Newbie 1718 [Game Over!] Mafia

[gigabyteTroubadour]

You're throwing things around here, I implied what you did was scummy, I didn't say I thought you were scum. Consider the fact that I have another scum read who isn't actively posting and I still need to get an answer from that guy.

OK, who is that scumread? It can't possibly hurt your scumhunting if you state who your target is. After all, you were under suspicion and it wouldn't kill to give some reads.

I'm still surprised that no one who has been on has voted for me though, I thought that if House felt one way the rest of the town would follow. I guess I can believe that you, DP, would be less likely to follow House, but Harlii? Town really needs to be more active.

If you were actually reading the game you'd know I'm still on foe

and i still don't understand why

[DoctorPepper]

again, if you actually read through my shit, you'd know why I have a case on foe

[gigabyteTroubadour]

again, if you actually read through my shit, you'd know why I have a case on foe

I did, I disagree with it. That's why I don't understand it.

[Racer64]

Greetings, I'm back from V/LA, and from my quick skim through the posts, I see there are some questions people have for me. Go ahead and ask them whilst I attempt to catch up.

[foedufafa]

If you read through their shit you would find that they have a case on me based completely on factually inaccurate accusations and then after admitting to not being correct in their interpretation of events they have a case on me based on "lol whatevs i'll just have to get you guys against foe I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

I guess this is kinda my fault for providing cursory glances and just making posts when I read them on my phone without double checking if what i said was correct, I'll get on this when I have more time.

For now, I think I'll have to convince you to go foe

[RadiantCowbells]

Doing this now.

[gigabyteTroubadour]

I can't think of any better questions, so bear with me here town...

Racer, do you still nullread DoctorPepper? How would you have reacted to his wagon? How would a mislynch affect your reads? A correct lynch?

[DoctorPepper]

If you read through their shit you would find that they have a case on me based completely on factually inaccurate accusations and then after admitting to not being correct in their interpretation of events they have a case on me based on "lol whatevs i'll just have to get you guys against foe I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

I guess this is kinda my fault for providing cursory glances and just making posts when I read them on my phone without double checking if what i said was correct, I'll get on this when I have more time.

For now, I think I'll have to convince you to go foe

Regardless of the accuracy, I voted for you based on what I perceive your intentions are.

[Racer64]

Racer, do you still nullread DoctorPepper? How would you have reacted to his wagon?

I initially had trouble reading DP. I'm not sure why, but I needed more information, which this wagon so helpfully provided. I believe the wagon was necessary, even up to L-1. If someone had indeed quick-hammered, we would instantly have tangible suspects. I would have a few questions for DP, as I still do that will be asked as soon as I have a bit more time available. (So probably tomorrow, when I can process more clearly.)

If it wasn't outright impossible given the setup, I'd peg DP as a lyncher, with Foe as his target. His persistence despite reason just doesn't add up right now. He's not given adequate reason beyond Foe voting for RC and taking it back, which, as has already been established, was due to Foe (and my) lack of knowledge of the V/LA ribbon. It really doesn't matter what my read at this point is, because it should be considered moot due to my previous neutral read, but right now, I read him as scum.

How would a mislynch affect your reads? A correct lynch?

If DP had been lynched and flipped town, I'd have rethought my position on RC (Though I have relaxed a little on that matter. We'll see how it goes once he joins the game proper). MNS would be my immediate target in this scenario, primarily due to Post 97. My impression of House would have also taken quite a plunge if he was the one who hammered.

It's worth noting here that despite suspicions of my "soft defense" of House, I was actually attempting to question MNS in Post 99. I was, and still am, genuinely curious as to why MNS read House as being defensive in case I missed something.

If DP had flipped mafia, I'd look into Giga for taking back their vote. I'm still quite suspicious of this as it undermined the entire wagon that was providing much needed information.

---

I have a lot of questions after reading through the past few days' posts. However, it's late already, so I'll at least ask one:

Why did House vote for me this second time?

The focus was immediately put on Giga, and this point was sort of glossed over in the end. I have my thoughts on the matter, but I'd rather not give any potential answers.

