used to no daytalk for scum in the newbie games and that kind of thing probably isn't a tell anymore. But looking at their back and forth, I'm not feeling TvT there. I'm probably like 60% AI / 40% Nictherat ... but putting my vote on AI just gives us three wagons at 2 people, and we're running out of time.

I hope you're not just tripping my paranoia AI.

VOTE: Nictherat

P-Edit:

Nictherat is at L-1. Do not vote for him without first giving intent to hammer and allowing him to give a defense and info dump.

[Drixx]

Oh, you Drixx.

You don't get to say this to me after Newbie 1666, especially in light of what I am going to bold in the next quote from you:

I really don't like the "Don't disappoint me with VT" post.

Felt like baiting a fakeclaim to me...

In a way, yes. If Nictherat is scum, then he might have fallen for it and claimed something ridiculous, that could easily be countered.

Idk though, I still think AI is being too bold to be scum. Unless.... That's his sneaky scumstrat? But that gets WIFOMY really quickly.

Well, my first game on this site was a scum game. I was quite cautious as scum, partly because it is the nature of being scum and partly because it was my first game.

In my town games, I quickly got bolder. This will probably require me to play a bold game in my scum games too. Not looking forward to it, but yes, I will probably have to do that, or I would have an easy meta on me.

That statement right there shows you are fully self aware of your meta and know that as scum you have to play bold. You're seriously tripping the shit out of my paranoia right now.

[Drixx]

And here I thought that being completely honest would give me town creds.

One of the strongest tools in the scum toolbox is telling the truth. You can easily point out that you have to be aggressive as scum because you have been aggressive as town, and it can be true and you can be doing exactly that right in this game.

Hiding in Plain Sight

is what I call that (HiPS).

[Drixx]

And here I thought that being completely honest would give me town creds.

I can't imagine you busing your partner day one. That's a little TOO ballsy, imo. What looked like coaching earlier makes no sense with day talk in play. I would probably view you as probtown and leave the paranoia for if the game goes into M/LYLO. Can't speak for anyone else though. Some of your posts don't seem to have much town motivation.

[Drixx]

Oh, you Drixx.

You don't get to say this to me after Newbie 1666, especially in light of what I am going to bold in the next quote from you:

I really don't like the "Don't disappoint me with VT" post.

Felt like baiting a fakeclaim to me...

In a way, yes. If Nictherat is scum, then he might have fallen for it and claimed something ridiculous, that could easily be countered.

Idk though, I still think AI is being too bold to be scum. Unless.... That's his sneaky scumstrat? But that gets WIFOMY really quickly.

Well, my first game on this site was a scum game. I was quite cautious as scum, partly because it is the nature of being scum and partly because it was my first game.

In my town games, I quickly got bolder. This will probably require me to play a bold game in my scum games too. Not looking forward to it, but yes, I will probably have to do that, or I would have an easy meta on me.

That statement right there shows you are fully self aware of your meta and know that as scum you have to play bold. You're seriously tripping the shit out of my paranoia right now.

Why would he say this though if he were scum? That sounds like the sort of thing scum says AFTER the game to me.

If you ever find yourself saying anything like "Scum would/wouldn't do..." make a habit of stopping yourself. There's literally nothing scum won't try. I've been playing forum mafia for about a decade, and live mafia for decades. I could tell you about a time once where I won a live mafia game as the Godfather by killing my mob boss and confusing everyone left enough that I went from being widely suspected to the only person people were

sure

was town. The stuff I've seen scum pull in forum mafia is over the top absurd. If you want an example, check out the "White Flag Gambit" on the wiki.

Mafia is a deeply psychological game, mate. AI worked me good the first time we played. There's a reason I'm paranoid of him.

[Drixx]

@mod: Can we get an extension if Bellaphant doesn't pick up the prod?

[Drixx]

I hate day 1. I like it as a concept but I am bad at it and a lot of these newbies seem to stall at this point. Starting to understand why Ika hammers any L-1. Haha.

As a more experienced player, it would help for you to set an example by being more engaged and encouraging the newer players to play.

I find that players frequently have a huge shock when they go to one of the large game queues and the games can go 200+ posts a day in pace.

[Drixx]

And here I thought that being completely honest would give me town creds.

One of the strongest tools in the scum toolbox is telling the truth. You can easily point out that you have to be aggressive as scum because you have been aggressive as town, and it can be true and you can be doing exactly that right in this game.

Hiding in Plain Sight

is what I call that (HiPS).

How do you know hes telling the truth scummily and not townily

I don't. That's why I'm noting my paranoia and pointing out what

might

be happening, instead of pushing a day one wagon on him. I would probably prefer an AI lynch today but, as I said before, my vote there would just result in three people at 2 votes with two days left.

