Large Normal 212: Korts' Geriatrics - Game Over @1831

[Axelrod]

/confirm

[Axelrod]

Hey everybody. Looking forward to this. Apparently I haven't played a game here in 2 years! I find it amusing that 10 posts in a day is actually considered restrictive now.

Vote: hitogoroshi

some rule about 3rd on a wagon or something.

[Axelrod]

THE GREAT CONFIRMATION MYSTERY - 2018!

[Axelrod]

So, what we're saying is, the two guys who didn't confirm in the thread, but the mod. said were confirmed actually confirmed in the scum PT, yes?

I'm almost ready to actually believe that, just because both of them have also been off just posting in the thread. I agree with everything Magna is saying here:

This? Pretty unremarkable.

So nothing oddball at all to you of him confirming in thread after Korts had said all confirms are in (signifying he had not read that post) but then said his vote on KMD was not RVS (signifying that he had read KMD's posts to make a "serious" vote)?

Yeah maybe he's joking and all about it not being RVS ... still doesn't explain why he confirmed in thread. Given you confirmed via PM I'd have thought that would have resonated with you as strange since you didn't confirm after Day 1 started.

It's just strange.

And Pine's attempt to explain it by saying "oh, I was asking the mod. a question anyway so I just confirmed in the PM" was also strange. Especially since the question was apparently something like "How much are you, the mod. going to police bad behavior in the game?" Plus, he's being abrasive.

I mean, it's thin, but it's D1 with less than 100 posts. I could vote for Eddie, but given he's already at L-2, I don't think I'm going to just yet.

Unvote:

Vote: Pine

[Axelrod]

If I squint I can see that maybe Eddie is saying that his /confirm post was the joke.

The problem is the way he immediately followed it up with the "vote: kmd this is not a joke" post kind of dilutes and confuses the effect, if that's what he was going for. Also, it doesn't/didn't actually answer the question of "how did he confirm" either.

[Axelrod]

Why don't you like Insanity? If I was going to make a "way too early to make these kind of conclusions" list, he'd be one of my top for Town.

[Axelrod]

I mean, he's even going after Eddie, who you think is scum? Are you reading him as bussing, this early?

[Axelrod]

I think I'm going to enjoy this game. As long as people can refrain from the personal attacks, there's some fun stuff going on.

First, questions to me:

Why don't you like Insanity? If I was going to make a "way too early to make these kind of conclusions" list, he'd be one of my top for Town.

Um, whut?

Okay, so, you saw the "way too early to make these kind of conclusions" part, right?

That aside, considering he's only got a very few posts, I like the mindset he's showing in just those few posts. I agreed with his assessment of Pine in #55 (that Pine's responses seemed a bit over-the-top), and his question to Chamber felt like it was coming from a scum-hunting mindset. And I liked his engagement with Eddie in #65. That was a lot better than most people at least to that point.

I'm with Pine that the wagon on Eddie over the confirmation thing is silly.

Don't like Axel's Pine vote or post 67. Looks like he's trying way too hard to explain it away.

UNVOTE: Old Man
VOTE: Axelrod

Sup. Who else besides Pine & Eddie do you not like?

I don't have strong feelings about anyone yet. Chamber feels a little dodgy right now, mainly because I can't see where he's coming from on several of his posts. I asked him why he had Insanity listed in his "top-3 scum list" and his response started with: "You being scum is entirely dependent on Eddie being scum" which was a non-sequitur. Then his explanation about Insanity was the complete opposite of how I felt. And him having Eddie and Insanity grouped together seemed odd also. Chamber has a bunch of posts, but none that have really resonated with me as "Townie!"

Axelrod: What pings you so much about Eddie's kmd vote joke thing? It looked like a normal rvs vote to me, so I'm not following your confusion over it, let alone the SR from it (his attitude sucks though). What else has Eddie done that pings you? Do you think everyone that is on his wagon are town? Do you agree that youre sheeping other's arguments against Eddie (I haven't seen you mention Pine as scum)?

So, you may be the one who's a little confused here. I don't think Eddie's vote on Kmd was a joke. I think his "joke" was his original "/confirm" post. When Eddie first posted, he had accumulated 4 votes, all of them RVS votes based on nothing (except Magna's joking original post about how Eddie hadn't confirmed in the thread but the Mod. said he had confirmed). So, one way to read that was Eddie had 4 votes because he hadn't confirmed in the thread. Given that, I can see how posting "/confirm" in his first post of the game, well after everything had already started, was meant as a joke. I actually have no problem with that.

The joke was made unclear, however, by the fact that he

immediately

posted a vote for KMD afterwards and said it wasn't a RVS vote. I think this unclearness is self-evident from the fact that people are still saying that they thought his vote for KMD was the joke (or was a RVS vote even when he explicitly said it wasn't). I think his vote for KMD was serious, and was because KMD had jumped 4th on his wagon. i.e. it was ~OMGUS. I almost don't have a problem with that either, just because 4 votes is a lot to pile on someone with no basis whatsoever.

The thing about Eddie right now though, is that he's not explaining himself and being super-obstinate. He's been asked questions he's ignored and some he's deliberately refused to answer, and kind of justified it with "I'm just sitting back and watching for now, and I'm going to wait until later to say anything." Which isn't really reasonable. One way to read that is: he's accumulated heat (rightly or wrongly), and so now he's trying to stay low and not post anything, hoping the pressure will just go away as other people talk more and draw it away. And that's kind of scummy. The other possibility is that he's just super-annoyed at a wagon that got up to 6 votes for what he feels is no reason whatsoever, so now he's going to be contrary. I could see some of that. I'd probably ignore the first 4 votes on me also (except he didn't completely ignore them - he votes KMD for one of them). But the last two votes weren't random RVS votes. So he ought to at the very least have a response to those. Plus, some people (myself included) who aren't even voting him, have at least commented about him, and he's ignoring them also. The only one he engaged with even a little was Magna, basically to insult him.

That's kind of where I am with him right now. I'm waiting to see what he says when he deems it time to actually post something significant. Then we'll go from there I guess.

Of the people voting for him, I have no problems with Magna, not for the RVS vote, nor for sticking with it after Eddie got obstinate. The same is true for Insanity. Hito has already moved his vote. KMD has kept it on, but it's still early and I don't care too much if he hasn't found a better place to put it yet. PJ's vote was...okay? I'm not crazy about putting a 5th vote on someone for relatively weak reasons, but it was/is super early, and you don't need much of a reason to vote anyone at this stage. I like Chamber's vote the least, as I think if you're going to put someone to L-2, which is basically claim-range, you ought to have stronger points and be pushing harder.

I'm not liking Axelrod.

It's just strange.

And Pine's attempt to explain it by saying "oh, I was asking the mod. a question anyway so I just confirmed in the PM" was also strange. Especially since the question was apparently something like "How much are you, the mod. going to police bad behavior in the game?" Plus, he's being abrasive.

I mean, it's thin, but it's D1 with less than 100 posts. I could vote for Eddie, but given he's already at L-2, I don't think I'm going to just yet.

Unvote:

Vote: Pine

What do you make of the fact that Korts clarified the rule in 45? Does that make it more plausible that Pine did ask that question?

Eh, maybe? I hadn't thought about that before. My read of it in the thread was that Korts was responding to some testy posting that was already happening in game, and he wanted to cut that **** off at the pass. Not that he was responding to Pine's concerns.

I still think it's a little strange that Pine would be asking the mod. that kind of question anyway. At least then. Like, if I had that kind of concern, seems like something you would have PM'd the mod. about

before

you even joined the game.

Do you think Eddie is more likely to be scum that Pine?

I don't have a strong feeling about it. I'm going to say "no." Eddie hasn't said enough yet.

Mentioning that Eddie is specifically at L-2 makes seems like you are conscious of not voting him to avoid drawing attention to yourself by putting someone at L-1.

I was very conscious of the fact that Eddie was already at L-2. Which is why I pointed it out. I'm not sure how you say this was to avoid "drawing attention to myself?" I'm basically never putting someone at L-1 unless (1) I'm feeling pretty good about them being scum,

and

(2) I'm ready for the day to be over.

Why don't you like Insanity? If I was going to make a "way too early to make these kind of conclusions" list, he'd be one of my top for Town.

I don't think I've done anything to justify this read. What do you like about me?

See above. I feel like I can at least see where you are coming from with most of your posts/questions.

[Axelrod]

@Old Man:

you say you deliberately picked your Avatar to see if you would garner quick votes for it, and that those votes would likely come from Town:

there are a few reasons why I picked this avatar, one of which was to garner reactions and as a sort of social experiment to hypothesize if it would result in a policy lynch, or, at the least, a couple of RVS votes. And, those votes would more likely than not come from town, under the theory that scum would not blatantly vote for another player with such obviously flimsy reasoning, in order to keep up some facade of self-preservation.

You give points to Kison for being the first one to vote for you. But when Chamber also voted for you, you said:

My townread given to Kison does not extend to chamber for the fact that chamber is second to hop onto a bandwagon, as well as the fact that it is a naked vote here.

Isn't that the kind of thing you

just

said you were looking for and were giving Townie points for? Is the lack of point-giving because he didn't mention your Avatar specifically?

@Pine:

for someone who is on a "respect people and don't be toxic kick", what's with the "bite me" remark in #92?

Also, at risk of being accused of turning a molehill into a mountain, these two things:

Hey all, I confirmed by PM because I had a ruleset question.

Honestly, I always confirm by PM. Most games require it, and I didn't think twice about just replying to my role PM and confirming that way. Korts didn't tell me "Hey I asked you to confirm in-thread," so I imagine he wouldn't have said so to Eddie.

Are not exactly the same.

I'm also feeling okay about Old Man's fairly thoughtful deep dive right into the game, even if I'm not necessarily on board with all his conclusions.

[Axelrod]

I'm also interested in Cooldog's PGO claim right out the gate, moreso because of the fact that several people have already commented that they don't believe it. I'll go on record here and say that, if it's not true - and he's Town - I'm going to be pretty pissed at Cooldog (Mafia-pissed, not RL pissed). I

despise

it when Townies lie.

I think Magna's response was pretty on-point there.

[Axelrod]

Hey Axel while you seem to be around can you walk me through your thought process in going from 31 to 67? Thanks!

Forewarning, if you ever ask me to describe my thought process on something, it might get a bit wordy.

At #31 the game state is: you've made your 1st post, where you noted that Pine and Eddie had not confirmed in thread, but the Mod. has told us everyone is confirmed. You've cast your tongue-in-cheek vote for Eddie. It's pretty clearly a RVS vote.

And yet -

and yet

- there's a

tiny

shred of something that just might be there.

Eddie gets 3 more votes in like the next 5 posts. Only Insanity acknowledges your (joking) reason as the reason for their votes.

Eddie posted @27 with his "/confirm" post. Ignoring the wagon, except he also votes for KMD. He says nothing about your initial reason for starting the wagon, i.e. how/when he confirmed with the Mod. Maybe he didn't feel the need (since it was a joke anyway). Maybe his "/confirm" joke/response was supposed to be his answer, I don't know.

Then PJ posts @29 and also votes Eddie, and this one looks a little more serious. Why did Eddie make that "/confirm" post when the Mod. has already told us he confirmed?

That's where I'm at @31. I think it's weird that Eddie posted "/confirm" in the thread like he did (I wasn't seeing the joke). I think your original point is clearly a joke. It's funny.

And yet

....So, I'm kind responding in kind. I'm joking there. But....

It's just possible there's something more.

Then Pine - the other phantom confirmer - posts @35 and explains his failure to confirm in-thread. And I think it's a strange explanation. He confirmed via PM, because he had a "ruleset" question for the mod? When asked what his question was, he answers @38 (he wants to know how pro-active the mod. will be about toxic behavior). I'm also not feeling this question. Pine also, and incidentally, starts to immediately butt heads with Chamber over a complete non-issue. Old Man and his alt. and whether that's appropriate or not.

Pine also had a fairly lackluster initial response to your question to him about Eddie's entrance into the game. He didn't seem interested in engaging on that question at all. When you pressed him, he responded in more detail @52, but I wasn't super-impressed with that response either. And as I just mentioned, his answer here about why he confirmed via PM is slightly different from what he said before.

