Newbie 1779 | Spring | Endgame

[mastina]

Hi there! I'm mastina, your IC.
My job here is to teach you not to make moronic moves!

Also, to keep you invested in the game--I want every single one of you to stay around! Please don't lose interest and leave. The site has potential, I promise, just let yourself spend some time here. If not the game of mafia itself, talk to people about almost anything, or play games other than mafia with others. (Many people stopped playing mafia ages ago and remain around for the community!)

If you feel like you're losing interest, if you feel like replacing out, if you're feeling stressed, if you're struggling, if you feel frustrated, bored, want to quit, want to leave, have trouble playing, I'm here to alleviate that, to help you maintain your focus.

As an advanced warning: while I'm a good teacher, I do my best teaching when I'm not expected to teach. But as your IC, I...am expected to teach, so I must apologize in advance if I fail to deliver the teaching experience you need to grow your game.

I will, however, do what I can to help you. Give you the resources you need, even if it's just "listen to what this other person said". (Teaching tends to be a group exercise: everyone involved learns, from the moderator to the IC to the SEs to every other player.)

Let's start with some baselines.

1. First and foremost, I am a player. I could be town or scum, but I'll have a wincon/agenda this game, where I'm aiming for a win.
   
2. However, I will never lie to you about game theory. Ever. I won't misdirect/mislead you. I won't place my alignment above my teaching duty.
   
3. That said, game theory is, largely...highly subjective. Just because I won't lie to you about it doesn't mean what I say about it is, necessarily, "true". Use your judgment given time and experience to determine what advice I give you is helpful or not.
   
4. My teaching style in a game is, largely, "roll with the game": I will teach by example and give thoughts as they come up.
   
5. If you have questions, my job is to give you the best answer I can.
   
6. Most situations are circumstantial, and my answers will always be working with imperfect information for
   current
   circumstances.
   
7. In short, my job isn't to teach you to play, so much as it is to guide you on your natural path.
   
8. I am human, and prone to error. Burden of Proficiency is still a fallacy. Regardless of my alignment, I can and will make mistakes.

Recommended Reading:

this article I wrote is good for newbies on establishing the differences in sites. (For differences in game types on THIS site, I wrote this short tip.)

Speaking of theory/wiki work, I did a lot of that a few years back, so you might as well take advantage of my presence in this game! I do encourage reading. Lots of reading. Past newbie games. Past games elsewhere on the site. Browsing Mafia Discussion. Reading the wiki.

Keep in mind the above guidelines, most importantly, things are circumstantial, theory is subjective, and the passage of time invalidates a fair amount. And ask questions. Ask lots of questions. Annoying questions, stupid questions, whatever. Ask anything.

I'll give you my opinion on what's timeless and what's dated. On things that work well and things that don't. Want me to evaluate a past play, I'll give a short, quick overview of my opinion on it. You need only ask.

Now with guidelines established (sorry for the length! Most posts won't be this long), let's get started.
When I begin Newbies, I like to ask many questions myself, to get an idea of what every player needs--there's no "universal playstyle" to be taught. Every player needs to grow their own unique playstyle, fitting their personality.
So given this:

1. What's your overall experience with the game? Where have you played, what have you read? The like.
   
2. If applicable, describe how, in general, the game plays out in those locations.
   
3. Please describe your own personal playstyle quirks, such as deviations FROM that norm.
   
4. I want you to describe in your own words how you see the game of mafia.
   
5. I also want to have you describe how you approach the game: in general, as town, and as scum.
   
6. Most of all, I want you to tell me what you are expecting from this game.
   
7. I also want you to tell me what you're expecting from this SITE.
   
8. Not a question, but a personal request: don't force anything! Just be yourself; we'll work from there.

I will provide my own answers in the post immediately following this.

And with that said, I hope you enjoy the rest of your RVS! (Which I have written about. )

I wish everyone good luck, and most of all want you to have fun.

Spoiler: Post-script

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Code: Select all

[spoiler=Title of spoiler (can be left blank)]Contents within the spoiler.[/spoiler]

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Be advised:

Spoilers don't nest. They also have bad interactions with quote tags if you use improper nesting which can fuck the site up. So IF you do use a spoiler tag, please make sure you have properly formatted it so that every closing tag is appropriately placed. The results of violating this are...very, very messy. They can and will break the site.

[mastina]

Spoiler: Answer time!

I have poor documentation skills, so it's impossible to track the exact number (especially since many games were erased from existence), but between alts and hydras, I estimate I've played somewhere over 200 games (excluding marathons) on-site, of all types. I'm a normal review group member, and actively contribute to Mafia Discussion.

My view on the game is impossible to succinctly summarize, but basically I see it as a social game focusing largely on psychology, with some logistics/statistics, balancing possibilities versus probabilities. Regardless of my alignment, I like to make plans. As scum, these tend to be complex; as town, they tend to be something simple like, "find scum, then lynch scum", but that's still a plan!

I'm an unorthodox player. I have autism, and view the world where I say my first language is "concepts", and my second language is English; my posts translate concepts to words. This has benefits where I see things others would miss, pressing people on the smallest/subtlest of details, but also carries three obvious downsides:
Inability to communicate properly, Verbosity, and sometimes being utterly wrong about my alternative ideas.

One quirk I have is viewing every player simultaneously as town and scum. I view each possibility, and then I weigh them, to determine probability. Which makes more sense? I set guidelines, among them: aiming for at least double the number of scum alive as townreads, and no more than double the scum alive as scumreads (preferably 1.5 times).

So while I'll see each player as town and scum in a given moment, by the balance of probability, in a newbie I'm aiming for 4-5 townreads and 2-3 scumreads.

As both alignments, I express generalities, expecting players to fill in specifics. Their interpretations not only allow them growth as players, but also allow me to get a better idea of their alignment(/how to manipulate them) off of how they respond.

As town, I'll try to defuse heated debates I feel are counterproductive, but if I feel they could be useful, I'll let them continue and weigh in only when I feel it gives something useful. (Often, one leads to another.)

As scum, I'll direct the spotlight so that town are fighting town. I'll still give commentary on it, just like as town, but I won't try to defuse town-town debates, because I need town to lynch town. I prefer minimal involvement in contributing to town lynches, because it positions myself to look better/positions the town to mislynch twice in a row (namely, the primary town pusher of the now-flipped-town).

I have a bad sense of humor in games, and like to flirt around a fair amount: just talk about random stuff that enters my mind, rambling about. I love to have fun with others, engaging them in dialogs even if not related to the game, bonding with them for the social interaction...even if I'm intent on lynching them.

My expectation of this game is that every player is given the tools they need to continue their career here on mafiascum.net.

Now onto the game proper!

[mastina]

(I mean, I realize this advice is less-than helpful for nearly half the playerlist: mhsmith has been here almost a full year, and is wise beyond said year; he was acclimated to the site in less than three months if I recall correctly, so he could very easily do my job as an IC. RC has been here for literally years and I basically consider his home site to be mafiascum, so he is no newbie. Grey is ALSO an SE this game, and he's been here a while himself. But half the game is still newbies and I wrote those posts for them.)

[mastina]

I mean that Mastin tried to vig me in stephen universe when I was confirmed town

Objection! You weren't confirmed town

yet

. Just...claimed a role that could become conftown!

(Also that was technically my hydra partner, I just didn't overrule them.)

I think that "it's a good idea, trust us on this and hold us accountable for it if we're proven wrong" is a sufficient argument at this stage.

I honestly don't see any real benefit to it, but on the other hand I also don't really see much harm in it either. It's unorthodox, but I'm not in opposition to the idea, so I'll throw my support behind it with a not-BP claim.

VOTE: Mastina
preempting any vig shots on confirmed town.

Town?

VOTE: oldwino
lel I feel like this name is mocking me.

VOTE: JustDanceWorld
because you're probably a better dancer than me

Scum?

VOTE: aa-dono

...Scum.

Vote: oldwino

.

[mastina]

The IC, Mastina, hasn't commented yet.

Yeah, that's the problem with me in newbie games. I'm a night-owl living in PST. By the time I'm online, most people aren't online anymore. It's regrettable, especially since my IC post is best posted earlier in the game, but you do what you can. Namely, by having a delayed entry, I can comment on issues after there has already been discussion on them.

[mastina]

Have you two (rc and grey) played together before? Looks like bad blood from outside this game.

I mean, as the IC I guess I could let you two fight it out for the learning experience.
And as a player, I suppose there could be value in waiting to see the fight develop further to confirm my suspicions.

But to be blunt: I'm townreading RC. I wasn't townreading Grey, but I lean town more than anything else. And I think that oldwino here is scum sitting on the sidelines of a town-town fight.

[mastina]

If we have specific questions or need advice, do we ask right out in the open?

Yup, that's what I'm here for.

[mastina]

I townread DogWatch.

I don't.

Right now my readslist would be:
RadiantCowbells
JustDanceWorld
Ulti
Grey
mhsmith0
aa-dono
DogWatch
oldwino

I'll admit I have fewer townreads than I would like, and they are of a lesser strength than I would prefer. But off of what I have so far, my scumteam callout would actually be oldwino-DogWatch.

[mastina]

are you suggesting oldwino's vote was merely an OMGUS? and if so, is that necessarily a scum read?

This is an interesting interpretation, but no. I am not making that suggestion. I am suggesting oldwino is scum for that post, along with others which follow.

[mastina]

Why am I town? Why is Grey town?

You're town because you're cheeky as either alignment, but there's a difference between a cheeky scumfuck RC and a cheeky town-cluck RC. Your play makes me strongly lean towards the latter. I could point those identifiers out if it is essential, but would prefer not to.

Grey is nulltown, so not strongly town. I'm only seeing hints of him being town, not as many as I would prefer. There's the slightest, ever of most subtle of hints he could be town, but I don't have a familiarity with him enough to know that they are for-sure solid indicators of him being town. However, he and you share a common element:

Your fight is very prominent. Your fight is the main topic of discussion in-thread right now.
And in that fight, I like your responses; I don't hate Grey's responses; I

do

have a distaste for oldwino and DogWatch's responses.

[mastina]

Unless you're saying that besides me, everyone who has posted has posted scummy things?

Well technically speaking? Yes. Grey has said some scummy things; mhsmith has said some scummy things; aa-dono's entrance was a little scummy; I am flat-out scumreading DogWatch and oldwino.

But while, strictly speaking, that's true, they have also said town stuff. Grey has said town things. mhsmith is at null because I can't read what he has contributed thusfar (namely because he actually hasn't). What aa-dono said wasn't exactly condemning. My DogWatch scumread isn't strong. I did say my townreads were weaker than I would prefer and that I had less than ideal. To put it simply, there's four people I have in mind as potential scum. While that's technically within acceptable parameters (we have two mislynches; four names would allow for lynching all of them), it is not ideal. I'm hoping more posts will help give me a better grounding.

[mastina]

How is it that two players that haven't even posted yet are above null?

Because they are probably town.

[mastina]

Yet two players that haven't posted are higher than I am in your list. Why?

Because they have a higher chance than you of being town.

[mastina]

Rude.

But accurate for the time of the list, at the very least. (My townread on you is growing.)

[mastina]

However, I think Mastina's scum read on me, only because I commented on the back and forth, maybe some bad blood between rc and grey, is weak.

It's funny that you think that's the basis of my scumread on you--it's not.

[mastina]

Why is everyone's role displayed below their name? Doesn't that make this game really easy for town to win?

Huh.

Alts are banned from lying about being newbs and Ulti's a newb slot with no games outside this one. But I could've sworn this line was so much of an established in-joke that nobody actually new would ever say it. I didn't think that it actually happened.

[mastina]

@mastina you're scum reading me but you're not saying why. Throw me a bone here?

With respect, I prefer to wait until everyone has weighed in with opinions. And even then, to wait until everyone has weighed in to a satisfactory amount, as deemed so by me.

In particular, slots who need to weigh in?
Ulti, JustDanceWorld, mhsmith0, and aa-dono.

There's multiple reasons for this. Care to guess them?
And for that matter, care to guess

why

I am scumreading you?

[mastina]

I joined this game to take advantage of the coaching help, but so far (and I know it's super early) I'm baffled by the IC's posts. Unless this is her ploy to make us think on our feet, but I don't know if that's how she coaches. Either way I'm not very confident in her ability to help so far.
VOTE: mastina

Normally, I would respond to this with a heavy dosage of snark.
You're young to the site though, so I don't want to scare you away with that level of obstructionism (even though this is a fair warning, you're gonna need to get used to that), so instead I'll respond sincerely:

It would be helpful for you if you are town to reread my IC post, along with my answers.
It seems most players in this game utterly ignored them--understandable, given that RC and Grey were the center of attention at the time, and that my posts were walls.

But if you actually read those posts, it will help a lot.
If you still don't understand, reread them again.
Look

really

closely.
Scrutinize every detail I laid in there.

And then tell me what it is you see.

[mastina]

Y would i be familiar with her play i've played like 3 games with her

One would be enough.

[mastina]

out of curiosity, was this pre-written? Especially the RQS part?

Of course it was. This game is a trial run for me continuing to IC games, those two posts are what I intend to open every game with, and have my third post onward be modifications as necessary (for instance, this game having a higher-than-standard level of experience).

That said, I take offense to the label of RQS. The questions I asked weren't random, nor something part of a stage. They were meant to give me a better grasp on the newbie players this game, as to better help coach them, which is one reason why I'm honestly a bit miffed that they were all passed over. It makes my job harder.

[mastina]

Why on all of those? RC is almost certainly capable of constructing a decent-looking RVS post as scum; "I'm voting you because salt from last game" is a super easy RVS vote for scum!RC to make, so it seems entirely null to me. AA/DW's RVS votes were basically empty; what in particular suggests that they were anything other than null? and OW's vote-back seems like the least scummy part of that post; why does that snippet of a vote-back ping you as scummy?

It's interesting to see the number of assumptions you're making in here.

Most of them aren't accurate.

Suffice to say, my answer here isn't changing: at this time, I decline to elaborate.

[mastina]

How is it that two players that haven't even posted yet are above null?

Because they are probably town.

very slightly villagery of mastina here, since it sticks to an overall logic and is tonally ok.

I want you to be explicit and explain both halves of your statement here RE: overall logic, tonality.

[mastina]

Any thoughts on the proceedings so far?

Inversely, question for you. You've given plenty of thoughts on the proceedings thusfar. Any READS?

[mastina]

Good band. I like their music.

[mastina]

I also thought it was odd that mastina acknowledges the RC/Grey battle as the main attraction of the thread so far, yet she chooses to scum read two people on the sidelines of that battle instead. Now, that's not necessarily contradictory; she could be viewing RC vs Grey as town vs town, but how she's gleaming scum reads from the sidelines I don't know.

Teaching time, and free tip!
When you see a large fight going on, the first thing to do is to determine the alignment of those involved: scum-scum, scum-town, or town-town. It doesn't matter which way you determine the scum-town split to be (though it can make a slight difference), the important factors to look for are scum-scum or town-town, especially the latter.

Because if you find it to be town-town, the very next thing you do is figure out where the scum are in regards to the debate. If you're unsure about which it is, you can probably safely assume town-town. (I mean, this is dangerous since scum-scum WANT to be read as town-town, and scum-town often want to be read as town-town or town-scum, but if you really can't make a determination, statistics are on your side to call a fight town-town; town fight with town a disproportionately high number of times.)

And given a town-town fight, especially in smaller games, that makes it much easier to figure out who the scum are. And believe it or not, I've already told you exactly how to differentiate between the two, somewhere in my iso--can you find it? Can you find where I explain exactly how I differentiate between scum on the sidelines and town on the sidelines?

She seems to be working off pure hunch, which again doesn't seem like she's setting a great example.

Tangent: "hunch" is, when refined, better than all the analysis in the world. I could go on all day about the theory behind this, but it wouldn't exactly be productive in the game proper. (I'm also considering writing an article about it. I've

sort-of

done so before, but a more updated version would be useful to have as a reference.) Suffice to say, however--yes, I do work a lot off of hunches.

The game of mafia is a game of socializing. A social game involves psychology. Psychology involves educated guesses: "hunches", as it were. So the game of mafia is essentially, hunches layered on top of hunches. Assumptions on assumptions, guesses on guesses. You'll quickly find there is no objective standard for finding scum; there is no 'tell' that works, there is no strategy which works. It's mostly subjective.

I see him making fair and pro-town observations.

Advanced theory lesson here: you see him making fair and pro-town observations. What do you see him

doing

with those observations?

[mastina]

Bad Posting vs Scum Posting

In a lot of games you can see people posting badly, whether it means lurking, saying really stupid things, being intellectually lazy about their engagement, or all sorts of other pretty transparently anti-town behaviors.

And, unfortunately, a lot of the time (though NOT always) really bad posting is done by townies instead of mafia.

Sorting between “bad” and “scum” is one of the hardest things to do in the game, but it’s a tremendously important part of your development if you want to get good at scum-hunting.
Again, if you look closely you can see the difference between simply being bad and actually being scum.

I'm going to steal from this and posit the inverse of this: Good Posting vs Scum Posting.
Namely, if you hold it true that a lot of times bad posting is done by town instead of mafia...you should also hold it true that a lot of times good posting is done by mafia instead of town. This is something that many find to be counterintuitive, and to be fair, the correlation isn't as strong: there are fewer mafia who can make good posts than there are town who can make shitty posts.

However, spotting mafia making good posts is arguably even

more

critical to your fundamental development as a player, because you need to be able to spot the difference between good, and town. They are not synonymous. If they were, town winrates would be much higher than they are.

[mastina]

RadiantCowbells
Grey
Ulti
JustDanceWorld
aa-dono
DogWatch
mhsmith0
oldwino

There are some rather notable changes in here. Would anyone care to guess them and why?

[mastina]

The real genius behind my posting style is that I already

have

explained it.

[mastina]

If you're town you don't want to gift possible firepower to potential scum who haven't contributed yet. You want to gauge their reads and playstyle first.

Astute! But also only half the answer. Rather, about a third of it. I read players off of situations--but I don't want to bias them

regardless

of their alignment (scum OR town), and furthermore, I don't want to bias OTHER PLAYERS, even those who have already weighed in.

I do not like playing my hand early. I like to feel out the strength of other players' hands, and give them a nudge towards working with my own. This isn't so much a game of poker (where the best hand is predetermined as a winner) as it is a game of...well, uh. Well, I don't actually know of an apt card game metaphor, but it'd be a card game where every individual players' cards influence every other players' cards. I'm sure you can think of some. (Closest I can think of is Hearts, which I suppose is crude enough to work: you want to feel out who can shoot the moon and stop it, you want to feel out if you can shoot the moon and be unstoppable, you want to feel out where the queen of spades is if you don't know it, and similar factors, and you do this by biding time and carefully observing the moves your fellow players make, as what they do reveals an insight into their strategy, a common one being getting rid of a suit so they're free to dump point cards at will.*)

*I, uh. Have three siblings, so...needless to say, I'm not exactly making this up. (I consistently get second-place. The winner always changes; the second place is always me. Which I suppose is a skill in of itself.)

As for why you're scumreading me, you think my interactions with oldwino indicate some kind of "busy work" or have a LAMIST flavor. I can't think of anything else that could be the case.

The former isn't exactly accurate but is closer to what I saw.

Would you care to guess what my current read on you is, and why? You're not in the same position you were in earlier.

Was this necessary? "I would normally be mean to you, but I'll have pity on you this time" is how this comes across.

Perhaps not necessary--but a little bit of a common courtesy I'd say. I have a motherly attitude towards players I see potential in. I absolutely do not want to drive them away from the site. (Which you'd know if you read my opening post.)

A potential way to drive someone from the site is if they feel like they are being shown needless hostility. My first instinct in a reply to you would have been a heavily snarky response: not something someone new to the site would normally take kindly to, as that level of snark can be read as dejection, willingly ignoring input for no reason other than it being "beneath them". So instead, I gave you a warning; I refrained from giving the snark, but that attitude is incredibly common on-site so you'll need to get used to it eventually. mafiascum players are blunt, impolite, crude, narcissistic, arrogant, stubborn wisecrackers who have an incredible fondness for sarcasm. These common tendencies are why we have that infamy for being elitist.

Actually, I DID read your answer post (I even visited your blog), but I will admit I had skimmed the first post and missed the part where you actually wanted us to answer them ourselves.

You've shown a higher aptitude for having read the two posts--but I still have a feeling like you're not actually answering my call, so I'm going to be a bit more direct with my hint:

I'm telling you to read my opening two posts with a critical eye. While they were typed before I had received an alignment, they are not null. That might seem like an impossibility to you--how can a post typed before I received an alignment possibly be an indicator of my alignment? But that's why I'm asking you to view my posts and really, really

think

about them. There's not a contradiction between my statements of it being alignment-indicative and being typed before I got an alignment. Both halves are relevant to the game, containing an answer you're seeking in my posting.

6. Expecting from this game: Really just wanted a casual game to practice in and be able to ask questions and be honest about my mistakes without necessarily being lynched right away for them.

Fair warning: mafiascum's not a casual site, not even in newbies. We do have casual games in the form of marathons (quick games with 5-15 minute deadlines), but due to them being a load on bandwidth + being a bit of a site tradition like an on-site holiday of sorts, we only host them a couple times a year on average.

However, obviously this is the best queue for the rest.

7. Expecting from the site: I'd like to find games that are more along the lines of what I'm used to.

We currently don't have fast-paced games outside of marathons (the Blitz queue was run as an experiment and people decided not to continue it), but power role focus/quirky gimmicks are the hallmarks of theme games--the place where you're most likely to find short-day mechanics and yet also the inverse of long-day mechanics, and posting rates tend to be insanely high. However, drawback: while mafiascum is notorious for daytime squabbling (you won't find a queue where that's so much as limited), theme games have it worst of all.

[mastina]

she claims her scum read of you had nothing to do with your interaction with the Grey vs Radiant thing.

I don't recall saying that. I have stated that assumptions made were incorrect; I do believe I have refrained from stating what my reasons

weren't

just as much as I have from stating what my reasons are.

My best guess is that she's reading something out of post #21. She thinks you're trying too hard to make the vote look random, thereby disguising any OMGUS'ing.

Oh, this is actually rather good! Not

quite

accurate, but really, really close.

[mastina]

I'm usually reprimanded when I FOS or vote based on my hunches. If I don't give an original, groundbreaking, graduate-level thesis on my suspicions, it seems the players on this site immediately view me as sheepy or scummy or whatever else.

Okay I wasn't going to do this but I suppose I need to.
Trust your gut.
No seriously.
Trust it.

And make it honest you are doing so--don't lie, and also, don't hide it.
I've talked about this subject in detail before, and I think my past words would say it better than my current words can. But until I pull those notes up, I'll do my best.

When you have a hunch, feel it out. Try to figure out the basis of your hunch--is your hunch based off of emotions? Probably not the best of hunches if so. Is your hunch based off of a predefined notion of something which

must

be in place? That is, you have made up your mind about something and the hunch happens to back it up? Probably need to second-guess the validity of the hunch. Is your hunch based off of paranoia? Is your hunch based off of desire? That is,

wanting

something to be true? Well both paranoia and desire are forms of emotions so tread carefully.

If your hunch falls into none of the above categories...then it is probably right. It is probably accurate. The subconscious mind has a MUCH higher aptitude for figuring out when something is "wrong", when something is "not right", or on occasions, when something just

fits

as being right. This, because the subconscious is thinking on a conceptual level and the conceptual level is "pure". But it is possible for the conscious mind to confuse something as being from the subconscious which isn't actually from the subconscious, namely, emotions.

Basically, your gut can be more accurate than any logic in the world, as long as you are able to tell a feeling from an emotion. A feeling is probably true; an emotion is probably not true. Now as to how to convince people to follow your gut? Surprisingly easy, you just have to work with them and say, "this is how I feel, and this is why I feel that way, I saw these things here which made me feel this way", and while that might not be a hard 'case', it works well enough for most to get by.

When the attack is questioned and I don't have a satisfying answer, it kills my credibility.

The greatest enemy of a player is fear.
I mean, the greatest ally of a player is also fear (fearing they're wrong instills a consistent need to reanalyze), but fear loses games consistently as either alignment. Fear of being wrong when you weren't (you need to analyze if you're right, yes, but you shouldn't be afraid to stick to your guns and go, "I actually think I AM right!"), fear of others not believing you, and as scum, fear of things going wrong with the nightkill you want to make. Fear hurts you a lot in games, so I generally recommend discarding it as early as possible. Be confident, in all aspects of your play: in yourself to be right, in yourself to lead, in yourself to be a player.

Yet you seem to be championing the whole concept here and that's interesting.

Gut players have always been welcome on mafiascum. They used to be in the vast minority, and the evolution of gut play is something very notable (I've tried to pioneer new levels of it, in fact), but it's never been frowned upon to have a hunch, and is often encouraged. (Now, acting on a hunch in a way which is absolutely stupid because it contradicts all logic, not so much; there's a limit to this past a certain point. But this limit is pretty intuitive to find, once you have a few games of experience.)

[mastina]

Followthrough tangent: My play here is an example of having hunches, of using my gut and my instinct. Now, I've reached a point in my career where I've hybridized logic and gut: I can actually explain to a player, "this post makes me feel this way, and I think this is why". I have hinted at, and in some cases, flat-out given, the tools for other players to already interpret these, though at this time, I have failed to provide actual backing behind them, other than indicating that they exist. But when I feel like explaining outright, you'll get a much better idea of what I mean, where hunch meets reason.

[mastina]

3. Usually I would try to find contradictions, but I recently realized that the ones who made more mistakes are usually town while a good scum would tell 90% the truth (said someone else) so I'm hoping to try some other ways.

Good insight!

Unfortunately, I can't give you an answer here, because there's none to give. This is beyond the capacity of me as a teacher to give you--because this is something each and every individual player needs to learn on their own. Their own unique style and method is their own development. What works for one person won't work for another. For instance, while I work heavily with my gut, that might not prove to be a reliable tool for you.

There's no strategy which will always work. But what I encourage is a "higher level" of thinking: not so much, what was said...but WHY it was said. What was the motivation driving the player to say what they said? What were they thinking when they said it? What is it that a player is hoping to accomplish? Look at the intentions behind what they are doing. These become easier to spot over time--for instance, by D3 you will have before you scummy actions from each player and townie actions from each player. (Heck you could have them even on D1!) Your job is to develop a method to sort through them, sift through them, and figure out which patterns are most likely to be scum, and which patterns are most likely to be town.

