Open 785: Secrets of the Anuket Topaz [Game over!]

[Something_Smart]

Yeet.

[Something_Smart]

I am not.

[Something_Smart]

Three players in this game.

[Something_Smart]

Frederick's page 13 is towny.

[Something_Smart]

Sure. I haven't said anything indicative of my alignment yet.

[Something_Smart]

Fredrick what are you even doing

Voting.

The man has a point.

[Something_Smart]

VOTE: Something_Smart

@MOD

I also thought Fred was voting Raya (based on the VC) but when he said he didn't I went back and ISO'd him and it seems he did switch his vote.

The vote was after the votecount...

[Something_Smart]

Why is no-one interested in playing this game?

One can only wonder.

What are your overall thoughts on the gamestate?

[Something_Smart]

Scum aren’t really fighting me for control of the gamestate, which means that either they’re happy for me to lead as I’m wrong somewhere, or that they’re just the inactive slots but that there’s also enough inactive town slots that the game feels dead

What is your case on RCE, in a nutshell?

[Something_Smart]

What about the replace-out is scum indicative?

[Something_Smart]

So RCE is town.

[Something_Smart]

It is purely because of the unvote.

[Something_Smart]

Producing AI content is such a drag.

(Yes I will, but it takes a while, especially when I replace in.)

[Something_Smart]

I don't know exactly how confident. More than I am in anyone else by far, and enough to vote probably anyone else to keep him from being killed today.

The reason is that 599 draws suspicion onto him in return for having a perfect alibi for being on the wagon. By unvoting, he's not revoking the suspicion-- it still looks like a potentially opportunistic vote-- but he is relinquishing the position on the wagon that was presumably very important to his survival as scum. To get back on the wagon he'd have to pretend to be unimpressed by Snowblaze's content and generate a new excuse, which will draw suspicion.

Also, like, he doesn't want to let up on Snowblaze as scum since he's likely on the chopping block if Snowblaze talks herself down. The unvote shows that he's actually invested in letting her give her defense, so either he's doing it as a play to look good, or he's just town. And being not the most charismatic player I would not expect him to try a reverse psychology play like that when he could go the more direct route of just remaining on and trying to get her hammered, which wouldn't have even made him look bad.

[Something_Smart]

This is actually suspicious. "Who on your wagon is scum?" then she says the counterwagon lol

But she has actual reasoning for it, so it's not a cop-out. And like I pointed out before, she's right that RCE's vote did look bad.

[Something_Smart]

S_S, chemist, RCE

I’d like it if some combination of you could vote snowblaze at this point to ensure she’s guillotined today

Why Snowblaze over Mohab?

[Something_Smart]

Wow there are a lot of nonvoters for so little time left.

I'll be around till deadline, don't worry.

[Something_Smart]

Sure.

VOTE: Snowblaze

Probably won't matter, though.

[Something_Smart]

It's not hammer. It's not even L-1.

[Something_Smart]

A townie who is actually confused on this point ought to, if not read the setup (because who does that?), then PM the mod.

I've never ever heard of a townie PM'ing the mod to ask what the setup is.

[Something_Smart]

Also hi Titus.

[Something_Smart]

I mean you're right that I wouldn't hear about it whenever it occurred.

Why didn't you just check the OP of the game in question?

[Something_Smart]

Yeah, that makes sense. I don't think this setup was unclear, though. I would guess they just didn't care enough to look at the mechanics (regardless of alignment).

[Something_Smart]

Sure. But do you really think they would have thought of THAT if they didn't even think to look at the setup?

[Something_Smart]

UNVOTE:

[Something_Smart]

I'm not against Mohab's slot dying; I am, however, against killing an empty slot.

[Something_Smart]

Don't forget this game uses plurality.

[Something_Smart]

Whichever wagon was more recently larger.

[Something_Smart]

huh? it's like the opposite of this no? which wagon reached the number of tied votes first

They are the same if the wagons became tied because of a vote. If they became tied because of an unvote, then it goes to the wagon that the person who unvoted was on.

[Something_Smart]

Why?