[innocentvillager]

	VOTECOUNT 1.4
Player	Being voted by (in chronological order)	Number of Votes
1. makesnosense	RadiantCowbells, kraska77	2
2. Harlii
3. gigabyteTroubadour	House	1
4. Racer64	gigabyteTroubadour	1
5. foedufafa	DoctorPepper	1
6. kraska77
7. RadiantCowbells
8. DoctorPepper	makesnosense, foedufafa	2
9. House

Not voting: Racer64, Harlii

Deadline to lynch is in (expired on 2016-06-29 14:56:27)

With 9 eligible to vote, it's 5 votes to lynch

RadiantCowbells is V/LA until June 21st.

Please let me know if there are errors in the VC, or have any other questions in general. Don't forget to bold such requests to me.

[House]

I have a lot of questions after reading through the past few days' posts. However, it's late already, so I'll at least ask one:

Why did House vote for me this second time?

Refer to post 182.

I badly misread your reads wall, hence my short tenure.

The bottom half of that post is still relevant and I'd like it addressed, but it isn't enough for a vote on its own merits.

[RadiantCowbells]

Town: {Kraska}
Towny: {House, DoctorPepper}
Nulltown: {Makesnosense}
Scummy: {Foe, Gigabyte}
Scum: {Harlii}

Kraska's entrance was really town, I liked her vote, and I was townreading her predecessors.
There's been some things that House has done that I really disliked but our exchange near the beginning of this game felt extremely town.
I don't at all feel like Pepper was white knighting me. his defense felt town motivated. I haven't scumread anything else he's done either.
I think that I was wrong on Makesnosense and the stuff that I scumread was just newbiness. I am leaning him town as of now.
Not sure how to interpret Racer. I will deal with him later.

I really dislike Foe's approach to his own wagon and I dislike even worse the narrative spinning he's been doing such as in 108. I feel like he's exaggerating things to manipulate people and in a disingenuous way that does't mesh with what's happened. He'd be lower if it weren't for Giga/Harlii.

I can't really put words to a lot of my Gigabyte scumread but I've felt like they were playing up their newbiness constantly and trying to use it to avoid pressure. There's some stuff that really doesn't make sense in their play; constantly reminding everyone that they are a newb doesn't mesh with their strong opinions on theory.

Harlii I'm positive is scum at this point. I strongly feel like he was trying to get a quicklynch on DP by revoting him, the unvote felt like a grab for towncred for it, his vote jumps feel really bad and I can't form a narrative to explain his thought processes through the game, 155 is really IIOAey and I get the feeling that it doesn't come from someone worried about scumhunting.

I think they're the scumteam because of how bad their associatives are together. Giga threw Harlii as #1, super obvtown townread with no real reasoning given, but moved them down to scummy later and they distanced right after that and I feel like they got jumpy because of it? There's not much communication between them and what there is seems really forced: like 154-156 doesn't even make sense, I don't think that Harlii was actually confused about the meaning of flip town and that even if he was that's not how he'd have dealt with it.

Anyway. if one of the two flips scum I want the other autolynched the next day, no questions.

VOTE: Harlii

[Harlii]

Harlii I'm positive is scum at this point. I strongly feel like he was trying to get a quicklynch on DP by revoting him, the unvote felt like a grab for towncred for it, his vote jumps feel really bad and I can't form a narrative to explain his thought processes through the game, 155 is really IIOAey and I get the feeling that it doesn't come from someone worried about scumhunting.

I think they're the scumteam because of how bad their associatives are together. Giga threw Harlii as #1, super obvtown townread with no real reasoning given, but moved them down to scummy later and they distanced right after that and I feel like they got jumpy because of it? There's not much communication between them and what there is seems really forced: like 154-156 doesn't even make sense, I don't think that Harlii was actually confused about the meaning of flip town and that even if he was that's not how he'd have dealt with it.

I can try to explain anything I've done that you don't get it you point out specific places, but I'm pretty confident my answer won't be enough for you because it'll likely end up as something like "I wasn't sure what to do, but..." or "I was (am) still trying to figure things out, but...". I don't think I meant 155 to be scumhunty, which explains why it felt that way. As far as I remember it was meant to be an explanation of my actions. I'm not sure how I could have gotten a quicklynch on DP, but I honestly hadn't completely thought out the consequences of trying to force a claim that early and what putting someone at L-1 really entailed. Everything else about that situation I think shows up in 155.

To be honest, at the risk of sounding more scummy, the problem we're going to run into is that you assume I'm a lot better than this than I actually am, and there's no way to get around either of us claiming one side of that. I can't prove that I'm not very good at this yet, and you can't prove that I'm great at this and just using newbishness to hide it. The fact is, it's my first game. I've never even played longer formats of face-to-face games, so I'm used to things being entirely different. I don't know what it is you expect me to be, but I'm not it. You can believe me if you want, or you can not, and there's nothing I can do about it, but the facts are on the table.