I'm growing more and more okay with Nictherat though as he's gone silent. I've seen a LOT of scum players use that approach to being very close to lynch... they go dark and wait for the town to get frustrated and move elsewhere.

[Drixx]

Night Kill Analysis points directly at me. I don't think that's a coincidence.

I agree that we would be much better positioned if we had the reads and thoughts. That's the whole point of giving intent; you're supposed to let the person defend himself, and they get a chance to infodump their thoughts. What was the motive to hurry yesTerday?

[Drixx]

Well that makes it pretty easy. Didn't I say that a doctor should not outright claim in newbie games, and if they do they should claim to be either a doctor or a 1-shot BP, in order to try and WiFoM the scum team?

Intent to hammer

.

[Drixx]

I agree with everything Drixx says there.

This Matrix6 setup thingy makes claiming on D1 anti-town in every situation as far as I can tell. Scum pretty much have to claim VT as a PR claim informs the real PR they're scum (only a 33% chance of claiming a PR that won't do that), and as every setup has more VT than anything, what do you learn? And if a PR claims, they better hope it's with a Doctor in the house. And what should doctor claim? Anything other than the truth and "lynch all liars" becomes an issue.

So we have pignash and AI asking for claim. On my original read list, that's most scummy and third most scummy.

Hmm...

I actually found AI's post way more suspicious than Pig's. They both basically asked the same thing, but you can see a clear difference.

As for your question:

If there's a doctor and they have to claim in a newbie game, they should always claim "I am either a doctor or a 1-shot B". The reason for this is because it won't cause any other townies to counterclaim and it has a 50/50 chance not to tell the scum whether they have a cop to worry about or not. If they just claim doctor and the scum has a role blocker, then scum know they have to worry about a cop. That's about the only time a town player should consider not being completely honest in a newbie game.

I really don't like the "Don't disappoint me with VT" post.

Felt like baiting a fakeclaim to me... Idk though, I still think AI is being too bold to be scum. Unless.... That's his sneaky scumstrat? But that gets WIFOMY really quickly.

This looks a lot like coaching. Radical Rat suggests that it might be an attempt to bait scum into fake claiming, and then AI shows up shortly afterward and goes "Yeah! That's totally what I was doing!"

Is it really that easy though? Is AI really making a super ballsy HiPS gambit play here?

Just quoting myself. You have the right to play however you prefer Christopher, but there was a reason I said that.

[Drixx]

Look.

I do not want to lynch pignash right now.

If he's today's lynch, that's fine, though I'd much rather have a confirmed scum in the endgame than a hidden scum.

But I don't want today to end early. We can just ignore anything pignash says, and still get some discussion and scumhunting done before we end the day.

That's super unorthodox. I don't believe I've ever seen someone suggest leaving a known scum around.

As for Christopher claiming; at first I cringed but it's probably a good thing. Instead of having some WiFoM situation where KaaG could be running a gambit, we have a compatible claim. If Pignash doesn't flip scum, the scum team just claimed today. It's that easy.

[Drixx]

You made the right choice KaaG. I wish Christopher would have taken my advice on how to claim as doctor though. As long as you are right, the claims today end up trading him for Pignash, which works as long as you find the partner. A one for one is always worth it for town.

[Drixx]

Thanks Drixx

Every second, my %%% of being sure who scum #2 is goes up. Trust me: town wins this.

I wouldn't blame you if you think it's me, but if you do you should re-evaluate. Since Christopher outed himself he can only protect you tonight and if you are thinking me all you will be able to tell us tomorrow is that it's not me. That's not the worst thing ever as we would have 5 of us alive and you and I would be confirmed, so we would only have to PoE between the other three.


P-Edit: What's done is done Christopher. It works out I think.

[Drixx]

Could the attempt to frame me be any more blatant? First there's a kill against the person I'm suspecting the most, and now our tracker makes it pretty clear right before yesTerday ended that he had decided I must be scum #2, and oh look, no kill.

There's just a couple problems with the theory.

1.) KaaG clearly wasn't sure who was Pignash's partner. Post #477 makes that super clear. I'm not sure that Pignash is so new that he needed to be told to self hammer (it is pretty basic mafia theory for caught scum after all), but supposing he needed to be told, why on earth would the partner have to be actively on right when Pignash self hammered? There were hours between him being outed as guilty and his self vote. For all we know, they were specifically watching for me to be on site just in case someone as looking at profile time stamps.

Anyone is free to check out my post history and see what I was doing Thursday around 11pm East Coast US time. Rules prohibit me from saying any more than that.