These patterns tend to change from game to game. A pattern which in one game indicates town may indicate scum in the next game you play in, so I tend to ask, "what pattern makes the most sense for scum IN THIS GAME?". Experiment a little bit and try to figure out stuff. One thing which might help your style is asking a lot of questions--as scum, questions are a great way to make it look like you're doing more than you are. As town, what you need to do is to actually try and make something productive with the questions. Follow through with your questions, to see what the logical extension of them is, and form conclusions off of them.

These questions might be to yourself, or might be asked to other players. (Or in themes, even to the mod!) But I

think

(it's hard to take a more precise guess) that asking questions would be a good start to figuring out what style works best for you. Contradiction-type players have a tendency to be good at adapting via questions. (Homework if you're interested: read games with the hydra account Reasonably Rational in them. The players in that account tend to be QUITE good at this asking-questions thing.)

That's about the best advice I can give you at this time; we'll have to see how the game plays out before I can give you any further pointers.

[mastina]

VOTE: oldwino
lel I feel like this name is mocking me.

Scum?

How did those sentences sound scummy to you?

What aa-dono said wasn't exactly condemning.

Wasn't exactly condemning = town stuff?

While I won't answer for the others, for you--when it came to your opener, more or less, yes. Your vote was a pretty standard RVS. What made me ping on it?

The 'lel' before the rest of the sentence. (No, seriously!) Without that, yours would've been by far the strongest townread in the RVS, but with it, your RVS vote went from "a random vote which would almost assuredly be town" to "something which

could

be scum" (because the entire tone of the post was shifted by that one word), thus, "Scum?": not exactly condemning, now, is it? Thus your much higher position on my readslist.

[mastina]

So, it's my second game, anywhere, ever, and in my first game a newbie asked about self-voting and was told that that's very scummy, almost 100% scummy, because it can't do town any good at all.

Disclaimer: I heavily discourage self-voting for any reason whatsoever. As in, HEAVILY discourage it. Very heavily discourage it, outside of extreme circumstances.

...However, it is not without its uses, in special circumstances. Even outside of those special circumstances, if you are not the player MAKING the self-vote, you must read the player who has made the self-vote. It is scummy, sure--but is it actually scum? That's the critical million-dollar question to ask, vital to any game. Often, the answer is no.

How is self-voting supposed to stimulate discussion and especially scum hunting?

You'd be surprised. It can do quite a bit of good if you have a clear idea of what, exactly, you are aiming to accomplish. For instance: your reaction to this is a pretty good reason to justify having made the move.

[mastina]

I still think Mastina is the most scummy right now because of her weak reasons for reading me as scum.

They can't be weak if they currently don't exist!

By which, I mean, I am fairly positive I have refrained from giving my reasons--of course I have hinted at them, but rather explicitly I have held back from posting them.

[mastina]

However, I think Mastina's scum read on me, only because I commented on the back and forth, maybe some bad blood between rc and grey, is weak.

It's funny that you think that's the basis of my scumread on you--it's not.

I mean, you could always just explain it in a clearer manner than you've chosen to do.

I could, yes--I have chosen not to.

[mastina]

It's fundamentally NAI.

Why did you feel the need to point out a lack of alignment for the act?

[mastina]

I'm not particularly sure why you'd take offense to labeling a stack of (seemingly not super interesting) early questions as RQS.

Site history you're not aware of. RQS is never used anymore and for good reason, but back a few years ago it was incredibly common--the reason it fell out of use?

...It was proven to benefit scum more than town. Scum had a much easier time blending into the game, and also, it did not end the "random" stage of the game any faster timewise, or any sooner page-wise. It also wasn't particularly slower or longer, but because it was basically the same length as the RVS and yet had scum benefit the RVS did not have, it was largely discontinued.

Thus taking offense to the label of RQS. I am a huge proponent of the importance of the RVS and scumhunt heavily from it. My post even encouraged a continuation of the RVS. RQS questions are designed to get the game out of the random stage; my questions are designed to actually help teach.

[mastina]

It's interesting to see the number of assumptions you're making in here. Most of them aren't accurate. Suffice to say, my answer here isn't changing: at this time, I decline to elaborate.

Well that was a transparently non-helpful response

Objection, it was an opaquely helpful response. The two, while similar, should never be confused.

1) 57 was a serious post

Technically this is a yes. Not in the way you would assume.

2) The snippet of text that you quoted from oldwino was the relevant part of his post that you were responding to

(-silence-)

3) Town? means nulltown, Scum? means nullscum, Scum means scum

Close enough.

4) RC's vote on you was "I'm feeling salty from last game", and that your read was dependent on the "content" of the vote or the tone of it

X

5) AA/DW's RVS votes were basically empty, but you claimed to have seen something in there that was readable

Sort-of?

6) There were scummy parts to OW's post 14 that you hadn't quoted

This was NOT an assumption present in your post--rather the opposite.

Also, there are assumptions in your post that you missed. Quite a few, actually.

[mastina]

It's kind of funny you say this right after you're like "screw explaining myself"

I was well aware of this, the difference being:
I have a style emphasizing a lack of explanation.
To my knowledge, you lack this.
In a position as a teacher, I have extra incentive beyond the normal to hold back on certain stuff.
As an SE you have self-admitted you are in no such position.

As a result, I am indeed holding you to a different stance than I am holding myself to--from you, I expect explanations; from me, explanations aren't expected until an appropriate time (potentially as late as postgame, even!).

Tone: the casual dismissiveness and snark of it. Basically, it was an answer not even slightly designed to appeal to / pocket him (or if it was, it really wasn't obvious to me how it was), and it felt relatively pure

I have thoughts on this.

Logic: Why don't you take a wild guess? I'll even give you a hint and point you to 66 and 72.

Well within my capabilities, but again: I'm not in a position where I'm interested in sharing with you; I'm in a position where I'm wanting you to share. I have stated that I will share. In fact, I have stated I have even to some extent already given answers in my posts, if people look for them. You're hiding your answer from me, though: I have an answer. It's my posts, after all. I want you to give YOURS.

[mastina]

I would like to note that mhsmith is doing something which I also noted from oldwino. The two of them, above all other players, are guilty of this cardinal sin. I'm not going to pull up a quote from either player to give an indication of what this is. But you might be able to guess--namely, by which posts of theirs I am

not

responding to.

Anyone care to guess what they have in common?

[mastina]

Inversely, question for you. You've given plenty of thoughts on the proceedings thusfar. Any READS?

Yes

And what, perhaps, are you doing with those reads?

Keeping them to yourself is obvious enough, but I mean aside from that.

[mastina]

When there is a town-town fight, fueling the flames is scummy behavior. Super awkward engagement is scummy behavior. Actively working to defuse the argument is towny behavior (provided it's town-town). Actively working to figure out who is right is towny behavior. Doing nothing is basically null.

There are things in here which I disagree with even though the broader picture is accurate enough, but I can't comment on this further without spoiling some of the surprise.

mastina has stated that this wasn't the basis of her read, but this post in particular suggests that it WAS a meaningful portion of her read (otherwise it's just theory fluff and IIOA).

You act as if theory fluff and reads are mutually exclusive; they are not. My statement about it not being the basis of my read was accurate; my implication that it was in your words "a meaningful portion of my read" (not the words I'd use but oh well I'll borrow them until such time I feel like explaining myself) was also accurate. They are not contradictions.

[mastina]

Why do you expect me to be doing heavy lifting right off the bat?

Never said anything about heavy lifting.

There may have been an implication about lifting at all though.

[mastina]

Was that an unfair interpretation of your current stated game state view?

Quite. You make many assumptions. Some I'll answer. Others are personal and won't be answered at all.

It is true that I view you as scum.
It is true that I do not view RadiantCowbells as scum.
It is true that I view there to be a difference between good town and good scum.

This is about all that can be said to be true in your post.

[mastina]

Sure, but basically any towny behavior can be imitated by scum for towncred.

An instance of a technical truth which is not true in reality--broadly speaking, sure, but realistically speaking, town behavior is called town behavior because it comes from a player who is town in a way that scum can't replicate. Perhaps imitate unsuccessfully, but not recreate. I'm running out of time here, so I can't go into detail about it.

[mastina]

Did I say running out of time?
Scratch that, ran out, sorry. I'll continue later.

[mastina]

Apologies. Family night went on for longer than anticipated; by the time it was over, I was too tired for continuing to play.
Should be noted--

MOD:

While I am

always

V/LA over weekends,

severely V/LA next Friday through the weekend

.
I have back-to-back days of events. A square dance on Friday, a staff meeting on Saturday and family night after that.

[mastina]

Why not when I'm not sure?

Because as town, your JOB if you aren't sure is to

become

sure. It is to

resolve

the lack of a stance, so as to have a relevant opinion. It is okay over an incredible short period of time to go: "I don't have an opinion there". You absolutely are REQUIRED as town to make an effort towards forming an opinion. If your efforts to form one fail, you don't go "welp guess I've got nothing"; you change your approach and try again until you can form an opinion.

I'm not going to commit to a POV or opinion that is still evolving.

If everyone took this stance, we would never get out of the RVS, because the RVS is defined as opinions still evolving, yet it's impossible to break that stance without some level of committing.

[mastina]

Our own resident MSocrates, ladies and gentlemen!

Probably an apt description: I know so much because I constantly remind myself I don't know so much.

And in general, I actually do encourage that trend to grow in players. Never feel content with your game. Always seek improvement in it. Always think, "what did I do wrong?", always wonder "what could I do better?", and try to take the RIGHT lessons from a game. For instance, "In this game, I didn't do this specific thing. What I learned from this is that this specific thing should always be done" is not a good lesson. "In this game, I didn't do this specific thing. This specific thing represents a skill of this broader thing. What I learned from this is that I probably need to work on this broader thing, which in this game happened to be this specific thing" is closer to the kind of lesson you want to take from a game. (And also what I'm hoping to provide in feedback postgame.)

Mafia is a game of generalities. The people who focus on the specifics often fail to learn, because the specific problem in every game is different. The people who focus on the broader generalities often rise to stardom, because the general problems in games are near-universal. They manifest differently in each case, and aren't always present, but are there more often than not, so working on them works wonders.

[mastina]

I'm nurturing a theory that scum is laying low while town gets tied up in NAI quarreling they hope will eventually turn into a mislynch.

Funny. So am I. I, apparently, just have a vastly different definition of this than you do! Because for me, I don't consider aa-dono, Ulti, or JustDanceWorld to be laying low.
I consider you and RC to be the town tied up in "NAI quarreling" to use your own words.

I, too, would prefer to avoid that scenario. So I am working towards breaking it!

While, yes, it's important to sort players while they're playing and available to be sorted, I don't want to get too heavily invested in any reads until everyone has either established their presence or been replaced by a more active player.

This is part of the reason I have yet to fully explain my stances on players: I was waiting for players to establish their presence.

[mastina]

Anyone care to guess what they have in common?

They both seem to be coming after you, for one thing.

Not what I saw.

Think more what they're

not

doing, more than what they

are

doing.

[mastina]

which makes me believe it is more likely to be genuine instead of scum trying to keep their options open.

You and I have very different views of the gamestate, m'friend. Keeping options open is explicitly what oldwino has been doing and is a large part of the problem.

[mastina]

I am flagrantly unable to see Mastina as town here.

[mastina]

but then I kinda wonder if she might just be going for a bizarre play here or

just actually be super not good as scum

.

In a normal game I would go on a very long-winded rant about this--ridiculously long. Full wall of text, at least a screenwidth long, and it would not be pretty.

Instead, I will link to a few of the quite numerous sources that would suggest VERY strongly to the contrary. (And note that's an incomplete list.)

Suffice to say:

no

. I am not "super not good as scum". I'm better at scumplay than I am at townplay.

[mastina]

Well you ought to start giving damns because the next step is for me to lynch you.

And I should be quaking in my boots about this, why?

I already think my wagon has two scum on it.

Why would I fear your L-1 vote? Because of the risk of a newbie derphammering?

Go on. Vote me. I literally give zero fucks about your stance on me. You are wrong. I don't care that you're wrong. You're not going to lynch me.

What's with the cheap townread you gave me?

It aint cheap, it's accurate. You are town. I am reading you as town. You don't like that, tough. I don't care. Because you are town, and I am town, and that's all that matters to me. I don't care about your opinion of me townreading you.

and given how hard I fooled you and others in TTH's game I would expect you to give my scumgame a little more respect.

Given how I wasn't playing that game: not really, no. I respect your scumgame about as much as I respect that of any other established veteran: it exists. It is something that is respectable. It may even be a don corelone nomination. It is not impenetrable, nor is it impossible to discern from a towngame. You are not special. You are just another player to me. Nothing less, sure, but also nothing more. And this game, you are town. It's really that simple.

[mastina]

Like you basically flew in with MMM RC IS CONFTOWN over absolutely nothing then came up with two hard scumreads including one on OldWino who I townread so.

Oi. Not so.

I came in with two soft scumreads (both of which have changed to unspecified reads which I have asked to be guessed at, with nobody yet to take me up on the offer), and one hard scumread.

Makes all the difference in the world!

[mastina]

I get the unmistakeable feeling that you are scumreading both mhsmith0 and oldwino. This doesn't jibe with me, because mhsmith0 and oldwino are both voting you.
I don't buy for a second that both members of the scumteam would be voting you together so early in d1 when one of those alleged scum are experienced.

It is specifically

because

the votes were together so early on D1 that they are not only possible but probable to be scum together.

mhsmith's vote was placed in the RVS.
oldwino's vote, not long later.

This is

exactly

the time a scumteam should be voting together. Early votes together are often written off as being something that isn't alignment indicative

at the worst

--many even townread it, insisting that if scum vote together, it MUST be late on a wagon they want to really see through.

Now, LATE together, with one experienced scum, THAT would be less likely I will admit. But EARLY together is >=random for scumbuddies.

[mastina]

So. Announcement time: not quite able to go full-out yet (for more personal reasons rather than preference reasons--namely, I'm exhausted due to a lot of real-life shit), but while I won't be doing so tonight, I'll be doing so

soonish

. As soon as I can, in fact. While I prefer to wait as long as possible, I think we're basically reaching that point even if less got done than I would have preferred.

Probably need to skim some of mastinas scum games to see if she's good at faking conf!bias or not I guess.

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: would normally explain to you exactly how so, though that's detrimental to the learning experience within a game, so if it's really important for you to know then ask me postgame and I'll either explain in here or send a PM detailing to you exactly why.

Even longer answer: While I am indeed skilled at confirmation biasing as scum, I also am one of the few players on-site who knows the difference between confidence and arrogance. It is okay to ask yourself, "am I right?", and then conclude, "I actually think I am". I tend to exaggerate the strength of reads, usually to get reactions and/or people to follow me, but in spite of that exaggeration I am also honest with how much I believe my reads. As scum I can fake the exaggeration easily, though the specifics are too much of a tangent.

[mastina]

I used to ask a lot of questions. I tried to reduce it since they were deemed scummy actions and something along the line "asked too many questions, but give few opinions".

That's why you need to figure out:
-Which questions to ask
-What you are trying to accomplish with those questions
-What to follow through each question with
-What the ultimate result of your questions are: both the ones which went as expected and those that didn't.
Among others.

It's perfectly okay to have a style which utilizes heavy question-asking...but you have to know what your questions actually accomplish, essentially. Because if you do "give few opinions", then yeah it's easy for you to hide as scum behind the questions. Like I said, though--I can't really give you pointers, there. I don't honestly know the specifics of how to make the style work. I see others use it, but I'm not intimately familiar with it, so that goes beyond the scope of what I can teach you; you just need experience and experimentation and time to hone it, I suppose. (Or a teacher who uses this style. Having someone who knows this technique teach you would work as a jumpstart.)

[mastina]

For what it's worth: the first potential sign I got that I'm wrong on oldwino is this post.

But on the other hand (yes, I like fences, early in the game anyway when few if any of us, me anyway, really doesn't have a firm read on anyone). Smith said

Why is everyone's role displayed below their name? Doesn't that make this game really easy for town to win?

Hello everyone! I will be your lynchbait for this game

I fixed your typos. I guess it could be scum with a buddy who didn't advise him (or he didn't bother reading advice, or he's just going for a super awkward derp-clear attempt), but lynchbait is my gut reaction to that bit

Incidentally, this is one of the first things oldwino's said in which I actually feel like asking him a question about it would be productive regardless of his alignment/answer. Specifically,

Hey, oldwino:

Given the above, what's your take on:

VOTE: ulti
choo choo

...This?

[mastina]

are we really going to do this mastina?

I dunno, are we?

You're

the one who's apparently scumreading me. My stance is we're both town, so it's really your call, not mine.
So you tell me: are we?

[mastina]

If not, then I give up on this goose chase you've sent me on.

You picked up on the largest bit, but to expand: there's more to it than that. For that bit, for instance--are you familiar with the concept of projection? Most people use the word in a negative connotation. I actually embrace and readily use the terminology because I project, sort of.

If you have time to give feedback before I go serious, you can try to guess what I mean specifically by that point. Because I intend to go serious soon, I'll also highlight the parts that are relevant you missed:

while I'm a good teacher, I do my best teaching when I'm not expected to teach. But as your IC, I...am expected to teach, so I must apologize in advance if I fail to deliver the teaching experience you need to grow your game. Give you the resources you need, even if it's just "listen to what this other person said". (Teaching tends to be a group exercise: everyone involved learns, from the moderator to the IC to the SEs to every other player.)

(Okay ^this paragraph's not too important but it's still part.)

I am a player. I could be town or scum, but I'll have a wincon/agenda this game, where I'm aiming for a win. However, I will never lie to you about game theory. Ever. I won't misdirect/mislead you. I won't place my alignment above my teaching duty. That said, game theory is, largely...highly subjective. Just because I won't lie to you about it doesn't mean what I say about it is, necessarily, "true". Use your judgment given time and experience to determine what advice I give you is helpful or not.
I am human, and prone to error. Burden of Proficiency is still a fallacy. Regardless of my alignment, I can and will make mistakes.

My teaching style in a game is, largely, "roll with the game": I will teach by example and give thoughts as they come up.

In short, my job isn't to teach you to play, so much as it is to guide you on your natural path.

All of these are relevant at least to THIS game.

My view on the game is balancing possibilities versus probabilities.
I'm an unorthodox player. I say my first language is "concepts", and my second language is English; my posts translate concepts to words. This has benefits where I see things others would miss, pressing people on the smallest/subtlest of details, but also carries three obvious downsides:
Inability to communicate properly, Verbosity, and sometimes being utterly wrong about my alternative ideas.

One quirk I have is viewing every player simultaneously as town and scum. I view each possibility, and then I weigh them, to determine probability. Which makes more sense?
As both alignments, I express generalities, expecting players to fill in specifics. Their interpretations not only allow them growth as players, but also allow me to get a better idea of their alignment(/how to manipulate them) off of how they respond. As town, I'll try to defuse heated debates I feel are counterproductive, but if I feel they could be useful, I'll let them continue and weigh in only when I feel it gives something useful. (Often, one leads to another.)
As scum, I'll direct the spotlight so that town are fighting town. I'll still give commentary on it, just like as town, but I won't try to defuse town-town debates, because I need town to lynch town. I prefer minimal involvement in contributing to town lynches, because it positions myself to look better/positions the town to mislynch twice in a row (namely, the primary town pusher of the now-flipped-town).

I like to flirt around a fair amount: just talk about random stuff that enters my mind, rambling about.
My expectation of this game is that every player is given the tools they need to continue their career here on mafiascum.net.

And so are these. You got the largest part, but there's a context to it you didn't get, and the bits immediately above the bits you got entirely change things. These are all the important parts.

I intend to explain this soon--very soon. I'm no longer waiting for a particular gamestate to happen, so much as I am a particular time in which I am physically capable of laying out my thoughts. (Explaining things in detail drains my very very very inconsiderable stamina. It's exhausting and takes a lot of effort for me to do--which is part of the answer by the way, and one of the things I even mention above!) So I'll try to get back to you on this ASAP with an actual laid-out process.

But. If you can beat me to it, I would encourage you to try. It might be a bit frustrating, but the guessing process is highly educational--I promise it is. You don't have to guess anymore (because I'm going to give you the answer as soon as I can), but all the same I still do encourage you to try if you can.

[mastina]

If you care enough to make a meaningful discussion point of it, explain what you think I missed.

Soon!
But not now!
And not the game thread's state making me say that; purely personal problem!

Basically, I have a perfect mind's eye of what I want to say on

everything

, start to finish, in the game.
Bringing that concept into reality, into English words, is a bit tricky--I need to not only figure out what words to say, to use, to explain my view, but also what order to present them in. It's a mentally exhausting effort and is one of the many reasons in a typical game I tend to be lazy and not go into detail about it, but I did promise you I would do it this game and I specifically designed my teaching style this game around the concept of this "keep mind's eye view in mind for a while, then when the time is right reveal everything as to show how I worked to get where I did and why", so it'll get done.

Just...I need the energy, the time, the condition (physically not tired, mentally not exhausted, emotionally not compromised), and situation to do it. The last has been fulfilled (we have the right situation for it), but the time/condition I need to set aside which right now I haven't. I do apologize for the delay, and hope it'll be worth the wait when I do give it.

Also, unrelated:
VOTE: mhsmith0.
I want to be voting here more than oldwino.

[mastina]

I don't consider it remotely acceptable to withold explanations indefinitely, ESPECIALLY doing so while demanding more clarity from others. And since you're citing being an IC as a reason to be LESS forthright, I'll cite the IC guidelines that you linked

The easiest way for newbies to learn is to watch good players playing at their best. Do not attempt to water down your game, or play any differently in terms of your objectives as you would in any other game. Make sure you're playing to win, and make sure you attack just as hard as you would in any other game. Do not attempt to coddle the newbies by playing down to their level, as that will not help them advance as players, and that's pretty much the point of the game.

So to the extent you're choosing to be less helpful than normal just becuase you're the IC, please stop doing that regardless of your alignment. "I won't bother explaining stuff until postgame" is completely unacceptable.

One: I don't recall saying I was going to withhold explanations indefinitely--quite the contrary, I was rather explicit in saying I was going to tell people at the appropriate time. The appropriate time would be now if I had the stamina to do so. (Instead it is ASAP--but still VERY close to now.)

Two: it is the very same passage you are quoting which is why I have played this way. I went to achieve very specific goals, goals I would accomplish in any game by using nearly identical methods. This IS my normal play, just slightly modified and exaggerated in a way which is convenient to a very specific teaching style. I did in fact achieve a fair number of those goals, albeit not as many as I was hoping for.

Three: I have been incredibly helpful, just not in an orthodox way, which is where waiting for the fucking explanation comes in. (And I do apologize for the delay--now would be the time to give it, but real life is real life. Shit happened and even if it hadn't--it's 3:30 AM as I type this, and the explanation I estimate will take 2-3 hours. I literally CAN'T give it right now even though I want to.)

Four: I never said I wasn't going to explain things until postgame--simply that as an IC I am within my rights to do so. Why? Because if I were a scum IC, then holding back on a full explanation would simply be my wincon. Trying to get every player to play at their maximum possible skill level is arguably against the wincon of a scum IC. And so, an IC is allowed to hold back on explaining their actions until postgame. In said postgame, a scum IC should lay out why they did what they did, but a scum IC is not required to say anything sooner than then, and this is what I was referring to. People don't expect a scum IC to explain how they are playing and being a scum IC in the middle of the game, except possibly to scum partners during the night. They DO expect the explanation postgame, but not before then.

That's why I said "potentially as late as postgame". But with that, was the implication that a town IC will explain prior to postgame: at the time THEY deem it appropriate, which is point five. An IC (especially a town one) can and will hold back from immediately explaining something to a newbie, if they deem it an appropriate play and/or an appropriate teaching strategy. (So long as they then go on to explain their action and what it was they were trying to accomplish, which I intend to do.) I deemed it both.

[mastina]

...And what, perhaps, are you doing with those reads?
Keeping them to yourself is obvious enough, but I mean aside from that.

I'm keeping them to myself less than you might think; just because I didn't dump out reads lists doesn't mean that I've been closed with what I think, or that it's impossible to figure out what I'm thinking about people based on what I've been saying. If you require further clarification, substantive questions (like "what do you think about player X, because I don't understand where you are on him/her/it") would be more productive than your current approach.

The question stands. I asked you what you are doing with your reads. That was the part I was asking about.

[mastina]

I feel like this is my opportunity to utilize what mastina told us about discerning town-town arguments from town-scum arguments, but I'm blowing that opportunity because I can't even follow the damn argument.

You're not alone.
Welcome to mafiascum's greatest lesson: the art of skimming.
Because people on mafiascum talk a lot, it can become difficult (even impossible) to read every post (which is one reason why I understand people having missed my own), and read everything within the post. To play in a game, you have to pick and choose your battles. You have to do your best to get the gist of a fight, and pay attention to what it reveals--not so much what it's about, as what it can tell you.

In that regard: the aggressive push from Grey is something I would strongly think to be town. He really believes what he says, and he's actually notably angry even in his tone: that frustration, that level of strong emotion, is not something I associate with scum. So at the very least, you can determine his half is town.

When it comes to mhsmith, there's less conclusive at least when skimming. Maybe if I read his posts in greater detail I would be able to lock it down, though from the exchange I would have the tendency to lean scum on him: in the entire exchange, he is mostly on the defensive. He is spending energy trying to prove Grey wrong, to get Grey off his back. His tone is either flat or annoyed, difficult to tell without reading closer which--but even if it's annoyed, the annoyance in this exchange is null at best.

Basically: Grey was pushing points with the attempt to do something with them and was visibly unsettled at the strong resistance to these points. That's something I typically think of as town since it's hard to fake as scum. mhsmith was bringing up points and not doing much with them aside from using them to counter Grey's points. This is an attitude I tend to associate more with scum.

[mastina]

As you've surely seen by now, Smith is a very detail-oriented player... so when he starts deliberately ignoring details to favor his narrative, it provokes my suspicion.

This is a very small part of my scumread on mhsmith, but is not the main contributing factor. Again, it's more what he's

not

doing than it is what he's doing. (Though also present are things which he has done which he shouldn't be doing.)

I'll lay it out when I explain everything at the very latest--I might even give a basic not-in-depth explanation prior to then, though that really depends on how long it takes for me to write my explains-everything process. (If it takes me a few days to write out my full explanation, I should probably write out the basics behind my mhsmith read sooner than that. If I can get the explanation done, saaaaaaaaaaaay, tomorrow, then no need for it to be before then.)