I'm also not sure why you don't think I would be confused about the meaning of flip town. I'd never heard of it before and since it wasn't an acronym I couldn't google it like the rest of the things. Why do you think it wouldn't confuse me? How else do you suppose I'd have handled it if I was?


I do, however, agree with your case on Giga. The fact that you read us as together makes the next part probably seem like distancing, but I find it really off that they made a mistake so similar to mine right after I did, after mine was already called out and discussed.

In other things, certain actions that House has made are also not sitting right with me. In the first place, I feel like both the situations that I and Giga were in (with house pushing us to vote on something) were deliberately engineered by House. Possible motivations were to see our reactions (pro-town, sort of), or to set up lynches (pro-scum, I would think). I feel like in especially my case, it put him in a position where if someone derphammers there's a free lynch, and two good new targets (me, and whoever derphammers), and if not, then they still get me as a good target. I also dislike their interaction with Giga when discussing the inconsistency they claim - my question still stands: Why wouldn't your read on me matter when it's specifically what you brought up?

Since it seems to be a thing that people like I'll try to compile an actual list of reads when I'm not in places where I have to pay attention to other things (i.e. class, assignments), but I'm not sure exactly when that will be. I'm still feeling really wary about voting for anything right now, because I don't think any cases I have on people are particularly strong, but I'll try to vote at the same time as I make that list.

((Also also, is MNS V/LA or have they just not shown up in a while?))

[gigabyteTroubadour]

Town's moving and I'm happy.

I can't really put words to a lot of my Gigabyte scumread but I've felt like they were playing up their newbiness constantly and trying to use it to avoid pressure. There's some stuff that really doesn't make sense in their play; constantly reminding everyone that they are a newb doesn't mesh with their strong opinions on theory.

The only instance I can think of this was the question I asked during RVS about House's vote, which intentionally seemed like a thing only a newbie would do. I admit that was a little manipulative, but I still stand by it because it got discussion rolling quickly. What's wrong with tricking newbie scum, after all? That's what I was hoping it'd do but I really doubt its success. On the bright side, I can never try to pull that off again in my entire MafiaScum career.

If you mean how I mentioned I'm not adjusted to the slower pace of a forum a few times, then I suppose I see your point, but many other Mafia sites use and discuss MafiaScum's theory and terminology, and I do have

some

mafia experience. Definitely not much, especially with bad meta. I'm just worried it's not translating to this meta because 5 minute deadlines are now 2 weeks long.

And even if I were a complete newbie, I've had ample time to read over the MafiaScum wiki and parrot people's opinions from other games and whatnot. Not that that's what I'm doing, but with almost a week gone by anyone can sound like they've played at least 1 game of mafia by now.

My Harlii townread was godawful but I'm only saying that retrospectively. To me, his posts read like he was genuinely trying to make sense of my line of thinking earlier in the day. Note that my strong townread of Harlii came before his IIoA-type posts (the reads were given on 101, #87 was his last post before that). #155 I really wanted to believe that I was right about the townread on Harlii and I guess my stubbornness will be my fatal flaw there, especially because I saw that IIoA as... not hidden as analysis? He even said that he had no special insights to bring in, but then he brought in his own reads that weren't exactly matching the popular reads at the time. People were still townreading Foe when he posted that, and yet he implied that he's scummy. Most of the post was a bit like stating the obvious, but I think it's plausible for someone to read it and see it as valid.

As the game went on (the DoctorPepper wagon, me reading up more on scumhunting and connecting the dots on Harlii's place in both major wagons, Harlii trying to act neutral again on Giga v. House), Harlii just started to seem more obvious to me. I still have room for doubt on this one, which is why he's not scumread #1, but it's a good shot.

What I dislike about Harlii is mostly the fact that he doesn't vote or really have an opinion on anything this far in the game. Town!Harlii has nothing to lose by voting for who he thinks is suspicious, but Scum!Harlii wants to save face by being on the best wagon. Is that best wagon, however, bussing their scumbuddy, or is it pushing for a scummy townie and turning out to be wrong? I don't think Scum!Harlii knows.

