Readlists - Opinions and Formats

[Ircher]

What's your opinion on giving readlists? Personally, I use them a lot as they give my stance on everyone fairly quickly.

Also, how do you guys format them? I like my colors, but most people don't like to.

This is the template I use:

Spoiler: Reads

Confirmed Town

(From my perspective):
Ircher - Role PM

Likely Town

Leaning Town

Null

Neutral

Leaning Scum

Likely Scum

[RadiantCowbells]

I wish people would stop copying Ranger's readlists.

I then wish Ranger herself would stop using it.

That is my dream.

[Ircher]

What's Ranger's read list look like?

[Heat]

I shouldn't have to make reads lists because everyone should just know what I'm thinking.

[Firebringer]

What's Ranger's read list look like?

This is what she does:

{Player 1, Player 2, Player 3}
{Player 4, Player 5}
{Player 6}
{Player 7, Player 8}

She puts players in blocks and goes town to scum, and doesn't always go into detail on this.

[RadiantCowbells]

What's Ranger's read list look like?

This is what she does:

{Player 1, Player 2, Player 3}
{Player 4, Player 5}
{Player 6}
{Player 7, Player 8}

She puts players in blocks and goes town to scum, and doesn't

ever

go into detail on this.

[zMuffinMan]

that's not a bad thing unless she never goes into any detail when asked. it's a good thing that people do that so that people can look at inconsistencies and ask about them

that said, give ranger a break. she's a newbie

people in general should be more forthcoming with their reads

[RadiantCowbells]

nope we're all here to make fun of her behind her back.

stop ruining the fun.

[Firebringer]

that said, give ranger a break. she's a newbie

She isn't a newbie.

[Ircher]

Well, I always give reasons in my readlists.

[Karnage]

I hate the color coded reads list. I find it hard to read.

[Ircher]

So, besides Ranger, what's the other opinions about readlists in general.

[Ircher]

I hate the color coded reads list. I find it hard to read.

I'm sorry, maybe you should try the dark theme, I'm personally fond of it.

[Davsto]

I'm fine with them in general but most of the time I dislike using them. It's not my style. Usually because I don't have reads on half the players for the first couple of days, and then by then I'm either dead or there are few enough players that it's hardly a big list so it's not a problem anymore.

[Cheetory6]

I like using scumpiles lately.
Ie: "Currently think scum is in this pile of players, discuss."
You have more chance of looking cool and right postgame that way.

[Marquis]

make the categories up as you go

[Marquis]

no but really. i find reading "nulltown" and "nullscum"-infected lists doesn't help me get a sense of where ppl are at. like when you confine urself to the same categories and/or don't accurately describe each division, it really doesn't solve a thing, for others' usage or for you trying to visualize where everyone definitively stands on your radar

creating new descriptive categories as needed then taking a step back to rearrange ppl based on the dynamic category changes helps imo. like sometimes it just doesn't feel right to sit two people next to each other in the same null category so you go ahead and make like three. (hint: this method tricks you into providing reasons eventually)

Spoiler: example of what i like to do

Marquis can you refresh my memory on who your town reads are again?

thanks for asking actually, it's been a while and this reminded me that i do have the time to at the very least sort a minimal-detail readslist

DEFINITELY TOWN

17. marquis
10. notscience
11. curiouskarmadog

TOWN

15. spiffeh
12. catboi

TOWN FOR TODAY (WON'T BOTHER CONSIDERING LYNCHING, BARRING MAJOR GAMESTATE THINGS)

4. pirate mollie
7. Davsto - literally just because fuck yall i'm not dealing with the whole potential "lynch what we don't understand" thing that might be going through the subconscious of some town players
13. Papa Zito
14. Starbuck -
18. Bins

NOT SURE, OR EFFECTIVELY NULL

1. Flameaxe - non-alignment indicative, but distracting, dickishness
2. mykonian replacing Blackberry - want to note that i liked BB's, like, one post? but then myko came in and honestly i haven't been attempting to read him much but i'll admit that mollie's scumread here makes me oddly tense, however irrational that is considering i don't even know for sure about my mollie read anymore
9. Nexus - ...i had thoughts on this slot. reminder to ISO again because i forget, but i definitely had -something- on this