[mastina]

Not once you get some experience under your belt and learn to look beyond superficial appearances.

This is one of the main things I've been trying to encourage with my process, by the way. This is essential in the longrun for a mafia career. My lack of explanations is meant to deliberately trigger this: FORCE players to think about my actions and look beyond the superficial surface. That's one of the teaching reasons why I delay the explanations for a few days minimum, ideally about a week (which is where we're at). It allows the players the chance to see me produce a fair amount of content, and for there to be a fair amount of content in the thread already...and then for them to actually try to decipher it.

And when they don't get it perfect (because honestly, who could? Not even a veteran could get 100% of what I've written though most probably can get over 90% especially if they know me), I go on to give the explanation. Ideally I'd be giving it literally right now, but it is quite literally 4 AM (4:05 to be more precise) as I type this so I really can't give it

this second

even though I want to. (That's my fault for letting my real life interfere with the game. Real life > mafia life, but I'm hoping it's only a one or two day slight inconvenience in delayed timing.)

[mastina]

The mod's scumclaiming in this post given this game is titled SPRING.

[mastina]

I want to respond to Mastina's question to me about Smith's wagon on Ulti. Today, I still think Ulti is just too new and scared to participate. But, I ask myself, 'why would he be so afraid, basically frozen with fear?' I think he's afraid to post, to play, because he is scum. A new townie may be afraid to post, afraid they'd make a mistake, but not so afraid that they would keep so quiet. If a new townie is lynched on D1, there are still 6 more townies to carry the game. But if he's scum and is lynched, he's leaving his scum partner out there all alone. So, now I'm leaning scum on Ulti because of his apparent fear to post and play.

And why would Smith start a wagon on Ulti? Frustration maybe? Trying to get a reaction from Ulti, pressuring him to play? And maybe Smith really does think Ulti is scum. Or maybe, several pages ago, to get a reaction from others? But since Smith's vote is still on Ulti, and surprisingly to me not changed to Grey, I've got to believe Smith still thinks Ulti is scum.

That's nice and good and all, but this isn't what I was asking. I was asking what you thought of MHSMITH, with these two back to back:

Why is everyone's role displayed below their name? Doesn't that make this game really easy for town to win?

Hello everyone! I will be your lynchbait for this game

I fixed your typos. I guess it could be scum with a buddy who didn't advise him (or he didn't bother reading advice, or he's just going for a super awkward derp-clear attempt), but lynchbait is my gut reaction to that bit

VOTE: ulti
choo choo

[mastina]

Grey's push on me came across as dumb much more than it did scum, my questions to / engagement with him was primarily "wtf are you even doing here" as opposed to "I think you're scum for it"

And therein lies the problem: if you were town, and you felt that Grey was town, then you entering into the debate with him is just as stupid as Grey. As a wise man once said:
"Never argue with a fool. People might not be able to tell the difference."
...Basically my problem is that you spent all that time on something you yourself admit was a waste of time: you were reading Grey as town, and you weren't entering that debate to get a better read on him at all. You were spending time and effort on something which wasn't productive, which you KNEW wasn't productive.

[mastina]

As a result, I am indeed holding you to a different stance than I am holding myself to--from you, I expect explanations; from me, explanations aren't expected until an appropriate time (potentially as late as postgame, even!).

This implied that you, at the very least, are considering witholding explanations indefinitely, and maybe even as late as postgame.

Did it now?
"An appropriate time" is an admittedly ambiguous phrase--but inherent in it is "a time will come when it will happen...just, at the RIGHT time". That means it'll happen definitely. That means it is a thing which will occur. 100% it will be given, inherent in the phrase.
This was further emphasized by the parenthesis--"potentially as late as postgame" implies there's the POTENTIAL for it to be that late...with the implication that

most likely

, it's going to come before then.

FWIW, I don't care if your explanations are slightly delayed. It's not quite the middle of D1 yet, so RL/health/etc issues happen and i don't have an issue with it, provided that it's coming soon.

Actually it is the middle of D1. Past it by now. The game started on Tuesday last week. Deadlines are two weeks, so we are past the half-way mark. But yes, it'll be soon. I wanted it to be today, but I couldn't quite get my shit together (which I am constantly telling myself I need to do), so I'll have to delay at least one more day (hopefully no more).

As an IC, you're a player first, and a teacher second. So no, I don't think you're within your rights to withold explantions or lean on "I'm the IC, I don't have to explain myself" as an excuse.

You have it backwards: the reason I'm not required to explain myself isn't because I'm an IC, but because I'm a player. (And as a player I have a natural inclination from holding back regardless of alignment.) It's simply that AS the IC, I AM expected to explain myself...eventually. At some undefined point. Potentially as late as postgame.

[mastina]

let's not bog this game down in an argument over the role of an IC.

It is unfortunately relevant to certain details, though my stance was made clear in my first post on the subject.

[mastina]

How am I supposed to confidently learn from someone who might be actively working against me?

For a start, ICs don't lie about theory. I personally consider it unethical to hold

anything

back, or to tell ANY mistruth when it comes to theory. As a scum IC I am required to lie about my reads and lie about my reasons...until postgame when I lay them out, and from those players can learn.

But you have my word that regardless of my alignment anything I say on theory is my viewpoint for real, because I wouldn't hold back any critical information, I wouldn't misapply advice, I wouldn't misdirect, I wouldn't mislead, I wouldn't lie, about anything game-theory-related. This, namely because I hold extreme pride in being a teacher, and teaching a falsehood even if only temporarily is beyond unacceptable to me. (Also because as scum it's easier for me to tell the truth than to lie, because often telling the truth doesn't hurt me whereas telling a lie is inconvenient.)

This doesn't even feel like a newbie game anyway. Half the players are experienced and only two newbies are trying to contribute, oldwino and myself. Not very fun, not very helpful.

I do apologize for that, though you also have aa-dono more or less present if it makes you feel slightly better. I did note the high ratio of experienced players early-on and anticipate it would be trouble, but I was hoping it wouldn't come up. It has...and there's not much I can really do to help you there. I don't think there's any strategy I could take--even if I fully explained all of my reads from the start in crystal clarity, I'd still be largely pushing mhsmith and pushing him hard, which is part of your problem (the experienced players butting heads), meaning I can't really help you.

The best advice I can really offer you is: patience, along with time. Have faith. Not necessarily in any individual player. But in the game itself, that it will get better. Especially post-D1. Many games suffer from a slugfest where big names clash with each other and produce a ton of content making things difficult to read--and you can't really stop it. All you can do is live through it, and then when it slows down (it always does), analyze the fallout from it.

I suppose you can do a few things. You can try to increase your own influence. If you're dissatisfied being an ignored voice in the corner...do something which makes yourself hard to ignore. Be larger. Be louder. Increase your aggression. Ask more to more players. Try to explain your views, and get them to explain theirs. Get them to follow you. This doesn't work for everyone, but it wouldn't hurt to try.

[mastina]

Not sure where she's drawn the line.

I'm rather unambiguous about this: I will not lie about anything. I will not misapply in any way whatsoever anything. I will not misdirect. I will not omit critical info with no indication I am doing so. (That is, giving the appearance of telling everything when in truth I am holding something back.) I will not deceive.

Now. There can be overlap between teaching and play...but this overlap is not alignment indicative.
If I am town, then I chose to hold information back--both because I thought it would be a good teaching experience

and

because I thought there was a pro-town value in having done so.
If I am scum, then I chose to hold information back--both because I thought it would be a good teaching experience

and

because I thought there was pro-scum value in having done so. (Probably pro-scum value which would appear on the surface to be pro-town.)

In either case, I made a call where doing an action was both teaching and for play...but because it can occur as either alignment, my role as a teacher remains separated from my role as a player. Now, I'll admit. Some of my lessons double as me laying the groundwork for future content of mine--but in those lessons, the above remains true.
If I am town, the lesson was an IC lesson, and doubled as groundwork for future content I would use to push the game closer to a hopefully pro-town state.
If I am scum, the lesson was an IC lesson, and doubled as groundwork for future content I would use to push the game closer to a hopefully pro-scum state. In either case, it is still an IC lesson separated from my alignment, even if it's not separated from my play.

This is how every IC should operate in my opinion, though sadly not all of them do.

[mastina]

We need EC's and maybe an IC is helpful, but they need to encourage the newbies to play rather than monopolize the game.

Incidentally, that's one of the reasons why I held back on my reasons!

At least in theory, by me not giving my presence at maximum, by me holding back my full reasons, by me NOT monopolizing the game by being very loud about my reasons, the idea there is that I would encourage newbies to actually

think

about my content, my contribution, and what it is I was trying to accomplish...allowing them to feel like they actually were giving something to the game rather than just being held by the hand and told directly "this is the case. This is why this is the case. Because this is the case, this is what we'll be doing", and that's what would have happened if I shared my reads immediately.

[mastina]

Hi all. reading up
UNVOTE:

I'm a bit saddened and disappointed that Ulti left, and I feel that leaving was partially because Ulti didn't know how to handle the game and I feel a bit responsible for that.

I also am a little bit disheartened that we didn't get a newbie to replace the newbie slot.
I do have to ask, though. pieg, are you:
-A public alt (such as me switching from mastin2 to mastina)
-A publicly known alt (that is, a player making no secret they are an alt but not sharing their identity),
-Or just a player really really really REALLY bad at hiding them being an alt?

Because 434 tells me you're sure as fuck not a newbie.

[mastina]

Words wound, mastina.

Apologies, that wording was unclear on my end.
I was saying essentially that mhsmith held that opinion of you (one I do not hold)--and that him holding that opinion of you yet engaging you

anyway

was not something I'd associate as being town.

[mastina]

Incidentally, if you're interested in verifying my teaching history: here are my relatively recent IC games.

Two of the above, I was scum.
The rest were town.
In both, my teaching was about the same. (Though from memory I may have actually taught more as scum? Would have to read in detail to confirm that.) In none did I lie.

[mastina]

(Yes relatively recent is two and a half years ago--I've not IC'd much because bipolar disorder can make it difficult to consistently live up to the necessary standards of an IC, but nowadays I have it more or less at a manageable level. Sort-of.)

[mastina]

This is just a bad case of stall. It seems clear to me that you don't want to give your explanations, you answered posts for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

General note, and this is to all players, not just you:
NEVER accuse a player of lying about real life. (You never know when you might one day have a player accuse YOU of lying about something you know is true and just imagine how that'll make you feel if it does happen--and realize that's why you just fucking don't.)

Nobody lies about their real life.
So when I say I couldn't get my shit together (a very personal thing)...I mean I couldn't get my shit together.
Not a lie, not an exaggeration. Lying about real-life is unethical. It is frankly the most sack-of-shit thing a person is technically allowed to do.
To be blunt I'd rather abuse my role as the IC, I'd rather lie about game theory, than I would lie about real life. And I consider those things sacred! That's just to give you an idea of just how fucking much I mean it when I say:

don't. do. this

. Ever.
Real life is sacred to mafia players. You don't lie about real life, and in return you also don't

accuse

people of lying about real life.

In this case: I want to give the explanations, I just am having difficulty doing so.
The answering of posts is actually a minimum time requirement--it is me barely coasting by. It takes me that long just to fucking coast by. To actually give the game the content it deserves requires me to invest the two hours you mention PLUS the 3+ hours or so for the project. The reason I need to answer posts is also self-evident enough: if I worked on the explanation at the expense of being caught up on the thread, I would fall behind and be unable to be up-to-date on the gamestate, something which I consider crucial to the role of a player.

My first priority is staying up to date with the game.
My second priority is the explanation I have promised--it takes a back seat to maintaining my first priority.

[mastina]

I think I understand it, but don't think you're accomplishing the separation as well as you think you are.

These two can't work together because inherent in my statement is that is is basically impossible for me to NOT have them separated.

It is possible for my teaching to overlap with my play. This has transpired--but there is nothing wrong with this, as it is to be expected and is the norm. ICs have their lessons overlap with their play all the time.

It is impossible for my teaching to overlap with my alignment. They remain separated at all times, because while my teaching may hold an overlap with my play, said play could come from either alignment and is rather explicitly equally helpful to both.

I think it must be hard, being an IC with the approach you take, and being scum at the same time.

Actually, this is a bit of a tangent, but the main dilemma as a scum IC for me isn't in role separation. It's in how to best achieve victory.
As a scum IC, I would be well within my rights to post IIoA: to do nothing but teach, ignoring play altogether. This coasting would be a valid strategy, because lurking is a valid scum tactic, and it can and does work. It's an easy way to win, because it's not something easy to be called out on.

The question would be whether that approach would be ethical, because while that is an

effective

method of winning...it is also a cheap one. It is a method which does not teach newbies good scum ploys. It does not teach newbies good scum tactics. It does not teach newbies good scum play. It is also dangerously close to abusing the role of an IC--while everything I would say would in fact be true, if I wasn't the IC then it probably wouldn't be possible to coast on nothing but coaching.

If you were town, you'd be less conflicted about your role differentiation, IMO.

There is no conflict. Maybe some players have been trying to sell that narrative, but I have been rather explicit in there being none. Regardless of my alignment, my teaching will overlap with my play--this is literally unavoidable. However, in spite of there being overlap, specifically because it exists regardless of my alignment...my alignment is inherently SEPARATED from my teaching. As a result? There is a clearly defined difference between my role as a teacher and my role as a player.

[mastina]

But by not sharing, by holding off this long, you're not helping town.

Yes I have acknowledged as much and apologized for the delay--the optimal time to have shared was about two/three days ago. I will try to get the reasons out tonight, once I have caught up.

[mastina]

@mastina Are you going to address this?

I did. This WAS my response:

Spoiler: This long post

You picked up on the largest bit, but to expand: there's more to it than that. For that bit, for instance--are you familiar with the concept of projection? Most people use the word in a negative connotation. I actually embrace and readily use the terminology because I project, sort of.

If you have time to give feedback before I go serious, you can try to guess what I mean specifically by that point. Because I intend to go serious soon, I'll also highlight the parts that are relevant you missed:

while I'm a good teacher, I do my best teaching when I'm not expected to teach. But as your IC, I...am expected to teach, so I must apologize in advance if I fail to deliver the teaching experience you need to grow your game. Give you the resources you need, even if it's just "listen to what this other person said". (Teaching tends to be a group exercise: everyone involved learns, from the moderator to the IC to the SEs to every other player.)

(Okay ^this paragraph's not too important but it's still part.)

I am a player. I could be town or scum, but I'll have a wincon/agenda this game, where I'm aiming for a win. However, I will never lie to you about game theory. Ever. I won't misdirect/mislead you. I won't place my alignment above my teaching duty. That said, game theory is, largely...highly subjective. Just because I won't lie to you about it doesn't mean what I say about it is, necessarily, "true". Use your judgment given time and experience to determine what advice I give you is helpful or not.
I am human, and prone to error. Burden of Proficiency is still a fallacy. Regardless of my alignment, I can and will make mistakes.

My teaching style in a game is, largely, "roll with the game": I will teach by example and give thoughts as they come up.

In short, my job isn't to teach you to play, so much as it is to guide you on your natural path.

All of these are relevant at least to THIS game.

My view on the game is balancing possibilities versus probabilities.
I'm an unorthodox player. I say my first language is "concepts", and my second language is English; my posts translate concepts to words. This has benefits where I see things others would miss, pressing people on the smallest/subtlest of details, but also carries three obvious downsides:
Inability to communicate properly, Verbosity, and sometimes being utterly wrong about my alternative ideas.

One quirk I have is viewing every player simultaneously as town and scum. I view each possibility, and then I weigh them, to determine probability. Which makes more sense?
As both alignments, I express generalities, expecting players to fill in specifics. Their interpretations not only allow them growth as players, but also allow me to get a better idea of their alignment(/how to manipulate them) off of how they respond. As town, I'll try to defuse heated debates I feel are counterproductive, but if I feel they could be useful, I'll let them continue and weigh in only when I feel it gives something useful. (Often, one leads to another.)
As scum, I'll direct the spotlight so that town are fighting town. I'll still give commentary on it, just like as town, but I won't try to defuse town-town debates, because I need town to lynch town. I prefer minimal involvement in contributing to town lynches, because it positions myself to look better/positions the town to mislynch twice in a row (namely, the primary town pusher of the now-flipped-town).

I like to flirt around a fair amount: just talk about random stuff that enters my mind, rambling about.
My expectation of this game is that every player is given the tools they need to continue their career here on mafiascum.net.

And so are these. You got the largest part, but there's a context to it you didn't get, and the bits immediately above the bits you got entirely change things. These are all the important parts.

I intend to explain this soon--very soon. I'm no longer waiting for a particular gamestate to happen, so much as I am a particular time in which I am physically capable of laying out my thoughts. (Explaining things in detail drains my very very very inconsiderable stamina. It's exhausting and takes a lot of effort for me to do--which is part of the answer by the way, and one of the things I even mention above!) So I'll try to get back to you on this ASAP with an actual laid-out process.

But. If you can beat me to it, I would encourage you to try. It might be a bit frustrating, but the guessing process is highly educational--I promise it is. You don't have to guess anymore (because I'm going to give you the answer as soon as I can), but all the same I still do encourage you to try if you can.

[mastina]

Framing the issue in this way is bad and you should feel bad (regardless of your alignment). You're basically saying "first smith said one thing, and then smith said another thing sometime later" without any consideration of the context and/or events that happened in between.
If you think my behavior here is scummy, you should have more to say than "look smith said something that kinda defended ulti and then three days later placed an seemingly empty-looking wagon vote on ulti, now please tell me why you think smith is scummy for it".

I don't recall any such framing.

All I did was ask a question of oldwino, in relation to you. Specifically, what he thought of you doing what you did, after HIM having SPECIFICALLY noting your earlier stance.

To put it another way: oldwino quoted 116 in regards to the Ulti wagon.
I asked him specifically about what he thought of 116, in conjunction with 281.
The question was directed towards him--and asking him about his stances. How he noted the Ulti wagon, noted your earlier thoughts on the wagon, and how you were later on the wagon.

[mastina]

Even beyond the first two points, even if you think that all I was doing there was defending myself (not accurate btw), why do you think that's scum-indicative?

That form of self-defense serves to be nothing more than self-preservation. It shows a lack of interest in finding scum and an interest in staying alive. You are not so selfish a town player as to place your survival above the needs of the town, and yet your attitude has shown this interest in your importance.

what exactly do you expect me to be doing there?

Living up to your title--your title's not just because you're a reviewer. It is also a reflection of your style as a town player: balanced. Reasonable. Yet this game, you are consistently displaying a tone which is frankly outright hostile to others. There's a lack of clear, strong, decisive logic, both in your posts and in your actions. You come across as angry. You come across as vain. You come across as looking down on others. You come across as argumentative. And yet in spite of all that bravado, you aren't displaying a strong interest in progressing the game forward. Your focus is, basically, in all the wrong places.

My expectation of you as town is that you would be giving hard thoughts--you would be noting the possibility of an alternative, but why you think things are a certain way. And then, given this perspective, you would be pushing others to follow you on this. You would not hold back. You would not be worried about yourself. If people scumread you, you would briefly engage them to tell them they are wrong...and you would, in the process, try to direct them to the players you personally think

are

scum.

Basically, there's a difference between consistently fencesitting and being balanced--your play this game has shown the former, whereas the latter is what I would consider town.
There's a difference between being hostile and giving hard thoughts--your play this game has shown the former, whereas the latter is what I would consider town.

And those are the two critical factors in play. There's a continued trend of deliberately being on the fence with no attempt to resolve it.
As town, when you are on the fence about something, you will do your damnedest to try and resolve that fence. You will be reasonable about it, but also conclusive.
Yet here, with you on the fence about literally fucking everything (I can point to your read on every player and why it is weak), you're doing nothing to try and strengthen any of those reads. You're happy, you're content, just leaving them as they have been. And that's why I think you are scum.

[mastina]

mhsmith0: seems a little nervous and worried how others perceive him

Basically, this is a HUGE fucking part of my problem with mhsmith. The amount of effort he has spent on trying to shut down reasons for him being a valid suspect FAR outweighs the amount of effort he has spent on trying to increase the strength of his reads--and that, my friends, is the fundamental divide at its most basic level between town and scum.

I WILL be bringing this up in my full explanation. (I intend for my full explanation to cover the whole game, so...I'm probably going to break it up into chunks of a few pages here and there, rather than all at once, but ideally I'll finish it all at the same time, just in separate posts.)

But really. Iso mhsmith.
See how much time he spends attacking me prior to my attacks on him.
See how much time he spends attacking me after my attacks on him.
See how much time he spends on Grey prior to Grey attacking him.
See how much time he spends on Grey after Grey attacked him.
See how much time he spends trying to follow through on his questions.
See how much time he spends trying to make something productive happen.
Then see how much time he spends instead shutting things down, which is the antithesis of productivity.

[mastina]

Right, so beginning my explanation.
The first thing you should know is a little quirk in my RVS reads--while

normally

, I read things post-by-post, sometimes, especially in the case of the RVS, I cheat: I read the entire page before commenting on the page. This is the secret sauce behind a large section of my reads. So while I'll quote the FIRST post that a player makes during the RVS, that post is not necessarily the foundation upon which I build their alignment.

In particular: When it came to RC, I knew that regardless of his alignment, he was going to type 6 no matter what. There might've been a difference between wording, but the general RVS vote was going to be formatted basically that way no matter what. I felt that if there was an alignment it was more likely to be town than not--this is true enough, but that's a big "if". (And coming from me, the girl who reads a lot into RVS votes, that should tell you quite a lot in how little I valued it.)

However

, largely (ironically enough) thanks to mhsmith, I became aware of RC's reasoning behind 12. I also liked on the same subject 23. While it is true that RC as scum would probably make the same argument (I maintain that the BP claim is neither harmful nor helpful to either side), the way that RadiantCowbells went about his stance felt incredibly town. Additionally, his post 10, where he explained the history behind his RVS, also felt immensely town--while his INITIAL RVS would be almost identical regardless of alignment, his followthrough posting would be different.

And the way he went about it, the wording he chose, the order of his posting, and his focus, it all felt town. The reason I labeled him with "Town?" rather than "town.", though, is because I am admittedly not intimately familiar with RadiantCowbells's scumgame. While I don't

think

his approach came from scum, I lacked the knowledge to for sure say someone of his caliber absolutely couldn't be scum with that entrance.

[mastina]

As for the

rest

of page one: I already explained why I took issue with aa-dono's 7: the inclusion of 'lel'. That little thing changed the tone of the entire post from something which was definitely from town into something which could come from either and looked ever so slightly bad to me tonality-wise, thus, "scum?". The followthrough post 8 was entirely null from the slot--I could see that coming both from town and scum equally, so it did nothing to influence my read.

Unfortunately, one problem with mental notes is that if I don't write them down, I can forget them--this is the case for DogWatch's posts, in that while I read them as worse than aa-dono's, I'm looking at them now and for the life of me I can't remember which of them gave me the scumread. The best I can give a guess at is this:

VOTE: aa-dono

why do you feel the need to return fire immediately on an RVS?

...Where DogWatch asked this question and yet kept the RVS vote on JustDanceWorld rather than trying to vote oldwino, though I'm less-than-certain that was my reasoning and if it WAS my reasoning it's something I know would be more playstyle-dependent than anything else, which is probably why I went with "scum?" rather than a stronger "scum".

For oldwino, the problem was in...basically every aspect of his posts.

@ aa-dono
Why does my name mock you? I am old, and a wino. That's me in real life and in my avatar. From what I can tell, you are young (so are you a wino?). Opposites attract, you know. What does your name mean, anyway? And back at you.
VOTE: aa-dono
Also, lynching the IC would be a disadvantage to newbies, right, since he is a major information source for us?

For this post, I felt the questioning of aa-dono was forced, and the self-admitted OGMUS vote was awkward. It didn't feel like a natural reason to return a vote. There didn't seem to be lighthearted banter attached to the vote, nor was there serious scumhunting. (Either would have been acceptable OMGUSes.) It was an RVS vote which was declared to be as much, with no attempt to make it more.

His bit about lynching the IC being a disadvantage also failed to take into consideration the possibility of a scum IC--this felt like a slip of knowledge. If he were town, then I felt that he (especially having already played one game) would have a heightened sense of awareness that the IC isn't special in terms of being granted immunity. I also disliked how in the above post (I edited it out), he held one stance on things, then in his next...

I'll take some time to read the logic you cited, from RadiantCowbells, and then decide.

I think Dong, as the IC in my first game, was very valuable until he got bored and kinda laid back. As an experienced player, and a tracker in that game, if he'd tracked Arona N1 and Desp N2, he would have seen them both at the kill site.
Rab, the 1shot, had to claim D1 or he would have been lynched D1. In retrospect, that may have been really helpful to town. Someone, I forget who, said that in the Endgame chat.

So I'm reading the logic you cited from Radiant and thinking about it. Lots of time left in D1.

...He went onto lack commitment. He backtracked, and fencesat. He put words forward, but didn't do anything with the words. There being plenty of time left in the day felt like an excuse.

I realize it's not rock-solid logic, but between the bad stances and the appeasement-heavy tone, that's why oldwino was a scumread even off of the first page.

[mastina]

I should mention: there was one other player who posted on page one: mhsmith.
Notably, mhsmith was absent from my page one list altogether--why?

Because he sat at ambivalence. His entrance in 11 was null--I couldn't read an alignment into it one way or another.
I disliked how he immediately went to support RC in 13--without a single thought, he followed the claim, no hesitation and no reason given.
However, because mhsmith made it clear in 16 and 24 that he had experience with RadiantCowbells and the BP claim, it became more ambiguous--he laid out his reasons well enough. They didn't seem particularly scum, nor town. They just felt like reasons.

The main thing which I disliked about mhsmith at this stage is that even back then...he wasn't doing much. As I said above, he was giving words and giving reasons but they didn't feel like they were meant to accomplish anything...
...

However

, let's be real: this was the first page. I mean. *I* tend to do quite a lot if I'm on the first page. But that's ME. I didn't realistically expect mhsmith to be producing hard, solid content on the first page, even though I hated its absence.

[mastina]

Blah.
I could continue this for another couple of hours or so, but I'm afraid I need to put it on hold for the time being.
I realize I've only done one page of 20, and that I had momentum going and now I'm killing it, and that I'm not nearly close to complete, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...