Call it sheeping, bussing, distancing, not thinking for myself, whatever you want. I really don't care what anyone sees this as. But besides his one readlist, there's very little to go with on Racer64's case.

UNVOTE: Racer64
VOTE: Harlii

Ultimately, I'm hoping that Harlii is a correct lynch and that I'll be, as RC puts it, autolynched. I'd rather be mislynched on D2 (after a correct lynch) than have my scummy play cause the town to lose during a 1v2 LYLO. Pretty much the instant House went after me for the Racer64 vote, I realized that my lifespan this game is going to be exceptionally short and I'm trying to make plans to be as useful as possible post-death.

My reads from before are pretty much the same. The only change I can think of is that Racer64 is more null than scum.

[Harlii]

What I dislike about Harlii is mostly the fact that he doesn't vote or really have an opinion on anything this far in the game. Town!Harlii has nothing to lose by voting for who he thinks is suspicious, but Scum!Harlii wants to save face by being on the best wagon. Is that best wagon, however, bussing their scumbuddy, or is it pushing for a scummy townie and turning out to be wrong? I don't think Scum!Harlii knows.

I disagree. I think Town!Harlii cares about staying alive equivalently to Scum!Harlii and doesn't want to vote for someone he's not confident about, especially after making mistakes in the DP wagon and recognizing . If you're really correct about that statement, then that's something I would want to work on, but my philosophy in basically everything is that staying alive seems like a priority, and making actions like rash votes seems like something undesirable to town (re: DP wagon) and would therefore give people more evidence to try to mislynch me. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I do think Anything!Harlii has things to lose by making votes with no/low reasoning or parroted reasoning.

You talk about me not voting, but I was voting up until the DP wagon, at which point I realized that the way I had previously been voting seemed like a bad plan. I guess you must have adjusted faster than me, because you seem to be a mix between calling me out for not doing things that I didn't know about and saying you're a newbie too for not knowing about things. I guess you have more time to read other resources, but I haven't.

On the topic of this wagon, your plan for me flipping scum is apparently to be lynched and be happy about it. What's your plan for when I flip town, then?

[gigabyteTroubadour]

Survival's only important if you're a power role. Maybe you do have stuff to lose by rashly voting (see House's change in perception of me), but I don't think that's going to happen to you unless you vote for RC or Kraska at this point. At this point, I think that if you're town, you have some ability to think of a rational vote on someone that doesn't rely on someone else's case.

You and Racer are the only people not voting at the moment, and Racer was on V/LA.

I see the role of a VT in a game like this to be death fodder. They can bring attention to themselves, can make good analyses, and can not really worry about being lynched for screwing up or being nightkilled for being onto the scum. Most power roles, to contrast, want to lay low while not seem scummy. That's not to say both types of roles can act differently to cause confusion (or because it's better for the town in their opinion), but that's generally how I play those roles.

Yes, you voted, but you voted late on both wagons. To me, that's Scum!you pushing for a mislynch (which I see the MNS wagon as being, possibly) or trying to gain towncred. Being the very vote that gives a wagon momentum (the L-2 vote, imo) is a powerful position for scum to be on, especially because it's only obvious if you are looking for it. The first and last votes are probably where most people would want to look intuitively (the person who started the wagon and the person who turns it into a lynch), and that's why I don't think new scum would vote there.

If you flip town, then I hope that I'm not mislynched then. I personally would go back to DP/(Scumbuddy), but I need more thoughts as to who that scumbuddy is if not you or Racer64.

[DoctorPepper]

giga may I ask where you played Mafia before here. You present yourself as a newbie but you're spewing theory all over the place

[Harlii]

I mean the MNS wagon is bizarre because they did one thing that was not great and then have disappeared. This makes me somewhat unhappy, because their actions caused legitimate questions and then they disappeared before people could get more reads on them. They'd be my vote if (a) there weren't already two people voting them without them showing up and (b) there was actually more information to base that on.

I have, so far, been under the impression that survival is important is important for all town roles (I mean, and scum roles, but for different reasons). My thoughts are that any living townie = one more vote. Putting town in a 5v2 position seems winnable but difficult, as was made clear to me in the DP situation - if I read the stats I remember someone posting properly, a mislynch on the first day greatly improves mafia victory rate (which makes intuitive sense but stats are nice). I just don't buy your argument that any townie ought to play like death fodder.