Eddie comes back @50 with his "old people don't understand jokes" post that both dismisses and ignores everyone. He posts again @60 and flatly says he's not going to respond to a post of Chamber's.

So, now I'm actually looking at both these guys, and it's not really about the fact they didn't confirm in the thread, but how they're responding to questions about it. So I make #67. And I address the (phantom) elephant in the room while I'm at it. Because frankly I think it would be hilarious if that were actually true. But I'm still (mostly) tongue-in-cheek about it.

It's a fairly thin reason to vote for Pine, but we're less than 100 posts into a game and thin is pretty much all you get at this stage. I'm kind of surprised I actually got blowback for this vote like I was trying too hard to justify it when I was barely trying to justify it at all.

That's what I was thinking.

[Axelrod]

@Old Man: You've twice said this:

Again, I wish to express my opinion that the wagon on Eddie Cane is not necessarily entirely scum (obviously, it can't possibly be, though the fact that I believe it's scum-driven remains)

If you may excuse me here, there is nothing "random" about this RVS wagon. My position is that this in a devious concoction of plain bullying as well as scum bandwagoners hopping in for an easy mislynch.

This was the wagon.

6) Eddie Cane - MagnaofIllusion, insanity018, hitogoroshi, Kmd4390, petroleumjelly, chamber

To this point I think you've said you think Chamber is scummy. I think you've also said that Magna and Hito seem town to you. Is that accurate, and what's your feeling about the other people here?

[Axelrod]

I do kind of like Eddie's explanation @156 for why he voted KMD, and the rest of that post is mostly okay also. Though I think he's just wrong to assert the reason he got waggoned in the first place was because he was considered the "newbie," and he's still acting like a guy with a huge chip on his shoulder. Chill out bro.

I'm not on board with an Old Man vote yet either. I'm not a fan of his "style" of posting, which does come across as a bit artificial. But I can't say that's scummy, and I feel like he's engaging with the thread/questioning in an okay manner.

On the other hand:

Yes, that is accurate. Insanity, Kmd, and petroleumjelly haven't posted anything memorable enough for me to get a reasonably solid read on them yet. However, if there is scum on the wagon, it's a good bet that they can be found hiding there.

This is not at all the same thing as saying the wagon on Eddie was scum-driven (which you asserted twice). Seems like you're backing off that assertion now, saying you don't have solid reads on any of these people?

I haven't read MoI's #186 case yet. That's the next thing.

[Axelrod]

All right, I've looked at Magna's #186 case on Old Man, and

1)

The point about Old Man voting Tywin instead of Pine is a non-point in as much as Old Man said in the very post you referenced that he was thinking Tywin scum independently of whether Pine was scum.

So the conclusion – OldMan would have you believe he’s Town who is voting Twyin based

soley

on Hito's case when the entirety of the case Hito laid out is predicted on one or both of Pine / Eddie to be scum. (

emphasis added

)

That's just not true. I mean he flatly says:

I have found that Tywin is likely scum regardless of the alignments of Pine or Eddie.

Regardless of whether or not you think his reasons are

good

, they aren't what you are saying, and I'm concerned that you characterize it this way. I mean, he does say that Hito's post was an "excellent observation," but I wouldn't interpret that as complete agreement.

2) Also, I don't think Old Man has ever said he thought Pine was (or was not) scum. More like he

wanted

to town-read him, but couldn't because he wasn't seeing anything that couldn't have come from scum. More like a null read. So, again, this doesn't seem inconsistent, and I don't understand the argument you are making.

So, I don't find that very persuasive.

More persuasive to me is my own point (surprise!) about him kind of backing off his assertion that the initial wagon on Eddie was scum-driven.

Also, @Magna I have another question for you. I

think

you have said that you think you know (or suspect) who Old Man "really" is? Yes? My question is - given the kind of exaggerated/artificial way that Old Man is posting - is this something that he always does/did? Seems like if you think you are recognizing this "style" then it must be, but if this is something he always does, it would be a null-tell.

[Axelrod]

I was waiting to see what KMD had to say about Eddie's point (that KMD knows Eddie, and knows he isn't just some random newbie, and therefore should/would have said something about the largely baseless wagon that was forming on Eddie, as opposed to, you know, joining it.)

KMD finally posted @192 and it was...weird. He actually goes through the wagon on Eddie, looking at all the votes, and remarking on which ones seemed like normal RVS, what ones could have come from town and what ones pinged him, but

he completely ignores/omits any reference to his own vote

? Which was the Fourth one.

So

@KMD:

what was up with your vote for Eddie? Did you see that he had three on him already and that you would be #4? If it was RVS, did it concern you at all when two more people jumped on after you, putting Eddie to L-2? You certainly didn't say anything about it, and you didn't unvote.

This is kind of a Red Flag for me on KMD here.

[Axelrod]

Oh look, Hito already made the same point I just made, derf.

MoI, your 186 is silly because Old Man explicitly said he likes Tywin scum independently of Eddie/Pine, not associatively like I was reading it.

Hito seems okay for now.

As an aside, you suggest that I tacked Axelrod as a lynch target because he hadn't posted much and therefore seemed to be an 'easy target.' Under no circumstances would I call Axelrod an "easy target." I have played with him long ago, and he is excellent. (And had I answered hitogoroshi's question about who I was most excited to play with, my answer would have been Axelrod). I currently having a mild but cautious Townread on him

Well that is super nice of you to say . I was pretty hyped when I saw that you had signed up too. I wish I could return the "mild/cautious" town read, but I'm afraid I'm not really there on you yet. I feel like you've kind of been sitting back so far this game and letting others do most of the driving.

[Axelrod]

I'm not on board with an Old Man vote yet either. I'm not a fan of his "style" of posting, which does come across as a bit artificial. But I can't say that's scummy, and I feel like he's engaging with the thread/questioning in an okay manner.

Here, you have described Old Man's style of post as artificial. Previously, you have described his play as a 'thoughtful deep dive.' (117). What has changed?

Nothing has changed. Maybe you're confusing my comment about his "style" with my opinion of his posting content, but those are two different things. Old Man has adopted a very formal and somewhat off-putting school-teacher style where it reads like he's talking down to all of us. Not knowing who his other alt. is, I can't say if it's normal for him or not, but regardless, it's very artificial sounding.

Completely independent of that, however, I have mostly liked his involvement and engagement with the thread. He's posting, and asking and answering questions, and he's got a point of view, even if I don't always agree with it. That is a tougher line to take as a scum - as opposed to sitting back and trying to engage as little as possible. The artificiality/formality would make it

easier

to do as scum, imo, so he is in no way clear to me, but I'm not currently interested in voting for him.

[Axelrod]

Axel's later posts look better. Nothing particular stood out other than those 2 early posts where he votes Pine. However, one thing I don't like is despite a high level of content, he seems pretty reluctant to take strong stances. There's Pine/Eddie & "chamber is a bit dodgy" in response to my earlier question. Has anything changed here?

Well, you are not likely to get "strong" stances from me on D1, at least as it concerns people's alignments. The most I usually feel is "okay" or "suspicious" about someone. It's actually a pet peeve of mine when people act positive about votes they have no business being positive about. We know almost nothing. Once there have been a few flips I tend to get more confident.

Okay, I've had enough. Korts's biased mod intervention pretty much made the game unenjoyable for me when he overlooked how Magna starting being a dick to myself and other players first. And, I didn't even use abusive language, at the least let us settle it among ourselves. Anyway, I am no longer enjoying myself.

My wallposts are, admittedly, a waste of my time as well as yours. I will be posting normally from now.

First, I am moving on.

I fullclaim Day 2 Innocent Child.

I am interested to see how players MagnaofIllusion, Pine, and roflcopter re-evaluate in light of this new information.

Forgive my ignorance, but is this "You will be mod-confirmed as Town at the start of D2?"

[Axelrod]

3.)

do kind of like Eddie's explanation @156 for why he voted KMD, and the rest of that post is mostly okay also.

Can you elaborate? I don't find his reason for voting Kmd4390 very convincing. It basically boils down to "he should have been defending me, not voting for me!" That's not a very realistic expectation, especially since the reasons he was being voted in this game had nothing to do with whether he is a respectable (or a newbie) player.

(And if anything, I generally expect players with a history of respect for each other are

more

likely to vote each other at the start of a game as a friendly jab).

It's simply that the whole sequence makes more sense to me from a Town-Eddie mindset, than from a Scum-Eddie mindset.

Town-Eddie sees a bunch of votes pile up on him for no reason and gets pissed off. He sees KMD, in particular, jumping on him 4th with no explanation and he thinks "well, of all of them, KMD ought to know better." And at that point there was no reason at all for the votes (besides Magna's joke). 4 votes is a lot for RVS in the first 25 posts of the game. And KMD didn't make that vote like he was making a "friendly jab." If he had remarked on Eddie in any way - made it clear it was a joke, addressed him with some familiarity, shown that he had some/any degree of respect for Eddie as a player, it might have changed the way it looked, but he didn't.

Scum-Eddie sees the votes piling up and thinks, what? Man, this is unfortunate. I didn't even do anything yet and they're all voting me! So how do I play this? I know! I'll vote for the last guy to vote for me, and act like it's a serious vote. But I won't explain why I'm voting him. I'll leave it ambiguous for awhile. Then I'll get all righteously indignant about how the guy shouldn't have been voting for me because he knows I'm a good player. Yeah, that seems like a good plan....

[Axelrod]

ms is bugging and not letting me look at axel's post iso right now so i can't go back and find this in situ but i particularly dislike where he implies that he'll just keep on tunneling on eddie and pine tomorrow pretty much regardless of what happens today.

Right so, that never remotely happened....

ok i can't find it, maybe somebody else said that, too much to go digging for right now

whatever, axel is scum anyway

axel why is your vote still parked on pine? do you still think eddie is scummy (you said early on that you would vote him if not for being at l-2 already)? do you have any other scumreads yet? because for all you've written this game, what i can remember of you is voteparking on pine, cheerleading the eddie wagon, giving kmd a red flag for being on the eddie wagon, and repeatedly defending old man while not quite calling him a townread.

It's like, "gee, all I can remember you doing (in this game of under 250 posts) is voting someone, expressing suspicion of someone else, then revising your opinion of said person, expressing suspicion of a different person, and criticizing a case on another person."

I mean, even if that were completely accurate - which it isn't - it's kind of a silly argument. Sometimes I feel like people don't even read what I'm writing.

I'm "vote-parked" on Pine because I haven't found a better place to put my vote yet. Pine hasn't done anything to make me think he's Town, and several things I haven't liked, and that's plenty good enough for now. I'll probably elaborate even more on this one later.

The other people I've expressed suspicions of include (1) Chamber, who has bailed, and his replacement promised something yesterday and that didn't happen, so I'm still waiting to see there. And (2) KMD, who has also made unfulfilled promises of future posts. People I currently need to look closer at include: PJ, Tywin, Firebringer, Kison. It feels like there's a bunch of people who haven't posted very much.

I've got what I'm going to call mild Town reads on (1) Hito (2) Insanity (3) Old Man (4) Eddie (now) (5) Magna (though this one is the most tempered, as I've got a lot of respect for his scum game).

[Axelrod]

Tywin #255 needs a longer response than I've got time for. I will ask you though: you say (at least as far as me): "Axelrod still scum. Nothing changed."

I'm just going to pull up your whole original argument (which is, even though that was post #99, as far as I can tell, still your argument?):

That said, I think the hard push on Pine and/or Eddie over the confirmation thing is pretty bad, yet some players went with it hard, as if they were looking for something to sheep. Its possible one or both of them are scum, but why would anyone be so sure it's not easy lynchbait? Why would anyone not question it when half the playerbase sheeped it instantly? I honestly don't believe anyone genuinely believes in the confirm thing, so it looks like an excuse to form fake reads.

I don't know metas, but chamber going so hard off of it and claiming to have solved the game on page 4 pings me. He's accused multiple people so far though, which I don't think scum would be doing on D1. Thing is, those accusations seem to be based 100% on either Eddie or Pine (both?) being scum. I haven't seen any posted content that screams scum to me from either one, and hardpushing with little to no second-guessing pings me. He's not a hard SR mostly due to his playstyle. I don't really see scum pushing that hard on D1, but it does happen with a few players. Titus comes to mind.

