Scum Hunting - Why do I suck at it?

[pieguyn]

1.

As well as that, seriously - analyse the fucking nightkill.

this, this, this, so much this. it fucks up everything if you have amazing reads and then can't do anything to push them because you get killed and everyone ignores it. analyzing kills and taking their reads into account is the best thing you can do to prevent this from happening.

2. another big one because I've seen this a lot: "misrep" is, by definition, a

scum-exclusive

term, and it means that someone is

deliberately

pushing false information in a situation where they should be situationally aware of it, and obviously so. do not use "misrep" unless you have reason to believe someone is being disingenuous about it. about 90% of the time, what you're seeing is someone just misinterpreting or misreading something, regardless of what their alignment is, and trying to clarify it before immediately calling it a misrep will help wonders. anyone who tries to claim that town can "accidentally misrep" something is using the term incorrectly (and potentially scum using it as an easy way to discredit).

3.

DO NOT MAKE 500 POSTS ON DAY 1.

seriously, just don't. if you can do this, you should be able to get everything else down fine. a lot of the really active players I've seen who are good at scum hunting are more than capable of getting the same accuracy with 80% less posts.

4. analyze motivation. figure out what scum would have to gain vs. lose by doing what people are doing in the game, and whether it makes sense that town would push what people are doing in the game.

5. prioritize endgame play. that is usually when alignments are the most obvious, since the scum vs. town wincon becomes more mutually exclusive the later you get in the game.

#3 is easily the most relevant point here. or I might just be tired of spamfest D1s where people waste 100 pages accomplishing a grand total of nothing /hide

[Ankamius]

More like don't spam posts in general. It's just as awful on day 5 as it is on day 1 and it's never productive. If you have 10x the posts of someone who's reasonably active that isn't only posting huge walls, then you're posting too much. Stop. High post rates create just as much apathy as low post rates. Lurking is dead null in those situations.

As an addition to the night kill analysis thing too; if you're analyzing nightkills and at least one of them just makes no sense whatsoever, then you need to reset because you're definitely off base somewhere.

[Zachrulez]

Really when you post in a game you should really minimize repeating points. If rehashing is all you can think to post, then don't. Wait until you have something new to add.

[Yosarian2]

Another good tip is process of elimination.

Look for players who are doing things that a scum just wouldn't want to do. Not in a "scum wouldn't do that because it would look scummy" WIFOM sense (I never buy that argument, personally), but "scum wouldn't do that because it hurts their odds of winning the game" or "I can't imagine ever doing THAT as scum, but I could imagine doing it as town." When you see that, put that person into the catagory of "leaning town" and then lynch someone else.

One big tip, for process of elimination and in general, is to make a list of everyone in the game and try to get some kind of a read on every one of them. When you do that, you'll notice that some people haven't done anything noteworthy, or are lurking, or feel really null for some reason. Those people are very often scum, since "not being noticed" is a key scum strategy; go after them, at least until they actually do something.

[Vampirate]

I'm going to add one thing.

Learn when to take a mental break from the game. This doesn't mean lurk and not post.

However sometimes your mind needs a bit of a reset for whatever reason. Like go out for a walk, watch a movie etc. I think this could help in clearing your thoughts and make them more organized.

Not sure how good this is but there you go.

[T-Bone]

Lynch from the top percentage of posters in the game until post volume becomes more manageable or we as a mafia playing site policy lynch that bad habit out of existence.

[Elbirn]

How to be good at mafia 101 with Professor Me

1. Listen to your gut because it's always right. Your brain is but a tool of the Devils we call scum, and they will manipulate it. Only your gut instinct knows who scum is. Fake a guilty on that person. Enjoy victory pancakes The End

[Varsoon]

Came here looking for some good advice, myself. I can always polish up on my game.

The advice given here is solid. I'll try to be brief with my two cents;
-Never clear anyone in your head. Only the mod can clear players as town.
-Don't second-guess yourself. Oft-times, your first impression is the best impression.
-Stick to your guns--don't give up on a read just because others decry it. Scum hunt in packs, Arisen.
-Find inconsistencies. Chips in the facade will allow you to break down scum.
-Study what confirmed town have said. This especially means the dead townies. They were killed for a reason.
-Do not give up. You can always win.

Stylistically?
-Do not concern yourself with looking town. Be genuine, even if it means death.
-Answer when asked, but don't sweat the small stuff.
-Be cool.

I hope this helps someone out there.

[kuribo]

-Do not concern yourself with looking town. Be genuine, even if it means death.

People give the antagonistic style a lot of crap (and rightfully so because it can make the game unenjoyable) but pure, unadulterated anger / frustration are usually seen as town for this very reason--- it's genuine.

Very few folks can get away with credibly feigning those emotions. At least when faced with someone who's good at reading emotion. You'll always have some dipshit saying "lol fake anger" even though the other person is fervently attempting to ACTUALLY KILL THEM WITH THEIR FUCKING MINDS.

[T S O]

that was always our relationship actually

[kuribo]

that was always our relationship actually

yeah it pisses me off

I can't remember if you're in the Nosebleed Club or not though (Players that pissed me off so much I literally started bleeding profusely)

mollie and majiffy definitely are in it, but I forget who else. In fact, Majiffy's also probably the only person to piss me off so badly that I wrote his name on my body. I woke up one morning hungover to fuck, covered in my own blood, with "FUCK MAJIFFY" written on the back of my hand

[pirate mollie]

oh kuriboooo

you bring up the oldest things! I am glad we have kissed and made up tho.

@ op - personally i feel like you can have the best reads in the world but they don't mean dick if you are incapable of working worth your townreads. I feel like town wins as a team and loses as a team and I feel like sometimes so many pple lose sight of this cos they wanna be DAH #1 TOP SCUMHUNTER OF ALL TIME.

another important skill that I feel like gets overlooked is differentiating between town flail and scum flail. <---- I feel like this is the most important town skill to have.

on scumhunting tho I guess I can say this: try to engage your scumreads in a way that gets other players to see what YOU see. pple are much more likely to wagon some1 if they feel that they have come to their conclusion on their own.

also the whole purpose of scumhunting is to et pple to reveal what they don't want to. sometimes direct assault doesn't always work (KURIBO BEING THE EXCEPTION) so try other ways like joking, flirting, doing things that disarms them so that they will let down their guard. it makes the game more fun IMO.

[quadz08]

I woke up one morning hungover to fuck, covered in my own blood, with "FUCK MAJIFFY" written on the back of my hand

jesus christ