2.) Accountant didn't post at all yesTerday in the game, despite having been online around four hours before Pignash showed up and self hammered. Why would Accountant get on but say nothing? If I had to guess, I would say that Accountant

did

say something ... just not where we can see it. Pignash self hammering while I was posting elsewhere on site was a nice touch on the frame job.


2a.) I do feel the need to raise a couple of points for future reference.

• Generally it's considered poor form to stalk profiles to try and game the game. It sort of defeats the purpose (and is why quite a lot of people disable that field in their profile).
  
• Any time you want to log into the site without that field updating, you can simply log in invisible and you can be online posting and your profile will swear you haven't been on since your previous non-invisible login.
  
• Deciding what actions to take or assuming alignment by profile is a really easy way to get hoodwinked

3.) This deserves its own point: Just how much are you trying to insult Pignash, KaaG? Do you really think he needed someone to tell him to self hammer?

I'm sure there's more, but that's just what I noted when I refreshed and saw that Pig had finally showed up and self hammered. Would have posted before day end if I had caught twilight.


@KaaG - You really should have kept it to yourself who you were thinking was scum. I'm not sure it's Accountant, but the lack of post in game does make it plausible that Accountant could have talked to Pignash in scum chat and just not bothered to risk putting anything in thread. Look at how you reacted when you looked at the profile and the erroneous conclusion you drew.

And that's not saying anything about the other suspects. If there are no counterclaims today, then you and Christopher are basically confirmed town. You should be pushing everyone to respond and this time

DO NOT

hint or WiFoM or anything else about what you're going to do.

@Mod: How does 'Happily Ever After' work in your games?

[Drixx]

This should go without saying, but going to say it anyway:

Today we have an even number of people alive due to the no kill. If we mislynch today and there is a kill tonight, that will make tomorrow MYLO (Mislynch and Lose). That is the one time where it potentially makes sense to vote a no lynch in a newbie game. The burden is then on the scum to kill and put it into LYLO (Lynch {correctly} or Lose). There's nothing to be gained by hurrying today. No matter how you slice it, the remaining scum needs to get two mislynches and at least one night kill done without getting caught.

There is therefore no reason to hurry.

[Drixx]

I'm apparently dumb. The no kill could mean that Christopher is actually 1-shot BP and caused the no kill with his claim. Pretty clever if so, especially if KaaG was spilling Wine in the thread and managed to track it.

[Drixx]

KaaG: this is really simple. You were just wrong about me. I totally get the reasons you decided it was me; however, you need only look at my topics and posts and you'll see what I was doing at the time you assumed I was up to no good. By dropping my name, you put a bunch of unnecessary WiFoM into the game. I didn't exactly try to hide from the fact that the night one kill pointed at me; it's the first thing I said yesterday, and I was super irritated by refreshing to see the self vote and twilight had already passed, as I would have said some of what I said last night (real time) in twilight.

In any case, the situation is still what it is. The last scum has to get at least one night kill off without getting caught, and pair that with two mislynches. We know for sure that KaaG and Christopher are town because no counter claims. Now that Christopher showed up, we know that KaaG gets minimum one more night tracking where he can give results. This is crucial because if he tracks me again (or someone else) and does NOT have a guilty, we still go into tomorrow (MYLO, presumably) with two confirmed town as a worst case (KaaG and an innocent track target) or with the game solved as a best case (KaaG tracks the killer). Christopher being doctor and not 1-shot BP ensures that position.

@Accountant - RE #490 - Of course from my perspective it's a setup. The scum have a tracker + Doctor combo to deal with and they have to get mislynches. I'm an IC still alive in the mid game (which already counts against me as far as site meta goes), and our town tracker made it clear he suspected me. The no kill, if it was by choice, sets me up to be mislynched today. The last scum is in the pool of {Accountant, Radical Rat, Phantom Cobalt} and the expectation would be that scum would have to kill Christopher tonight (there's a reason I asked about Happily Ever After). If KaaG doesn't catch them in the act, then tomorrow it's KaaG plus a confirmed innocent and two question marks. If we aren't sure, that's why MYLO is the one time a no lynch is acceptable: force the hand of the scum to kill and put it into 3-man LYLO. That kill would presumably be against KaaG and would leave me and two of the people in the scum pool. One of us would be cleared as town by KaaG.

That's the worst possible case. We'll have to go out of our way and try really hard to make this game a loss at this point.

@KaaG - Re-assess your priors please. Don't death tunnel on me and (I assume) your secondary scum read Accountant. Your thoughts on how to proceed are going to steer the ship. I've done my best to lay out the situation logically.