Axelrod has been doing the same thing, but has been accusing far fewer players (none outside of Eddie? Pine?), and has not really contributed anything new to the argument, which chamber has done. Its almost entirely sheeping, which pings the hell out of me. They're not alone in doing it by any means, but they're also not giving any other thoughts. They've gone entirely for the easy lynchbait wagon with no looking elsewhere.

And ask you if you are trying to seriously argue that I (1) "Hard pushed" Eddie/Pine over the "confirmation thing" (2) Was just "sheeping Chamber" (3) Was not giving any other thoughts, and (4) Have not looked anywhere else - as of the

first 99 posts

of the game.

I mean, not even considering what has happened since.

I'll be over here.

[Axelrod]

I need to do some serious re-reading, but I will confess the somewhat relaxing pace of the game makes it easy to put that off.

I kind of want to vote for KMD, but it's as much because of what seems to be avoidance as anything else at this point. It's like he's actively avoiding saying anything relevant. Like, this whole sequence:

I know I said I'd read today. Didn't get to it. Tomorrow should be better.

FUUUUUUUUUCK MEEEEEE

I seriously just lost my post.

Will try to put it back together another time. Too pissed to do it now.

V/LA until Saturday

for my 16 hour work days Thursday and Friday.

And then, when he does "come back" and posts something game-related, it's...this?

Old Man, in post 94, you gave Kison a town read for voting based on your avatar. It was RVS. Most, if not all votes are going to be flimsy reasoning. Hell, about half of us voted based on confirmations. Also can you tell me where you got the idea the Eddie wagon was policy?

If Pine flips scum we are lynching Tywin next 100%

Why? I don't see it. What is your read on Tywin now? What would it be with a Pine town flip?

_____________________

Jelly, how do you see Eddie's play as nervous? I don't see any way a nervous player intentionally waits on explaining a vote while he's the leading wagon.

______________________

I'm through post 110 on page 5 (this is more for myself than anyone else)

Spams a few what seems to be very random questions at people. And

Does anyone know insanity well enough to know if she fakes this kind of thing as scum?

I don't think I've done anything to justify this read. What do you like about me?

Another huh? post.

So seems like it's either (1) He's scum trying to avoid posting as much as possible or (2) he's just not trying at all. The thing about (1) is, it's just such a bad "strategy".

@KMD

, were either of these two posts the one you "lost" that you were crying so hard about? Also, I would like to hear you talk about your vote for Eddie. Did you notice the other votes on him at the time? What were you thinking then? What about his stated reason for voting for you?

[Axelrod]

I've got a bit of time this afternoon, so I'm going to try and catch up on a few things, mainly reviewing people. There's two ways for me to do this, the short way and the long way. People who already don't like that I'm "using a lot of words to not say that much" would probably not like the long way , but it's where my natural tendencies lean.

I guess we'll see how it goes.

[Axelrod]

So,

Pine.

I still don't like his "confirmation explanation". I've pointed out at least once already (and Pine has not responded to it as far as I can see) that he's given two different explanations for why he confirmed by PM to the mod. as opposed to in the thread, and the first one was already strange.

After that, the next thing he did was get into a spat with Chamber over something completely irrelevant - whether or not Old Man should be using an Alt. I didn't get how aggressive he was being there. And he followed it with a vote for Chamber that wasn't very good. He said Chamber had engaged in 2 "BS" pushes (1 on Old Man presumably, and 1 on Eddie). Except neither of those things were true. Chamber hadn't "pushed" Old Man at all. He just vented about his dislike for hidden alts. And his "push" on Eddie wasn't BS. Eddie was totally acting strange. So, I call Bad Vote.

He gives Town points to roflcopter for his reaction to cooldog's claim post. Eh. This is fine as far as it goes. I disagree with the conclusion (that scum could/would not have responded like that), but it's mostly null.

Then there's a sequence where he, for lack of better words, "sucks up" to MoI a bit.

MoI - No? You're fantastic when scum, so I don't thoroughly trust my TR of you. Take that as the compliment it is intended.

It also deserves to be said that I *want* you to be Town. We universally work well together when we're on the same side.

Hey Old Man.

Be less smug and condescending. If you're so out of touch you don't have any idea who Magna is, you definitely need to fuck off of your high horse.

And proceeds to sheep MoI with a vote for Old Man after. None of that feels particularly Townie to me either.

#219 is his (only) mention of me. And it's basically just the "using a lot of words to not say much" thing. I feel like, certainly by #219, that argument is super-inaccurate, and this is just a lazy suspicion, thrown out there with no justification whatsoever. Which you can do. I've said before and will say again, you don't need much to have a suspicion of someone early on D1, but you ought to at least acknowledge it for what it is. Pine not only does not do that, but he doubles down on it after Old Man makes his IC claim, switching over to vote me like I was his next most clear suspect.

He first refuses to elaborate any more on the vote even after being requested to do so. And then, most recently, simply reposted his original point and said that he still "stands by" it. He seemingly added that he wanted to see how I would react to it, and I've just continued to post the same way.

This has been Pine. And there's still nothing here that comes across as Townie to me. And that in and of itself is somewhat telling.

[Axelrod]

KMD

My issues with KMD can maybe be boiled down to three (3) things:

1) "Active" lurking. Of the kind where you pop in every so often to make a post that doesn't say a whole lot, or asks a random question, or makes an excuse for why you haven't been posting.

2) His vote for Eddie. Initially unexplained, 4th on the wagon. Eddie

had not even made a post in the game yet

. Now, reasonable minds can disagree, and some might argue that it's even good strategy to run someone up really fast for no reason at all, but IF that's your rationale, you had best follow through and/or do something to show that this was what you were doing. KMD did not. In fact, Eddie posted soon afterwards and proceeded to get two more very quick votes. KMD's response - in as much as there was a response, was to say, in #63:

If Eddie's vote on me was a joke, I don't get it.

That's after the 6th vote has been placed on Eddie. So, if I'm reading that, my feeling is that this is KMD expressing support for this wagon. Not that it was random RVS, not that he was "reaction testing", but that he's got a reason to be here, and he's staying here. The vote sticks until #192.

3) His Wagon analysis/explanation of #192. I already mentioned this previously, but in this post KMD goes through the wagon on Eddie, looking at the votes and saying what he likes and doesn't, and completely ignores his own vote. KMD responded to this criticism here:

Yeah, I'm not gonna analyze my own vote. I already know I'm town so what would I be trying to gain by trying to figure out my own thought process?

Um, dude, if you are doing a wagon analysis, you have to acknowledge your own vote on it, if only because YOUR vote could/should have an effect on the other voters, and this is the kind of thing you are supposed to be looking to see. Also, and not incidentally, it's not about you trying to figure out your own thoughts (duh), it's about you EXPLAINING your thought process to us. So we can, you know, figure out if you're Town or not. Skipping completely over your own vote/thought process does not allow us to do that.

So what was his thought process? He finally answers that here:

I didn't have a better reason to vote anyone than the one Magna gave on Eddie and figured a wagon could be useful anyway. At the time, no, more votes on the person I was voting didn't bother me. I still wanted to see the wagon build so maybe we could get something out of it.

Which is ? to me. He's not saying he had any actual suspicion of Eddie at all (unless he is saying that Magna's joke vote was an actual reason) but he left his vote there until #192 (which was well after the wagon went away, and anything that he might have "gotten" from it was done.) I also agree with Eddie's point, to some extant, that if KMD was actually familiar with Eddie as a player, and actually had respect for Eddie as a player, and he was Townie, seems like he might have said something about this completely unfounded wagon that was building. I mean,

later

he makes this "defense" of Eddie to MoI:

Huh? Stubbornness like that usually comes from town. Why wouldn't scum-Eddie just do what everyone is asking to get people off his back?

But that was in #310. Where was this defense when the wagon/votes were happening?

Some of the other stuff in #192 is okay. I like that he's addressing a bunch of topics of conversation, and some of his responses seem reasonable enough. But it's such a big dump post, immediately followed by a week of more lurking, it's the kind of thing I can see a scum doing, working themselves up to "say something" because they know they have to, and then hoping it's enough to make people leave them alone.

[Axelrod]

Tywin

I have to go, but here's the short version.

Tywin only has 3 1/2 posts in this game.

That's a slight understatement, but only slightly. Most of his posts are 1-liners that don't say anything. There's one what I'm going to call a "normal" sized post, and then 3 others.

The three are enormous wall posts, so his wordcount might even be higher than average, but what I just said about KMD (not posting very much, and then trying to dump everything into one big post) applies here. I find that "mode" to be somewhat scummy. And the posts themselves are full of generalizations and misrepresentations. Also, irony, as he complains in at least 2 of his posts about the huge wall posts everyone else is writing.

I could try to break these down later. But, man, would that be another wall.

[Axelrod]

i really still want to lynch axel seriously is no one else seeing this?

I'm not seeing it.

[Axelrod]

Hey Old Man, fuck you *thumbsup*

@Mod: Immediate emergency V/LA. Lady Pine and I about to leave for the hospital to welcome baby Pinecone! Yayyyy! I may or may not check in over the next couple of days, depending on how often I can/need to take a break from being a new dad. Posting should stabilize over the next week or so.

Break out the cigars!

Well that's absolutely fantastic, congratulations Pine!

[Axelrod]

[quote="In post 360
Axelrod - you're the same player from mtgs right?[/quote]
I am indeed! Welcome to you too.

[Axelrod]

Axel (in response to post 307):
You said you believe me to be avoiding the game. So I'll ask you the same question I asked Insanity: what is the scum benefit to doing that rather than simply being caught up and under the radar?

I mean, it is just something that

happens

, yes? I'm not sure what you are arguing. That scum don't really lurk? Because what would be the benefit to them? Like, I don't know how to answer that. They do lurk. Not

all

of them, not all the time, but it happens, and quite frequently.

Why

they do it varies from game to game and person to person, but I don't think it's even an arguable thing. The "benefit", at least in theory, is that by laying low and not posting much, you avoid attention, avoid controversy, and hopefully avoid votes.

I'm guessing what you are really asking here is why - as hypothetical scum - you would be choosing to avoid the thread in this particular way, i.e. by claiming to be busy in real-life. As opposed to...not claiming that, and just posting infrequently?

I know people do some grimy things in mafia games now, but I'd hope lying about RL is still something that doesn't happen much if at all. Either way, it's not something I'd do or have ever done in ten years of playing this game.

So, I'm uncomfortable with this argument in as much as it involves your personal sense of honor IRL, but I'll accept it. Please don't take any of this personally. But I do also think lots of scum use the excuse of being "busy" for not posting when they get challenged on it. Being busy IRL is obviously non-alignment indicative, as you would be equally busy whether you drew Town or Scum. It was kind of the way you were posting that was raising the Red Flag for me.

You also called my questions "random" implying they don't count as content.

Random meaning, where did that come from, at that particular time? Why is that the thing you decided to ask about of all the things you might have?

Some of this may be because you were playing catch-up from behind, so your questions looked a little out of date. Like, Old Man already explained why he gave Kison a Town read for his early vote. Hito already explained why he made his Tywin/Pine association. And also, this is another thing that scum just sometimes do - make a big "catch-up" post, and pepper the post with questions to people in an effort to look engaged. But it comes across as very random.

Is there anything specific you'd like my stance on that I haven't commented on already?

Probably. I'll get back to you.

you were crying so hard about

This, I WILL ignore. If you want an answer to anything that was in that paragraph, please rephrase. I'm not gonna be talked to like that.

Again, sorry, that was not meant as some kind of an insult. I mean, you did make a big "F***** Meeeeee" post. But when you came back to the thread and posted again, it did not seem like the questions you were asking merited that kind of reaction.

Wrong. That's me saying that if there was a joke, I didn't get it.

Well, it's the timing of the post almost as much as the content of it. That was

right

after Chamber put down Vote #6, I believe. Vote #6 is no joke (or at least, it shouldn't be) Do you really not see where your post, immediately following that one, looks like tacit support for the wagon?

..I'll say it again. This is you suspecting me for real life. I'm not about to smuggle a cell phone into work and get myself into trouble over a mafia game. It's just not something I'd do and that's true regardless of my alignment in any game.