...When I started doing this work, I was physically fine.
Now, I am coughing. To my knowledge, I'm not sick--but if I stay up because of a mafia game, I probably would become sick.

I do apologize for the inconvenience, but I

should

have most of tomorrow free. (I don't have dance tomorrow.)
I'm not happy leaving my work unfinished, but I suppose an appetizer is better than nothing at all for the night.
Basically, I'm taking a precaution and going to bed early (well, early for ME anyway), as to attempt health in real life > mafia life.

Tomorrow, I will resume, after
-I get caught up again
-I answer any questions
-I incorporate any requests I can into my explanation. (For instance, one thing I want to do is steal from future posts and reference them for earlier posts, which makes my stances easier to follow. As an example, my first page posts could have referenced 227 but did not, even though referencing 227 would make it easier to understand when I do get to covering things around the time of 227. This is something which I could actually use feedback on--if you want me to reference a specific later post of mine for my page two posting, now would be the time to request it.)

Again, many apologies I am making the call to not do it all at once. I will try to do all of the rest of the 19 pages after I attempt to get a proper night's sleep and stave off a potential illness.

[mastina]

(OH GOD SNIPPING THIS)

And THAT, m'friends, is what I was talking about in regards to the spoiler tag when I first mentioned it:

Be advised:

Spoilers don't nest.

They also have bad interactions with quote tags if you use improper nesting which can fuck the site up

. So IF you do use a spoiler tag, please make sure you have properly formatted it so that every closing tag is appropriately placed. The results of violating this are...very, very messy. They can and will break the site.

Honestly oldwino's break was a comparably small one (barely noticeable, but compare posts on the page prior to the break to posts on the page after the break); you can actually break the site FAR worse than he did by using bad tag nesting.

If I were the mod of this game I would fix the post, but as a player the best I could do is try to show the post fixed and that's a risky venture thanks to the chance of me NOT actually fixing it and therefore fucking up MY post, too. Soyeah. General rule of thumb, use the preview button when you have a combination of quotes and spoiler tags in your posts; I BELIEVE if you've fucked them up it's usually easy to spot.

[mastina]

I'm not going to back down from the fact that Scum could use RLI as a place to hide.

Could...but don't.
They just don't.
Like I said. It violates mafia ethics. Personally, I'd argue it's against the spirit of a universal site rule even:

Do not bring outside influences into the game

...And lying about real-life is bringing an outside influence into the game.

Mentioning

your real life is not a violation of the rule--it is a common courtesy in fact. It is volunteering private information about yourself to be posted on a public forum filled with strangers, where you willingly disclose aspects of your life to explain why you are not going to be able to do something:
Not going to be able to be around (V/LA),
Not going to be able to play (replacing out),
...And also, not going to be able to deliver something at a specific time.
LYING about your real life to gain an advantage? That is a violation, maybe not of the letter of the rule but of the intent. It spits in the face of everyone who is honest and truthful about their lives for someone to lie--so we simply don't. And that's why we also don't make the accusation that someone has lied. They do not.

If you see someone say something about their real-life...in mafia terms, you treat it as true. You will not find a player lying about real-life. It's simply unethical and immoral. Mafia is a game of deception and lies, yes--but some lies cross a line. Some things you just don't say, and lying about real life to gain an advantage is one of them.

[mastina]

^To put it another way: mafiascum can never 100% verify things.
It is possible, however improbable, for a user to get away with cheating, such as signing up for a game under two different names. (That is 98% likely to get caught, but it is something which COULD manage to get by.)

So mafia games, no matter what site you are on, inherently rely on an honor system: we must take it in good faith that certain things are true and certain things are

not

true.

Real life is one of the things we take in good faith: sure someone

could

lie about it, in a violation of the honor system...but we simply assume they are not, that they are following the unspoken rule, because it is something essential to the very core integrity of the game.

[mastina]

No, you skipped the part where I read all that and STILL called you scum.

And you skipped the parts where I was answering your call of me being scum with a call of "read these parts, plus have this quick explanation". Once more:

Spoiler: Long Wall

You picked up on the largest bit, but to expand:

there's more to it than that

. For that bit, for instance--

are you familiar with the concept of projection?

Most people use the word in a negative connotation.

I actually embrace and readily use the terminology because I project

, sort of.

If you have time to give feedback before I go serious,

you can try to guess what I mean specifically by that point

. Because I intend to go serious soon,

I'll also highlight the parts that are relevant you missed:

while I'm a good teacher, I do my best teaching when I'm not expected to teach. But as your IC, I...am expected to teach, so I must apologize in advance if I fail to deliver the teaching experience you need to grow your game. Give you the resources you need, even if it's just "listen to what this other person said". (Teaching tends to be a group exercise: everyone involved learns, from the moderator to the IC to the SEs to every other player.)

(Okay ^this paragraph's not too important but it's still part.)

I am a player. I could be town or scum, but I'll have a wincon/agenda this game, where I'm aiming for a win. However, I will never lie to you about game theory. Ever. I won't misdirect/mislead you. I won't place my alignment above my teaching duty. That said, game theory is, largely...highly subjective. Just because I won't lie to you about it doesn't mean what I say about it is, necessarily, "true". Use your judgment given time and experience to determine what advice I give you is helpful or not.
I am human, and prone to error. Burden of Proficiency is still a fallacy. Regardless of my alignment, I can and will make mistakes.

My teaching style in a game is, largely, "roll with the game": I will teach by example and give thoughts as they come up.

In short, my job isn't to teach you to play, so much as it is to guide you on your natural path.

All of these are relevant at least to THIS game.

My view on the game is balancing possibilities versus probabilities.
I'm an unorthodox player. I say my first language is "concepts", and my second language is English; my posts translate concepts to words. This has benefits where I see things others would miss, pressing people on the smallest/subtlest of details, but also carries three obvious downsides:
Inability to communicate properly, Verbosity, and sometimes being utterly wrong about my alternative ideas.

One quirk I have is viewing every player simultaneously as town and scum. I view each possibility, and then I weigh them, to determine probability. Which makes more sense?
As both alignments, I express generalities, expecting players to fill in specifics. Their interpretations not only allow them growth as players, but also allow me to get a better idea of their alignment(/how to manipulate them) off of how they respond. As town, I'll try to defuse heated debates I feel are counterproductive, but if I feel they could be useful, I'll let them continue and weigh in only when I feel it gives something useful. (Often, one leads to another.)
As scum, I'll direct the spotlight so that town are fighting town. I'll still give commentary on it, just like as town, but I won't try to defuse town-town debates, because I need town to lynch town. I prefer minimal involvement in contributing to town lynches, because it positions myself to look better/positions the town to mislynch twice in a row (namely, the primary town pusher of the now-flipped-town).

I like to flirt around a fair amount: just talk about random stuff that enters my mind, rambling about.
My expectation of this game is that every player is given the tools they need to continue their career here on mafiascum.net.

And so are these. You got the largest part,

but there's a context to it you didn't get, and the bits immediately above the bits you got entirely change things

. These are all the important parts.

I'll try to get back to you on this ASAP with an actual laid-out process. But. If you can beat me to it, I would encourage you to try. It might be a bit frustrating, but the guessing process is highly educational--I promise it is. You don't have to guess anymore (because I'm going to give you the answer as soon as I can), but all the same I still do encourage you to try if you can.

Bolded were in particular the parts most relevant to your point.

[mastina]

Spoiler: Ramblings which aren't really game content

i never knew you were from em.

I'm not.
I'm from the battleon forums. My username there is mastin2 (meaning mastin2 predates Mastin), though I called myself (and was called by everyone) Mastin, capital M and without the 2. A game of mafia was played, and there was a mention or two of mafiascum. (Fuck if I know who the players on there were in terms of Scummers on here though.) I joined in 2008, started Newbie 688, then replaced out.
...But

also

mentioned was EpicMafia. At

that time

(late 2008, early 2009), I signed up for EpicMafia and played a shitload of games on there, until Newbie 688 had concluded. (I had come back to the site but I didn't want to post for fear of having my slot be considered compromised--"Mastin's posting on the site, in spite of having replaced out" was something I wanted to avoid.) When it had concluded, I played a few Newbie games (735 and 742 being my concurrent first two), and was simultaneously still a player on EpicMafia. This lasted for a solid six months or so, until my parents blocked both sites at home, causing me to siteflake for a year.

Basically, I came from the battleon forums, signed up on here with the name I called myself and was called on there (Mastin), left here temporarily, went to EM, came back to here, continued to be on both here and EM, was forcefully cut off from both, and then later when I resumed school I came back to here and have been here ever since. But, my EM account is still in existence last I checked. I don't really consider myself to be from there though. I was there when it wasn't so shitty, but here was always where my heart was.

you look so much the same back then, i'd normally not consider 3-4 year old meta to be particularly relevant but tonally you're largely similar and your whole approach just looks unchanged for the most part. if it ain't broke, i guess.

Some things change. Other things...don't. You'll see a gradual progression in accounts though. Mastin had longer wallposts than mastin2. mastin2 had longer wallposts than I do. Mastin had abysmal formatting and no focus. mastin2 had okay formatting but poor focus. I have a slightly-refined formatting (still imperfect), with much better focus.

Mastin posted long walls.
mastin2 posted medium-length walls one after another.
I post shorter posts, maybe small walls, one after another.

There's also progress in my understanding of the game. Mastin didn't know how to play. mastin2 was still learning how to play and refining her theories. I'm at the point where for the most part I've more or less figured them out. I was still changing in 2012, 2013, and even 2014, though you'd be right that from that point onward I haven't changed much.

Anyway, quick note: I will finish this catchup, but I won't be able to immediately resume the explanation--there's an emergency situation which came up and while I can delay a response for a very short period of time...this is an urgent matter that I have to attend to quickly.

[mastina]

I think he has been helpful thus far to town

Define "helpful to the town".
Define also why helpful to the town translates to alignment.
Define ALSO which posts give the above two definitions.

[mastina]

hoping you don't mean that you know who my main is off just one post...

That would be an impossibility, since you're a player who hasn't played with me before. (If you had then you wouldn't be having this much trouble with me...or if you did have trouble, you would know

exactly

which questions to ask in order to get a read. Since you haven't posed those types of questions to me, and you don't have a read on me, I know you're inexperienced with me...which means you're not someone I'd know.)

I mainly asked to get a better understanding of what to expect from you. Both as a teacher and a player, knowing where you're coming from allows me a better ability to perform my duties.

@mastina: which of my town games have you read to develop your meta expectation of my town game? Have you read any of my scum games? If so which ones?

This is not something I will be answering. For some players I am more than happy to share my game experience with them. (Usually close friends I have a shitload of experience with.) For most, I will not.

This is fluff.

Disagree very strongly. While the way a person asks a question can in fact be alignment-indicative, this is not a case where I consider that to be true. There is very clearly the implication that Darklyn is expecting more than just a literal blunt "yes"; Darklyn is demanding an explanation just as much

if not

moreso

than pieg is.

[mastina]

What in particular makes you think I'm nervous? Is this tone? Something else? Can you point to a quote or two that drives this?

It would be easier for me to quote the posts I don't think are "nervous" than it would be to quote the ones I do. (Nervous might not be the best word to use, but I think it is close enough to an accurate one.) So yes, it is there in your posting. Both in tone AND in your posts.

[mastina]

I'm back on page 22, but at the moment I'm feeling a tad bit emotionally compromised--I don't think I'm in a state where right now I am capable of posting as an IC should, though this feeling

should

also pass in a few hours; I'll be back later tonight and have this game as my first priority. Basically I need a couple of hours or so to cool down and calmly collect myself and get back into the mindset appropriate for a newbie game. So, very very very short-term prod-dodge; I'll be around later tonight when I've steeled myself.

[mastina]

You have broken down page 1, this post is on page 22. If we are lucky you will find the time to break down page 2 before end of day 1. How can you sit back and still say (oh I'm going to catch-up) Am I supposed to view that as TOWN HELPFUL? Do you want me to go back and count how many times you have said "something came up, maybe tomorrow"

No, you don't have to view my inactivity thanks to real-life kicking me as helpful to the town--rather the opposite, it is explicitly unhelpful and something I wish wasn't there. You should realize however that it is also not scum though, because it is real life.

I am in a state where if I had a few good days in a row (not many, just a few, two or three is all it'd take), I would be able to, start to finish, give this game all the proper attention, love, and care it deserves--go into details about everything I wish to, and from there lead the town as a player.
I am also in a state where I haven't had those days--it hasn't been bad enough where I've reached the point of being unacceptable in either play or teaching (either of which would cause me to replace out), because I am in a state where in spite of real life doing literally every fucking thing to drag me down (and this is something that any player aware of my more personal life is perfectly aware of), I am still managing to not have fallen below an acceptable standard. (Though I know I am dangerously close.)

At this point, I know the deadline is near--so I will not be able to contribute as intended. I somewhat-doubt I would be the nightkill though, so there is always Day Two. At that time, I am hoping life will have properly worked out. In the unlikely scenario that I am nightkilled, I will specifically ask the mod to not spoil the game for me, and I will follow along in the dead thread, laying out in there step by step what I would be saying if I were alive. While that wouldn't be immediately visible (and thus, would be sub-optimal since my preference is to do it all now), it would serve to show where I was coming from, what I was hoping to accomplish, and give a much better teaching platform than what I currently have on display.

Apologies for the life inconvenience.

[mastina]

I think he has been helpful thus far to town

Define "helpful to the town". Define also why helpful to the town translates to alignment. Define ALSO which posts give the above two definitions.

Are you really more interested in improving my game than you are in sorting out players?

The two are not mutually exclusive. Rather the opposite, they are mutually inclusive. Though I wasn't asking this as a teacher at all. It's nice and good and all that you think I was looking for a lesson--but I wasn't. I was demanding as a player that you be held accountable for your statements. Being confirmed town does not give you a pass to say whatever the fuck you want; you

are

still accountable for your content, and this is me explicitly calling you out on yours.

[mastina]

Don't really have much to say about mhsmith's 548. It is accurate enough. I could probably explain it from a different angle--give my experiences, my wordings, add to it, elaborate on it, give more to it. But at this point I don't think that theory lesson would move the game forward. I'll do so if someone asks me to, but right now my focus is more on catching up than on teaching.

[mastina]

You want the mafia to be engaged and trying to influence the lynch, because that is (generally) how you catch them. You want the town (ESPECIALLY non-clears) to be engaged and trying to influence the lynch, because that is (generally) how you find them.

Ironically enough, this is one of the reasons I scumread mhsmith. His lesson here IS accurate--but the thing is, he has been one of the players I have most strongly seen NOT influencing the lynch. (The other being oldwino.)

RC was trying to, earlygame at least.
Grey has been doing so throughout the game.
I have also been pushing pretty hard for a lynch in my own way. (My style mostly involves getting people to see scum through a combination of MY perspective and working with THEIR perspective and fusing the two which is why I focus so heavily on getting people to read my posts and form conclusions from them.)
Ulti's slot may not have--but Ulti's slot also hasn't given content and to influence or not influence the lynch you first have to have content/posts.
DogWatch and Darklyn I admit you could make a case either way for.

But mhsmith has one of the highest post counts this game...yet he has deliberately avoided trying to influence the lynch.
Similarly so for oldwino. While he's cast a vote, he's done everything in his power to avoid committing to the lynch.

[mastina]

Now, here's a game-relevant challenge for people: what do I think of mastina? Why do you think I think it?

The funny thing there is, you've voted me the majority of the game and been constantly putting me down, yet you've never actually pushed me even when you were voting me. Your vote started as RVS, but you kept it on me LONG past the expiration date thereof (which again was a MAJOR tipoff to me), without a strong indication you were thinking I was scum. It's deliberately vague on your part, and not in a "try to guess my reads tee-hee!" sort of way, in the "I am avoiding giving reads while still putting out content" way.

[mastina]

In regards to mhsmith's 553/554, his defense is technically accurate--it is in fact far more likely that regardless of his alignment mhsmith believes what he said. It is also true that what he said wasn't bad. (Albeit, probably not worded the best of ways. I think if I explained the concept it'd probably come across a bit more clear.)

...

However

, that being said, the WAY he goes about pointing this out feels incredibly scummy to me: it is making a big deal out of a small thing. It is a huge overreaction to Darklyn's push, placing a huge amount of emphasis in an area which is largely null by his own account.

[mastina]

So I sorta came around on Mastina being town. That leaves me with a pretty hefty townblock.

Do tell.

[mastina]

So I sorta came around on Mastina being town. That leaves me with a pretty hefty townblock.

Do tell.

[mastina]

That may be the single worst "scumslip" argument I've ever seen.
VOTE: darklyn

This might be the single worst reaction to a "scumslip" argument I've ever seen!

[mastina]

What she's been doing has been super frustrating for me to deal with, but it's also had the fairly predictable result of making her a big center of attention, and not the positive kind.

Small tangent: I'd like to say my playstyle when I'm actually playing the fucking game isn't actually anti-town, I've just had one HELL of a bad week (no seriously don't ask me about that shit because if you do I WILL go into a very long rant about it that'd just be all-around unpleasant to deal with; the last seven days have SUCKED for me), which has prevented me from playing in the way I should be playing. My playstyle revolves around timing: strategic omission of key information, temporarily, and then later laying the cards on the table. All the while, I'll post things which continue to push where I want to, just holding back on the "juiciest", the "meaty" details and using more generic ones...until the time is right to spring my "trap", of sorts.

So keep that in mind when I say the following, in that I swear and give my word what I have done this game is NOT me intentionally trying this, just...having circumstances dictate that this is something which you could say applies to me. With that in mind, I'd like to take some time to point out that being the center of attention is not inherently a bad thing--in fact, it is often a key part in two-thirds of the "town trifecta" (the triangle, triple-threat, and other similar names as I call them): being obvtown, and being charismatic.

Sometimes, by being in the spotlight, you can use the opportunity to display things you want displayed. If everyone's eyes are on you, if everyone is paying attention to what you are doing, it can be

much

easier for the entire town to get a townread on your slot, and if someone disagrees, they'll quickly and justifiably be called out on their bad reasoning for disagreeing. Furthermore, by being in the spotlight, you can use the time, the chance, the opportunity, to push your own perspective, to give your thoughts, and allow others to see them in clearer detail than any other time--from this, you can sway people's minds such that they follow you.

So by virtue of this: being in the spotlight is not inherently a bad thing. It IS, however...something I would very much not recommend intentionally trying to do, at least...not like it has happened to me in this game. The spotlight on me in this game was accidental, and the spotlight on me in this game is not as good as it would be if this were being in the spotlight done right. HOWEVER, this is good knowledge to have when it

does

come to being in the spotlight and I do thoroughly recommend not freaking out if you enter it.

Heck, mhsmith's a master of this! For all his talk of ME being in the spotlight, he sure has plenty on him, himself, and regardless of his alignment, he's shown a fair deal of exactly how it can be handled positively. (I happen to think he is scum in the spotlight rather than town.)

I just really struggle to see someone who's IC'ing try THAT kind of stunt intentionally.

Intentionally, never. I will never advocate bad play. Maybe play which is unorthodox. Maybe play which there is no immediate town gain from. Maybe play which is seemingly anti-town yet which serves a much more obvious, deeper pro-town purpose. Maybe taking advantage and making the best of a bad situation. Those? Yeah, those I will not only preach but also do myself.

Accidentally, though...

or that she believes as an IC, that it's correct to put more energy into teaching (including the "figure it out yourselves guys" attitude) than playing, and that kind of attitude is much more natural as a town IC (if I get lynched, there are still two mislynches to go, and maybe my lynch becomes useful) than a scum IC (if I'm mislynched, we're kind of screwed).

The proper attitude as an IC is to put an equal amount of effort into both, with a focus on playing--my "figure it out yourselves" attitude, while VERY helpful for teaching, is not inherent to ICing. That's just me in general. That's how I play, because I have trouble explaining things and prefer to do so only when absolutely necessary. (There's a reason for the longest time, not explaining things was a mild towntell and explaining things was a major scumtell for me. I fixed that habit, but it existed for literally YEARS.)

Who would reasonably fit as her buddy?

The few times I feel like defending myself, this is usually one of my largest selling points--yet I'm actually calling bullshit on this one. Grey fits as a scumbuddy for me. So does Darklynn. Admittedly RC/DogWatch/oldwino/Ulti's slot all have good reason to not be a scumbuddy. But there are very viable scumteams with me on them. That, not even going into circumstances, such as RC backing off (RC doing early distancing then going away is perfectly natural for him as scum), or Ulti not actually casting a successful vote on my slot, either/both of which would expand the number of viable scumbuddies even further.

[mastina]

Cba to wait for intent, worried oldwino might quickhammer
claiming Tracker

Realistically, this narrows down the lynch pool to:
mhsmith
DogWatch
oldwino
lemonater

...Because Icy is town, Darklyn is town, I am town, Grey is probably town and nobody wants to lynch him as far as I know, and RC is still likely town and I don't think there's momentum to lynch him.

My preference is still mhsmith, though I will compromise on any of the above four if push comes to shove.

[mastina]

If he's scummy and wants you gone, why wouldn't he simply unvote you and shoot you tonight since he knows you can't be protected?

^This is valid, especially in newbie psychology I believe. It takes a special kind of veteran to LYNCH a power role claim without CCing. By which, I mean, a gutsy player who is confident they can do so without consequence, without it backfiring on them.

I do not hold that opinion of lemonator, so I am more inclined to believe lemonator is town.

Which would further narrow down my lynch pool to, again:
mhsmith
DogWatch
oldwino.

I really think scum are in here and we should lynch within here.

[mastina]

Ok, so unless something changes from Mastina, Darklyn is cleared. In that case I would like to see todays lynch come from his train.
RC
Lemon
Smith
Grey

The only name in there I would lynch is mhsmith. I don't think lemonator plays this way as scum. I don't think RC is scum. I'm pretty damn confident Grey isn't scum.

[mastina]

Grey, the only way that pushing the BP claim at this juncture makes even the slightest bit of sense is if you're claiming jailkeeper (in which case he MIGHT be lying) or cop (in which case you probably should have claimed a while ago, and certainly should have CC'd the tracker claim since you'd have both scum outed at this point). You disliking his push on you is a terrible reason to vote someone who's essentially a mechanical clear, and I feel like you'd know this if you were town. What gives?

This is also a bad post because it should be obvious to any veteran (and maybe even a newbie) EXACTLY what Grey is doing. I'd explain now, but there's the chance I'd ruin what Grey is going for by doing so, so.

[mastina]

Mastina's V/LA hurt this game a lot.

And I am really really really frustrated at that because I fucking

know

that as the IC my role in a game is critical. I know that my V/LA is far from the only factor--another factor is so many veteran players with strong attitudes in the same game. That's in my experience always detrimental to the learning for newbies, as they have no clue what the fuck is going on.

...But my V/LA was definitely *a* factor. And it's incredibly disheartening to think of how much of it could be my fault because of what amounts to bad timing and shit happening in my real life which wasn't avoidable. One of the main reasons I didn't replace out because of my V/LA though is because I feel that having the IC replaced would hurt the gamestate even WORSE than having the IC be only temporarily incapacitated. But, all the same. While the incapacitation was only temporary...it happened at a game-critical time. Namely, close to deadline.

An active IC can make the game so much more easy to invest in.

[mastina]

Maybe a confirmed townee doesn't get a free pass, but I think it gives them a bunch of latitude to do and say thinks that they normally wouldn't. You want me to be accountable for my statements the same as I want you to be accountable for yours.

Yes! And I am more than happy to provide explanations! Well, now I am anyway. The point of holding back passed a week ago. Me not giving proper explanations since then has been real-life suck rather than intentional, so literally ask away; I'd answer!

And I expect the same! So again. Define "helpful to the town". Define also why helpful to the town translates to alignment. Define ALSO which posts give the above two definitions.

[mastina]

I really don't see Greys bouncing his vote around as influencing the lynch. Is there something else I'm missing?

It is specifically

because

Grey has been bouncing his vote around--for some people, that could be argued as playstyle. But then you look at what the player was DOING moving their vote around like that. Grey's approach was basically slinging mud at a wall and trying to see what would stick--he pressured RC hard. When he determined RC wasn't as likely to be scum, he move elsewhere. I'm too lazy right now (also it's 6 AM) to look up the names but this is repeated throughout the game with wherever he goes, laced with heavy doses of sarcasm and for lack of a better word, satire. That's town. He's scumhunting, not doing nothing.

[mastina]

When you say Smith hasn't been influencing the lynch, what exactly do you mean? I feel like it's something I subconsciously picked up on, but couldn't put into words.

I'm going to bed now, but I'll be back up hopefully with enough time to make a post in the afternoon tomorrow. (If not, then it'd be after tae kwon do tomorrow which means circa 8 PM PST, which is before the deadline but closer than I would prefer.) I feel like I wouldn't be able to explain this properly in my current (rapidly degenerating thanks to me getting tired) state of mind. Basically, he votes but doesn't do anything with the vote; there's a disconnect between his vote and his voice. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it's subtle (like the timing of his Darklyn vote being off), but this doesn't do the concept justice so I'll explain more tomorrow.

[mastina]

RadiantCowbells has requested replacement. Night 1 deadline on hold until a replacement is found.

So this is obviously a disinterest/detachment/boredom replace-out, though I'm not sure if there is an alignment attached to this. I don't know if RC would get disheartened enough to replace out as scum, and by my gut, I would think the answer would be no.

On the other hand......

[mastina]

On the other hand......

^Basically, I am majorly skeeved out at Alisae's entrance. Alisae's pushes feel all kinds of fake.

No one died during the night.

So this is obviously a hit on the BP. This is a bit unusual, considering that the tracker had claimed. The possible explanations for this:
-Scum weren't afraid of being tracked. (If this is the case, then looking to Darklyn's reads could give insight as to who the scum are.)
-Scum want the BP dead as quickly as possible. (If this is the case, then looking to Icy's reads could give insight as to who the scum are.)
-Scum were not as informed as the rest of the town. (If this is the case, then Alisae is scum.)

Note that these possibilities are not mutually exclusive; they could all be true, or it could be that I'm not thinking of the actual reason in which case none of them are true. (This is doubtful though.)

It should be noted that the third is unlikely, because the only way it would be viable is if we had a player flake overnight who was not replaced, and said player was Alisae's scumbuddy. In that case, Alisae would have nobody to update Alisae on the status of the game, leaving Alisae unaware of the roleclaims we've had. If this is not the case, if every player slot returns to the game on D2, then a scumbuddy of Alisae's would inform Alisae of the roleclaims we've had, thereby eliminating the possibility of the scum not being as informed as the rest of the town.