TO BE SORTED, OR ACTUALLY NULL SO FAR

5. ChannelDelibird
8. AJ the Epic (i think this was replaced - help??)
16. scotmany12

MIGHT BE SCUM?? IDK IT'S RECK BUT MAYBE I GAVE HIM TOO MUCH FOCUS BECAUSE I DIDN'T EXPECT THE BUDDYING

6. xRECKONERx

I SCUMREAD BOTH PLAYERS IN THIS SLOT LIKE WHOA

3. MattP replacing StrangerCoug

if you have issues with my category division, this isn't meant to impress everyone. this is actually just me trying to keep my own record of in-the-moment opinions because it's been a while since i've really sunk my teeth into this.

actually, move myko up to "town for today". i liked blackberry enough to not want to deal with too much of that right now. gotta limit this now too

p.s.: the lowest six on that day 1 list contained all the scum! it helped! (reck was the only townie there, which is obv excusable)

[Plotinus]

I think it's okay that everyone has different styles for reads lists that is recognisably them. I like Ranger's style because she can elaborate on them if she wants to -- in a recent game i tried to guess why she had people in which pile in RVS and she was willing to engage with me at enough level of detail that it was obvious she wasn't just throwing names in random brackets and hoping nobody would ask her about them. And scum jumped on me for "why aren't you just writing her off like everybody else always writes her opinions off," which was interesting.

I like the colour coded style because it's easier to see where the town leans start and where the scumleans start and it makes it easier to show how confident you are in a read. If I'm using

#080

then somebody is as good as confirmed town but if I'm using

#0F0

then my read is less certain but still fairly confident and if it's more of a

#8C0

then i'm a lot less certain and once we get into

#CC0

territory then that's still a townlean but i'm not going to fight their lynch very hard if it comes to it because i really don't know.

I like goodmorning's style that she uses sometimes when she's ICing where she just says "I have 3 townreads" and doesn't say who they are because she gets more out of people trying to guess what her reads are than she would out of being forthcoming, and it's good for early day 1 when you're in a townleader position, when we hydraed together we were in a pseudo-innocent child position so we could afford to be cagey early on.

I like the really high effort readslists I see sometimes where someone (usually someone expecting to be nightkilled) goes through everybody's ISO and makes a strong towncase for their townreads and strong scum cases for their scum reads.

If your reads list is "everybody is null" or "everybody but me is scum" then you are not in the part of the game where you should be producing a readslist even if other people are producing them. If you only have reads on two or three players, then it's fine to just talk about your reads on those two or three players and try to get into conversations with your null reasons to try to sort them. It is also probably not the case that everybody but you is scum.

Sometimes I like to take a votecount and colour it in according to my feelings and then figure out whether my reads make sense for the game state as I understand it. This isn't really VCA, and I don't produce a readslist in this format outside of my hydra pt very often for some reason (I'm not really sure why), but it can alert me to situations where maybe my top three scumreads are also the top three leading wagons but it really doesn't make sense for them all to be scum because the energy of the game would be different if that were the case and then I can try to figure out who i'm scumreading incorrectly.

The players that I know well enough to have meta tells on them, it's usually a situation where if they do something then they're scum and if they haven't done it yet then they're either town or they just haven't done it yet, so my true read on them is in a permanent state of "town for now" until they do whatever the thing is. When I call someone "town for now" it's a way of saying null, but it means something like "they haven't done anything that bothers me yet, but i wouldn't expect them to do something that bothered me this early in the game, and they'll be an asset to the town if they are town, and I don't need to interact with them in any way to sort them, it'll be enough to just watch what they do and don't do, so I'd rather just work with them as town until they do the tiny thing i'm watching for."


I wouldn't like it if everybody did readslists in the One True Acceptable Mafia Scum Approved Reads List Format. I like that people's personalities show through in the way that they share their reads.


This post has too many words in it but i don't know how to fix that.

[Wisdom]

Town: {A, B, C, D}
Nulltown: {E, F}
Null: {G}
Nullscum: {H, I, J}
Scum: {K}

No explanations.

[kirroha]

What's the difference between null and neutral?

[zMuffinMan]

null sounds better (objectively)

[Davsto]

Also, not so much here, but I've seen some roles such as Survivor described as "neutral", so it helps avoid confusion for some.

[Dwlee99]

The fact that the poll says could care less instead of couldnt bothers me.
On topic though I really like ranger's way of doing reads lists and I actually used it in the game we played together.

[Cheery Dog]

I only ever use them as scum

[Kagami]

Readlists of any sort are important. You don't want Day 2 to roll around after a scumflip and have 4+ players who have never given a solid position on the flipped scummo.

They also compel town players to think about the entire playerlist, which can be very useful in preventing lurk-scum from staying under the radar.