And I don't like you kind of handwaving the issue away like this. I'm not suspecting you for real life. I get you're busy. It has happened to me too. More times than I can count. i guess what I feel it that the way you have been leveraging your busyness is something that I feel a scum could easily be doing. And I haven't seen enough Townie-looking posting otherwise to make me feel better.

Um, what? This is the first you've mentioned this. Point them out or I'll assume you're throwing out buzzwords just to make your "case" sound stronger.

Haven't actually made a case on Tywin yet. Mainly was just pointing out his own relatively low level of activity. I have not tried to dissect those long posts of his in great depth, but even from what I did read, I could see there were

lots

of generalizations and misrepresentations he was making. I imagine I will get around to pointing some of that out, later, if I decide to vote for him.

[Axelrod]

Axel, what motivated your "review" order and cadence? It kinda feels like you just wanted to write three cases.

Mostly that was stuff I felt like I had been promising to do but hadn't gotten around to doing yet. Particularly in elaborating my Pine vote, in as much as (some) people seemed to have an issue that I'm still sitting with my initial vote on him. KMD I've also had uneasy feelings about which I was trying to flesh out, and Tywin was/is something of a current topic of conversation, so that's why those three then.

I still have more people I want to/am going to review too.

[Axelrod]

@Magna:

in #186 you made an argument about Old Man voting for Tywin when his only case against Tywin was a supposed relational tell/association with Pine and how bad that was. I pointed out that in the same post you were quoting, Old Man had said that he believed Tywin to be scum independent of whether Pine was scum - i.e. it was not a "relational tell" as you were arguing.

Your response was to direct me to your "back and forth" with Hito who had already made the same point. This is all I see on that question:

Well I disagree. Because removing the “suspecting Eddie / Pine as scum” element from it and I think Twyin’s post pretty much parallels OldMan’s – overwrought attacks on what was I think a pretty standard RVS wagon. So to my mind OldMan is pillorying Twyin for what he himself did in regards to Eddie’s wagon and calling it a disgusting disguised policy lynch. I don’t find that level of cogdis a Town tell myself. Do you feel I’m way off base?

And what you are saying here seems to be something completely different. You seem to be changing your previous argument and saying (in effect) "well, even if it wasn't a relational tell, I still suspect Old Man because he is being hypocritcal and attacking Tywin for doing the same thing that he himself did."

Which looks just a bit hand-wavey of the fact that your original point seemed completely off base. Am I missing something here?

[Axelrod]

Also,

@Magna

, in #205 you gave Town reads of vaguely decreasing strength on

Axel, Cooldog, Hito, Pine, Rofl, Chamber, Eddie and PJ.

I'm interested here in the read on Pine, as up to that point, at least, I didn't see where you had anything positive to say about him, and rather seemed to have been questioning him in a number of posts. This is the best I see you saying about him:

And I agree that I think we are well equipped to Townblock together if we both come to solid Town reads on each other. Which is why I’m questioning you so much. With Eddie’s information drop the biggest stumbling block I had early (what looked like soft defending of him) is for the moment removed so I’m working to move you out of my Null reads if possible.

You haven't commented about Pine much at all recently, so, what's your current read on him?

[Axelrod]

Axel:

You ducking me???

Congrats Pine!

Then there's a sequence where he, for lack of better words, "sucks up" to MoI a bit.

MoI - No? You're fantastic when scum, so I don't thoroughly trust my TR of you. Take that as the compliment it is intended.

It also deserves to be said that I *want* you to be Town. We universally work well together when we're on the same side.

Hey Old Man.

Be less smug and condescending. If you're so out of touch you don't have any idea who Magna is, you definitely need to fuck off of your high horse.

And proceeds to sheep MoI with a vote for Old Man after. None of that feels particularly Townie to me either.

This seems pretty weak to me. I don't see those posts as sucking up, or at least, I don't think scum-Pine would be foolish enough to think he could manipulate town-MoI that way. Why do you think his vote was sheeping?

I'd like to know what you think about Firebringer's posting as well.

Yes, I am ducking you.










No, sorry, I completely missed you asked me something.

Agree to disagree on whether or not that constitutes sucking-up. Happy to concede it's "weak" as far as points of a case go. I have no idea what a "scum-Pine" would or would not do (is that a meta argument regarding Pine specifically?) but I think scum

in general

will try to cozy up to Townies who they think are strong players

As to whether Magna could be manipulated like that, who knows? I just asked Magna a question about why he said he had at least a vague Town lean on Pine.

Magna aside,

I

can get manipulated like that, and this I freely confess. One of the most frequent ways scum get by me is when they are posting about how Townie they think I'm being. It's a weakness in an otherwise decent game that I recognize in myself.

As to whether his vote was "sheeping," the vote came after Pine had made those other posts, and he specifically said that he was "coming around" to where Magna was on Old Man. It felt like he was sucking up to him, and following Magna's vote was the next progression. That's what I meant.

Firebringer is on my list of "people to review." He hasn't made much impression at all. Maybe I'll do that one next.

[Axelrod]

I'm trying to look at Firebringer's stuff, but it's hard. Punctuation, spelling and proper sentence structure. Is that so hard?

[Axelrod]

Yes I know that wasn't a proper sentence either. I'm falling asleep at my keyboard.

[Axelrod]

Sorry guys. I have not been paying any attention to this game this weekend. Will post something meaningful tomorrow.

[Axelrod]

Well this is unfortunate.

Can't we all just get along?

Only a game people. (says the man fully capable of losing his **** when someone has made a BS attack on him that other people seem to actually be buying....but that's neither here nor there)

[Axelrod]

Axel

, please respond to my question from earlier:

Well, I think it is still

possible

that Pine could be lynched today, though with the advent of baby Pinecone, I suspect that's less likely, as he has literally the best possible excuse to be, shall we say, not on the top of his game. But in terms of overall suspicions, he's still right there near the top.

If the thrust of this question, however, is "why aren't you, personally, doing more to achieve this lynch" then I would direct you back to "I generally don't have strong reads on people D1." Not strong enough to get all gung-ho rally the troops let's lynch this scum. I'm just generally more laid back about it, at least early on.

Give me a few flips, and some claims, and I'll give you the game....(he says, not at all modestly)

Also can everyone take in the majesty of the following claimed stances by Fire -

1. I'm scum for potentially delegating my read on a single player to Pine (and he keeps also forgetting I put Eddie and now Tammy in that pool as well).
2. He's happy to delegate his vote for today to another player (Eddie) even when that results in multiple cases of him voting claimed Townreads.

If you Town read that behavior then ... I mean ... WHUT?

It's like, while I agree with you that the behavior is not townie, the conclusion I draw in this particular case is the opposite. Because I just don't feel like a scum would actually be posting like that.

I agree that I don't like those stances from Firebringer. However, I'm also feeling that his play is almost too blatant or too scummy to actually be scum.

Right. See? This.

Because I was being policy lynched and aside from Pine he was really the only one saying anything about it. They can defend it all they want, but it isn't a coincidence the person with the newest join date ended up being l-2 within a couple pages.

I actually think that was a complete coincidence and had 0 % to do with your join date. Your reaction to the whole wagon, however, feels more like a Townie one than a scum one.

My take on PJ's Eddie case. Kind of sad that PJ has now absented himself, but I'm still talking like he's still in the game, here. My comments in

bold

.

Spoiler:

Reasons to vote Eddie Cane:

1.)

Not confirming in-thread, though is at

best

a minor point. The theory here is that he could have possibly confirmed in a scum PT,

or

he could have been intentionally holding off an official in-thread confirmation, thinking it would allow him more time to talk in the scum PT before the game began.

You are correct. This is

at best

a minor point

.

2.)

After the Mod announced the game had begun -- i.e., everybody had confirmed -- Eddie Cane quietly confirmed in-thread and then made a "not RVS" vote.

Had nobody called out his in-thread confirmation, it would have appeared that he was just now confirming and hadn't realized the game had started until posting. I think this post was an intentional attempt to conform. It suggests without saying.

I do not agree this was what he was doing, and I do not agree it would have worked at all as you suggest even if it was what he was trying to do. This does not seem to be a viable plan for a scum-Eddie.

3.)

When pressed about both his confirmation and his non-RVS vote, he simply posted "revelation: old people don't understand jokes." This is problematic in multiple ways.

First, Eddie Cane is wedging the term "old people" into the game as a contrast to himself. While clearly not a newbie, he has multiple times 'explained' the votes on him as being because he has a more recent join date, and that his wagon is 'policy.' This is very obviously not the case. It's like he's trying to get the benefits of playing the newbie card while acknowledging he is not a newbie.

The simpler explanation is: nobody got the joke

.

Second, Eddie Cane did not initially clarify whether he "confirmation" or his non-RVS vote was supposed to be a joke. His sweep is far too general.

When I looked back at it, I got it. I don't see where there should be confusion as to whether a vote labeled as "not RVS" was, in fact, a RVS joke. And that wouldn't exactly be scummy anyway.

Third, if the in-thread confirmation was a joke, then there were

no

suggestions that it was a joke. There are multiple ways that could have been done. And yet apparently adding a winky face (or literally

any

comment to suggest he was joking) is "stupid bullshit". Clearly it isn't, especially coming from somebody who already uses emoticons fairly frequently in their posting.

Yes, no one got the joke the first time. This isn't an argument why he's scum though. You seem to be suggesting that the fact it was ambiguous meant he left himself options to claim it meant one thing or the other, depending on what looked best to say, but there really aren't a whole lot of "options" there for him to have tried to finagle.

4.)

Eddie Cane then declined to interact with chamber's legitimate prodding, and ultimately attempted to excuse himself from posting content potentially up to page 10 of the game (see Post #70). When he was correctly called out on this by MagnaofIllusion, Eddie Cane had the absurd over-reaction of:

Arrogant oldie thinking he knows better than me, complete with

bold

and

italics

. next time try underlining it I might understand better. You should check your math, though, because it's more like 1-2 days at max. I'm not going to rush my sorting because of a retarded wagon on me.

This post is

incredibly

bad, and pretty childish overall.

First, and

again

, Eddie Cane draws a line between an ("arrogant") "oldie" and himself.

Second, he then tries to shift the discussion as if people are talking down to him (which is a constant theme when somebody is pressig him). That is not what's happening here. MagnaofIllusion was putting a stop to any attempts of Eddie Cane to avoid having to post content for a significant portion of the game.

Third, Eddie Cane dismisses his wagon as being "retarded." Besides being language he obviously shouldn't be avoiding, it's also not the case. RVS wagons are often necessary to give a game momentum (which he must know). The reasons for a wagon starting on him in this game are as legitimate as anything. And the two additional votes (from myself and chamber) were due to his

reactions

to his wagon.

His reaction - in hindsight, mind you - is the towniest-looking thing about it. It feels much more like someone who felt wrongfully persecuted for poor reasons threatening to pack up his toys and go home rather than play anymore. Also, I tend to think that scum run up like that would take a less defiant stance, and be more conciliatory. Possible whine a bit more about how unfair the whole thing is. Possibly trying to appease by doing exactly what people are demanding that he do.

5.)

When Eddie Cane gives his first post with reads in it (see Post #128), there is little explanation, but what stands out to me is how his reads seem to correlate with those on or off his wagon. His three scumreads (Kmd4390, myself, and chamber) are all players who were voting for him. His top two Townreads (CooLDog and Old Man) are a claimed power role and the guy going most all-out against the Eddie Wagon cane. His other two Townreads (Kison and roflcopter) are a player who finds the confirmation votes "silly" and a player who voted for Axelrod while saying it was a "better vote than eddie or pine."

Essentially, all of his stated reads appear be surface-level and reactionary as to whether players agree with the gist of the Eddie Cane/Pine push.

Possibly this is true. It is not at all scummy, however. It's kind of normal, I think.

6.)

For my part, I tried to look at things from another angle at this point in the game. I did not like (and still do not like) Eddie Cane's posting, but it is certainly possible that part of my scumread on him can be attributed to me simply not liking his playstyle, and maybe his confirmation post was a poor joke.

I tried to ask him

multiple

times to explain his motivations as to why he was playing the way he was (see Post #195, Post #227, Post #263, Post #286, and Post #303). I still never really received a satisfactory answer.

