A couple of new scumtells

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A couple of new scumtells

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Mon Mar 21, 2016 3:47 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

Not sure if there's been this sort of theory post in here for a while. There are a few odd things that have happened in games that I've played, that have formed enough of a pattern to be alignment-indicative. Here they are:

If a player claims to have used a Cop investigation (or equivalent) on a claimed Miller (or claimed Godfather), they are probably scum, and quite possibly have an investigative ability.
I've seen this twice. Here's Seanald claiming to have investigated me (a Town Godfather; that game was mechanically weird) in Marketplace Mafia II. He was a Mafia Cop. (Haylen also did this in Mastin's Mafia, but the game was eaten by tigers; I guess this at least gave her an excuse to forget her target was a Miller. She was a Mafia Cop, too.)

It's easy to see why scum would do this. In a game where Mafia come into possession of a Cop shot, most likely either it's a Smalltown-style game (in which everyone would know that the Cop had the shot and would be waiting for an investigation), or, as in Mastin's Mafia, it's a clue from the mod that Cop is a safe claim, and the Mafia often claims it as a result (in Mastin's Mafia,
both
scum claimed Cop as a sort of powerbus). However, making up Cop results is dangerous for the scum (either you implicate yourself or you give away information), so burning the shot on a useless target is a kind-of obvious thing to do. A scum who is actually a Cop, as opposed to a scum who has fakeclaimed Cop but actually has a different role, will typically use their ability on the target they claim to have used it on, to protect themselves from being caught by Tracker and Follower-style roles.

This is also a more likely mistake to happen from scum than from town (unless, possibly, it's a player who only just replaced in). A Town Cop tends to be very aware of Miller claims, as they're somewhat relevant to their dayplay and highly relevant to their nightplay. For a scum Cop, this information is much less relevant, so forgetting it is more likely.

(One possible flaw in this theory: Seanald was aware that I was a Town Godfather and investigated me anyway in the hope that I wouldn't activate it (?). The game was one in which scum didn't have full information on the members of their faction, and benefited from determining the other members. So the action seems equally inexplicable as town and scum, but it did come from scum in this case.)

If there is apparently a simple explanation of things that have happened in the game, but someone insists on coming up with a much more complex theory to explain it, then a) they are probably scum, b) the thing in question actually
does
have a complex explanation.
I've seen this happen in numerous games. I first noticed it happen in an offsite game, where I was the scum in question, and came up with a complicated theory to explain the dayplay (that a particular player was powerbussed by some of their scumbuddies, and defended by others), where the simple explanation was just a case of townies misreading players. The reason I'd come up with the explanation is that it had actually happened; I just swapped out names. I was townread for it at the time, but I'm now pretty certain this is incorrect; anyone coming up with a really bizarre theory is probably scum (unless it's a Mind Screw or similarly complex game). The game that really convinced me of this was Uncommon Mafia; when I replaced in, I (as town) was theorizing an "inadvertent" near-Mountainous setup (one with a bunch of power roles but which were almost all useless), and the other players were coming up with crazy theories involving multiple scumteams. Turns out there was only one other townie left and I was in a basically unwinnable situation (the only way I could have won would have been if both other scumteams cooperated to give me the win).

The reason is that when something truly weird does happen, scum are normally going to be the first to realise that something is wrong; they have a lot more information than town does (most notably, the motivations of their scumbuddies). Meanwhile, there's likely to be a relatively simple explanation that still fits from town's point of view, just by chance; town rarely have enough information to make the complicated explanation the only available one, and many of the incorrect explanations will be simpler. Note that the explanation that scum give is not necessarily correct (they tend to at least swap out names and often entire events in order to fit the narrative they're trying to push), but typically the true explanation will be equally complex. Scum, from their superior-information point of view, often don't notice the simple explanation that town would see and thus end up dropping this tell.
scum
· scam · seam · team · term · tern · torn ·
town
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Mon Mar 21, 2016 5:21 pm

Post by Antihero »

using a cop investigation on a claimed miller is so terrible so yeah that would probably be autolynch for me

i don't know if i agree w/ your second thing. it seems like personality plays a big role in that.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Mon Mar 21, 2016 5:21 pm

Post by Killthestory »

I don't believe in scumtells. I believe in perceiving how someone acts and relating it to your past experiences with them and their personality, or inferring how they act in real life and using that to determine if they're acting off or not.

Scumtells generate a sort of narrow minded way of thinking of which causes players to have incorrect scumreads since you're evulating a player based on past players. This is relative to comparing someone's personality to someone else's and saying whether they're smart. There's many different kinds of intellects, you just have to know how to find it without using a relative specifimen to compare said person to.
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Mon Mar 21, 2016 5:23 pm

Post by Antihero »

In post 0, callforjudgement wrote:However, making up Cop results is dangerous for the scum (either you implicate yourself or you give away information), so burning the shot on a useless target is a kind-of obvious thing to do.

claiming a result on the nk is another thing
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Tue Mar 22, 2016 3:14 am

Post by GuyInFreezer »

In post 1, Antihero wrote:using a cop investigation on a claimed miller is so terrible so yeah that would probably be autolynch for me

i don't know if i agree w/ your second thing. it seems like personality plays a big role in that.

Actually I've seen a town cop investigating a claimed miller before. That was hilarious.
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Tue Mar 22, 2016 10:03 am

Post by ZZZX »

In post 0, callforjudgement wrote:If there is apparently a simple explanation of things that have happened in the game, but someone insists on coming up with a much more complex theory to explain it, then a) they are probably scum, b) the thing in question actually does have a complex explanation.

Or you are playing with a planny-kindaguy (read: me) who loves to go through every possiblity
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Tue Mar 22, 2016 10:30 am

Post by callforjudgement »

@ZZZX: But you tend to go through the simple ones first/as well, right?

@GuyInFreezer: Link? What was their justification?
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Tue Mar 22, 2016 4:48 pm

Post by GuyInFreezer »

Lemme find the link but I think the justification was not reading the game closely enough.
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Tue Mar 22, 2016 4:53 pm

Post by GuyInFreezer »

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 2#p5199702

The aforementioned hilarity starts here.
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"who the fuck fakeclaims Tracker like that
WHO THE FUCK DOES THAT"
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Tue Mar 22, 2016 5:15 pm

Post by callforjudgement »

The cop scanned a claimed Miller, and got a
Town
result? This is gold. (At least it doesn't point nearly as strongly that the Cop is scum, as it would if they got a scum result. The fact that they were an unrevealed Innocent Child also works to put some sort of limit on the madness.)
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Tue Mar 22, 2016 5:18 pm

Post by GuyInFreezer »

The best part is that had she read the game a bit more closely, she probably would've scanned scum N1.
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"I used to think you had this elegant-trolly, minimalist playstyle. Then I realized the playstyle is ~Lazy~
The true enlightenment was realizing that they are the same thing."
~fferyllt

"who the fuck fakeclaims Tracker like that
WHO THE FUCK DOES THAT"
~Alisae
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