[Drixx]

Just because we're in a nearly impossible to lose position doesn't mean we should slack. Reasons for reads should be included please PC. Just throwing out reads doesn't give us any idea of your thinking, and we need to see how everyone is thinking just now.

[Drixx]

I didn't say we were in MYLO. You should re-read ... unless you intentionally said that so someone would correct you so you could misrepresent me. In that case I guess you're playing to your win con. Hopefully people will go look for themselves and this can be a perfect win instead of me getting mislynched before they catch on to you.

[Drixx]

KaaG: this is really simple. You were just wrong about me. I totally get the reasons you decided it was me; however, you need only look at my topics and posts and you'll see what I was doing at the time you assumed I was up to no good. By dropping my name, you put a bunch of unnecessary WiFoM into the game. I didn't exactly try to hide from the fact that the night one kill pointed at me; it's the first thing I said yesterday, and I was super irritated by refreshing to see the self vote and twilight had already passed, as I would have said some of what I said last night (real time) in twilight.

In any case, the situation is still what it is. The last scum has to get at least one night kill off without getting caught, and pair that with two mislynches. We know for sure that KaaG and Christopher are town because no counter claims. Now that Christopher showed up, we know that KaaG gets minimum one more night tracking where he can give results. This is crucial because if he tracks me again (or someone else) and does NOT have a guilty,

we still go into

tomorrow

(MYLO, presumably)

with two confirmed town as a worst case (KaaG and an innocent track target) or with the game solved as a best case (KaaG tracks the killer). Christopher being doctor and not 1-shot BP ensures that position.

@Accountant - RE #490 - Of course from my perspective it's a setup. The scum have a tracker + Doctor combo to deal with and they have to get mislynches. I'm an IC still alive in the mid game (which already counts against me as far as site meta goes), and our town tracker made it clear he suspected me. The no kill, if it was by choice, sets me up to be mislynched today. The last scum is in the pool of {Accountant, Radical Rat, Phantom Cobalt} and the expectation would be that scum would have to kill Christopher tonight (there's a reason I asked about Happily Ever After). If KaaG doesn't catch them in the act, then tomorrow it's KaaG plus a confirmed innocent and two question marks. If we aren't sure, that's why MYLO is the one time a no lynch is acceptable: force the hand of the scum to kill and put it into 3-man LYLO. That kill would presumably be against KaaG and would leave me and two of the people in the scum pool. One of us would be cleared as town by KaaG.

That's the worst possible case. We'll have to go out of our way and try really hard to make this game a loss at this point.

@KaaG - Re-assess your priors please. Don't death tunnel on me and (I assume) your secondary scum read Accountant. Your thoughts on how to proceed are going to steer the ship. I've done my best to lay out the situation logically.

Emphasis added to make it super clear. There's no world in which that reads as me saying today is MYLO.

VOTE: Radical Rat

[Drixx]

That actually reads really genuine to me RR. You know what reads as scummy? Accountant being all about you or me being lynched today.

Unvote

FOS: Accountant

@KaaG - It appears to me that you couldn't decide yesterday who you thought was Pig's partner, and that you only ruled Accountant out because of looking at the profile page. What do you think now that I pointed out why that was not a good way to clear someone? What do you think of Accountant being on during the day phase but avoiding posting? At this point you are guaranteed to be alive one more night and either confirm someone as town or catch the last scum, so you don't need to play coy anymore (and you probably shouldn't;

EXCEPT

when it comes to who you plan to track tonight if today's lynch doesn't win us the game. That you should not say or hint or anything).

My biggest fear is that I will end up in a 3 person LYLO either as the cleared person or with a cleared person and me being the easy mislynch bait. The more you and Christopher interact with the possible scum pool and give your thoughts, the more you move the needle from "Town almost certainly wins" towards "Town guaranteed wins".

[Drixx]

Well put Christopher. That's what I was explaining in my post earlier. Our worst case scenario is mislynch today, you die tonight and KaaG tracks me or the other person in the suspect pool who is town and can only confirm a townie instead of handing us scum. That makes it worst case KaaG plus someone he clears alive tomorrow with two in the suspect pool. A mislynch ends the game, so the best play in that situation is to no lynch and force scum to kill. KaaG would be the one killed, leaving his cleared town left to try and decide between the two suspects.

Solving it today would be a whole heck of a lot better than that worst case. That's why I asked both you and KaaG to actively get involved. Grill those of us who aren't in the confirmed block. Work the problem and find the scum and win today, and none of that worst case scenario stuff is anything to even worry about at all.