At first he "couldn't tell me" what his mindset was, and then invited me to ask

other

players to fill in Eddie Cane's mindset for me (Post #278). He later sweeps away my questions again and then invites me to spend "five minutes" skimming any of his games (Post #289). After I do that, he basically reverts to insisting I am "talking down to him" (Post #306) when it is very clear I am just trying to get actual answers from him.

He was being obstinate, yes. You seem to be assuming that being obstinate in and of itself = scummy. I do not agree?

7.)

Eddie has also been highly evasive when I pressed on him on his read of Pine:

I couldn't say this before, but Pine and I had an ongoing game during this and his posting here felt like he was genuinely trying to sort me. 52 is pretty townie. his attempts to engage me ring genuine from the perspective he was a player who just saw me perform as (pocketed) town. some of his posts kind of felt buddy-y on the surface but i doubt he'd hard buddy me 2 games in a row in immediate succession so i don't read into it. pine is my most hesitant tr but i'm still gonna call him a tr above a lean and he's off the table for a lynch.

First, Eddie Cane indicates he was thinking Pine has been trying to "sort him" well before this post, and that he was simply waiting to be able to say so. Second, he explicitly says that Pine has had "attempts to engage" with him.

When asked, Eddie's first response was:

Sorting doesn't mean asking a bunch of questions. He's sorting my alignment, internally. It followed off our last game and recent games are always more fresh in your subconscious.

I press again for a more in-depth explanation, and we get:

You already listed posts...

I press a third time, and now:

1.) Eddie Cane, please explain why you feel Pine is internally "sorting" you.

asking me the same retarded question while i'm busy irl for a third time is not going to make me answer quicker, maybe try 4 or 5?

I don't remember why I thought that. Looking back Pine's early stuff still doesn't look scummy to me. He's defending someone he knows is competent from stupid bullshit such as not adding a winkie face to a joke.

So now, the thing that Eddie Cane was initially thinking but

couldn't say

about Pine, and then he

could

say about Pine once their other game ended, is something he "can't remember." And apparently he can't figure out what it was by simply re-reading Pine's posts in this game.

I think Eddie Cane's "read" on Pine is completely fabricated. While initially giving his read, he expressly said that Pine was "engaging" with him, but after being pressed he withdraws and changes up the language, suggesting Pine is simply sorting him "internally" and therefore doesn't have to ask questions or actively discuss anything with him. And now he somehow doesn't remember where he got his impression.

This is the only point with any teeth at all as far as I can tell. Eddie does kind of back off/shift his position with respect to where his read on Pine was coming from.

~

Even now Eddie Cane's reads ultimately appear to be that people who support him in the game are Town, and people who attack (or "annoy") him in the game are scum, with the occasional nuance thrown in for players in-between. He continually avoids explaining himself, and acts offended when he is pressed. While clearly not a newbie, he is happy to jump to how "old" players are attacking him in a "circlejerk" of voting for a player with a recent join date.

Yes, but most of that isn't actually indicative of being scum.

reasons to vote pj: 7 points against me that are absolute dogshit.

Actually, I found the case as a whole to be pretty solid. I'll take it into consideration when I do my read through tonight

To which I give a strong :eyebrow

(why don't we have that smiley )

Thank you for thinking I'm good at scum it that's real! I do hate/get stressed out playing scum. It wears me down emotionally in a different way than playing town that I have a hard time with! (I'm not sure why people have such a hard time differentiating between Nacho and me; I feel like we're so different posting-style wise.)

In as much as I feel like I have a "meta" on anyone, being as cold as I am, I would agree with this: Tammy gets stressed playing scum. And what she's done here so far has felt relaxed and easy-going enough for me feel pretty decent about her so far. It no doubt helps she's giving me the 'old Town read, and if she's aware enough to know that's going to boost her in my viewpoint, then good on her, I guess.

And Lycan still hasn't said enough to make me feel better about his slot.

[Axelrod]

Travelling out of town until Friday, and it turns out the internet here is garbage. I may be able to eek out a post tomorrow, otherwise it will have to be Friday late.

[Axelrod]

More comprehensive post probably tomorrow at this point. I have a snarky response to rolf, which I'm refraining from posting due to my amazing tact , but the very quick hit is that you are seem to have completely missed the manner in which my suspicion of Eddie shifted over to a suspicion of KMD, and that it's possible to have suspicions of more than one person at the same time. Meanwhile, Pine has still not done anything to make me feel like moving my vote off him, which is why it's still there. "Vote Parking" is a nice big scummy-sounding thing people can say, but it's actually pretty meaningless.

I mean, depending, I

guess.

But I'm not really read up yet, I just skimmed now. So, tomorrow hopefully.

[Axelrod]

Well, I probably deserve this, as I can't seem to get motivated and have very little energy for this game. Just seems like there's always something else I'd rather be doing.

I have never replaced out of a game ever, though, so I don't imagine I'm going to start now. Maybe I'll get a second wind. Game is so dense though, makes re-reading take so much longer.

[Axelrod]

So, as far as what rolf posted, like, I feel like I responded to him once, he completely ignored it and proceeded to say exactly the same things again. So that's annoying. I also get the sense he's the type who you can't exactly reason with, as he's going to just feel the way he feels. But I guess we shall see.

First time he says anything is #69, which is just a vote. Fine. I don't care that much he didn't say why.

Re-affirms the suspicion in #209, again without saying why.

Then there was #244 where he finally explained the vote - by citing something I did not do. :/

i particularly dislike where he implies that he'll just keep on tunneling on eddie and pine tomorrow pretty much regardless of what happens today

He does sort of correct himself in the next post, when he can't find my saying what he claims I had said, but then literally goes on to say "whatever" he's still scum anyway. Super.

He then asked me some questions directly for the first time, like he was trying to engage me. Which I responded to, in #273, to the sound of deafening silence.

Goes back to voting me in #573, and as far as I can tell, it's all about my "vote-parking." Like, is he seriously still voting for Pine, how scummy is that? but also accuses me of throwing "shade" on the side of select other wagons.

Then, his big "case." Which consists entirely of him pointing out where I expressed suspicions of Eddie early.

And, gee, yes, that happened. I had some early suspicion of Eddie, because of how he was posting. He glosses over my #125 where I explained more or less exactly what I was thinking at the time because it has too many words. He continues to characterize this as "shading" Eddie, as opposed to, what? Just expressing a suspicion?

And then he jumps to my #214 about KMD, and characterizes this as some kind of...flip? Because I'm now expressing suspicion of KMD for his Eddie vote. He has seemingly missed #202, where I started to come around on Eddie, and also seemingly missed the entire context of #214, where I had been specifically waiting to see how KMD responded to Eddie's accusation, and KMD's response was super lackluster.

He

really

doesn't like that I express suspicions of KMD and also Tywin while still voting for Pine. I've explained this too. I then gave more or less sequential reads on all of them (though, the Tywin one wasn't even a true read) just by way of explaining my current stances on people, but apparently this is more evidence to rolf, because...? Why am I explaining my suspicions of people I am not currently voting for?

Is that really it?

He asserts there has never been momentum against Pine, which I guess I would dispute. Plenty of people have expressed suspicion, though I certainly concede he's not been subject of a major wagon yet.

He then concludes by jumping through a somewhat twisted logical hoop to conclude that he people I have been "shading" (in this case KMD and Tywin, I have no idea what he thinks about Eddie) are Town, while the person I am

voting

(but not

pushing,

see) is my actual scumbuddy.

There is literally nothing to even respond to here, except to acknowledge that I have not been using my vote this game. I half wonder if I hadn't even voted at all if the entire case would evaporate in a puff of smoke, or if that would just then be it's own thing. Because it's scummy to express suspicion of people without voting for them (it's really not).

What about this are other people agreeing with?

I see where Magna has his own post. I'll try to respond to that tomorrow.

[Axelrod]

All right, doing this. Responses are in bold.

@Magna

Spoiler:

So with a completely fresh set of eyes I’m looking at Axel’s ISO –

His progression at the start of the game is pretty Null to me. I mean we’ve been over confirm-gate to death but I don’t necessarily see anything that pushes me either way about his posts around that. In fact his unwillingness to put Eddie at L-2 that early isn’t scummy at all. Worst that can be said is that the point he makes in 68 about not knowing how Eddie confirmed is questionable since it really was nothing other than RVS warlgebargle in the first place that he didn’t confirm in thread.

There is a bunch of stuff in 115 I agree with and can see from a Town perspective. And I still don’t see a reason to scum read 125.

And I agree with his thoughts at 202 re: OldMan backpedaling on the notion that Eddie was a scum-driven wagon.

Now 346 is the first post where I’m seeing something that smells of scum here and that is some Cogdis between the following …

He's not saying he had any actual suspicion of Eddie at all (unless he is saying that Magna's joke vote was an actual reason)

but he left his vote there until #192

(which was well after the wagon went away, and anything that he might have "gotten" from it was done.)

Bolded for emphasis – he’s dinging KMD for not moving his vote from RVS (in effect) fast enough when he’s just recently been defending his own “vote-parking” as not scummy and something that is, for lack of a better term, a “fake-news scumtell”.

Sure. The only distinction I'll make is that this

was

supposedly a "rvs" vote (at least, this is what it looked like at the time, given Eddie hadn't even posted yet), giving him less reason to keep it there. That's not so big a deal. But when I asked him about it, it seemed like he then tried to say that it wasn't so much a RVS vote as a vote to push the biggest wagon and see what "we" could get out if it. He never actually said that in #192, though, which was the post he actually analyzed the wagon in. I'm not really dinging him for not voting/moving his vote per se. KMD actually didn't vote anyone until #371 (which I just noticed right now, amusingly enough, because I didn't care about it)

Also not a fan of 399. I can see Town wanting to know why I have a Pine Town read when he’s apparently Axel’s top scum candidate but the point about me “not talking about Pine” feels a bit dirty when Axel himself has had little to nothing to say about Pine for some time either.

Dirty? Really? This post is 100% me trying to suss you out, Magna, not me trying to push anything on Pine. Because I did have a legitimate question about where your Town-ish read was coming from, given that I wasn't seeing anything remotely townish and also that you hadn't previously said anything about it.

Finally two more general points – on ISO re-read I don’t have the same strength of feeling that this is Town scum-hunting. There seems to my eye to be a disproportionate amount of posts that are “defense of self / others (like Firebringer)” as opposed to pushing scum suspects. And I’ve seen multiple cases of Axel saying “I need to read said person” that have never materialized.

I will cop to defense of self, in as much as I try to respond to questions tossed my way, and I virtually always respond to "cases" even if it's to dismiss them out of hand. What I might not respond to is a naked vote on me for no stated reason. Responding to a case on someone else is more hit-and-miss whether I do it. Depending on (1) how strongly I feel about it and/or (2) what else I'm doing in life. Also (and I'm not looking back at what I said before) sometimes when I say I need to re-read someone, it's just that, me saying this is something I need to do, and is not me promising to write up a review of said person or share my thoughts. If I make a promise then I virtually always try to do it, so sometimes I make promises in the thread to literally make myself do something I've been putting off. Other times I'll still share an opinion. I try to be transparant about such things, but it doesn't always happen, and I've been slacking on this game a lot especially lately.

That combined with his calling Firebringer effectively “too scummy to be scum” and I don’t feel back giving Rofl my vote right now.

VOTE: Axel

Still feel KMD is scummy but getting no traction there.

So, this is just my biggest concern about Magna, who I have a lot of respect for as a player, and it's that he's been kind of pushing some weak cases, and some of his reads just seem off to me. And, I mean, I've said and will say that weak cases are kind of the norm on D1, so, it's isn't so much his doing it as maybe his acting like they are stronger than they are. I have a feeling he's just one of those people I'm probably never going to get a strong read on though because I'm always going to be paranoid.

And I know some other people had questions, so I'll try to get to those next.

[Axelrod]

I am making a note to myself to look closer @Cooldogs #610, but I am not reading it for reals right now.

[Axelrod]

While I do agree with what rofl is saying when I discussed his issues with axel, I do have this suspicions of rofl and I'm having trouble putting my full faith into his case because of that.