Honestly I don't know, it might just be a standard principle that I adhere to because I'm used to non-mountainous games where you need to get a claim first, but first of all replacement perspectives can be valuable, and second of all, lurkers are easy enough scum targets and it's a very easy scum tactic to try to force through an execution on a vacant slot before someone can replace in and turn it around. The only thing you really gain from that is you don't have to wait for a replacement to join and read up, but that's really just an out-of-game thing.

Also, Mohab is extremely LHF-y and while LHF can be scum that means we won't get a lot out of the flip (since scum probably won't go out of their way to save them) and if we wait for someone to replace in and do some real interactions and then we kill them and they flip scum, that's much better.

[Something_Smart]

I don't believe in slips.

Townslips definitely exist, whether or not you believe in them.

[Something_Smart]

What?

[Something_Smart]

Sure but things can be faked.

Yes.

The accuracy of townslips is no greater than random.

Does not follow from the above.

The accuracy of townslips is most certainly greater than random. It's not PERFECT, but it is evidence.

[Something_Smart]

@S_S: instinct, probably nothing meaningful.

No I mean, I don't even know what you're trying to say. I'm not contributing to the theory that you're scum? Why would I be doing that?

[Something_Smart]

Ah, I see.

I respect Titus as a player, but I generally don't hold her theories in very high regard. She and I have an extremely different way of approaching the game.

This particular theory suggests one possible explanation for events but doesn't really give any evidence to overcome that explanation's low prior. And I individually townread both you and Frederick, so my priors are even lower.

[Something_Smart]

I was waiting to see the VC, but we have like 2 hours left and nsg said she wouldn't extend so

VOTE: Mohab

[Something_Smart]

Does it? I wasn't counting the wagons.

[Something_Smart]

Good response.

[Something_Smart]

And yet you continue to vote there @S_S

I still prefer her to Snowblaze.

[Something_Smart]

Something_Smart when you get here let me know how you feel about Almo

~Eve

He sure is a player in this game.

[Something_Smart]

Sorry, I've had a very busy weekend. I will reread some of the pages around the rise of the Mohab wagon and get back to you with a better answer.

[Something_Smart]

This is a game.

I did the reread I was talking about and got absolutely nothing from it. A50 was suspecting Snowblaze before the Mohab wagon was a thing, but it's not like his reasoning for staying off the Mohab wagon was particularly good.

[Something_Smart]

Something Smart changing from Snowblaze to Mae needs explaination.

I feel like it's pretty clear from my ISO? I voted Snowblaze because Menalque implored me to and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. Then Snowblaze did towny things, so I unvoted, and then it was almost deadline so I voted Mohab.

[Something_Smart]

It is really hard to get invested in the game when almost all of the players I had reads on are now confirmed.

[Something_Smart]

In my opinion, we should just execute the scummiest player regardless of which wagon they were on.

Yes but also no but also why are you scumreading me.

[Something_Smart]

I think I contributed a decent amount, including eventually landing on a scum wagon, for being a very late replacement.

The reason we shouldn't ignore wagon positioning is that this is a game with significant consequences for scum if scum die early. While bussing isn't possibly it's not something that scum would do lightly and it's something that they likely would look for excuses to avoid-- so the people who gave an excuse to never vote Mohab should look the worst, associative-wise, and the ones who should look the best are the ones who gave an excuse to not vote Mohab, but then still did.

(This is also a reason that I think I should be more townread-- I was voting Snowblaze at Menalque's request and then voluntarily left that wagon and joined Mohab's at Snowblaze's own request when I could have easily stayed on the Snowblaze wagon and refused to listen to her.)

[Something_Smart]

Oh after reading Eevee's post I realized I made a typo, let me belatedly EBWOP that

While bussing isn't

impossible

it's not something that scum would do lightly

[Something_Smart]

The swap thing is silly. All doors have equal probability once one of the doors is shown to have a goat. All the problem shows is if the thinker has rigid thinking or if they are open to changing their mind. Arguably it doesn't show that if you truly understand basic probability. I detest that problem because people think they are smarter than they are if they agree with the leading question the asker wants.