As for me using FoS on Accountant; I wanted to see how Accountant would respond. Accountant responded by trying to make me look scummy. It's not perfectly alignment indicative, but from my POV, Accountant doesn't seem to care who dies today, as long as it isn't Accountant.

[Drixx]

What do you think of Accountant being on during the day phase but avoiding posting?

Actually I missed the day phase completely.

This is outright not true (a.k.a. you are lying). According to your user profile, which I checked after I saw KaaG had used it to decide to track me, you were on site during the time the day phase was going on. It seems a stretch for you to tell us that you somehow just didn't look at this game when you were on the site just three or so hours before Pignash self hammered. Quite frankly, you've now moved to the top of my list, and that's an achievement since the same refresh that showed me this post by you also has a post by Radical Rat trying to lull us into a false sense of security by suggesting the game is won no matter what.

You get more than an FOS this time:

VOTE: Accountant

[Drixx]

No, two votes isn't L-1 with six alive. It will take four of us to agree on a lynch today.

[Drixx]

We have plenty of time left in the day. I won't hammer until we've had it out more.

I would like more contribution from PhantomCobalt, though. So far PC has been coasting.

I'll take KAAG's advice and re-read Drixx's posts now knowing that Pignash was scum.


@KAAG and Drixx--

How do you read RR's attempt to keep Pignash alive? Do you read it as (a) a scum attempt to use Pignash as the puppet to block the tracker, or (b) a scum attempt to try out a new strategy, unconnected to the tracker/puppet hypo, or (c) a newish player who wants to try a novel setup? If your answer is (c), is it affected by the length and depth of RR's knowledge of the game, as evidenced by his reference to a statistical argument showing scum replace out of newbie games [Note: RR is the 3rd replacement for the slot] (#175) and "Salem days" (#504 and #508)?

It feels like a "too scummy to be scum" move. What scum would suggest that approach, knowing that the scum team would just send the already caught guy to do the kill and thus making that suggestion was tantamount to suggesting we strip KaaG of his ability? Do you think RR is playing at level 0, level 1 or level 2? That post could be a legitimate exploration of the idea by someone who hadn't thought about it at all before (level 0), an exploration of the idea by someone from a different meta (level 1), or an intentional post that nobody would expect to come from scum actually being made by scum (level 2).

How does the rest of RR's play read to you? Does it make you feel like any particular purpose for the Pignash post is more likely than another?

[Drixx]

That's a load of bollocks. I want to win and I know that KaaG will track me tonight if we mislynch and I already laid out the whole series of events that's going to happen when he has to report that I'm innocent. Instead of all of that mess, I want to cut to the chase and win today. More and more that looks like it's Accountant's head in a noose that results in the GG.

[Drixx]

Why argue you've made the right choice after it's too late to make a different one? The horse is already out of the barn. You decided and that's that.

[Drixx]

Yeah ... those are the things scum use to get innocent people killed. I was seriously concerned with the slip by my partner and replace out. I went pretty heavy on the "no way an experienced player does that" playbook because it kind of felt like a hail mary right from the start this game. Once day two came around and I realized it was a tracker with a doctor (for a moment I mistook which setups were possible and thought he was actually BP and I could kill KaaG then go after Christopher for claiming doc and KaaG dying ... you can see in the mafia chat), it was basically over.

I actually thought KaaG's vote was the hammer on me. I wouldn't have posted what I did if I had realized it wasn't the hammer. That was supposed to up the drama for what I thought was going to be a game over at any moment kind of situation. Sorry about that.

Well played all.

As a note for the future KaaG: I've seen town do exactly what I did this game. I've seen it a lot. You won't always be seeing a scum slip and a scum partner doing his best to save it when you see something like that. Learn to discern when it's real from when it's a TvT mess, and you'll be one of the best on the site. Well done.

[Drixx]

Learn to discern when it's real from when it's a TvT mess, and you'll be one of the best on the site. Well done.

Thank you. Although with players such as AlwaysInnocent about, I doubt I'll ever be one of the best: I literally had no clue whether he was town or scum, until his death flavor.

Interestingly, considering I've played 12 - 15 games of Mafia stretching back to 2002/2003, I've only ever been scum once, and that was years ago. I suspect I will not be so good there: I'm a terrible liar!

Playing scum requires all the tools to play good as town, but with a ruthless efficiency in application. Everything I posted in this game was reasonable, which is why it took you so long to decide to go with the lynch on me, even though you

knew

that the game wasn't even at stake. Imagine how much more pressure you would have felt if today had been LYLO.

[Drixx]

I hope you stay and play regularly here KaaG. Would be nice to see you in some of the large theme games (I tend to play in the newbie queue and in the large theme queue).