So, exactly what part of what rolf is saying do you agree with? All of it?

Axel, what's your

read

on rofl? You've never mentioned it one way or the other.

My read is that he's tunneling hard while not being at all interested in actually engaging me. That's sort of surface scummy, but it's something Town can also do, particularly if they're otherwise disengaged from the game. Or just like to go by their "gut." Which it also feels like he has been and could be doing. So, he's probably like "bottom half" in terms of people I like, but not "bottom three." What's frustrating is him just saying "lynch Axel" "Lynch Axel" for the same (non) reasons, and then blithely ignoring when I respond to him. That's going to put me on tilt as much as anything.

On Axelrod

I have lukewarm feelings about the slot because he scumread both Chamber and Pine. My question to him was a lead off to put how he rationalized the two slots alignments for when I made my next post. I didn't get a response.

If you're talking about my read on the "Chamber" slot, I did give that, when I talked about Tammy. I have no idea what you are talking about as far as rationalizing the "two slots" alignment.

If our back and forth didn't satisfy you, why didn't you respond to my last post directed at you?

Well my recollection is that I looked at that post and decided there wasn't much in there to follow up on, except for where you said you'd be interested in seeing the places where Tywin was over-generalizing and mis-repping. And that's fair, except for what I already said which is that it would involve some kind of monster post for me to go through and post all that and I had zero energy for it.

I suppose it is still possible that could happen. Kind of depends on what I decide about Lycan, which I've not done yet.

Axelrod - have you not been scum in two years? Am I missing something? Will you tell me your last one?

I *think* the last time was, in fact, about 2 years ago, here. In "A Musical Mafia" (which I am not looking up to link to. But it started March 2016.) The only other place I've played is MTGS and I haven't been scum there in a while, I don't think. I think I've only played maybe 4-5 games total in the last two years.

[Axelrod]

Axel

: You seem to mention that vote immobility is something only rofl would find scummy, but it's the same thing I was after in 541.

I do? I don't think I said that. I did say I don't understand why anyone who is actually reading his posts (and mine) would be agreeing with him, and I guess his main thing is me being "vote-parked" but I'm not saying he's the only one who doesn't/didn't like that. Clearly he's not the only one.

Maybe I'm saying that all you people who think it's some kind of brilliant scum tell are...just not correct. Discussion for after game/Mafia theory perhaps.

Also, Axel 649 doesn't seem like a post directed at someone who he has on "bottom half".
...
top bit seems to be assuming he's town, bottom bit just seems weird that his response is "why does anyone else agree with this?" without imputing any value judgement about rofl himself

Not assuming he's town at all, but besides latching onto me for "reasons", he's not done much else I remember this game.

And at risk of giving people new and interesting reasons to vote me, here's where I am on everyone, with the rather large caveat that a lot of this is based on early game stuff when I was a bit more active and there are a bunch of people I've only got vague feelings about. These are pretty rough orders, especially within groups.

The most Townish:

CooLDoG (I'm currently buying PGO, and that means Town. I feel like that is not a gambit that scum would be likely to make in their first post of the game. I mean it's possible, but not

likely

.)
Eddie Cane (I am currently buying what he is selling. If he's scum he's got some very big *****
Old Man (Even aside from IC claim, and annoying posting style, he's been all right. Rather large caveat: if he doesn't put up with the Innocent Child thing first thing tomorrow, he's gone)
Tammy

Morality chamber

(Tammy has almost completely redeemed the Chamber slot for me. I really like how she's posting).
insanity018 (asking reasonable questions. I "get" most everything he says, even if not always agreeing 100%. I feel he's a little like me, maybe. With a slightly less wordy style.)
hitogoroshi (similar to Insanity. I like what seems to be a pretty logical approach. Maybe trying to be a little too...tricky?)

The I do not knows:

MagnaofIllusion (Asking questions. Scum-hunting. Logical, which is all good. Except when he comes to these conclusions that do not seem to follow. And following rolf because he has a Town read on him is completely barf. yeah, yeah, he came up with his own reasons too! which were pretty trivial. Player I am most paranoid about.)
Firebringer (not doing anything especially Townish, but doing it defiantly? Hard to quantify, but not acting like I feel a scum would be acting)
roflcopter (my best friend)
Kison (one of the most under-the-radar for me atm. I remember very little about what he's done this game.)

The most worrisome:

Ginngie

petroleumjelly

(PJ wasn't great this game. Then he quit. I have barely read anything Ginngie has posted. What I remember did not blow me away me with it's Townieness.)
Kmd4390 (I think I already talked about him. It feels like he's been somewhat better more recently?)
Lycanfire

Tywin Lannister

(Lycanfire is another player I have barely read since he came in. Tywin wasn't great though).
Pine (my second best friend. How's the Pinecone?)

When/if I get the time/energy. I'll do some more comprehensive reads. But those are always more useful after some flips have happened. I feel I'm generally fumbling around in the dark until then.

[Axelrod]

omg I am in such a foul mood right now, and this game isn't doing anything to improve it. It feels like trying to argue with a bunch of Trump supporters.

[Axelrod]

But, that makes no sense at all?

MAGA!

It's like the opposite of what he said?

MAGA!

I mean, like, dude, just look at it?

MAGA!

[Axelrod]

Which weak cases do you think Magna is pushing? Which reads seem off to you? Did any of this bother you before he decided to vote you?

Town – Tammy, Cooldog, PJ’s slot, Pine, Rofl, Axel, Kison
Nullish – Eddie, Hito
Scum – OldMan, Firebringer, KMD, Insanity, Lycan

I strongly disagree with his "Town" read on Pine, and "PJ's slot". Neither of those people has done anything to merit a Town read, much less a strong town read, and have, in fact, been actively scummy. He ought not be hard town-reading rolf or you either, frankly, but reasonable minds can disagree on what constitutes a strong town tell.

I also disagree with the scum reads on Oldman and Insanity (to a

much

lesser extent Firebringer. I don't even know why I'm bringing that up, because I don't have any good reason to town-read Firebringer except just a feeling that he wasn't playing like scum would play. And now he's kind of completely checked out again)

And that's not a whole lot of disagreement actually. For D1.

But his decision to sheep rolf here and tack on a few points of his own to try and justify it more is almost unforgivable. I cut him far less slack in this regard than people who just randomly vote people to "make stuff happen" or because it's what everyone else is doing.

The worst case Magna pushed hard was the one on Old Man, which I did talk about it already. And now his "points" to justify the vote on me, which are terrible. BUT I GUESS NOT MORE TERRIBLE THAN ANYONE ELSE'S.

[Axelrod]

axel scum power, insanity goon, you heard it here first

MAGA!

[Axelrod]

I mean, ffs, rolf's hypocrisy is just astounding. He's been calling me scum since post #63 of this game. Sure, his

vote

has bounced around a few time, but his

read

has apparently never waivered in the slightest. The entire game.

Like, it boggles the mind.

[Axelrod]

cool defense axel

Are you suggesting you have actually made a case?

When was that? That would have been cool to see.

Wait, was it that time you pulled up quotes of me expressing suspicions of people?

Yeah, that was a cool case.

[Axelrod]

(ad hominem, when you can't actually defend yourself you impugn the intelligence of your attacker by... calling them a trump supporter?)

bernie would have won

See, and I did "defend" myself already. Muptiple times. Every "point" he made. Rolf

completely ignored

my responses to him. Like wind through the trees (or in this case through his head). So for him to post this, as though I

wasn't

defending myself. Smugly asserting I can't defend myself is just...gah.

I'll have you all be aware, these are my polite, restrained and tactful replies. You should be thanking me.

[Axelrod]

you may repeat yourself on the "roflcopter hasn't actually made a case" talking point some more if you like as well, you're not the one i'm trying to convince to vote for you after all

it's ironic that you keep pulling from trump's playbook while saying i'm acting like a red pill maga mook

Sadly, see, I'm still not convinced that you are scum despite your lazy ineptness, so there's this tiny part of me that keeps thinking, hey, if this guy will just engage, he'll have to come to his senses.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I know, right?

I also know I'm completely burning that bridge insulting you, because pop psychology 101 is that when you insult the guy attacking you all it makes him do it dig down harder, fight-or-flight response (like when you try to challenge a Trump supporter's beliefs, see? Logic and reason goes completely out the window)

I can't help it though. You're being too annoying. Sorry.

[Axelrod]

Also, if you ARE scum, I will take back everything bad I have said about you at the end of the game with no hard feelings at all. Because in that case, you'd simply be doing a fine job.

I actually kind of hope that's the case now.

[Axelrod]

Axel

- Any reason why you aren’t voting Lycan? There’s an obvious scum-motivated counterwagon to save Lycan, and your top scumread roflcopter is the leader. I cannot understand why your vote is parked on Pine. Please correct this.

well, (1) rolf is not my top scum read, and (2) I am skeeved out at the idea of just jumping on a counterwagon.

Lycan/Tywin needs a serious deep dive, but **** if I know when I'm going to have the time or energy for that.

What I want to do is look at the people voting for

me

for crap reasons. Like, rolf was doing his thing and being mostly ignored (the correct response) but then Magna kind of legitimized it, and did it in a kind of back-handed way, so that's a concern. And then who jumped on after it became an okay thing to do?

Oh look, there's Pine....

And Ginngie? Who? I am not sure I've read a single post Ginngie has made this game (in any great detail, definitely not), because, he's (she's?) got a tough style to read, and came in during a time when I was mostly checked out, and then I had other stuff to deal with.

[Axelrod]

No more excuses and read me

Ya know i don't once remember you saying anything about me besides that you scumread me dude

I could say the same thing about you voting for me. I looked back and there's #606. Which is you saying you think rolf made a good point.

And that was it?

I think I even asked you what about that "case" you agreed with and you didn't respond. It's like, the entire point is my expressing suspicions of some people while voting someone else (who I am also expressing suspicions of, you know, but like, not at right that moment), and then calling that scummy.

Yes, I'm still voting Pine, but good lord, look at his posts for like, the last two weeks.

1) He specifically asked people to cut him slack because of new baby, and used baby as excuse for tonal changes and inconsistency.

2) He voted Firebringer based on "gut"

3) He called PJ case on Eddie "pretty solid" when it was anything but. I already broke that down. He did not respond to me, because he doesn't respond to me. And why should he, really, since everyone has already dismissed my vote on him.

4) If I am being generous, he gave a read on Tammy when he said he thought she had redeemed the Chamber slot. That's all he said, but I guess that's...something? (selfishly note that Tammy does not support voting for me)

5) He then asked Magna who he should vote for and voted for me after Magna did.

6) He then gave another pseudo-read saying he could see Hito being scum for being "tonally off." Not further elaborated on.

That's essentially it. None of that is Townish. Why am I supposed to be changing my vote again? Because baby?

If the answer is "because deadline" well, that's something else entirely. But that hasn't been a valid point until just now.

[Axelrod]

Stop telling everyone that I'm good at scum.

Stop calling me bad at scum it hurts my feelings.

I actually like this post. It's funny.

And I kind of like the fact that Gingee is going to other games to pull out posts/points that have some kind of relevance to a point he wants to make here.

What I would really be interested in finding out is whether he's done that as scum before. Because

generally

, not always but generally, you don't work as hard as scum.

I can't get worked up about Gingee though, so, in a way that's too bad for me.

[Axelrod]

You read 606 and then didn't know what I agreed

Just because I posted something in parentheses doesn't mean you don't have to read it lol

You can literally trace my read as well, I'm reading through the game, Rofl says some shit, I look at it kinda puzzled, ask for it to be explained, he explains it, and I like the post and give it my support. I don't really think I should have to reiterate every single point rofl makes and call it my own.

What I'm saying is that it's weak. It was always weak. Repeating the same thing over, and over, and over and over, does not make it a stronger point.

I mean, I already talked about this, and no one engages. Maybe I should try this another way.

What about my reply do you disagree with

? Since clearly you were not at all impressed.

Ya btw Pine is town lol

Your point 1 is a fucking dick move to even say, like you do realize he LITERALLY HAD A BABY A COUPLE WEEKS AGO. What are you actually expect him to be the same? He's probably fucking tired as hell.

Point 2, gut is valid, a plethora of people used it, does not indicate scum.