Please tell me I'm grossly misinterpreting this post

[Something_Smart]

Frederick continuing his legacy of terrible takes.

[Something_Smart]

Scum Menalque is most certainly capable of making those posts. Holden very likely had that idea before he got his role PM. As for RCE, well I think those specific reasons are pretty bad, but I do think he's town for other reasons.

I should also think that scum-A50 would know that his whole "woe is me" shtick is going to make people like him even less.

[Something_Smart]

Oh, if you do go me -> A50 then my ego solve partner is definitely S_S > RCE for the hatchet on fredrick above

I will call out bad takes if and only if I think they are actually bad takes, regardless of my alignment, and you know that.

[Something_Smart]

Ydrasse/me seems patently crazy.

[Something_Smart]

A bus is possible, but a double bus seems legitimately insane.

[Something_Smart]

gylo

This makes me uncomfortable

[Something_Smart]

I mean if there's a scum execution at any point in the future we just win.

[Something_Smart]

EV is expected value, or the odds of town winning with random decisions.

Why is his math still wrong? He initially forgot that the scum escape happened at all.

[Something_Smart]

Not to mention that self-votes are +scum like always.

Since when?

[Something_Smart]

So... having a scumread?

[Something_Smart]

No. If you have a scumread, suspicion doesn't just fall on a player as a result.

Then I don't understand what the difference is. If you scumread a player, you want suspicion to fall on them, no? What is the town way of handling that situation that you think is different?

[Something_Smart]

I never said it was insane for scum to bus, I said a double bus was insane. Because the instant the redflip hits the game goes completely out of scum's hands and they have no idea if people are going to conclude that bussing was likely. So if you double bus, you're essentially forcing that outcome, and then you have to survive two executions where five conftown players bounce ideas off of each other and you basically don't get to participate.

Normally the primary reason for bussing is to maintain control over the gamestate, but all of scum's control over the gamestate is gone if they lose a member in the first two days. So that leaves the only reason to bus is to look town or not look suspicious, but given that they have to confirm people, they can just confirm almost everyone on the wagon and then the majority of unconfirmed players are ones who didn't vote flipped scum.

[Something_Smart]

Also, why did this make you uncomfortable?

I don't know lol

[Something_Smart]

And also, it's way way better for scum if Mohab dies D2 rather than D1. Like instead of Snowblaze being conftown, Snowblaze is dead, and scum get to escape after just one more execution, and they can do the same trick of confirming on-wagon so it's not like town can just plow through the offwagon people safely. (Plus there's always the chance that they second-guess themselves and try to kill the unconfirmed players on the wagon.)

[Something_Smart]

I feel like there's an argument to be made that this^ is against the rule about harming your performance in the current game to gain an advantage in future games... (there is such a rule, right?)

Though this is neither the time nor the place to discuss that. It just annoys me because it encourages a culture of secrecy and competitiveness, like, beyond the scope of the game itself.

[Something_Smart]

I don’t think not outing a tell on another player to allow you to reliably discern their alignment in the future is like a trust tell at all really and I think the idea of “you should always out your tells” is flawed

At most I’m hurting myself very minutely here through not outing, but I doubt me outing it changed whether I get guillotined today or ydrasse does

Well yeah, you are only harming yourself if it actually benefits you to out it which would basically be if anyone wanted you to out it and thought they could evaluate either you or Ydrasse better as a result.

If it's a meta tell, I, having no meta with Ydrasse, have no interest in it, since I have no way to judge its validity. But I suppose others might.

[Something_Smart]

Right only if I’m right then so long as people listen to me and titus’ VCA it doesn’t matter if I keep the advantage for the future by not telling her what it is, because she still gets flipped tomorrow and town wins

Understood.

[Something_Smart]

Meh. I've got nothing on either one of you.

How confident are you in Ydrasse?

[Something_Smart]

VOTE: Ydrasse

[Something_Smart]

the way s_s ignored me asking for some reads just to turn around and vote me...

I missed it. My bad.