Basically, if any of oldwino/lemonator/DogWatch disappeared overnight, the above becomes a plausible theory. Otherwise, it is incredibly improbable. Alisae would be just as informed as any other player.

In essence, this is a

potential

scum indicator for Alisae, one which will very quickly be proven or more likely, disproven.
It says nothing on whether Alisae is town or not, and if disproven says nothing on whether Alisae is scum or not.

[mastina]

Alright this is textbook scum!Grey sheep me guys I didn't read the rest of the game besides Grey's ISO at all.
VOTE: Grey
For my next magic trick, I will make Grey's scumbuddy bus him because that's the best way to play mafia. In all seriousness I can explain a bit more in-depth when I get home.

Sorry but you're wrong. For my next truck, I'm going to disappear.

replace out

I was already townreading Grey, albeit with a promise to mhsmith to review the slot, but this makes me firmly feel my townread was in fact justified. I don't see Grey doing this as scum; I DO see Grey doing this as town.

[mastina]

@Alisae, I think the scum is in the newbie slots anyway

I have

mostly

reached this conclusion, but not all the way.

You are confirmed town for your claim.
Icy is confirmed town for Icy's claim.
I know that I am town.
I am very heavily townreading the Grey slot.
We also know that mhsmith was town.

The only possible non-newbie scum is the RadiantCowbells slot.
The only possible newbie scum are oldwino, lemonator, and DogWatch.
If you suppose the townslip from DogWatch is genuine (it's not impossible for DogWatch to fake, but incredibly unlikely unless RadiantCowbells in the pregame gave that instruction/advice to DogWatch since I don't see an all-newbie scumteam thinking of the slip and I would be

incredibly

impressed by DogWatch generating it on her own), then that leaves three slots for potential scum:
Alisae (SE), oldwino, and lemonator.

I feel we should lynch within there today. I think an Alisae townflip would firmly clear DogWatch, leaving the only possible scumteam as oldwino/lemonator. An Alisae scum flip is a little harder to determine, but...well. Lynching scum would be lynching scum, so obviously that would be something we'd want.

In fact, if you are willing to:
-Trust that I am town, and:
-Trust that Grey is town, then...
...I think this game is an auto-win with an Alisae lynch.

Alisae lynched, flips town:

1. DogWatch is confirmed as town.
   
2. Alisae is cleared via death.
   
3. Darklyn is town via claim.
   
4. Icy is town via claim.
   
5. POE indicates oldwino and lemonator are the scumteam.

Alisae lynched, flips scum:

1. DogWatch, oldwino, and lemonator are possible scum.
   
2. We have one mislynch.
   
3. We have three scumspects.
   
4. We can mislynch one time, and because there are only two possible scum after a mislynch, we win.

In fact, I think the above still works with an oldwino/lemonator lynch, so long as Alisae is lynched tomorrow, because if oldwino/lemonator are both town, Alisae/DogWatch are scum (thus, lynch Alisae tomorrow); if one of them is scum, then the other scum is either the other of them or is Alisae (thus, lynch Alisae tomorrow).

We want to avoid:
-Mislynching Grey,
-Mislynching the PRs,
-or ideally mislynching myself. (I probably need to step up my game and convince you I am town because the game is on a lockdown town win if I'm not mislynched.)
-Mislynching BOTH of oldwino/lemonator, leaving us endgamed by an Alisae/DogWatch scumteam.
-Mislynching one of oldwino/lemonator, then mislynching DogWatch, to be endgamed by an Alisae/other of the pair scumteam.
-Mislynching BOTH of Alisae/DogWatch, to be endgamed by an oldwino/lemonator scumteam.

So either today, or tomorrow, Alisae should be lynched. I did promise mhsmith I would review his notes if nothing else, and I have the outcome of the night to take into consideration, but for the time being:
VOTE: Alisae.

I really do think my effort today is best spent on convincing you NOT to lynch me and convincing you NOT to lynch Grey, because if I accomplish that, then you should be able to follow the above and understand where I am coming from in this.

[mastina]

To summarize, this is the situation as I see it:
DogWatch can

only

be scum if Alisae is scum. If Alisae is scum, DogWatch could be town or could be scum, but if we lynch Alisae first, it doesn't matter: we have three lynches for three suspects, so can afford to mislynch DogWatch. Or we could save DogWatch for last, lynching oldwino/lemonator first and if the game doesn't end DogWatch would be the last scum lynched in 4p mylo. (This is not a game we're likely to no-lynch in, because of the nature of the BP/tracker claims meaning we will have conftown with us for basically every step of the way, and you don't no-lynch when a player is conftown.)

Alisae can be scum with DogWatch, oldwino,

or

lemonator.
oldwino can be scum with Alisae

or

lemonator, but cannot be paired with DogWatch.
lemonator can be scum with Alisae

or

oldwino, but cannot be paired with DogWatch.

If you hold these to be true, then as long as we avoid the two possible

bad

lynch orders (that is, lynching DogWatch prior to lynching Alisae leaving us vulnerable to being endgamed by literally ANY of Alisae/oldwino, Alisae/lemonator, or lemonator/oldwino; lynching both of oldwino/lemonator leaving us vulnerable to being endgamed by Alisae/DogWatch), the game becomes a guaranteed win.

In none of the good lynch orders is Alisae a bad lynch for today or tomorrow.
Now I intend to do scumhunting beyond simple pair analysis. I intend to narrow things down even further: review the game thread, with a focus to paying attention towards these pairs. (Alisae/DogWatch, Alisae/oldwino, Alisae/lemonator, and oldwino/lemonator.) Review mhsmith's notes. Review Icy's reads and Darklyn's reads. Before the day has ended, I'll be giving more clear thoughts on which I feel is the most likely. Heck, if I conclude it's oldwino/lemonator I'll even switch my vote to there.

But I think I've laid out with enough detail my process here. The main thing to do is, aside from the above to give which of those four combos is the

most

likely, prove to you that I'm town, and prove to you that Grey's slot is town.

[mastina]

was Grey more lynchable then here or was Grey more globally TR'd?

Grey was mostly townread and for good reason.

[mastina]

Off of what I've read thusfar on the day (namely, 916), I would be inclined to believe that whichever of the scumteams it is, it'd include oldwino. (I would also lean towards it being Alisae-oldwino; see below for why.)

I feel like a scumteam of newbies (that being, oldwino-lemonator) may not have understood exactly why they needed to kill the tracker first, since they are left dangerously close to being caught by leaving the tracker alive.

I also feel like a scumteam of Alisae-oldwino is one of the more likely teams to take a shot at Icy, figuring they have nothing to lose by doing so. Alisae is known for having unorthodox play, and leaving the tracker alive would be one such instance of doing so. Alisae, as an experienced player, would also be in a position where if Alisae wanted to take a shot at the BP, oldwino would trust in Alisae's experience:

oldwino has made it abundantly clear he trusts in the competency of more experienced users. So even if oldwino's natural inclination would be to kill the tracker, if Alisae strongly insisted on killing the BP first, then oldwino would relent and let that go through, and 916 is a post which I feel betrays that mindset.

[mastina]

She hasn't posted now in several days and I'm surprised she hasn't replaced out as well.

I posted Tuesday.
The lynch happened on Wednesday. Literally seconds before I logged on. (Well, the hammer happened prior to that, but I saw the thread was unlocked when I was logged off. I logged in, and by the time I got to the thread, the thread was locked. If you're interested, you can check the time of Huntress posting the final VC for the day, and my sitewide activity around that point. Prior to the lock, my last post was basically a full day ago. After the lock, I almost immediately was posting elsewhere, because I was intending to post

here

, was prevented from doing so, and went on to do my other sitewide activity chores.)

If you are interested in the exact specifics, I was reading the thread while offline (something I don't often do, but sometimes will for various reasons equally beneficial to both alignments), and I was noticing mhsmith towntelling left and right. I wanted to make a post where I acknowledged him doing so, but keeping my vote on him for two main reasons--one, doubting an extension would be granted with him as literally the only viable lynch. And two, wanting to have him confirmed as town rather than simply probable town.

In that same post, I was going to request that mhsmith give essentially a summary of his most up-to-date thoughts, so I wouldn't have to read between the lines and sift through all of his posting to figure out his reads with perfect clarity and accuracy. (I instead settled for asking the mod to convey essentially that same message to him, including an apology for the unfortunate clash and lamenting the lack of him towntelling earlier because if he had done what he did in the middle of the day rather than at the end of the day I most certainly WOULD have unvoted.)

Of course, none of my reasons here are verifiable until postgame (for instance, an alternative viewpoint you

could

argue is that I was scum intentionally lurking, and specifically waited to log in until it was too late, even though that is a tactic I would NEVER stoop so low as to use as a scum IC because it is teaching a bad practice), but the timing itself is very easily verified. Just look at where I was posting and when. There were no contemporary posts on Wednesday, the day of the lynch, prior to the lynch; there were posts on Wednesday, the day of the lynch, literally minutes after the lynch had happened.

[mastina]

You really need to help with this "Grey is town stuff", because I don't see it at all.

Quick question: have you played with Grey?
(I have, but your answer makes a difference in how I answer this.)

[mastina]

Even if Alisae was scum and their buddy was away surely they would have read through the thread before picking a kill?

Possible, but also possible is that Alisae was genuine when saying that Alisae did not read the thread. While there can be certain benefits to lying about this as scum (namely, being informed when you are pretending not to be allows you to "townslip" of things no informed player would post), there are an equal number of benefits (arguably even stronger) of telling the truth about a lack of reading (namely, your posting becomes more genuine and harder to fake, and whenever you "townslip" it is appropriately more sincere-sounding).

There can be an argument made either way, and not knowing Alisae's history as replacing into a scum slot during the night (a very specific occurrence so not something exactly easy to track down as happening), it would be a mistake to assume one and discard the possibility of the other. It is possible the former happened, thus making the kill intentional. It is also possible the latter happened, thus making the kill accidental.

Not to mention, if that was the case it's likely PP would have filled him in a little. So yah I agree

I wish you weren't confirmed town already because this would be a townslip.

Moderator intervention is absolutely forbidden in games.
A moderator is NOT allowed to replace a slot during the night without being given cause to do so. For instance, if a player siteflakes during the night, the mod is not allowed to replace the player unless they already had an outstanding prod they failed to respond to.
A moderator is NOT allowed to fill in a scum player on the events in a game.
A moderator is NOT allowed to pass a message on from the previous holder of a slot to the next, at least not in a newbie. (I.e., RadiantCowbells wouldn't be able to tell the mod, "please tell my replacement *these facts*".)
These are considered moderator interference.

What a mod CAN do is:
-Prod a scumbuddy (unofficially), requesting their attention. (If the scumbuddy fails to respond, the mod cannot replace them until daystart, as per above.)
-Unlock the topic during the night phase, and allow a player to talk. (E.g. if RadiantCowbells posted in the MAFIA TOPIC, "Hey, my replacement, here are my footnotes on the game", this would be acceptable because RadiantCowbells was a player, and it was during the night, when the topic should be open.)

That's it though.

[mastina]

@ Mastina,
WHY do you townread Grey????

In a word: experience.
I have a fair idea what to expect from Grey as town and what to expect from Grey as scum. In particular, Grey as town is random and chaotic and also incredibly emotional, all traits exemplified by this game. He is vulnerable to long tangents, bitterly commenting on what he sees as past offenses. I wouldn't say he holds a grudge, so much as he thinks everyone ELSE holds a grudge against HIM. (So in a way he holds grudges, but he doesn't think he does.)

These aren't really traits he displays as scum. As scum, he will in fact show certain things: a "lul" here, a joke there, a sarcastic response every once and a while, but overall, his tone is flat and so too are his pushes. As scum, he has a cool head about him. He has focus. He has a very specific drive, where he will do one thing, and then do another thing. His posting is incredibly consistent, with a gradual trajectory. There is a consistent trend of worrying about his appearance, so he tries to stay absolutely constant.

But as town, Grey is all over the board. He'll do one thing one moment, and another thing the next. He lacks cohesion. He will be disorganized. He will be all over the place. He will feel one thing one moment, and then switch around to feeling another thing the next. He doesn't give a damn about how he is seen, so he's free to do whatever the fuck he feels like doing.

[mastina]

I still don't think Alisae flipping town is enough to clear DogWatch, none of us really know her experience level

Actually, we do.

1. Overall experience: I played on a small site about a decade ago, roughly.
2. How past games played out: Fast paced, focused more on power roles and night decisions/analysis, less endless daytime squabbling, more quirky gimmicks and themes, most games are finished within two weeks. Felt more like text-based video games than constant arguing over minute details.
3. Personal quirks: I see the conspiracy before I see occam's razor. I wrestle with WIFOM too much. I'm rarely the first to spot scum behavior, so often I look like a wagon hopper.
4. How I see mafia: Dunno really, it's a little more psychological here; I'm used to an almost RPG-like feel. Not entirely sure how to answer this at the moment (it's late, I'm tired.)
5. How I approach the game: I'm not typically a strong town leader making big plays and constructing castles of logic. I'm more of a supporting player. Weakness would be sheeping votes at times. It's like I need other's approval before I attack someone and I want to fix this, be more bold, etc.
6. Expecting from this game: Really just wanted a casual game to practice in and be able to ask questions and be honest about my mistakes without necessarily being lynched right away for them.
7. Expecting from the site: I'd like to find games that are more along the lines of what I'm used to.

The questions I asked, while for teaching purposes, double as a good indicator of game experience, which in this instance makes them relevant to play. We have no reason to believe that DogWatch is lying about her experience here, especially because I indicated that these questions were meant for teaching purposes.

DogWatch would have minimal experience, and have said experience be incredibly out-of-date. A decade ago was 2005. The game of mafia was, on online communities, still relatively in its infancy. It wasn't until about 2008 or so that it really took off as what we now know it as. Games back then didn't rely on townslips for town credit. You also see in DogWatch's responses an indication she would not do so: she is cautious of conspiracy theories, because that's her natural style. (People tend to fear their own style used against them more than any other, especially as a newbie player.) She is afraid of wifom catching her, because she uses wifom in her own scumhunting.

As a result, it would be INCREDIBLY unlikely for DogWatch, on her own, with no coaching from a more experienced scummer, to think of the townslip to clear herself. So it therefore follows DogWatch cannot be scum with oldwino or lemonator, both of which are newbie slots. Since Grey is town and I am town, that means either DogWatch is scum with Alisae with RadiantCowbells encouraging her to make the townslip (something RadiantCowbells is notorious for doing)...

...Or, DogWatch is actually just town.
This is one of the reasons I was so peeved so few people answered my questions. Those questions give me a crash-course in psychologically profiling players (a technique I rely heavily on), and DogWatch answering as she did is able to give me this.

[mastina]

You said (quite emphatically) Day 1 that RC was town, now we have a player change and they are scum....same slot, different day.

You know what also happened on Day 1? We lynched mhsmith.

You know what also happened on Day 1?
mhsmith flipped town.

You know what also happened on Day 1?
mhsmith (until he was already lynched at which point it was too late) was my strongest scumread.

What did you expect me to do after my strongest scumread flipped town?
Do nothing? Charge right in and not challenge prior assumptions of mine?

Fuck no.

My read on RadiantCowbells on D1 was more-town-than-not, and he was among my stronger townreads. He was not my strongest townread, mind you, but yes it is undeniable he was a reasonably strong townread. He was not a townread I placed absolute faith in. I never said it was impossible RadiantCowbells was scum. Quite the opposite: I said rather consistently, "I strongly think RC is probably town" (early to mid game), and then, later in the day, "I still think RadiantCowbells is more likely town than not" (a weakened read from strong-town, but still town). Never ONCE did I declare that he was lock-town. Never ONCE did I declare he was definitely town, that he was firmly town. I quite specifically acknowledged he COULD be scum.

62, townreading, unspecified strength. 70, "strongly lean". (LEAN.) 235, "do not view as scum". 246, town-quarreling, unspecified strength. 389, stance of him as town, unspecified strength. 475, explanation of read and telling you exactly why I said "town?", not "town.". 725, I demanded an answer from RadiantCowbells in who he townread. 728, I point out a plausible reason/strategy for RadiantCowbells being scum. (Admittedly relying on me being scum but that's beside the point.) 729, "still likely town". (LIKELY.) 731, "don't think scum".

That was rather consistently my stance.

I have reevaluated it off of new evidence I have been given.

I am not calling Alisae confirmed scum at this point. Quite the opposite, I noted why it is very possible that Alisae is town. (Specifically, thinking it slightly unlikely RadiantCowbells replaces out as scum thanks to disinterest.) However, there is reason for the slot to be scum: process of elimination is rather strong with both a tracker and a BP claim, furthered by mhsmith's death. If you're within the conftown, you only need TWO locktown reads to win the game; if you're outside of the conftown, you only need ONE locktown read to win the game. (Assuming like I do that you clear DogWatch if there is not a veteran mafiate.)

Grey is my locktown read. I am still reading, to determine if Alisae is in fact the player with the highest probability of being scum. Maybe it turns out Alisae isn't. Maybe I conclude later we have the newbie-scumteam of oldwino-lemonator. Fuck, however unlikely it would theoretically be possible I reverse my stance on Grey and turn him into a scumread with Alisae instead as my locktown.

But it should be absolutely NO surprise to you that I am reevaluating a read after my prior read was proven wrong. Did you honestly expect anything else?

[mastina]

I'm getting a really bad feeling about DogWatch

As I laid out, DogWatch can only be scum with veteran scum, likely Alisae.
You have only my word that I probably wouldn't think to suggest the idea to DogWatch. As a result, I would be a better lynch than DogWatch right now.
I cannot say that Grey as scum wouldn't think to suggest the idea to DogWatch. As a result, Grey would be a better lynch than DogWatch right now.
I am telling you that RadiantCowbells as scum very probably COULD suggest the idea to DogWatch (albeit with no guarantee he actually would). As a result, Alisae is by FAR a better lynch than DogWatch right now.

[mastina]

See who wanted Smith lynched. Look there.

Actually, I tend to advise looking OFF the mislynch first.

In a typical newbie, you

usually

are going to have "one on, one off".
If you have two veteran scum, the probability increases to have both off the lynch, albeit only slightly.
If you have two newbie scum, the probability increases to have both on the lynch, albeit only slightly.
But by far the most common, typical model in a newbie game is that on a D1 mislynch, there's one scum on the wagon and one scum off the wagon. This is not universal, but it's a fairly safe assumption to take in most games.

In this case:

mhsmith0 (5): mastina, DogWatch, Darklyn, RadiantCowbells, -Grey- [LYNCH]
Not Voting: Icy, lemonater, oldwino

DogWatch cannot be scum unless with Alisae. Darklyn is confirmed as town. As a result, we absolutely know for sure that there cannot be two newbie scum on the lynch. If there is a newbie scum on the lynch, it is with an experienced player...also on the lynch. This, because literally no experienced players are OFF the lynch.
(Additionally, from my perspective the only possible scumteam which would be two veterans would be Alisae-Grey, yet very consistently the dynamic between those slots in-thread suggests to me otherwise. This indicates to me, personally, that at least one newbie MUST be scum.)

This does lead me to somewhat doubt the newbie-scumteam theory though, because if lemonator and oldwino both had the smarts to avoid being on the D1 mislynch, I would be impressed.

Now! Don't get me wrong. It

does

happen. Newbie-scumteams can and will surprise veterans with great play surpassing expectations, and learning to force a D1 mislynch to be an all town wagon is some advanced level scumplay. (Or, sheer blind luck. ) But it's uncommon, for good reason. Newbies, more often than not, will think that they "must" do something. In this case, as scum, newbies have a tendency to--if they're not told otherwise--think they

must

be on a mislynch in order to win. But this is just a general pattern. It fails to take into consideration circumstances, such as past game experience.

For instance, if oldwino noted in his prior game that the scum blended into the town by not being on the large wagons, he could advise his scumbuddy of this, and lemonator replacing in may follow that pattern. That would be a plausible circumstance in which this general trend would be shown to not apply this game, which is why I emphasize the importance of context and circumstance so highly in my VCA.

Basically, the most likely scumteams for me are, in order of most to least:
Alisae-oldwino
Alisae-lemonator
Alisae-DogWatch
oldwino-lemonator.

[mastina]

No, and I don't think I have even read a game he played.

I have. I've multiple times seen Grey act in an incredibly anti-town way which was detrimental to him, purely out of emotion. This is a tendency present in his towngame which I have not observed in his scumgame. Admittedly my exposure to his scumgame is limited, but he has shown this trend this game, he shows the trend as town, and I have not seen him show that trend as scum, which is one of the main reasons I am townreading him.

[mastina]

Mastina, why is it that I can only be scum if Alisae is scum? If you explained that already, kindly quote it because I've only been able to briefly skim the past couple pages. Also not understanding how all your assumptions hinge on Grey!town.

You had a pretty convincing townslip.
For this townslip to be false, for you to be scum, it would be required for you to think of the idea of making that townslip in the first place.
For that to happen, for you to have the idea, I have determined that it is unlikely to originate from you, or a fellow newbie scum player.
None of the newbie players in this game outside of you I think would hold the cunning to push for the idea of a townslip.

The reason I don't think you could do it on your own is based off of what I understand your player profile to be: your tendencies that you have outlined. Given your stated playstyle, given your stated stances, the idea of you forming a fake-townslip seems unlikely, because you in your mind would naturally think "this couldn't possibly work". You would doubt it. You would think someone would call you out on it. You would be afraid of making it. You also would perhaps be afraid that if you townslipped, people in their paranoia would question why you are still alive. Admittedly, your slip came after the bulletproof claim...but you would still be worried that your townslip would make people question "why did they shoot at someone they knew would be immune?", and in their paranoia, question why a player who should be conftown was let to live.

So while it is

possible

that I am wrong about you, that you were devious and cunning enough to not only think of it but also have the confidence to boldly proclaim it (again, something I'd find incredibly impressive if you are scum), it is incredibly improbable for that to be the case. Meaning, for you to be scum, it requires a veteran player to inspire you.

I do not know Grey's scumgame well enough to know if he could think of suggesting it to you. However, I have Grey as my locktown read.
I know RadiantCowbells is

notorious

for gambiting as both alignments, and he would be all too happy to have suggested the idea to you. Alisae is the RadiantCowbells slot. Ergo, for you to be scum, it requires Alisae to be scum.

[mastina]

One of the things about his scumgame is Either way his game is going to be clean.

Yes.
My point exactly.

Grey's scumgame would be clean.

His play this game is anything but.

[mastina]

Darklyn is cleared. In that case I would like to see todays lynch come from his train.
RC
Lemon
Smith
Grey

While I recognize Icy had content after this, this slightly increases the chance that lemonator would be scum.

Most likely to least likely scum imo, might change when I do re-read
mhsmith0 > Radiant Cowbells > Dogwatch > lemonater > oldwino > mastina > Grey

This would vaguely suggest DogWatch is town though, since Darklyn wanted both Alisae's slot and DogWatch dead, yet was allowed to give off a track during the night.

My list at this point

Mhsmith
Dogwatch
Oldwino

RC
Pieg
Darklyn

Grey
Mastina

This also slightly increases the chance of oldwino being town, albeit only a bit.

It should be worth noting that I BELIEVE mhsmith felt that scum were within the middle section, that being, Alisae (RadiantCowbells) and lemonator (pieg).

I do admit by this analysis though that because Icy had Grey as a scumread and Darklyn very much did not it is at least

plausible

for Grey to shoot at Icy, working towards eliminating the slot N2, setting up a higher chance of long-term success.

[mastina]

I'll have to iso-dive mhsmith later. It's getting pretty late, and I've got other stuff to do. (I do apologize, but...I've been posting for nearly three hours in this game. I think I'm within my rights to take a short break. )

[mastina]

A few quick notes:
-One of the main reasons I want Alisae lynched today is that if Alisae is scum obviously lynching scum is good; if Alisae is town, it tells us that certain things become much more likely. Somethings from mhsmith's iso:

Not really sure tbh. Is grey/lemon possible in your mind? Hadn't especially thought about that one, or looked back on their connections, not sure if that's realistic or not. I GUESS I might think on oldwino but don't really think he's scum. That townslip by dogwatch was really well done if scum, MAYBE that was a pregame advice or she has great scum instincts but I consider it unlikely.

He was talking to RadiantCowbells, so obviously addressing a team with Alisae in it wouldn't be something he'd be doing there. But, you can see him giving his feedback earlier:

I don't really think it's mastina/grey, but that's largely due to an independent TR I have on her (if this whole ISO of hers was an intentional act as a scum IC, just pretending to play really badly, I'm going to be super upset - if it's a town IC thing, mistakes happen, but if it's intentional I just get really bothered by that). Also I do think that Grey's "I think smith is the IC" bit largely cleared mastina if he is in fact scum; I just feel like that's the kind of derp thing that's pretty unlikely if he's buddies with her (which, you know, was an actual substantiated read that I put energy into thinking about for the "but smith hasn't been solvey enough" crowd )

FWIW RC vs Grey is I think a pretty reasonable day 2 situation (that mastina "RC/Grey is town/town, let me make weird reads of people who were around at that time" gets funnier x100 if it was in fact town/scum).

I'm sorry I don't have a stronger read on which side is scum

, or if somehow it's actually town v town, but this has been a hard game for me to sort, and people have been more villagery than wolfy.

Plausibly this just means ulti/lemon was lurkerscum

and that explains a lot of it but idk.

...Between these, you get a fairly good picture of his stance.
He thought oldwino was unlikely, albeit possibly, scum.
He thought one of Alisae/Grey was scum, but only one.
He thought DogWatch was probably town.
He thought that I was town.
He thought that lemonator was scum.
Given the obvious Icy/Darklyn townreads, this is viable feedback. I can work with this, and these reasons. (Well these aren't his only reasons but they're basically the latest-provided reasons.)

Resolving Alisae/Grey today would be helpful. If Alisae flips town, then I'd be willing to wager on DogWatch being town as well. Grey would be revisited at that time, leaving the possibilities as: Grey/oldwino, Grey/lemonator, or lemonator/oldwino. (I'd lean towards lemonator, leaving oldwino/Grey to be the final resolution.)
If Alisae flips scum, Grey is town and we've got three lynches for three suspects.

With this done, right now, two things:
-I am going to let Alisae case on Grey. This is something important regardless of Alisae's alignment.

Alisae:

Who is Grey's scumbuddy? This, too, you should answer.