I'm stopping myself at point 3 because of 2 things, 1) i have to go to work lol and 2) I can start to feel myself just waning to prove you wrong no matter what you say and that's a bad mindset.

I know he had a baby. I'm not trying to be a dick about it either. I'm trying to explain why I have never switched my vote around. People are like "why are you still voting Pine!" Well, what the hell?

Could the baby explain him being a complete non-entity? I guess so. Can you vote based on "gut" without explaing why? I guess so, but it's super not helpfull and useless for anyone else. He's clearly coasting. It is because of baby? Maybe? Probably. Would he coast exactly the same way regardless of alignment? Maybe?

I mean, screw it. He's not getting lynched today, baring some huge mis-step. I know this.

Unvote

But I'm not going to Town read him for any of it. I have no idea why anyone would.

[Axelrod]

Frankly I think it is pretty transparent you can track Axel’s read as suspecting me as my suspicion of him increases.

Player pushes weak case. Suspicion on player increases. News at 11.

Hey Axel – can you chart for me how your suspicion of OldMan (as you indicated in 212) morphed to suddenly him being a solid Town read in 723 when you don’t have a single interaction or comment about him making Town posts in-between?

Really, Magna?

I mean, aside from the fact that the suspicion you note in that post wasn't a strong suspicion to being with, and aside from the fact that I explained in #216 how I liked his involvement with the thread, can you really not think of a reason why I might have come to a stronger Town read on Old Man, and not had a lot to say about him since? Any reason at all?

I fullclaim Day 2 Innocent Child.

I get that you don't believe this claim. And I mean, sure, he could be lying here. But I don't see a particularly

strong

angle for a scum. Hooray, you got to live until D2, and then guaranteed your own lynch!

Like, if he was going down, and had literally nothing to lose, then living until D2 would be all upside and you might fake claim something like that. But that was not the situation there.

As to Clash of Kings – Axel’s playstyle seems consistent. That’s why he got the initial gut Town read. But as been said over and over – playstyle doesn’t alignment make.

This being the game where you were scum and got the Town to speed-lynch me (the Doctor) before I even had a chance to claim. Oh god, the flashbacks.


I've got some work to do. Then I guess I have to decide who I'm going to vote for. But as one of the leading vote-getters, I'm kind of ambivilent about doing work that I already know people are going to jump down my throat for because "he's just trying to distract from his own wagon...!" and "He's just trying to save his own skin...!" Yah, looking forward to that tremendously.

[Axelrod]

Player pushes weak case. Suspicion on player increases. News at 11.

Scum player attempts a snarky comment and ignores the majority of a post in hopes that it dissuades people from realizing he doesn't have an actual response

I KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO SAY THIS. I FREAKING KNEW IT.

I have responded to everything people throw my way. Everything. I have responded in exhaustive detail. Point by point. I've been completely open and completely trasnparant. Everyone ignores it. No one cares (that is not true, some people seem to be reading what I post, but most are just glazing their eyes over it). Instead they criticize because I use "too many words." You yourself said all it seems like all he's doing is defending himself.

So, for once, I

don't

respond in exhaustive point by point detail. It simply wasn't necessary. And you come back with "look at him ignoring me. See how he doesn't have a response..."

Give me a break.

I don't believe Magna's this bad.

[Axelrod]

Something occurred to me about Pine though.... I also kind of think that his appeal to people concerning pinecone and request to give a day reprieve might be a little below him as scum. Granted real life happens no matter what your alignment is; I've been there, but when scum I always feel especially testy about getting slack for it, and I don't even come close to identifying as lawful

And this. This here, may actually be the strongest point anyone has made for Pine actually being Town. Because it

would

be kind of low and out-of-game to use your baby as an excuse like that if you were scum, and I was not really thinking of it in those terms.

I mean, I have never played with him before and I have no idea if he actually cares about such things. But some people do.

Also, I'm wondering if that also means something for Axel's alignment because I was looking at his iso in musical mafia where he was scum. (HEY I was in that game and you guys inadvertently killed me night one!) But anyway his reaction to Pine today is pretty dickish, Ginngie's right there, if he's scum here. There someone he was trying to push a scum read on said that he needed some time from the game because something was going on in his life and Axel's response was to unvote and be very reasonable and say that real life was more important that mafia. Here he seems irritated. Like here if he's scum and Pine's town, he knows that Pine is dealing with having a baby and he knows Pine's actually struggling right now. While if town, he might behave a little irrationally about the situation and get frustrated at someone, who he thinks is scum, is getting a pass. So I understand that reaction much more if Axel's town here.

I don't mean to be a dick. I never mean to be a dick. But I can't help losing it at times when completely BS stuff is happening.

[Axelrod]

I'm not sure who complained about deadline scrambles before (Hito?), and - while I agree they suck - the fact is, you actually get the best reads on people during these times.

For example, there is approximately <1% chance that Ginngie is scum. There is just no way she (he? sorry, I'm still not sure) does a reversal on me like that this close to a deadline. Not when it would be SO EASY to just say nothing, let it ride, let other people continue to push it for you. You could try to argue "oh, she's trying to gain credibility for later" but the fact is, scum also HATE to reverse themselves. So much easier to just be "consistent." It just wouldn't happen.

I know, no one else gets to credit this until I flip, so, just make a note for later.

I'm going to re-read Tywin/Lycan. I am still really unhappy at the idea of jumping on that wagon just because it's the alternate to my own. And I have no idea what I'm going to do if I really read him hard and come to the conclusion I think he's Town.

[Axelrod]

Screw this reading people in ISO also. I'm reading the whole game straight through again.

This would be approximately 100% more effective on another day, but it is what it is.

[Axelrod]

I found the smoking gun.

I will not be voting for Axel today.

Magna clearly scum.

[Axelrod]

Well, I'm only through 10 pages, and it's getting to be as much of a slog as I feared. I'm trying to read from a mindset of PJ/Ginnie/Eddie/Old Man/cooldog being definitely Town, but so far it's not giving me any brilliant insights. Most of my early reads still seem pretty reasonable. I guess I have one more day at this.

[Axelrod]

@axel

What about kmd, you wrote a case on him earlier?

also @axel what happened to all the work you did casing tywin earlier did i imagine that?? what was that all about if you're just gonna posture about not wanting to hop on the leading counterwagon to yourself when it's the exact same slot?

Are you just being snarky again, or are you actually interested in anything I post, rolf? Because I'm answering things. I never got around to making a "case" on Tywin after he got replaced. I tried to start, and then realized it was going to be a huge slog and cut it short. But I didn't care for him up to then because it turned out he didn't have very many posts at all with any game related content, and the ones with game related content were full of some pretty weak and/or straight up wrong stuff.

I could go back and pull up some of the things I'm talking about, but somehow I feel like that would be a supremely wasted effort.

And then he got replaced, and I have barely payed attention to Lycan since then. But I feel like I kind of ought to before voting him, because, Tywin might have been kind of bad, but he might just be bad, you know? Nothing he posted was any kind of smoking gun.

I'm not posturing. I just really don't like to be wrong. And I actively feel bad when I accuse someone incorrectly of being scum. I imagine this is not a problem that you have.

[Axelrod]

Was this the question you were talking about Eddie?

My read is that he's tunneling hard while not being at all interested in actually engaging me. That's sort of surface scummy, but it's something Town can also do, particularly if they're otherwise disengaged from the game. Or just like to go by their "gut." Which it also feels like he has been and could be doing. So, he's probably like "bottom half" in terms of people I like, but not "bottom three." What's frustrating is him just saying "lynch Axel" "Lynch Axel" for the same (non) reasons, and then blithely ignoring when I respond to him. That's going to put me on tilt as much as anything.

iirc you have a lot of experience with rofl - how does this jive with how town!him or scum!him has treated you in the past?

I do not, in fact, have a lot of experience with rolf. Not that I remember, at least. It is possible I played with him back in the day, he's familiar in a "I know he's been around a long time" kind of way, but that could also just be from seeing him posting other places on the site. If we were in a game(s) together, it would have been years ago. I believe every game I've ever played here is mentioned in my Wiki

<--- over there. The games themselves are not linked to, though, so one would have to go find them.

What does this actually mean?

"Chinese Fire Drill" Basically speed-lynching someone. Usually at the last minute. Not typically a fan of those, though I understand how they happen.

KMD is probably in the same space for me that Tywin/Lycan is, which isn't great. I could say, sure, better one of them than me, and that's probably objectively true - baring one of them having a particular power role - but I can't get excited about it.

I'm recommencing this re-read. But I have company coming over at 12 and then all bets are off.

[Axelrod]

look axel/tammy you really should not feel bad about mislynching or being wrong in a game of mafia like statistically everyone is wrong more than they are right but we'll literally never get anywhere without votes and lynches. i've never felt bad about being wrong and i certainly won't be starting this game, even if axel flips town.

It's the certainty - when you are just so, so wrong - that drives me insane.

KMD is probably in the same space for me that Tywin/Lycan is, which isn't great. I could say, sure, better one of them than me, and that's probably objectively true - baring one of them having a particular power role - but I can't get excited about it.

it boggles my mind that no one else is even concerned by the fact that axel put actual effort into scrutinizing both kmd and tywin[lycan] earlier in this day and now that they are the only two viable lynches aside from himself he won't commit to either.

I need a giff for "mind blown."

I suspect that I would be voting one or the other of them at this point were I myself not also in the running. There's something about voting someone else to save your own skin that just feels wrong to me on a kind of primal level.

Even

someone I had suspicions about.

I'm curious what you think I get out of that particular strategy as scum though. Don't really see much of an angle. But that's self-serving, sure.

[Axelrod]

I got to my own post on KMD. I'm not wrong.

[Axelrod]

My company's here.

On p16.

@rolf: you actually think that applies here?

[Axelrod]

So, yeah, that claim, that way,

probably

town. But I got nothing to say against anyone who voted there. Certainly not right now.

@Hito: you'll get it. I don't promise to break the game on D2, but it will be better than today.

[Axelrod]

I agree the "move" is "wait for OM to prove his IC claim."

But then there's some other stuff.

[Axelrod]

Don't worry, I'm not going to push everything off if OM fails to deliver. I'm still going to do my thing. But my thing will also be informed by that info.

[Axelrod]

i'm interested in what your thing would be if there weren't a claimed day two ic to wait around for. why not give us what you've got now?

I'm resisting the urge to get snarky. You have made your opinions very clear here.

What I do is rather large vote count/wagon analysis that tends to take a long time to put together, and the more information we have to go on the more accurate they are. I don't "have" anything right now. I was waiting to see who died in the night before getting started. But, preview: I'm going to look at all the votes for Lycan/Me/KMD. And actually have to look at them 2 ways, one assuming Lycan Town, and one assuming Lycan scum.

[Axelrod]

So, I can look at some of this now, I suppose.

Again, disclaimer, I am not going to be breaking the game wide open on D2, and most of this is still opinion, but it's more informed opinion at the very least.

Starting with the KMD flash-wagon, because that's just the most interesting thing. 2 days before the deadline, the votes were like this:

(5) Lycanfire - hitogoroshi, insanity018, Old Man, Kmd4390, Eddie Cane
(4) Axelrod - roflcopter, ManaofIllusion, Pine, Kison
(2) hitogoroshi - CooLDoG, Firebringer
(1) MagnaofIllusion - Lycanfire

not voting: Tammy, Axelrod, Ginngie

And that vote count had been fairly static for a bunch of days. Basically, the only changes over the past week or so having been:

(1) Eddie switched from Ginngee to Lycan (Lycan now up to 6, I think)
(2) Kison switched from voting Lycan to voting for me (Lycan back down to 5, and me also up to 5)
(3) Ginngie Unvoted me (me back down to 4).

I've already mentioned how I just do not see a scum-Ginngie ever unvoting me under these circumstances, almost regardless of Lycan's alignment. If Lycan were Town, then the scum would be looking at two townies up on the block and probably not caring too much which one got chopped. The "momentum," in as much as there was any, was towards me. There were at least a few people saying stuff like "I'm willing to vote Axel at the deadline" or some such. And, if I'm being immodest, I would say the scum might marginally prefer having me get the chop than Lycan, just based on what has happened up until now, because Lycan isn't doing very much this game and I don't think he has a lot of people expressing a strong opinion they think he's Town, and I'm at least more active and have got some people supporting me.