[Something_Smart]

My readlist is:
RCE
Menalque
Everyone else

[Something_Smart]

Menalque is angling for a loss if he's scum here by putting all his eggs in one basket when he has to survive two more days.

Obviously he'll argue against dying tomorrow if Ydrasse flips town, but I expect that plea to fall on deaf ears because they usually do.

If he's scum he doesn't have a plan to win, unless his plan is to specifically pocket people who think like me by playing 4d chess.

[Something_Smart]

what about your RCE read? anything on top of the reasons from yesterday?

Mostly yesterday stuff but 1353 is pretty good as well

[Something_Smart]

VOTE: Something_Smart

I hypothesize that Something_Smart is in the mafia with Montosh.

Can we get a wagon here? That would be a wagon I'd actually be happy with. Already two votes. 2 days left to make it happen

Why? Just because you're "starting to like the idea of 1 scum on each wagon"?

[Something_Smart]

I sorted you as uncaring town rather than scum but I'm starting to think otherwise. That read was influenced by me believing that both scum were on the snow wagon. Now I'm not as attached to that idea so I believe that there's a good chance of you being scum.

Okay but this doesn't address why you now think there's one scum on each wagon...

[Something_Smart]

Also I feel like scum would know that the snow wagon is the more obvious choice to hunt within in this set-up. So if they were both on it why only leave 4 unconfirmed on it? That would make it a 50% random chance of hitting scum if town decided to hunt exclusively on the counter wagon.

There were only 5 on it to begin with, and Frederick was never getting executed anyway...

[Something_Smart]

Like that's a weak argument. Saying "I think it's wrong to say scum couldn't have bussed" is also a weak argument, because nobody ever said that, just that it's possible scum didn't bus.

[Something_Smart]

Look at my vote. I'm not. But there's a difference between treating something as a possibility and treating it as a foregone conclusion.

The opposite of "there definitely is one scum on each wagon" is not "there definitely isn't one scum on each wagon." I do not have to prove the latter, to disprove the former. I don't especially believe either one at the moment, and I feel like you shouldn't either. And your scumread on me seems entirely predicated on the assumption that there is one scum on the wagon, which you don't really have support for.

[Something_Smart]

What was scummy about my play?

[Something_Smart]

...you haven't given any reasons why I'm scum. How can I refute them?

[Something_Smart]

That's just a bunch of descriptions of my play. There's nothing in there relating any of it to my alignment or explaining why it's more likely to come from one alignment than the other.

[Something_Smart]

That stuff is easy to do as town, too. What makes you think that my motivation to do harder things depends on my alignment?

[Something_Smart]

I was in an open position to move my vote around as needed... and I ended up voting scum. You yourself admit that I didn't need to since I didn't lock myself into any particular vote (something I rarely do as any alignment but am way more likely to do as scum, FYI), so I could have easily voted Snowblaze instead; in fact I WAS voting Snowblaze and I chose to reevaluate and switch to Mohab because I thought Snowblaze was being towny.

And then you circle it back around to the one scum on each wagon bit. I know you think that, I already know you don't have a good reason to think it. You said I was scummy, so I'm asking for reasons why I'm scummy, regardless of the VCA.

[Something_Smart]

I'm having a very hard time seeing this being in good faith. It's really surface level and it feels like you're using other people's VCA reasoning as a crutch while insisting the read is your own.

VOTE: Raya

[Something_Smart]

This might just be frustration but like can someone else weigh in on this? What she's saying here makes no sense, right?

[Something_Smart]

Or you switched your vote because you realized Mae was going down and you decided to bus to get town-cred.

Where is the evidence that Mohab was going down? Snowblaze was ahead before I voted, iirc.

[Something_Smart]

Why are raya and montosh cleared, but moreso montosh?

Echoing the Raya question. I feel like people have just been writing Raya off as town for ?? reason.

[Something_Smart]

(5) I think this paragraph is unfinished

lmao

maybe it was supposed to be "I don't know where the

sentence should end

"

[Something_Smart]

Sure, if I thought the towncred was worth getting five townies confirmed.