-I am going to be reviewing the game to try and solve the pairings assuming that Alisae/RC is town and making sure DogWatch is town. (I need to eliminate Grey-DogWatch as a possible scumteam in order to 100% clear DogWatch with an Alisae townflip.) This, largely to sort Grey/oldwino/lemonator.

[mastina]

Alisae. I mean it. You have my attention. And I will listen to you. But you're going to need to do better than these.

The most easiest shit scum could hop on and Grey took the bait.

You're gonna need to explain to me how "easy hop on" and "wagon on RC" are able to coexist, 'cause, uh...yeah.

Showing oppertunism

Grey was the first vote on the slot. Not opportunism.

The fact that the L-1 vote and this are right next to each other bothers me.

You know what happened between them? The player he voted claimed tracker. Not a towntell, but sure as fuck not a scumtell.

You want me to FOLLOW you, well, then...

More oppertunism.

Show why the L-1 vote was opportunistic.

Or, maybe you're trying to turn today into a no lynch by splitting up votes.
VOTE: mhsmith0
And the reason I've been plausibly softing will be clear enough d2.

This is most likely a scumhammer coming from Grey. Also lol at the last bit.

Elaborate on this.

Those are the things you'll need from me.

[mastina]

Couldn't we lynch one of lemonater/oldwino today instead to settle the newbie question?

The newbie question is comparable easier to answer when you have the veteran question answered first.

Veterans have established patterns and have strong tendencies that are easy to pick up on and determine. Knowing which veteran (if any) is scum helps to determine who the probable newbie scum would be.

Knowing which newbie is scum gives less information if it's a mislynch--if, say, oldwino flipped town, then we wouldn't know DogWatch was town and we wouldn't know which veteran would be scum and even IF lemonator were the scum (which would be an 'if') then lynching lemonator would tell us lemonator was scum...but lemonator's slot has not produced much content this game. (For what it's worth I'm reasonably confident lemonator's slot is scum but not to the point of being absolutely sure of it.) Making it hard to determine: newbie partner, or veteran partner, and if veteran, which one. Three slots, for two lynches. You'd have those slots minimal interactions with lemonator, and that's about it.

In contrast, if we can determine veteran scum, then veterans give a ton of interactions with newbies, and newbies have a ton of interactions with said veteran. (Except lemonator's slot.) That is why my preference for today is Alisae, though I would compromise to lemonator if necessary. And, I hold at this point the opinion pretty much that short of extreme circumstances, whichever isn't lynched today should probably be lynched tomorrow.

[mastina]

[quote="In post 1001, Alisae"I see more scum motivation to jump on RC saying something that was obviously sarcastic (also let's add RC has nothing to gain from saying that statement as either alignment) then town. Considering it was still RVS, town!Grey could have started a fight with RC there to see how people responded to it and get out of RVS, I'll give him that. But I don't think this is what's happening here. He follows it up with 42 (the answer to life, the universe, and everything) and the tone here reads fake to me. Grey keeps on saying "RC was lieing" but he's not attempting to analyze anything about it.[/quote] You're missing my point.
Grey was picking a fight with

RadiantCowbells

.
Grey was picking a fight with RADIANTCOWBELLS.
You have played many games with RC, have you not?
Let the implication of that statement sink in then.
You were saying Grey's hop-on to RadiantCowbells was easy.

I am asking you to justify how "easy hop on" and "onto RadiantCowbells" can fit together in the same sentence. RadiantCowbells. The player with a huge ego, priding himself in his nigh-immortality as both alignments, who thinks that he can easily catch scum especially with gambits, and who genuinely (regardless of whether you hold him to be a good scumhunter or not) can obvtown in games as either alignment, AND whose most deadly feature is his ability to get people to listen to him. THAT RadiantCowbells, who Grey knows from past game experience just as well as you or I would. Is who Grey decides, of ALL people, to pick a fight with. That RadiantCowbells, notorious for tunneling his targets until they are ten feet underground, is who Grey decides to deliberately engage in a 1v1 against.

So I maintain my stance on those two phrases fitting in a sentence: they don't.

[mastina]

Ulti's post was pure, innocent, and genuine townposting. The fact he was flashwagoned for that is stupid.

While the wagon was in fact stupid, I feel like there's something critical you're missing about Ulti:
Ulti failed to cast an L-1 vote, but tried multiple times to do exactly that, place me towards L-1. You call Grey opportunistic, but had Ulti succeeded, what would you think then? Still an innocent vote? What differentiates Ulti's L-1 vote from Grey's vote, then?

Furthermore, and this is a large factor.
aa-dono, town, failed to respond to a prod when replaced.
JustDanceWorld, town, failed to respond to a prod when replaced.
Ulti, on the other hand:

Ulti and aa-dono are being prodded

...Was prodded, and then...

Ulti

(2): mhsmith0, aa-dono

...When there was a wagon on Ulti, WITHOUT ULTI POSTING...

Ulti has requested a replacement

...Ulti REQUESTED replacement. Not a flake. Not a peep of real-life justification for it. A by-PM replace-out, by request rather than by flake.

Ulti was pressured. And replaced out, probably in a panic. Now I give credit where credit is due: being a panicked newb is not scum-exclusive. But Ulti is far from innocent in this exchange. The panic-replace-out is actually exactly what I did in my first game on-site as scum. Under basically the exact amount of pressure Ulti was under. And we know that 2/3 of the Ulti voters were town. The ONLY possible scum voter there...is the voter who both was the FIRST on and the first OFF, in the form of Grey.

[mastina]

I'm not looking for buddies atm or associatives. That'll be easier to do when we have a scumflip.

Uh-huh.

This is a very convenient excuse to overlook how few scumteams with Grey included on them are actually plausible. Namely:
Grey-lemonator is possible but you refuse the possibility off of Grey voting Ulti as opportunistic. (When Grey was the first vote, and also hopped off the wagon relatively quickly.)
Grey-DogWatch is I suppose possible but unlikely unless Grey is the type of player who likes gambits as scum. You've professed knowledge of his style; does he like gambits? Be honest here. If the answer isn't at least "maybe", then this scumteam can be thrown out right here and now.
Grey-oldwino is possible but you townread oldwino.
Grey-mastina is I suppose objectively a theoretical possibility, but mhsmith raised very good points for the sheer improbability (nigh impossibility) of this scumteam combo:

I am thinking Mastina/Grey right now too so at least we're actually on the same page.

I don't really think it's mastina/grey

, but that's largely due to an independent TR I have on her (if this whole ISO of hers was an intentional act as a scum IC, just pretending to play really badly, I'm going to be super upset - if it's a town IC thing, mistakes happen, but if it's intentional I just get really bothered by that).

Also I do think that Grey's "I think smith is the IC" bit largely cleared mastina if he is in fact scum; I just feel like that's the kind of derp thing that's pretty unlikely if he's buddies with her

(which, you know, was an actual substantiated read that I put energy into thinking about for the "but smith hasn't been solvey enough" crowd )

Basically, I would consider Grey-oldwino and Grey-lemonator. Grey-DogWatch I am looking to eliminate with luck. But these are literally it. And these are the teams you are most discarding. Your narrative simply doesn't fit the realities of the game, Alisae.

[mastina]

Then I'll just do it without your support it's as easy as that.

Oh, also.
I seem to have picked up a trend: you are townreading the players who are supporting you, and you are (when you can get away with it) scumreading the players who do not.

[mastina]

I DON'T AGREE WITH YOUR READS THEREFORE I AM SCUM
THAT IS THE LOGIC YOU'RE USING HERE?

A very good question! Let me bounce it back onto you!
Because again. oldwino has scumreads on Grey/me; you townread oldwino.
You apparently gained a townread on DogWatch (not one you have explained); DogWatch's only post this day phase has been a question towards me as to why I am townreading Grey, with the implication that is important.
The only townread of yours not fitting this pattern is lemonator (who, surprise surprise, is who I feel is most likely to be the newbie scum), and that's by virtue of lemonator not having

any

reads. (The one and only read lemonator has generated

the whole game

is a scumread on Darklyn...who is confirmed town. Literally iso him, look at his contributions. It's a bunch of empty statements that contain no actual content, because they are devoid of actual conclusions.)

[mastina]

you left off 255. That to me seemed like a hard town read. Was I reading that wrong?

Twice-over, actually.
One, I had stated I had two scumreads outside of RadiantCowbells--POE would therefore suggest all players not being scumread (including RadiantCowbells) would therefore be town. This is a POE assumption which falls apart if those scumreads cease being scumreads.

Two, even ignoring that, I specified I was reading him as town. This was true. I did not specify by how much. I thought he was town, yes. I had a townread on him, yes. But it was explicitly "I am reading you as town". An unspecified strength read. If I am hard-townreading a player, I will specify I am hard-townreading a player. I am often fond of exact wording. (Quirk of autism, quirk of being a writer, you decide. But I like to be exact in my language as often as possible, such that it is done mostly subconsciously.) I never once said I was hard-townreading RadiantCowbells, because I never was. He was a townread. He was at the beginning of the game my strongest townread, sure, yeah...but explicitly not a

hard

townread. (On a very bad day where I see most of the playerlist as scummy, 'strongest townread' could literally be "51% likely to be town" if literally everyone else is null-or-worse. On no day does "hard-townread" mean anything other than "strongly townread". I could, in a newbie game, potentially get six hard-townreads, and have even the weakest of those hard-townreads still be a strong townread.)

[mastina]

I've been skimming and reading and skimming. Much of Mastina's analysis is too dense for me and since she is convinced I am scum

Apparently you really

are

skimming if that's what you think my read of you is. I would advise you go back and check again. I would normally quote the pertinent information here, but this is such a bad misunderstanding of my stances on a fundamental level that I really need to tell you to go back and read it all without skimming because that's literally the only way I can think of to tell you that you're working off of a very flawed assumption.

[PenguinPower]

I don't understand why I was prodded when I have previously indicated to the moderator that I am V/LA over the weekends and my last post was on Saturday (so naturally that means I wasn't going to be around yesterday or most of today), but since the message was apparently not communicated clearly enough and I was given a prod anyway, it should be noted that I have received the prod but am unable to give content immediately. I will give content tomorrow. (As in, Tuesday.)

Please PM questions only the mod can answer to the mod instead of posting in game.

-PenguinMod

[mastina]

Why are you argueing semantics here?

Normally I'd answer that semantics are important but fuck that. This isn't semantics. This is a legitimate problem with your narrative: you are trying to sell me the idea that Grey willingly entered into a fight with RadiantCowbells expecting it to be easy.

That conflicts with even so much as basic knowledge of RadiantCowbells.

[mastina]

Remind me again how I'm supposed to find assoications without flips?

By using common fucking sense.

It's called basic scumhunting.

It's called basic partner interactions.

It's called looking at interactions between players and figuring out which are possible scum and which are not.

[mastina]

You're just assuming I'm townreading people for helping me lynch Grey or agreeing with my reads. Stop.

It's not an assumption. It's an objective observation.
You are townreading the players that are agreeing with your reads, especially the ones who are interested in lynching Grey.
This is firm, 100%, fact.
You can argue whether this means anything, sure, yes, that you can do. I happen to think it no coincidence, but that would be debatable.

You can't argue the existence of this trend, because yes it exists. That you are is doing you no favors.

[mastina]

Searching for a replacement for lemonater

I saw no indication of a prod so this looks like the

second

newbie in the slot to have requested a replace-out.

[mastina]

Isn't there some kind of 'penalty' for replacing out?

We do not penalize replacing out because there are a myriad of valid reasons to do so.

We punish

excessive

replacing out--that is, a slot who signs up to play games, then replaces out of a lot of games. Especially if they immediately try to start playing in other games after continuously replacing out.

Otherwise, we do not.

[mastina]

Slightly more confident in the lemon slot being scum than alisae. There's also something to be said for the ulti/pieg/lemon slot being replaced AGAIN.

To be honest. This is actually my stance right now. The lemonator slot is actually a larger scumread than Alisae. I

think

Alisae is scum, but I'm not absolutely sure; I'm pretty damn sure that lemonator's slot is scum.

[mastina]

It seems to me that the town learns so much more from a Alisae flip than a Lemon flip.

This is also true though, since the slot hasn't produced actual content basically all game. The closest was pieg, and even there, not really much. pieg asked lots of questions, but didn't really do much with them. (The closest we get is casting shade on oldwino, which reduces the chance of the newbie-scumteam. Also, 584 looks like pieg knew oldwino was town.)

[mastina]

Welcome Christ

Can I just comment on how appropriate this comment is with your Amish avatar?

[mastina]

I'd like to give TB a few days (real time) to speak up, establish himself, and maybe redeem the slot from maybe just poor play, rather than scummy play, from Grey.

For what it's worth, if ThinkBig

doesn't

deliver a metric fuckton of good content relatively soon,

I

will be lynching him.

Yes.
In spite of me having Grey as my top townread.
I am giving ThinkBig a "grace period". A short time, where he is being given the chance to orient himself and get settled in.
If that period passes and I don't see something very specific from him that I expect from town but which is absent from him as scum, then he's scum, I was wrong about Grey and damn straight I'll lynch him.

[mastina]

Ok read to pg38 or so, got a few interesting read but my oh my this game was a crapfest. Smith was a really bad lynch d1, nobody listened to his side, and to top it all off RC pushed it through over a scum read because we needed a lynch but without even building a case on their scumslot. Town threw my last game hard, d1/d2 was terrible and made it easy to manipulate - not allowing it to happen in this one.

For what it's worth, and this is actually one of the reasons I was scumreading oldwino, I consider it a scumtell to complain about the game prior to your replace-in. Rather reliably, town tend to not bother with this because they know it happened and know there's no use mentioning it. Instead, they will make jokes, instead they will laugh it off, and when they do pull attention towards the bad play, it will be to highlight which plays were scum, and explain which plays (while bad) were town.

Scum, on the other hand, will continuously try to make people feel shitty for their mistakes. Scum will try to take the "moral high ground" by always claiming they are superior to the rest of the players, simply because clearly, they would not have made that mistake, and they vow that they will keep the town from making the mistake.

Mentioning prior games, which oldwino did religiously, is a variant of this. (Thus the early scumread on him.) By constantly referencing a prior game, you are using it as a crutch. You are trying to frame a narrative: "This event happened in this game, therefore this is true of our current game", whereas in reality, every single game is different and frankly should be treated appropriately so, with them MOSTLY self-contained. (There's room for player meta, and there's room for moderator meta, but by and large, every game is different.)

Aside from that, there's more with this post I take issue with, though:

Ali is a bad place to vote imo - I'd like to see that wagon fold. Not too sure on ThinkBig (Greyslot iirc) but probably also bad place.

This is basically calling the scumteam two of mastina/oldwino/DogWatch, thanks to Icy and Darklyn being conftown. Alisae's stance that the Grey slot is scum and ignoring associatives is pretty bad...but whichever of the three scumteams Chris has in mind is arguably even worse.

[mastina]

Posting here to say, probably not posting tonight: there's some white stuff on my kitten's nose. Now, a quick google tells me I should

probably

not be concerned.

Most likely, kitty litter. (After all, she has some basically permanent black stuff stuck to her fur under her chin which I assume is food dried into her fur; this wouldn't be much different.) Maybe dry skin.

Still, all the same: I want to alert my family of this and keep an eye on her until I can personally deliver the message, so...not going to post tonight even though I planned to.

Sorry.

[mastina]

Pre-flip associations are really bad it's total WIFOM, and not a great way to find scum - post flips are great. In nearly every game I've read on here (in the 200-300 range) it's a widely accepted fact. I find it odd that Mastina (especially as IC) would try and paint Ali as scummy for not doing it.

Well on that subject, I have published a few thoughts on the subject where I argue in favor of the concept, and for good reason thanks to the myriad of benefits from doing so.

(Incidentally, I am currently working on both publishing AND editing my past work so a fair share of this is actually fresh in my mind: A lot of my articles could use some formatting fixing, not to mention, trimming the fat from them. I'm actually thinking of spending time today publishing an article on the importance of gut, though I would also like to update a ton of others, in particular, all the Mastin Academy lectures which weren't actually put on the wiki by me and it shows because they have crappy formatting because the person who put them up wasn't as familiar with the wiki as I have become.)

Suffice to say: fuck yes I advocate for pre-flip interactions. Especially since I use the word, very deliberately, interactions. Associatives I do use, but I use them with caution; Interactions I use consistently and constantly as my strongest scumhunting tool. The two are not synonymous, though I admit I often use the terms interchangeably when engaged in dialogs with others since they will use one term and I'll engage them using the term they have laid out even if the term they use is for me the other of the two. (It's a bad habit I need to break, because I should be consistent if I want to preach them being different.)

Mastina was scummy before this, but seriously... why is nobody questioning this at all?! This is terrible logic, terrible play, and can easily hand scum the win.

Because it was neither terrible logic nor terrible play.

explain why I'm not right in thinking we need to assume 3 unknown slots need to be confTown without flipping for this to work.

Okay. Let me lay it out for you.
We have Icy as confirmed town.
We have Darklyn as confirmed town.
We are already making those assumptions, because those are safe assumptions to make. That leaves OBJECTIVELY six slots to sort, SUBJECTIVELY five slots to sort. We have one mislynch to spare. Meaning, we have one spare lynch, and a second emergency lynch. One lynch. For five slots. After the lynch, in mylo, we have four slots. Two would be scum. That's objectively 40% odds, subjectively 50% odds.

If we can eliminate one player from contention and make them very strongly likely to be town, that reduces the possible scum pool. As a result, we jump in odds from 40/50% (not in our favor) to 2/4 (objective) or 2/3 (subjective): 50/66% odds of lynching scum. While not an ensured victory, this is why I said it'd only take one lock-town read outside the conftown (two if you're a member of the conftown) in order to be near-guaranteed victory.

If you can eliminate a

second

player from contention in the resulting mylo by making them very strongly likely to be town, the scum pool is reduced

even further

: objectively to 2/3, subjectively to 2/2. Giving players inside the conftown a 66% chance of lynching scum, and the players outside the conftown a 100% guaranteed scumteam which they KNOW is the case.

It's basic math, yes?

So then it follows that you need to be able to clear players who are still alive. This is a vital skill for a mafia player to master, and I guarantee you, I am not alone in my belief there. Look to any recently completed Large Theme, for instance. You will see player after player using Process of Elimination. PoE. They will have players who are unflipped as townreads, and refuse to lynch them. They will have various reasons for these townreads. Among those reasons will be interactions with players, both flipped and unflipped.

Fuck! What do you think you are REQUIRED to do in a game where you lack the luxury of a scum flip? You are absolutely, 100%, REQUIRED to make assumptions, to make speculations, as to viable scumteams in a lylo. If you've got seven alive and three are scum, one wrong vote will end the game in a scum victory. Five alive and two scum (not at all unrealistic in a Newbie), one wrong vote ends the game in a scum victory. So you MUST hunt scumteams. That number scales, too. Let's say you had a 19-player game with four scum. On Day Six, you have nine alive, no scum flipped. What do you do then? You've got plenty of interactions, but literally every single one is with either a player who flipped town or with a player who is unflipped.

So there's DAMN FUCKING GOOD REASON I say that you absolutely are REQUIRED to do interaction analysis with unflipped players. You literally are left with no choice. And advocating against doing so is something which is either a scumclaim or frankly SHOULD be a scumclaim for just how ridiculously anti-town it is to throw out probabilities.

You'll note, for instance, that mhsmith, the guy who we mislynched on D1, was doing interactions with unflipped players. The player CHRISORNIE IS INSISTING WAS SO TOWN AND SO MUCH OF AN IC THAT MHSMITH WAS APPARENTLY MY EQUAL/SUPERIOR. Was doing interactions with unflipped players. Yet ChrisOrnie is taking the stance here that they are bad.

What do you have to say to

that

?

I mention most of it here due to my case on you and how scary it seems you are leading town when your plan is either mistakenly flawed, or coming from scum.

By the way, this "or" statement is the hallmark of scum players who KNOW the player they are going after is a mislynch.

If you believe the player you are voting is actually scum, you don't leave yourself an out. You don't go leaving an escape route. Doing so is a scum tactic, which allows for justification for being wrong: "See here? See it, see it? Here is where I said I didn't think she was scum, so me mislynching her wasn't nearly as bad as you'd think it was!" It's another way of claiming the moral high ground: "It wasn't MY fault I was wrong, it was clearly HER fault for this".

My scumteams atm are actually Mastina and one of DogWatch or Grey/TBslot. I want way more feedback on TB from Ali/Icy/Dark before I decide how likely that partnership is.

And why are you ignoring the input of dead flipped town on how likely the partnership is? Specifically, you say how good mhsmith's play was. You say how obvtown his play was. You cite, you reference, how good he is at every step of the way:

so why are you ignoring his actual fucking CONTENT?

[mastina]

Okay, I need to summarize that because it got a bit long. (In my defense, I was responding to a very long post so naturally my response would also be long?)

ChrisOrmie is painting the picture that it is bad to do pre-flip interactions analysis, and that me advocating it is bad-teaching-at-best, scum-lying-at-worst.
He holds mhsmith to some golden standard, insisting that mhsmith's play was nigh-god-levels of perfect. (I can quote any number of areas where he indicates as much, but if you iso him and look at what he says I think I don't need to point this out to you because it is really fucking self-evident.)

Contradiction:

mhsmith, like me, was doing

and advocating

pre-flip interactions analysis.

ChrisOrmie is asking for feedback from living slots on a scumteam.

Contradiction the first:

He does so in spite of insisting it is bad to do pre-flip interactions analysis.

Contradiction the second:

He is not taking into account mhsmith's content and mhsmith's reads/wishes/desires, particularly those near mhsmith's death. Now, it is one thing to say, "mhsmith was lynched town, not nightkilled town; there is no guarantee he was accurate". If you hold mhsmith to the standard of a normal player, this is at least a plausible defense, albeit still one I loathe. HOWEVER, ChrisOrmie is explicitly

not

holding mhsmith to the standard of a normal player. He is elevating mhsmith's standard to a player who "should never have under ANY circumstances been the D1 lynch because his play was JUST THAT GOOD". This is not at all an unfair paraphrase of his stance about mhsmith.

...Yet in spite of him taking that stance about mhsmith, ignoring mhsmith's actual contributions to the thread is quite literally spitting in the face of that respect. The first thing I did after mhsmith was lynched was pay my respects to him: I apologized, recognized he was towning it up, and lamented that it was too late to avert his lynch, with a promise that I would take his analysis into consideration. A promise

I made good on

. He felt one of RadiantCowbells(Alisae) and Grey(ThinkBig) was scum, and the other was town. I, at the time, townread both. But I took his reads into consideration and reevaluated my stance, used his input, and formed new conclusions.

This is another instance of a narrative which is ignoring the reality of the thread. ChrisOrmie is holding a double-standard which is inconsistent.
That, not even going into how he is leaving himself an out: he is painting me as being scum, yet leaving

just

enough wiggle room that WHEN I flip town, he can say "I totally saw that coming" and that "it was okay to do anyway". It is classical manipulation at its finest.

I left the interactions point unfinished, but I'll save it for a second half of this.

[mastina]

As for interactions: I believe it can be safely established that I firmly hold true my stance that they are a GOOD thing. The most potent, powerful thing, even. What I didn't follow that through with, though, is how they should be applied this game, and that is by looking at the plausible scumteams within the pool of players: mastina/ThinkBig/Alisae/DogWatch/oldwino/ChrisOrmie.

A mastina-oldwino scumteam is fairly self-evident as to why it is unlikely: we were at each others' throats all of D1, oldwino continues to hold me as scum D2, and it took me half-way into D2 to begin to doubt oldwino as scum and even then he's not eliminated from suspicion altogether.
A mastina-ThinkBig scumteam faces a point which mhsmith rose that was incredibly valid:

I don't really think it's mastina/grey. I do think that Grey's "I think smith is the IC" bit largely cleared mastina if he is in fact scum; I just feel like that's the kind of derp thing that's pretty unlikely if he's buddies with her

...Nobody has yet to offer a counter to this point aside from "but...pre-flip interactions are bad!".
A mastina-Alisae scumteam requires that Alisae and I are cross-bussing right now given that we are at each others' throats right now. It would also FURTHER require that the interactions between RadiantCowbells and I were scum theater on D1.
A mastina-DogWatch scumteam requires a newbie to have bussed their experienced scum partner, given DogWatch is heavily against me. Furthermore, it would require me to have distanced from DogWatch, given I was calling DogWatch scum for the first half of D1.

Additionally

required is that in this given scumteam, I am doing EXTENSIVE in-thread coaching to my scumbuddy, because to be honest, DogWatch once past the first half of D1 became the newbie player I held the greatest interest in teaching thanks to me seeing great potential in her as a player.
A mastina-ChrisOrmie scumteam seems plausible enough given D1 thanks to me defending lemonator...but then you get into D2 where I have increasingly stated my suspicion for the slot, increasingly given my reasons for the slot to be scum, and have increasingly pushed harder there. Furthermore, you get into ChrisOrmie's push on my slot. Again, this requires cross-bussing in order to be plausible.

A ThinkBig-Alisae scumteam requires extensive scum theater crossing the whole game. I simply don't see this as viable.
A ThinkBig-DogWatch scumteam is currently something I am reviewing:

This is one of the teams we need to eliminate

. I feel it incredibly unlikely given DogWatch's townslip and what I'd see from Grey if he were scum, but I haven't yet deemed it absolutely impossible.
A ThinkBig-oldwino scumteam is currently something I am reviewing:

This is one of the teams we need to eliminate

. I individually hold both players to be north of null by some undefined amount (and by undefined, I mean undefined, not unspecified, meaning no I can't put into words by how much), but it is a plausible team. oldwino's vote makes this team unlikely, but not impossible.
A ThinkBig-ChrisOrmie scumteam is possible and even among the probabilities:

This is one of the teams we need to eliminate

.

An Alisae-DogWatch scumteam is basically the only scumteam which I see as viable for DogWatch to be scum.

This is why this is a team I want to eliminate with top priority

.
An Alisae-oldwino scumteam is possible given that neither slot has shown strong hostility towards the other, and thus,

this is one of the teams we need to eliminate

. However, oldwino

has

indicated that Alisae is a scumread. Given his vote is on ThinkBig rather than Alisae in spite of him thinking both are scum and the Alisae wagon being larger, this scumteam is more likely than the ThinkBig-oldwino scumteam.
An Alisae-ChrisOrmie scumteam fits the gamestate almost perfectly. They are working rather heavily together and are using basically the same logic to push the same players.