I feel like if I am lynched, I'm somewhat unhappy that your next action is to just move on and go back to the reads you already had. I'd hope you were planning to gain actual information out of it, instead of just the information that I'm not scum.

My question to House still stands, as I am genuinely curious about that.
My questions to RC still also stand, but I'd also like to add the same question as I asked Giga - when I flip town, what does that tell you?


Last of all, I actually have been thinking about a case, so here it is.
VOTE: House
Things that House has done that I dislike:
1. Set up the wagon on DP, specifically pushing me to be the L-2 vote and putting himself in a position to hammer.
- It sets up a situation preying on my inexperience to make me look terrible
- Regardless of his desire to hammer, if somebody else was to quickhammer (and, assuming scum!House) DP flips town, it gives him two wagonable targets the next day and one less townie.
2. Set up the Racer situation, specifically pushing Giga to vote when they were reluctant
(Giga doing this after what happened with me still weirds me out, but)
- They deliberately telling Giga that they think it's fine to put pressure on them

even when the case majorly falls apart

(I don't know how to usefully quote without the quote button but it's post 186)
-> I don't know what Giga's thought process in this situation is, but I know mine would have resulted in something similar (I mean, you saw it in the DP wagon). I tend to assume that more experienced people are more understanding of strategy then me, which I am now trying not to do. It's possible to read this situation as a reaction test, but it's also possibly scummy, as again it sets up lynch targets for immediately or later.
- In the exchange after, they bring up their read on me as proof of Giga's inconsistency, but subsequently dodges questions about that statement.
3. I recognize that they've done what looks like scumhunting, I just don't buy that they wouldn't be doing that as scum, and so I want explanations for their actions in these situations.

[gigabyteTroubadour]

giga may I ask where you played Mafia before here. You present yourself as a newbie but you're spewing theory all over the place

I've played several games on a chatroom and also have played many face to face games. Theory only really comes into play on said chatroom, as some scummers are on it. Not really sure how I'm presenting myself as a newbie to mafia, I'm just new to MafiaScum.

[House]

If you flip town, then I hope that I'm not mislynched then.

Nah, you won't be. You're hands down the towniest player in the game.

I was hoping to get some opportunistic sheeps onto you, but alas, it was not to be.

VOTE: Harlii

[gigabyteTroubadour]

Nah, you won't be. You're hands down the towniest player in the game.

I was hoping to get some opportunistic sheeps onto you, but alas, it was not to be.

wait wait wait wait hold the phone??

Can you please explain what this whole fiasco is? So your whole thing on me with the Racer vote

was

an incredibly elaborate reaction test? Damn it, I'm supposed to wake up early tomorrow, I'm losing sleep over this.

[House]

Nah, you won't be. You're hands down the towniest player in the game.

I was hoping to get some opportunistic sheeps onto you, but alas, it was not to be.

wait wait wait wait hold the phone??

Can you please explain what this whole fiasco is? So your whole thing on me with the Racer vote

was

an incredibly elaborate reaction test? Damn it, I'm supposed to wake up early tomorrow, I'm losing sleep over this.

Yes, I was hoping that scum would jump at the shift of momentum to rid themselves of a hugely town player without having to use their NK to do it.

[gigabyteTroubadour]

Nah, you won't be. You're hands down the towniest player in the game.

I was hoping to get some opportunistic sheeps onto you, but alas, it was not to be.

wait wait wait wait hold the phone??

Can you please explain what this whole fiasco is? So your whole thing on me with the Racer vote

was

an incredibly elaborate reaction test? Damn it, I'm supposed to wake up early tomorrow, I'm losing sleep over this.

Yes, I was hoping that scum would jump at the shift of momentum to rid themselves of a hugely town player without having to use their NK to do it.

That is incredibly clever of you and I'm sorry I kind of undermined it by pointing out that you were way too overzealous for it to be true. I was legitimately worried of it catching on too because I've been similar situations (obviously not as a reaction test, they were legitimate scumreads) and got quick lynched.

[House]

That is incredibly clever of you and I'm sorry I kind of undermined it by pointing out that you were way too overzealous for it to be true.

That's fallacious anyway.

[gigabyteTroubadour]

That is incredibly clever of you and I'm sorry I kind of undermined it by pointing out that you were way too overzealous for it to be true.

That's fallacious anyway.

wait what I said? maybe i'm not phrasing it right but it's not important. i'll post thoughts on harlii's last post tomorrow if there's a time i'm not busy