As I've said multiple times I wouldn't expect scum to put their eggs into the basket of "town will think scum wouldn't bus" because bussing accusations are common even in situations where bussing really does make no sense (and it does make some sense here).

[Something_Smart]

She literally just unvoted lol

Raya can you talk to me about Ydrasse? It seems like the source for you saying you share an alignment with her was a Snowblaze post saying that she didn't think there would be one on Mohab and one off, and that's why she thought you and Ydrasse were the same alignment, but obviously that logic can't hold now if you think one-on one-off is likely. So why do you townread Ydrasse?

[Something_Smart]

Actually you're right. That's a flaw in my logic I missed. I guess I can no longer clear ydrasse for that reason.

Why did you accept that logic to begin with? Just because it came from conftown?

[Something_Smart]

I got nothing.

I guess I'm gonna have to read Menalque's case but I have a very complicated relationship with wallpost cases and by complicated I mean I hate them.

[Something_Smart]

(of course by the time we know one of the wagons is on scum the game is probably over, but still)

Not if one of them flees.

[Something_Smart]

Like how often does a mislynching wagon have all town on it?

Way more often than a lot of people think.

[Something_Smart]

So you think what I'm saying here is not true?

I disagree with your logic, yes. There's no rule saying that at least one scum has to be on every town execution wagon. Even if in a vacuum every town wagon is likely to have at least one scum on it, that changes when the majority of the wagon is conftown.

[Something_Smart]

I'm here.

I still feel like Menalque is probably town and well if he isn't either he flees and we get a shitton of info or he stays and we have another chance to kill him.

VOTE: Ydrasse

[Something_Smart]

Got poked while I was sleeping...

@S_S, if Menalque is scum and frees, who is his partner? What sort of information do we get? Also why do you think it’s Ydrasse?

~Eva

I would imagine that answering this is a bad idea, because it just tells him whether or not to flee if he's scum. I don't think he is scum, but I think we shouldn't really talk about who exactly we should kill depending on who flees, because that will just tell scum who should flee. But there's plenty of information regarding him being wagoned that I would imagine will tell us a lot once we see him go red.

Re: Ydrasse, it's partially that I think Menalque is town and trust his read, partially that I still have some suspicion on Raya (her reactions yesterday lessened it, but her interactions with me were still pretty gross) even though there's no way she would get executed today but Ydrasse makes sense as her partner, and partially process of elimination.

I'm here.

I still feel like Menalque is probably town and well if he isn't either he flees and we get a shitton of info or he stays and we have another chance to kill him.

VOTE: Ydrasse

How are we supposed to differentiate between the situations where he is town and isn't the escapee and the situation where he isn't town and isn't the escapee?

I mean, that depends on who we kill today and who does flee and who gets NK'd. Again, we should cross that bridge when we come to it, and not tell scum what to do during the night.

[Something_Smart]

but... doesn't me/raya go against what you said about a double bus?

Ye you right, my thoughts are pretty jumbled right now ngl. Somebody suggested you two as a possible team and I certainly didn't do my homework there lol.

UNVOTE:

Gonna look into Raya a bit I guess. Probably a moot point since there doesn't seem to be nearly enough support to kill her.

[Something_Smart]

also how is there no way that raya would get executed today?

because nobody is voting her and nobody has expressed an interest in voting her...

[Something_Smart]

maybe i'm biased here because the vote is on me but i don't see the like... coherency in pushing on me here except that i am in the preferred poe for the day and it fits this scenario which doesn't like... work. :v

There's no coherency, really. In a game with so many conftowns I don't have to pull much weight in solving, I just have to make sure I'm decently townread, which I think I am?

I don't know why Snowblaze and A50 are voting me honestly, I should probably go back and look and engage them on that.

[Something_Smart]

Oh yeah that's right I should actually read A50's wall

[Something_Smart]

I am assuming AT LEAST one scum bus'd and one didn't.

Why are you assuming this?

[Something_Smart]

Dammit. Sorry Menalque I tried.

[Something_Smart]

how.