This is the scumteam I think exists, and thus, I want to confirm/eliminate it

. Quite frankly, the one and only thing making me doubt this scumteam is just how fucking perfect it is. That's literally the only thing making me doubt this team: a variant on the "too scummy to be scum" fallacy, "too perfect to be true". That's it.

A DogWatch-ChrisOrmie scumteam is impossible, thanks to DogWatch's townslip.
A DogWatch-oldwino scumteam is impossible, thanks to DogWatch's townslip. (DogWatch's townslip not being genuine, as I previously laid out, requiring DogWatch to have a veteran scum partner who would advocate the idea.)

An oldwino-ChrisOrmie scumteam is possible, but requires both newbies that could feasibly be scum to actually be scum. Still,

this is one of the teams we need to eliminate

.

As a result, you have the following teams:
ThinkBig-DogWatch (unlikely, but my top priority in making impossible)
ThinkBig-oldwino (unlikely thanks to oldwino's vote)
ThinkBig-ChrisOrmie
Alisae-DogWatch (lynch Alisae first; if Alisae's town, DogWatch is also town, barring ThinkBig-DogWatch which I lay out above as unlikely)
Alisae-oldwino (viable, albeit less likely than others)
Alisae-ChrisOrmie (the team I believe, and am pushing hardest)
oldwino-ChrisOrmie.

There are three viable scumteams with ThinkBig, but two are unlikely.
There are two viable scumteams with DogWatch, but one is unlikely. The other can be eliminated if Alisae flips town, thereby effectively clearing DogWatch.
There are three viable scumteams with oldwino, but one of them is unlikely.
There are three viable scumteams with Alisae, and each of them is a strong possibility. Alisae flipping town eliminates them all, clearing DogWatch and making oldwino literally twice as likely to be town.
There are three viable scumteams with ChrisOrmie, and each of them is a strong possibility. ChrisOrmie flipping town eliminates them all, but does nothing to reduce the chances of a player being scum: oldwino, ThinkBig, and Alisae all lose one scumteam, and DogWatch continues to have one viable scumteam, meaning we still have four suspects come mylo.

Now admittedly. All of these make the assumption the lynched player flips town. This is quite the assumption to make. However, taking a precaution and assuming the worst-case scenario of a town flip is simply smart play when it comes to laying out possibilities and probabilities, as it allows you to lay out a plan which maximizes expected win value given the WORST possibilities. If instead the BEST possibilities turn out to be true (i.e., we get a scumflip), then a lot of this planning becomes superfluous.

Butyeah. This is the math explained. This is how you handle logistics in mafia games. This is probabilities, this is statistics, this is the logical aspect of the game: pure, simple number-crunching. By the numbers, an Alisae lynch gives us the best information. Alisae flips town, we literally eliminate almost all of the viable scumteams. Alisae flips scum, we lynched scum and have some flexibility in hunting viable teams. (Namely, that there are only three possible partners with a mislynch to spare, giving us two shots to hit scum in three slots, 66% odds in our favor just by random, and by doing interactions with flipped scum we can increase this even further.)

And this is why we do interactions.

[mastina]

I realize these are long posts, but 1222, 1223 (a summary of 1222 essentially if you want to save on reading), and 1224 are all important posts.

But they all hold true.

Give me a non-"but pre-flip associatives are bad" answer to:
-Any of the mastina scumteams and why you think my logic there does not hold.
-Any of the scumteams I have written off as impossible (DogWatch-ChrisOrnie/DogWatch-oldwino/ThinkBig-Alisae), and why you think my logic there does not hold.
-Any of the scumteams I have as possible which you think are impossible. (I would actually love to narrow down my scumteams so this would be most appreciated!)
-Any of the scumteams I have as less likely (ThinkBig-DogWatch/ThinkBig-oldwino) which you think shouldn't be so unlikely, and why you disagree with my logic on why they are improbable.

Because if you can't, then yes they are true. The burden of proof has shifted to YOU. I have laid out:
-Why I hold interactions to be important
-The benefit of interactions
-Which interactions I find impossible, and why
-Which interactions I feel are improbable, and why
-Which interactions I feel are probable, and why

...So if your response is just, "but pre-flip associatives are bad!", then I think you can see why I am going to look at you and go, ":neutral: Uh-huh.

Sure

they are."

[mastina]

(For what it's worth, I don't know how much mhsmith agrees or disagrees with me, but in the dead thread if he's commenting there he should be able to back me up here in that what I've said is more true than not in his opinion. I don't think he'd agree with everything I've said. But he should back me on MOST of what I've said because damn fucking straight I know what I am saying is true because that is experience gained from literally 200-300 games on this site alone. The place for logic in games is in dealing with interactions and noting their possibility or lack thereof. All other applications of logic are secondary.)

[mastina]

ChrisOrmie is basically sheeping Alisae like I suspected he would, lulz

^That.

[mastina]

Scum can open the game up and decide who they want on any given day if you remove the BP ability. Leaving the tracker on the board is a terrible move though, I'd expect that role to be taken out of the game as it's the best way Town can find Scum.

And what, pray tell, does it tell you that the fucking IC who has been preaching theory and optimal play all game long, would if scum have left said tracker alive?

That is: if you suppose it is true that leaving the tracker alive was absolutely terrible play, and you also hold it true that I as the IC know what is a good play and what is a terrible play to make as scum...

...How the fuck do you come to the conclusion it is possible I would be scum?

Possible WIFOM with experienced scum trying to look like newbScum

I have gone on record to say, on multiple occasions: "fuck WIFOM". Site search sucks at picking it up, but you may peruse this selection to confirm this is true. My stance has, rather consistently, been that WIFOM kills do not happen. EVER. They don't. There's always a reason outside WIFOM for a kill.

if Mastina is scum then her sporadic absences may mean a newbie partner might have done it without her.

I post sporadically, however, I log in every single day and check my private topics every single day. This means that if a private topic which is locked is opened for the night, I would see it. I can also easily verify I was online during the night phase: Wed Mar 15, 2017 1:13 am was the time the flip happened.
Fri Mar 17, 2017 11:01 am was the time night ended. About here in my post history across the site, you can see the MYRIAD of times I was logged in and posting across the site. I was online during the night. Therefore, I would have had a chance to submit a kill.

[mastina]

do we actually know icy was attacked? could there have been no night action at all?

townslip and even if this isn't a townslip I don't see why scum would push this narative. Occam's Razor deduces that Icy was attacked rather then Scum pulling a no-kill gambit.

do we actually know icy was attacked? could there have been no night action at all?

No kill is bad for scum, and mod said BP wouldn't know if they'd been targeted or even if their 1-shotBP was gone. Pretty sure scum went after Icy last night.

While it is certainly a probability that there was in fact a shot at the BP last night, I find it down-right hilarious that these two players felt the absolute NEED to insist on this being true back to back to one another using near-identical wording.

[mastina]

Theory question

: Is it better to lynch a player who is more likely to flip scum or a player who's flip would be more informative to town?

This might surprise you, but.
...I don't have an answer to this.

I know, right?
mastina, the IC who prides herself on her teaching above all else, can't answer a theory question!

But it's true. I literally have no clue myself.
Rather.
It'd be more accurate to say my answer changes literally every game.
One game, I will hold the stance, "fuck information, a scum lynch is a scum lynch".
The next game, I will reverse around and say "fuck that lynch; I know it's probably on scum but right now we need information".

It's something I wish I knew which was objectively better myself, but.
I don't.

I really don't.

The best answer I can give is maybe that it is circumstantially-dependent: in some games it might be better to just fucking lynch the obvscum player and deal with finding information later.

In other games, lynching the obvscum player first directly leads to the scum winning because the town neglected the chance to gather the information necessary for the lynch on obvscum to actually help them.

It's a valid question, and one I think I will make an MD thread about once this game is over. (I can't make it during this game for hopefully obvious reasons.) I genuinely, legitimately, have no answer to give you.

I have explained why Alisae gives more information if Alisae flips town than ChrisOrmie would if ChrisOrmie flipped town.
I have also explained a large part of my beef with Alisae, but also why I feel that ChrisOrmie's slot is the scummiest in the game and far more likely to be scum than Alisae.

But I'm not going to pretend I know what to do in here when I don't.
My

best guess

is that lynching Alisae is more important. (Not to mention, more viable, as there is an existing wagon there.)
I cannot say for certain if this is true, because even I don't have a firm grasp there.

[mastina]

Um...I don't see Chris sheeping Alisae. Am I missing something here?

Look at the names both players are pushing and just as importantly the REASONS and LOGIC behind said pushes.

The names have significant overlap, and the reasoning is nigh-identical.

[mastina]

There's also something to be said for the ulti/pieg/lemon slot being replaced AGAIN.

I would agree with this if this wasn't a newbie game. In Newbie 1746, for example, there was a slot that had 3 people replace out. That slot flipped town jailkeeper.

Key differences: Sertorious was replaced prior to the game's start: siteflake. deadalus1 was replaced out without posting: siteflake. AndHar failed to pick up a prod: siteflake.

Here, Ulti--under PRESSURE--

requested

replacement.
pieg

requested

replacement. (Albeit this one I think is null.)
lemonator--under PRESSURE--

requested

replacement. (Near as I can tell, anyway. It seems too short of a duration for lemonator to have failed to pick up a prod: the mod has announced most prods, did not announce one for lemonator, lemonator last posted on Friday, and the mod was searching for a replacement on Sunday without explanation.)

Siteflaking is null.
Requesting replacement with no justification is--while not a strong indicator of scum--at the very least, sketchy coming from newbies. (This is a newbie-specific tell.)

[mastina]

I will say that it is quite telling that he says that lurking is anti-town behavior and then requests a replacement.

Not to mention the content lemonator was giving--rather, lack thereof. Active lurking is an even worse form of lurking than actual lurking is. And while lemonator had 20+ posts...not one of them was really filled with anything you can call content. I.e., lemonator was active lurking.

[mastina]

Your game play is questionable. but your excuses are worse

That was a sitewide post, and posted word-for-word in two other games. (Go check my sitewide posts if you don't believe me, because it's fucking there and would take you literally ten seconds to verify it wasn't just in here I said that.)

Still think it was a fucking excuse?

Like I said.
Don't. fucking. question. Real. life.

[mastina]

i like his posts so far, but he's in my biggest scum slot.

I've given you the answer on this already!

Good scum will make good posts, just as true as bad town will make bad posts.
A slot posting good content doesn't make the slot town.
A slot posting bad content doesn't make the slot scum.

What makes a slot scum is them posting content which has a clear scum mindset attached (one I have laid out as to where ChrisOrmie has shown it).
What makes a slot town is them posting content which has a clear town mindset attached. (I mean I could point out why my mindset has been town but fuck that, I don't really do defense. Not like that anyway.)

[mastina]

VOTE: mastina
If I can't get the Grey slot, I'll go get mastina.

Hey Alisae.
You placed this L-1 vote, yes?

You still would have pointed out it was L-1.

So are you a fucking hypocrite, or just opportunistic scum willing to drop literally everything about Grey just because it's convenient?

[mastina]

Mastina is at L-1

I would like to point out: if I were scum, I would have a scumbuddy.

I literally wrote the fucking BOOK on

not

bussing.
No, seriously. Read that article. That article, the one titled "Stop Bussing!", was made by me, mastina. This is not the only place I have voiced that opinion. As in, I have written quite a fucking LOT on the subject, outlying just how stupid it is to bus and exactly why you should

not

be doing it.

Automatically, that basically rules out ChrisOrmie, Dogwatch, and Alisae as viable scumbuddies.
It also largely rules out oldwino, who would have no hesitation to hammer me.
So then!

Who am I scum with?
Darklyn is confirmed town. (So's Icy, but Icy is included in the above.)
That literally leaves the one.
And ONLY.
Possible scumteam with me on it as ThinkBig.

And in all this time.
In all this argument.
Nobody has yet to give a counter to mhsmith's point:

I don't really think it's mastina/grey

, but that's largely due to an independent TR I have on her (if this whole ISO of hers was an intentional act as a scum IC, just pretending to play really badly, I'm going to be super upset - if it's a town IC thing, mistakes happen, but if it's intentional I just get really bothered by that).

Also I do think that Grey's "I think smith is the IC" bit largely cleared mastina if he is in fact scum; I just feel like that's the kind of derp thing that's pretty unlikely if he's buddies with her

(which, you know, was an actual substantiated read that I put energy into thinking about for the "but smith hasn't been solvey enough" crowd )

Even if you address that.

Ask yourselves the following question:
I have been nominated for the Don Corelone Scummy (as in, Most Cunning Manipulation) at least once if not more.
I have been known for some of the most notorious scum victories in popular mafiascum site lore.
I have written the book on good scumplay. Three of them, actually! (Linked above.)
So ask yourselves.

Do you honestly believe that I as scum. Am so incompetent. That I would allow myself to leave one and only one possible scumteam in existence? That I would allow the town to so deliberately narrow it down to the correct choice?

I am not scum because it is simply not viable, not possible, for me to be scum on any scumteam. That's literally all the proof you should need, though if you want more I can point out how there was a reversal: Alisae literally went from L-1...

Vote Count 2.06

Alisae

(4): mastina, Darklyn, Dogwatch, ThinkBig

(L-1)

ThinkBig

(2): Alisae, oldwino

mastina

(2): ChrisOrmie, Icy

...To having ME at L-1...

Vote Count 2.07

mastina

(3): ChrisOrmie, Icy, Dogwatch

Alisae

(3): mastina, Darklyn, ThinkBig

ThinkBig

(2): Alisae, oldwino

VOTE: mastina
If I can't get the Grey slot, I'll go get mastina.

...In the span of three fucking hours. THREE HOURS. You went from having an Alisae wagon at L-1. To having a mastina wagon at L-1. Three fucking hours. To have a reversal in the game.

If that doesn't tell you my wagon is driven by scum, I don't know WHAT will.

[mastina]

She said when I asked her about her change of heart on RC (RC was town), (Alisae Scum) that she needed to reevaluate her game while all the time seemingly unwilling to reevaluate Greys position. (Grey is town)

(Literally right below this quotes me reevaluating my position on Grey)

*cough*
You can't have it both ways, Icy. You can't be suspicious of me for not being willing to reevaluate my position on Grey AND be suspicious of me when I actually fucking do reevaluate my position on Grey. You, as conftown, I absolutely get to call out on being a hypocrite. Though I suppose I should answer.

The slot is what matters not the player in it!!!

Yes. The slot is what matters, not the player in it. That is EXACTLY why I am not giving ThinkBig an indefinite pass: because while Grey remains my strongest townread, he is not a slot infallibly town beyond all reproach. He is the player I found most likely to be town. He is the player who moved to be my strongest townread midway into D1. He is also a player who I have less than half a dozen games' experience with, and of those, only one or two are scum. I cannot claim to read him with perfect accuracy. I can and do HAVE a read on him. It is strongest town, the player who I am currently most willing to call locktown, the player I am most willing to gambit on being town.

However, I also have about equal experience with ThinkBig. If ThinkBig acts a way I expect him to act as town (I think he is), then that townread is augmented. If ThinkBig acts in a way I expect him to as scum (I don't think he has), then that townread would be thrown into question. (There's also the fact that ThinkBig could easily have hammered me if he were scum, and receive virtually no flak for it, so. That, too.)

As a result, I made my stance clear. If ThinkBig, a holder of the slot, acted in a way which I thought made him town, then the townread I had on the slot would be further vindicated. If ThinkBig, a holder of the slot, acted in a way which I thought made him scum, I would then need to reevaluate my townread on Grey and see if it were still valid. If I felt it were valid, I would hold the townread true and assume I didn't have a good read on ThinkBig. If I felt it were invalid, then I would assume I didn't have a good read on Grey and that my read on ThinkBig was more accurate. This is not a hard concept to grasp.

A slot does not get an indefinite free pass, least of all in circumstances such as these. Were ThinkBig to have subbed in on D1, I probably would have given him the free pass. But this is D2 with no scum dead and no obvious leads aside from speculation. As a result, I literally cannot afford to hand out a free pass unconditionally. Just...circumstantially.

1) She has been doing a pretty good job of explaining things, but let the Dark Tracker thing slide by without comment. Had he tracked anyone else you know she would have been all over that.

You assume much. I haven't commented on the tracker thing because there's no need to. Darklyn is both right and wrong. It

does

reduce the chance I am scum. It also does not

eliminate

the chance I am scum. With two scum alive, there's a 50% chance of catching the killer, so there's a 50% chance that a no-track result would indicate a player is town. This result can be used to augment analysis, namely, pairs, and who the likely killer in a given scumteam is:

Who is the most likely to submit a kill in a mastina-Grey scumteam?
Who is the most likely to submit a kill in a mastina-oldwino scumteam? (The answer is mastina, eliminating this team.)
Who is the most likely to submit a kill in a mastina-RC/Alisae scumteam? (The answer is more likely mastina, eliminating this team.)
Who is the most likely to submit a kill in a mastina-DogWatch scumteam?
Who is the most likely to submit a kill in a mastina-lemonator scumteam? (The answer is 100% mastina because lemonator was basically everyone's secondary suspect.)

These are simple things that go without saying. The track results reduce the number of viable scumteams I could be on from five to two. As a result, it reduces the odds I am scum significantly...but also does not eliminate them altogether.

2) It fits that she would have taken a shot at me, and let Dark live.

It doesn't fit because you being shot would fucking increase your confidence. I am RENOWNED for my ability to exploit paranoia and doubt. You living without being shot at would make people think your reads were wrong...and that's especially helpful if "people" also includes YOURSELF.

By shooting at you, I give you confidence that your reads are right.
By shooting at Darklyn, I prevent him from gaining a result which would call his reads into doubt.

Now, if you were a VT, your point would be valid. I can and will shoot the players most suspicious of me when I think they will die. I know town players don't do NKA. The problem is, you're a fucking bulletproof. So by failing to nightkill you, when your slot so helpfully claimed, I am announcing to you that you were onto something.

Ergo, I wouldn't kill you. I'd kill Darklyn. He's the superior kill all-around.

[mastina]

cant keep up anymore
thinking of replacing out

This is why I generally recommend not playing in too many games at a time. (...Do as I say, not as I do. I am a moron. I am also an addict. Also, I am also basically a freeloader. I work four hours a week, on Sunday. I am busy for about four hours on Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday nights. I am restricted by family night on Friday Nights. I am otherwise usually free to be online and only restricted by what hours I need to sleep in. Meaning, I can devote theoretically 20 hours in a single day to the game of mafia. I sincerely doubt you have that much time on your hands, which means you should probably not play as much as I do.)

But, I would encourage you to stay, to stick around. I'd consider it a favor, even. While I mean no offense to oldwino, he has a playstyle which is basically foreign to me--I can maybe give him tips or tricks, but I can't really

connect

to him. You are the only other original newbie in the game, and you, I CAN connect to. You I see a ton of potential in. (oldwino could have the potential, but his playstyle being what it is, I lack the ability to tell if he has a ton of potential or not.)

You might not hold the strongest of groundings in the game

right now

. But I genuinely think, if you stick around, you could be a big name in the game. I think you have a huge amount of potential. And I realize it's selfish to ask you to stick around when you're having difficulties (I normally recommend a player does what they need to do, even if that's replacing out), but I really am hoping to see you stick around and I think that you need this game in order to do so.

[mastina]

actually considering quitting mafia period, all it does is add stress to my life. It's not fun anymore. and most of this community is completely toxic anyway... seriously some of the worst human beings ive ever interacted with

And let me tell you this. I caught wind of you playing in other games. The rule about talking about ongoing games prevents me from commenting on anything about them, obviously (aside from me mentioning that I have seen you in other games).

But what I

can

tell you is to please have faith. There are some awful people in games, yes. Those are the types of players I honestly tend to avoid as much as I can. There are certain lines I do not cross. I always try to treat a player with respect. I avoid namecalling. I avoid insulting. I avoid calling them out on shit which is not likely to be alignment-indicative. (*coughIcecough*) And there are many more like me.

And outside of games. Outside of games, we are really wonderful people by and large. This community is really supportive--one of THE most supportive communities I've ever been in. I know, that sounds hard to believe, if you've been hanging around inside a game. But think about outside the game. For instance, the Speakeasy (you have to request access in the User Control Panel) is filled to the brim with a ton of people who are loving and caring. (Admittedly it's also filled with shitposting, but people who insult others quickly eat a ban in there and for damn good reason.)

And if that's not viable, if that's not what I promise it to be (admittedly I view a lot of the site through rose-tinted glasses thanks to being a long-time member and I've seen it at its best and worst but tend to filter out the bad and emphasize the good), then there's always the ridiculously fun and open and supportive other games forum. Many, many, MANY scummers have stopped playing mafia but hung around the site. Some exclusively in discussion forums, others near-exclusively as Mish Mash players and I'd highly recommend giving it a chance.

mafiascum is not a cesspool of hatred. Some users may give off the impression it is--and those users tend to quickly find out that they are not thought of too highly for their toxicity and tend to either change their attitude or ragequit or end up banned because they didn't. (Not that those latter two are mutually exclusive.) We are mostly nice people.

We are also just...very, very, very passionate people. And sometimes, our passion leads us to be emotional and when we're emotional we tend to have a slight insensitivity to other people's emotions which leads to a nasty cycle. But that's hopefully when a moderator steps in to resolve a dispute because that's the fucking job of a moderator. Providing votecounts and flips is easy but a computer can do that much. A computer can't automatically handle a volatile dispute the way a mod can.

Give it time. We have the potential, I promise we do.

[mastina]

a newbie game FILLED WITH EXPERIENCED PLAYERS

I really, really regret this by the way, but as the IC there's not much I can do about it. The IC position is the mandatory experienced player position. I have also hopefully done my job in NOT fucking driving players away and if anything I have done has made you feel unwelcome, then one, I sincerely apologize for it, and two, I'd appreciate you pointing out my contribution to the problem so I can fix it, both here and in any future games I IC.

This many experienced players in a newbie makes the game that much harder for the newbies to handle. We all know it, too. (Which is one reason I feel pieg's replace-out was null.) But since it's happened, there's not much we can really do. If an experienced player scumreads an experienced player, they are going to fight. If an experienced player has a theory dispute with another experienced player, they are going to fight. In a game which is literally over half experienced players, there would be absolutely no way for this to not happen, and it has gotten fairly bad, yes.

But we can't change the makeup of the game. (Heck, you leaving could make it worse if an experienced player takes your slot.) What we

can

do, is try to make the most of what we have on hand. I'm not quite sure what I can give you to accomplish this. But I will do whatever is in my power to assist.

[mastina]

And I do wonder why all of these experienced players want to play newbie games.

Well, there's three basic reasons:
One, to teach. You don't have to be the IC to like to teach, either; a lot of SEs teach even when not given the IC role.
It is also mandatory for the IC to teach. (Though how they do so is largely their discretion.)

Two, to learn. SEs tend to want to gain knowledge. It is also not impossible for an IC to learn. For instance, from this game I have gained ideas for theories to publish, and also have thought of a subject I hadn't given much thought which I feel makes a good MD thread, and this is because I am not omniscient and therefore my understanding of the game can evolve from interacting with others.

Three, to play in a specific environment. Newbies have a lot of factors unique to Newbies: every game is micro-sized. Every game is a semi-open. Every game is hydra-free (I mean to me this is a negative trait but oh well; others see it as a positive). It is the only queue to consistently hold all three of these traits. You can get one of them in micros, another in opens, and a third in Normals, but even there that's not entirely consistent.

Often, it sounds like they are here to show off and play against each other, not help us learn the game.

Technically speaking, the only player required to help you learn the game is the IC. In that regard, I can only say I've done the best I am capable of doing of helping you learn the game. I have given you my perspective on theories, as they become relevant information. I have explained my perspective, and why I feel these things are true. I have also attempted to basically have a one-on-one teaching session with a newbie (DogWatch).

For that matter, I have also engaged another newbie (Icy, albeit admittedly not as much as I probably should). I do admit, I have neglected to directly engage Darklyn (though that's honestly largely because I feel he doesn't need much help) and also you, so if you feel I have not given you as much effort to help you learn as I should, my apologies. (This of course, originating from how different your style is from mine, so it's difficult for me to parse and give input.)

But strictly speaking, the SEs cannot be held to any standard at all. They are allowed to be and do almost whatever they want. (Within reason.) So they are not required to teach, they are not required to help newbies learn. I mean. Frankly, I kind-of

wish

they were. But it's a little bit unfair to expect a person who is still fairly new to pick up that role. For instance, oldwino, next game, you'd be an SE. Would you feel comfortable teaching to the extent, saaaaaay, mhsmith did? Of course not. But SE just means "third game or more, yet not the IC". If you get an SE who has played 30 games, ideally, yes, mandating them helping to teach a newbie would be nice. Yet because the definition of SE is so broad, we can't enforce anything on them.

Basically, what I'm saying here is: if you hold a problem with me, you absolutely

do

need to name my name. Because I am literally the only one who holds an actual, legal requirement to teach as per the laws of mafiascum. So a breach of that conduct from ME is important for me to know about.

[mastina]

Siteflaking is null.
Requesting replacement with no justification is--while not a strong indicator of scum--at the very least, sketchy coming from newbies. (This is a newbie-specific tell.)

Yo, mhsmith

, you're the stat nerd.
I'd actually be quite interested in whether what I say here is actually objectively true, but it'd require you to manually track each and every reason for a given slot replacement (not to mention, manually tracking if the holder of the slot is a newbie since this is a newbie-specific tell) which I'm not sure how easy/hard it'd be, but if it's something you

could

do, I'd love to know whether what I'm saying here is backed by hard evidence rather than just personal experience. (Basically it's something that my gut tells me is true: flaking from the game is null, but requesting replacement if a newbie is >random scum.)

[mastina]

I'll sum up my posting today since I've done a lot:
1222/1223/1229/1231/1232/1235/1237/1240/1241/1246 lay out ChrisOrmie (and Alisae) suspicion.
1224/1227 lay out why interactions are important.
1231/1246/1248 lay out some defense of points raised against me.
1234/1240/1249/1250/1251/1252 deal with game theory, along with appeals to newbies, in particular,

oldwino

and

DogWatch

, asking them what they need for this game.

That's the basic categorization of my posting. (Yes there is overlap, where some posts fall into multiple categories.)

[mastina]

Fucking

hell

, this is bullshit. I knew today was gonna be bad the moment I woke up and I was told, "Hey, stay off the computer, we're gonna be fixing stuff".

I had no fucking clue it'd get

this

bad. For a start, my dad insisted that the problem between the computer and the monitor was something breaking, rather than the far fucking more likely, loose connection. Then, in his incompetence, he managed to shut the fucking computer off WITHOUT KNOWING HE HAD DONE SO. He insisted that to fix the computer would require disassembling it, so who fucking knows what he has broken.

So here I am on my damn LAPTOP. The one which is abysmally slow. Oh and did I mention half of what gives it power is suddenly missing and so, will soon die?

And it takes me literally HALF AN HOUR to get my fucking laptop to actually get a damn internet connection because it boots up that damn slowly (admittedly, mostly my fault; I have a lot of shit open and a lot of it likely has memory leaks), meaning that this message is going to take a while to reach you and the ONLY way I am going to be able to post is if my some MIRACLE the fucking desktop ends up actually fixed.

[mastina]

Got a few things to take care of, but will be posting later tonight. (It's almost 9 and there's a few things I need to do before midnight, so. Best not to start a catchup project on a game since that would eat those three hours up and then some. I'll be here at some point later tonight.)

[mastina]

You are for pre-flip interactions being analysed. Associatives, you agree, are not synonymous with interactions. You engage others using the term they have laid out. You also agree that associatives/associations are something you use with caution.

This is in fact correct. Though I don't see why you went and proved my point by quoting a bunch of posts which just go to reinforce what I just told you. I mean. I'm reading what you said. And all of it is just going on to demonstrate I'm telling the truth?

You literally quoted evidence which proved my point.

I'm not infallible, and neither is Smith

This is true enough.
And yet.
You allegedly hold mhsmith to a higher standard--this is evident in your posting--and yet you have utterly failed to so much as use a single piece of his analysis. That's my fucking point.

I wasn't arguing mhsmith is infallible.
I was arguing that mhsmith is someone you have claimed to hold in high esteem (do you deny this?), yet you're not fucking using his input into the game at all. (Which is also pretty damn true.)

The point is you're trying to have your cake and eat it too in terms of mhsmith. You're trying to paint him as being some great town player...but then you're trying to not use anything he gave under the assumption he is not that great of a town player. It's a contradiction in stances.

I don't know why RC didn't read the town vibes.

And RC, a player who from your perspective should see them, not having seen them, doesn't give you hesitance in your read at all...why?

So Grey can't be scum with Mastina because they'd have needed to suggest a "fake derp clear" pre-game? Possible - unless you consider that since Smith acts like an IC even when he's not, that Grey just thought that he was and made an honest mistake.

Not possible if we were scumbuddies.

Scum get pregame chat.
In that pregame chat, I would have indicated I was the IC to Grey. And yes I did have a chance where if I were scum to talk during the pregame; I confirmed while we were in pregame and was about the fifth or so to do so. Also, I know something you don't about Grey: immediately after I /inned to IC, Grey sent me a message. Since this was WELL before the game began (the queue is long so this was almost a full month before the game began), I can share it, too.

Subject: Newbie Game Queue (Players and Moderators)

I'm gonna try it again, and hope for the best: /in as IC.

A red letter day for newbies! I hope you have an enjoyable experience.

If Grey were paying attention and knew I was in the game, he would have known I was the IC.

He did not know I was in the game. As a result, we are not scumbuddies.

Just because I love the way Smith thinks, and his self-analysis, does not mean I always agree with him, nor should I still sheep him when I see flaws in his thinking.

The problem isn't that you're not always agreeing/sheeping him.
It's that you're not fucking using him AT ALL.
Not one bit.
You utterly discarded his input to the game.

[mastina]

No idea what you are talking about "Statewide post"

A sitewide post is exactly what it fucking sounds like. A post, posted across the whole site. Rather than just in one game, it is posted in EVERY game, be it as a player or a moderator. 1283 was an instance of a sitewide post as well.

I. believe. you. have. real. life. issues. All humans do. The problem is you posting consistency. You claim you will do things and then don't. Today was no time to post, but once at L-1, all of a sudden unlimited time to post. I don't understand.

The two are connected.
My real life situation changes.
Issues I thought were minor inconveniences become major ones.
Issues I thought were major inconveniences turn out to be minor ones.
These are not lies. (At least not intentional ones.)
They are just my life. My life works in a way where I am inconsistent. I'm around, I'm not around. I'm on 20 hours, I'm on 0 hours. All are equally as possible. Because there's no consistency--but that is something which is.
As you so indicate.
From my real fucking life.

My real life situation changes.
A big influence on my real life situation, for instance, is a combination of physical, mental, and emotional state: I told you at the gamestart I am bipolar. I also told you I am autistic. Those traits are not always positive. (Especially mixed.) They come with nasty downsides that can wreck me physically, mentally, and/or emotionally. If I have a bad day I might not be in shape to play. And that bad day could be something physically exhausting, just me being fucking tired, or maybe I was super-stressed-out by something and am emotionally compromised. All happen about equally. And all of them are real life based, and from things I have the right not to share thanks to their personal nature.

Fuck activity.
Pay attention to what I'm doing when I'm around.
That never changes. L-1, not a single vote on me, my vote being a vanity vote, me sheeping someone to near a lynch, me being sheeped near a lynch. No matter what, the content I give when I'm around is always about the same: I first focus on catching up. Then I focus on elaborating. Then I go into any further details I need to. And when I feel like everything which needs to be said has been said...I leave the game until I next come back (which is usually 12-24 hours from the last time I posted). This is the pattern I display in every game--you won't find a game where I don't display this.

The content within the pattern is where you will find my alignment.

I aim to be around five days a week on average. I might exceed that, I might fall short of that, but that's the level I aim to maintain. If you feel I should be around more as the IC, that is a valid point. If you feel I would be around more as a player, the answer is fuck no. This is my normal activity in any game. So instead of being hung up about what I haven't given. Instead of being hung up about things which were not mine to control. Pay attention to what I

have

given. Pay attention to what I AM controlling.

[mastina]

Ready for the metric fuckton of good content
Ah well, I never did understand the metric system. but I thought a "fuckton" would be more. In any case it was good enough for Mastina.

You should try isoing ThinkBig.

The thing about ThinkBig is that every time he gives content, it is more or less: good. It is what I was expecting. It is what I wanted. It is what I would think would be town.

But the thing about ThinkBig is also that his content is sporadic. You say there isn't content present, but there is. It's just a little bit inconsistent in its presence--stronger in some areas, much much much much much weaker in others.

So ThinkBig simultaneously

has

delivered the content I demanded...
...And

hasn't

delivered the content I demanded.
So no. It's not clearly good enough for me. It's weakly okay. It's good enough for me to not turbo-lynch ThinkBig--but it's not good enough for me to clear ThinkBig. I want to give him more time. Not to establish footing. But more, well honestly, give myself the time. To think about it. And maybe see more clearly definitive proof one side or another.

So I would still prefer not to lynch ThinkBig today.
I would still prefer to wait there a bit longer.

[mastina]

1st vote Chris (just entered the game) more on him later
3rd vote Dog (locktown? is that what everyone is calling her)
4th vote Alisae (been on Mastina/Grey sense entering the game)

Yes.
ChrisOrmie, the slot who is my strongest scumread, voted me.
DogWatch, who is realistically possible scum

if

Alisae is scum, voted me.
Alisae voted me.

That is not a town-driven wagon.

[mastina]

but do we really think Alisae would make it so obvious he jumped his scumbuddy's wagon?

Alisae will be a blatant scumfuck if you let Alisae get away with it. Alisae will do whatever Alisae thinks can be done without it backfiring--so bold, blatant scum plays are not at all out of the picture.

[mastina]

I know town players don't do NKA.

Why?

Perhaps you misunderstood my point.
I was not giving an IC lecture saying "don't do NKA as town".
I was saying that town players

don't

do NKA...even when they SHOULD.

I'm not quite sure the exact reasons why so many don't do it. Personally I am a strong advocate of doing NKA. But I think the most common explanations are along the lines of "the kill could be wifom!" (I've played in like 300 games and I've never once seen scum actually make a wifom kill), "you don't know what the scum were thinking", "it was probably not for reads", and the like. I vehemently disagree with that stance personally. However. Just because I disagree with it. Just because I think towns should do NKA. Doesn't mean I as scum won't take advantage of the lack thereof.

Because I know towns DON'T do NKA (even though they should), I as scum will kill players who should be traceable back to me, but won't be thanks to the lack of NKA. And that is the point I was conveying.

[mastina]

Eh, just tried going through Chris's recent posts. To be honest, I had a hard time really following all of it but I'm getting a gut feeling that mastina is using lots of weaselly words and reasoning to make herself sound correct, and that seems to be Chris's main point.

You sure you don't have that backwards?

I'm notoriously difficult to follow. (Blame autism, blame verbosity, whatever.) ChrisOrmie's posts used a lot of fancy words in them to bolster his position, yet when you look at what he's saying...he's saying things which aren't really based in fact.

@mastina, can you walk me through again why a scum team with you on it wouldn't kill Darklyn?

Um.
I could generate a theoretical scenario for why it would be POSSIBLE I wouldn't kill Darklyn for you if you really

want

, but.
My stance was pretty clearly that a scumteam with me on it WOULD kill Darklyn?
There's just no scenario where it is not +EV for winning by killing Darklyn first.

[mastina]

Did you mean to say you 'know town players

who

don't do NK?"

Sort-of.
Realistically.
On mafiascum.
They're synonymous.

No, they shouldn't be. I agree with you there. NKA should be done. It should be done by all players, every game. This stance I hold firm to be true.

That doesn't change how much of a rarity it is on mafiascum as a whole. It doesn't get done--and the people who do it get laughed at for doing it. (Which might contribute to why it's so rare. If you get ridiculed for doing it, it discourages you from continuing the practice, which I think is abominable but it happens.)

I would fully encourage this batch of newbies to do NKA. So I would fully encourage y'all to actually not stop doing it like most on this site do. Still, the site as a whole doesn't do it (and encouraging newbies to do it is one way to maybe hopefully bring it back!), so when I am scum I tend to not fear NKA.

[mastina]

It's been a couple of days and he hasn't said anything of substance yet.

Not so! His iso is actually full of content. Thus, not voting him.

However, it's less than what I was hoping for.
Thus, not strongly going out of my way to save him!

At this stage I won't

help

you wagon ThinkBig.
I also won't

hinder

you on ThinkBig.
This will remain until he tips the scales.

[mastina]

This post is all kinds of wrong. The odds of catching the killer was not 50/50. It would be 50/50 only if Dark knew exactly who the sum team was. His odds for CTK was 1 in 7.

Aside from you making a math error yourself (it's 1/6 thanks to mhsmith's death + your claim narrowing the pool down because he's not going to track himself), you're thinking from the perspective of town, not scum.

The math changes.
From the perspective of town, the odds of catching the killer is 1/6.
From the perspective of the scum, the odds of catching the killer is 50/50.
The scum don't know who Darklyn is going to track. But they have to send

one

of their members to do it. So they have to take an educated guess as to who Darklyn would track. (Which is why if I were scum I wouldn't bother and would just fucking shoot Darklyn.) SOMEONE has to make the nightkill. SOMEONE has to take the risk.

So if SOMEONE has to take the risk.
For every scumteam combination, you would need to calculate which of the two players in question would be the one actually sent.
Now because Darklyn tracked me, I listed only the mastina scumteam possibilities.

But it'd apply for whichever teams would exist.

I don't believe for a minute you would have actually taken the shot. You would have had your partner do that.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that me having an ego (which I will shamelessly admit I possess) means I am selfish enough to value my own life above all others. Not so. I will send the player least likely to be caught to do the kill when it comes to trackers (or jailkeepers for that matter). This is because I have an interest in not giving the town a free handout. I kill smart. I don't kill for my own personal benefit; I organize kills which have the maximum benefit for my faction. This is because above all else, as scum I value maximizing the paths towards victory. Giving the town a guilty is leaving less paths to travel.

So yes. Given Darklyn's reads. In an oldwino-mastina scumteam, I'd kill. In a lemonator-mastina scumteam, I'd kill. I honestly don't know who would kill in a mastina-Grey scumteam, or a mastina-DogWatch scumteam. Therefore, the result on me does indicate there are only certain teams I could be on. Reducing (but not eliminating) the chances of me being scum.

In particular you'll note that a prominent probable team is the mastina-Grey one: people keep saying that's a team which could exist, and it is also a team which if for some insane reason I actually were stupid enough to leave Darklyn alive would be plausible for me to have not been the killer.

But I am not wrong in saying it reduces the odds of me being scum.

[mastina]

I NEVER SAID PRE-FLIP INTERACTIONS, I FUCKING SAID PRE-FLIP ASSOCIATIONS. THERE IS A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE!

Yes but you still used the term.

And I said that you should use them.
I use

caution

with them.
But inherent in that is USING them. Just, not placing absolute faith in them.

Except the very same post you quoted here also explains why I have read his points, why I liked his thought process, and why I still disagreed with him.

You apparently disagree with everything he said, then?

Again.

It doesn't add up.

If you like his thought process.
Then you're going to use some of it.
Yet you are discarding literally fucking everything he said.

I have explained in detail each one of my points, refuted yours, and called you out for your "content" and attempts to get town to follow a flawed plan which could easily be a trap to get scum a quick win.

Right, you've responded by dodging the heart of the problem, posting things which don't have a basis in reality, and called it an explanation.

You rate Mastina highly as a player, so why can she not twist her meta?

Actually, about that.
I

can

.
I am incredibly self-conscious about my meta. So much so, I even developed a flowchart. It's a bit long, and not something I was planning on posting, but because it's relevant I suppose I'll share it.

Here, for your reading pleasure, might as well quote this.

I think everyone should make one of these. Especially mastin.

Actually...I have.

I've been meaning to post it, too. It's about a year out of date, though, but I started compiling a way around Mafia with the Quickness 2 called, "How to read Mastin: the flowchart".

Spoiler: Stuff about it

The flowchart, while half a year old in its latest version, still applies more than it doesn't, by the way.
I'll condense it down for you, though:
If Mastin is scum, accept the loss; she's going to win regardless of what you do. So treat her like town.
If Mastin is town, then she is town. Treat her as town. If she wants to be listened to, listen to her and trust her instincts. If she doesn't tell you to listen to her, take her words with a grain of salt; they're reads but not solid ones.
BAM.
You now know how to treat Mastin.
Will work out for you nearly every single game.

Summary. I think I realized my problem with Mastin. Her reads are changing very quickly and they're moving on a very, very wide scale.

Helpful hint, you have absolutely no reason to trust me on this right now, but this is a MASSIVE towntell for me. On the "how to read Mastin: the flowchart" I made (I need to track down the most up-to-date version), it's one of the primary items, in fact. The reason? Town Mastin doesn't have a clue what's going on. Her reads are in a state of constant flux, specifically because of that, and her own self-doubt, paranoia, and whatnot betrays her, as she constantly second-guesses herself and reevaluates, rethinks, and redoes stuff. In contrast, scuMastin has absolute control of the game. Whereas town-Mastin is defined by inconsistency, scuMastin is defined by consistent, solid, controlled, calculated play. She keeps the same reads as much as possible, because it serves to antagonize the least number of players. She is calm, collected, and cool. She is strategic. She is focused. Her thoughts are logical and precise, because she has a good handle on the game, and thus, her mind does not betray her.

Or in short, the difference between town and scum is the difference between chaos and order. Now, obviously, this isn't absolute. There have been towngames where I've felt in control, rare as they may be. There have been scumgames where I was chaotic, either by circumstances or in one or two cases me faking my town chaos convincingly. But it IS a fairly solid general guideline. I know what I'm doing as scum; I'm just taking my best guess and throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks as town.

I bet she has quite a few "playstyles" (and she knows, I think, why I'm saying this.)

Indeed I do. Fairly certain I said so already in this game, too, the reason why: because my play in games is fluid, thanks to situational awareness. While I might not know what's going on as town, I can generally feel out the game and have an idea for what will work best, adapting to have a playstyle specific to that game. It's mildly helpful, since it lets me hone in on scum better, but situational awareness mostly helps me as scum, because as scum, adapting my play to the game when I have more info than my town self does is

lethally

effective.

Though that does remind me, I need a point in there about focusing on scumhunting.

I find her posts coming from a mostly town point of view and she has a genuine interest in finding scum.

Right, that's another one I need to add in.

How To Read Mastin

:

Are you zMuffinman?

Yes-->Screw tells, you know mastin's alignment instantly.
No-->

Are you AngryPidgeon?

Yes-->Screw tells, you know mastin's alignment instantly.
No-->

Are you a player who has hydraed or has otherwise worked well with Mastin?

Yes-->You likely don't need the chart, but because you're not that familiar with her, you should probably go through it anyway as a precaution.
No-->You REALLY need to go through the chart; proceed! But fair warning in advance that it's only about 90% accurate.

Is/Are zMuffinman/AP in the game?

Yes-->Sheep them on their read! Never doubt it.
No-->Think like them and continue on.

THE FLOWCHART:

Is it D1?
Yes-->...And you're suspicious of Mastin?!?
She's town.
No-->Is it D2? Yes-->She's prob-town.
No-->Is it D3 or later? Yes-->Proceed.

Does Mastin look town?

No-->She's town.
Yes-->Proceed to next step.

Trust her as town.

What does she do?

Get paranoid of you-->She's town.
Enthusiastically work with you-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
Nothing-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
Milk your townread and bully you-->Proceed.

Suddenly pressure her.

What does she do?

Freak out-->She's town.
Show concern, but subdued-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
Brush it off-->Proceed.

Is she posting up a storm?

Yes-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Is she gloating how good her scumgame is?

Yes-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Does Mastin have delusions of grandeur?

Yes-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Is she waffling...
...A lot?

Yes-->She's town.
Sorta?-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Does she look like she's trying to leave a legacy?

Yes-->She's town.
Maybe-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Is she antagonizing everyone?

Yes-->She's town.
No-->Proceed.

Has Mastin rambled at all on MD theory?

Yes-->She's town.
No-->Proceed.

Is Mastin making a case for why she could be scum?
Yes-->She's town.
Kinda?-->Prob-town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Is Mastin making very strong reasons why she's town?
No-->She's town.
Kinda-->Prob-town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
Yes-->Proceed.

If applicable, did she 'crumb her role and/or claim it openly and immediately?

Yes-->She's town.
Maybe-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Do the circumstances behind her play and/or claim look town?

Yes-->She's town.
Maybe-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Is she irrational?

Yes-->She's town.
Maybe-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Is she spewing random illogical theories?

Yes-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Does her posting look intentional?

No-->She's town.
Yes-->Proceed.

Is she spontaneous, random, and/or whimsical?

Yes-->She's town.
Maybe?-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
No-->Proceed.

Is her tone flat?

No-->probably town, but proceed anyway as a precaution.
Yes-->Proceed.

(BONUS:

If Mastin is behind, does she demonstrate knowledge of the

current

gamestate she could not reasonably have at her supposed point of reference?

No-->She's town.
It's hard to say...-->She probably does know, but not much, having likely skimmed offline, not logged in, and chose not to get the full context to spoiler her as probable-town.
Yes-->Proceed.)

And finally...

Is there minimal resistance to lynching her?

Yes-->She's town; defend her!
...Maybe?-->You've gotten this far and the best you've got is a "maybe"?!? You dummy, run through it again! (But she's probably town anyway.)-->All other factors equal, if you're having this much trouble reading Mastin, just freakin' assume she's town. (She likely is, anyway.)-->FOR THE LOVE OF GODS, SHE'S TOWN, DANG IT.
No-->She's probably scum...but you should run through the flowchart one more time just to be sure, as a precaution.

Is Mastin's posting wildly inconsistent?
Yes-->She's town.
Maybe?-->Probably town, but proceed anyway.
No-->Proceed.)

(Oh, and I think rambling in-thread's already there*, but if not, it should be.)
*Relies on scum having daychat. Scum have daychat, in-thread rambling = decent towntell. Scum don't have daychat, rambling = prob-null, maybe slight townlean. Scum daychat ambiguous, assume slight townlean.

(Oh, should be noted. Last scum, rambling in-thread gets upgraded to major towntell, since scuMastin typically keeps rambles to the scum QT about why she's screwed.)

Totally should just, in general, take this policy about me.
There's a flowchart that I plan to publish that will give better tells for reading me in general, some of which are timeless, others which are in contemporary site meta, but valuable all the same. Until it's actually published, though, the general policy I have on reading me is, increasingly, becoming:

Just assume I'm town until you have a REALLY solid reason not to. You'll be right the VAST majority of the time, by sheer probability alone.

(In fact, beyond probability. Probability says I should be scum a minimum of 25% of the time. 2014's been something like half that overall.)

It'll save you a BUNDLELOADS of headaches.

(Should be noted that my record was 34 games IN A ROW as town and my scumgame remains STILL below statistical probability in numbers.)

"If you're townreading Mastin, lynch her. She's scum, having successfully predicted your movements and is manipulating you. You fell into her trap, hook, line, and sinker.
If you're scumreading Mastin, she's town; save her from the lynch. She's probably either really onto something or really lost. In either case, she needs your help, either to sheep her or help her develop more accurate reads."

Some of them are out of date thanks to contextual meta shifts, but most of them still apply.

(Note of course that the flowchart is never 100% accurate. It's impossible, literally impossible, to display all of them in a single game since many of them are in fact slightly contradictory, but the point is to see as many as possible and if the majority matches town or scum. This chart has been in play for quite a while, now, and to this date, in spite of no active attempts to uphold it and some attempts as scum to subvert it, remains highly relevant to my play. It goes to prove my point, though: scuMastin always has this laser-like focus. Anything Goes in particular, until I faked having my confidence shattered, I was pushing for a specific lynch. In games like Resistance where I was the last living scum in lylo, I wove a narrative specific to one player being scum because I held focus. In my entire scumgame career, holding focus has done nothing but serve me well. Losing focus has done nothing but screw me over. Because guess what? People like focus. They like confidence. They love to see assurance in a read. They want to have a figure be charismatic and to follow. It's an inherent part of people's nature. That's why tunneling is so prevalent, because it works DAMN good and well to get a lynch. People hate doubt. When someone is calling everyone town/scum in rapid circles, AKA circlejerking, people think it's scum trying to mislynch anyone. They see desperation and attribute it to being scum. They don't see a town player desperately trying to figure out the game. They see a scum player that is trying to find options. So damn fucking straight. Maybe someday I'll flail as scum. It could in theory be this game. But in practice? Fuck no. As scum I'd push a lynch through; as town, here I am without a clue.)

(I really need to also add a section in there about explicitly blowing up.
I don't think I've ever thrown f-bombs around as scum freely, aside from some trolling in L4D when I literally claimed scum in-thread once I realized Molla had a guilty on me.
As town, you'll note, I go absolutely ballistic, and for damn fucking good reason. Lynching me has never done a town favors, ESPECIALLY not in the lategame.)

^That's how. ('Course, the flowchart was developed for single-ball games. I actually have no clue myself how well it does or doesn't hold up in multiball.)

(I just realized that an item not on the flowchart but which should be is how I explain my reads:
"Does she explain her reads in crystal clarity?
No-->Almost certainly town, though you can proceed as a precaution just in case.
...Maybe?-->Probably town, but proceed anyway.
Yes-->Proceed.")

Not included: "Is she doing anything?"
Yes-->Well, go read what she's doing, dummy!
No-->She's probably fighting a flake.

Doesn't tell you alignment, but is useful to have on there anyway.

I quote the flowchart to show how self-conscious I am about these things: so I

know

about them.

...The thing is. As scum, I have no incentive

to

change them. As scum, my game looks better than my towngame does, because I have a different viewpoint and can work from a different perspective. So as a result, I tend not to change my game, because the game I have developed

works

. And works REALLY well. I am not a great town player.

I am one of the best players on site as scum.
So it stands to reason, my scumgame is fairly static; my towngame is fairly chaotic. By which, I mean, my scumgame remains largely the same; my towngame tends to change every game.

some even set up their meta for months just to play their "town game" and win as scum.

IC note:

this is borderline against site rules as we have rules against trust tells and also rules stating you must play to your wincon--deliberately sabotaging one alignment for the sake of another violates those standards. Never ever do that. EVER.

If there is no town-motivation behind a post, it has to be from scum.

While I feel you're scum.
I just need to state that if you genuinely believe this.

You need to fundamentally rethink your approach of the game.
Because the vast majority of content is neither town-motivated nor scum-motivated.
In a given game, a good 70-80% of any players' posts are going to be identical or near-identical regardless of alignment. It's finding the 20-30% that is the main part of the game.

If someone looks like they have zero town motivation in any of their posts, it is a surefire sign they are town.
If someone looks like they have zero scum motivation in any of their posts, it isn't as surefire a sign they are scum but it is something which you'll need to reconsider when that player is still alive past their expiration date.

[mastina]

And your right again, my perspective is from town (why do you think that is). Yet your perspective is from scum (thank you for admitting that). Why is your perspective not from town?

About that. Remember what I said in my opening post?

My view on the game is impossible to succinctly summarize, but basically I see it as a social game focusing largely on psychology, with some logistics/statistics, balancing possibilities versus probabilities.
One quirk I have is viewing every player simultaneously as town and scum. I view each possibility, and then I weigh them, to determine probability. Which makes more sense? I set guidelines. I'll see each player as town and scum in a given moment, by the balance of probability.

...An extension of this is that I don't think in just one perspective.

I think in

every

perspective.
I have to think of EVERY mathematical combination, and I do.
I run the math on literally every possible scumteam.
Inherent in this process, is that I have to think like scum, in order to determine how likely that scum pairing would be: "how likely would it be for this scumteam to act in the way we have seen them act in-thread?" And applied to every team. Then further entering the picture is the opposite side. "How likely would it be for this player to be town acting this way?" I literally think in every possibility.

So it's not that I think in terms of town.
Or think in terms of scum.
It's that I think in terms of

everything

. Literally everything. Not just one side. ALL sides. Literally every fucking single one of them.

[mastina]

Even if I was scum, my buddy isn't going to directly help push my wagon. Just sayin.

True enough, though it's not mutual...



Which reminds me. Now that it's over, I can share with you that I've known Alisae was scum in this game since March 16th. I suspected (and as of March 15th, knew) Grey was town in that same game. So literally from the

moment

D2 began, I have had a very recent encounter with Alisae as scum and Grey as town and that was and still is influencing my read.