So, a scum-Ginngie is probably very content to be where she is on that vote. But instead of just being content, Ginngie did a re-read of my posts, concluded that rolf's original points weren't very good, and unvoted me. Just did not have to do that

at all

as scum, and probably counter-productive to their plans. You could argue "she did it for the cred!" for the day when I flip Town, but I don't think Ginngie needed that cred in that spot, she was already pretty solidly voting me and I don't think anyone was calling her out on her vote, and I just don't see scum doing it.

It's even more solid case for Town-Ginngie if Lycan were scum. Obviously the scum would prefer the Axel-wagon to the Lycan-Wagon then, and a Ginngie re-read and potentially momentum-killing unvote could have sent her scum buddy to the noose for absolutely no reason.

So, this is why Ginngie is Town.

The Kison switch is probably NAL. If Lycan is Town, then, again, scum don't care and might marginally prefer me. And scum-Kison could be sucking up to rolf/Magna. But town-Kison could be doing virtually the same thing, and just might not have had a strong preference between us. If Lycan were scum, well, you could look at the switch as an attempt to "save" Lycan, but it doesn't really read that way, and he'd been sitting on that vote for Lycan for a long time with ample opportunity to move it before if he wanted to. Like, scum-scum is a possibility, but not really a stronger possibility than any other.

Similarly, Eddie's vote on Lycan is probably NAL in itself. He's expressing the position that he would prefer a Lycan lynch to a me lynch, which is consistent with what he's said before. He could do that as Town or scum. And I think he could even do it if Lycan were scum with him, despite it increasing the chances Lycan would be lynched, just because it would be more consistent with his previous posts. Though it's probably less likely scum-Eddie busses scum-Lycan there.

I think Eddie is probably Town here anyway, but not because of this.

And then the flash-wagon happened.

[Axelrod]

Tammy starts the flash-wagon @ 869.

Looking back, she's commented a number of times that she doesn't see the case against me, and that I read fine to her. KMD and Tywin are both on her radar. So there's an interesting question here of why vote KMD right there, as opposed to throwing support behind the wagon that already had votes. I can think of a number of possible answers to this, but I'd be curious to hear Tammy's particular ones. I'll say I don't find it scummy on it's face though.

It's kind of the same "if Lycan is Town, the scum don't really care" situation, where there's simply no reason for a scum-Tammy to go and try and start up something completely new on another player. Rather, she would be

perfectly

able to hem and haw and lament about these crap choices she was being given, but had no choice but to pick one due to deadline, and etc. etc. No real reason for her to try and start a new wagon. Lycan-scum is

slightly

more likely for her to have tried something like this, given she has been expressing support for me, and probably wouldn't want to have to reverse herself and vote me, but given the deadline situation, I just don't think scum-Tammy would have been feeling the pinch or need to do something like that.

So, I was feeling it before, but this solidifies it more, than Tammy is just very likely Town.

[Axelrod]

The second flash-wagon vote comes immediately after Tammy suggests the cfd, and it's from - of all people -

Pine

@ 870

This one is just weird to me, and I have a lot of conflicting thoughts about Pine. I mean, as far as I can tell, I am one of Pine's top suspects, and have been for quite a while. In addition, Pine is the only person I've voted against myself. Despite his vote for me, Pine has been disengaged from attacking me, or trying to convince others to vote for me. He's mostly been just cruising along. Given his newborn, certainly at the end of the day this part is pretty NAL.

But why jump to this flash-wagon? And at this point it isn't even a wagon, it's just Tammy. What does he say? He says kind of two things: "I'm tired" and "Fine, lynch the Lurker."

I have to ask myself, does scum-Pine, who has every reason in the world to just keep his vote right where it is, switch off me at literally the last minute to try and get a different Town lynched? I mean, it's possible? Scum-Pine doesn't

really

care here. And maybe he's feeling that trying to get me lynched is just too much trouble. The "I'm tired" plays a little into that feeling. But I also go back to my "scum like to be consistent" principle, and question whether scum-Pine really wants to switch off me after all this time for so little reason? Hito may have had it right, in the sense that a scum-Tywin/Lycan looks a lot worse for Pine here than a Town-Tywin/Lycan. This is one of the first votes I could see as coming from a scum-buddy of Lycan's. But if Lycan is Town? Not as much.

I looked back to see what he had to say about KMD (and Lycan) before this switch, and it wasn't a lot. The first time I see anything at all is #313 where he lumps both KMD and Tywin in with several of people who "have been giving crap for content all game" by way of defending himself that he hasn't been doing much.

He then says (somewhat ironically given how the day ends)

In brief, I would fight a D1 lurker lynch of KMD, but not oppose Tywin. I think there are better choices than Tywin though

Tywin had three votes on him at that moment, and KMD none, I think (Pine was responding to a question from Hito here).

At this point, Pine has a baby.

Later, in #514 he says that he "never saw" the scum-read on Tywin, and that Lycan looks fine to him. That's really it. As of #726 (Lycan has 5 votes, I have 3, Hito has 2) he says he'd vote Me or Hito, or maybe Fire. Doesn't mention Lycan, but as Lycan is the top vote getter, it's clearly implied he's against that lynch. He's still not

said

much of anything about Tywin/Lycan at all though.

When asked about his switch off me specifically he says:

If Axel were viable we'd have seen movement by now. There's support for a KMD flashwagon. It's subpar but an acceptable D1 EOD lynch with a decent chance of hitting scum.

This is kind of backwards-justified, since at the time of Pine's vote he would have had no idea if there was support for the wagon or not. The fact that three more people hopped on immediately after him is irrelevant. But - again - I'm not sure I see the angle for scum in just being mistaken.

Also, on the "maybe they could be scum together" angle, this exchange:

Kindly fuck off. I'm one of the very few people who had a Tywin!Town read, and your bullshit pushes are doing work upending that.

Kind of argues against that. I know scum can bus, but this is a little more hostile than I would expect to see teammates being to each other. Maybe not - and maybe someone familiar with Pine can tell me.

Finally, there's this little inconsistency. Pine first says this:

On a KMD scumflip, I am 100% hard for a followup Hito lynch.

So, KMD scum = Hito scum. But that is followed by this:

Yeah absolutely wagoning the fuck out of Hito D2. He's REALLY acting like informed minority around the KMD lynch here.

After Hito has said he thinks KMD's claim makes him likely Town. So, basically, Pine ready to wagon Hito no matter what KMD flips?

Pine doesn't address KMD's claim or really say anything else about KMD, so that's not great either.

If Pine is Town, he's just on a totally different wavelength from me. Frazzled new-baby tiredness could be playing a part here? Look, I have said a lot of words again, and not come to a solid conclusion! Stupid baby.

[Axelrod]

I'm not even sure what narrative you think that is, Pine, considering I don't have one.

What exactly?

[Axelrod]

I mean, given how many people seem skeptical of Old Man, I am not surprised at all to see him living. Like, obv. if he's scum, but if he's Town, then I could easily see scum leaving him alive in the hope that he was doing some kind of stupid gambit and would get himself lynched today when he couldn't prove it out. I don't think unconfirmed IC claim is an auto-night kill.

[Axelrod]

I mean, given how many people seem skeptical of Old Man, I am not surprised at all to see him living. Like, obv. if he's scum, but if he's Town, then I could easily see scum leaving him alive in the hope that he was doing some kind of stupid gambit and would get himself lynched today when he couldn't prove it out. I don't think unconfirmed IC claim is an auto-night kill.

all those people that were vocally skeptical of it before day two started... you mean just me and magna?

Pretty

sure it's more than that. Not that it's particularly relevant atm.

Like, personally, Magna's vote there makes no sense to me except as some kind of "statement" vote there's really not a reason to make. He is announcing loudly "I don't believe Old Man's claim!" Well, okay. But he's going to prove it or not, so there's not a reason to waste a lot of brainpower on it.

Vote Count

(3) insanity018 - Ginngie, roflcopter, Kison
(1) Lycanfire - Eddie Cane
(1) Kison - insanity018
(1) Old Man - MagnaofIllusion

not voting:

Lycanfire, Old Man, Tammy, Firebringer, Axelrod, CooLDoG, Pine

7 to lynch

Deadline is 6 PM EST on Friday the 29th of June.

[Axelrod]

I'm just pointing out that you're wrong (again)

[Axelrod]

Vote: Old Man

I think I might hate you.

[Axelrod]

I might believe it too. But there's no way I don't vote him. I can't not. I won't lose to being bluffed out by a bold scum. I will lose to lying Townies.

Hence the hate.

[Axelrod]

Unvote

The only thing that will make me reconsider is if Lycan comes back and claims that "yes, I have a gun" (while presumably still claiming to be Town).

He denies that, Old Man is gone. Then, if Old Man is just a terrible, terrible Townie, Lycan goes tomorrow. And we have a nice big hole to dig ourselves out of.

[Axelrod]

We are presented with 4 possibilities:

(1) Old Man Town/Lycan Scum
(2) Old Man Scum/Lycan Town
(3) Both Town
(4) Both Scum

I'm not digging in right now, but I pretty much want to dismiss the last two out of hand. Both Town would seem to involve such an incredible coincidence and bad luck that I can't believe it. Both Scum is just way way too convoluted as a gambit.

So I'm still going to be on one of these people. Lycan's claim which appears to be making a push for us to believe (3) is giving Old Man a lot more credibility, I have to say.

[Axelrod]

You guys understand how horrifically unlucky we would have to be for them to both be Town? And how conveniently the claims now line up? It's too much.

[Axelrod]

You guys understand how horrifically unlucky we would have to be for them to both be Town? And how conveniently the claims now line up? It's too much.

Okay so what side are you coming down on?

Well, I am leaning towards believing Old Man. He's demonstrated an investigative ability. For him to be scum it's either (1) scum with Lycan and this is all a gambit, which I do not believe or (2) He's scum with a different investigative, like a role-cop? Or maybe you could be a scum-gunsmith too, I don't know. But either way, his claiming IC on D1 would still have been a crazy thing for him to have done as scum. Knowing that today he was going to have to come in here and admit he lied and maybe not even having a result to show for it? Like, if he had claimed to investigate someone and found they didn't have a gun, he would be getting lynched now, I have no doubt of it. So, as scum, he would have had to have gotten very lucky.

Also, given his expressed suspicions yesterday, Lycan was his obvious target, but scum wouldn't really have wanted to use an investigative on someone they were hoping to get lynched the next day, so it would have forced them into a sub-optimal decision. Plus, there's the risk of a counter-claim Town investigative? It's just real bad play all around for scum.

I don't like his behavior as Town either. I actively hate it, frankly. But I can

see

it.

[Axelrod]

Lycan, on the other hand is a situation where either (1) he's scum or (2) he's Town and we have gotten very, very unlucky. Plus there are weird roles in this game.

And in favor of him being scum is the convenience of this claim, which nicely answers why he has a gun and also doesn't require him to have any proof. Like, if he's scum trying to survive, what could he claim in this spot? He could never get away with claiming vig. Claiming straight Cop would mean he should have a result for us right now. 1/2 Cop who hasn't had a shot yet is just very convenient.

What is holding me back is the simple fact that a 1/2 gunsmith is pretty poor as far as Town investigative roles go if that's all we have. Having a 1/2 gunsmith and a 1/2 Cop is weird to me. I don't like it. But maybe there's a world that makes sense in. What wouldn't make sense would be if there was any other Town investigative role though.

Before anyone starts screaming "Fishing!" I'm not asking for any such hypothetical role to out themselves yet. I'm just thinking about it.

[Axelrod]

Is too weird design.

[Axelrod]

I've got a lot of stuff going on for the next couple days, so not a lot of time to put into this.

If there's scum b/w the two, it's Lycan, I think. Maybe,

maybe

the horrific coincidence is just that, a coincidence. But my gut still rebells hard against that idea.

I'm going to go back first though and continue what I was doing. See if anything shakes out in light of this new stuff.

[Axelrod]

Still no time for this. Sorry. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow. I suppose I could do one of those V/LA things, but I'm not actually on vacation.

[Axelrod]

I don't have any more excuses except being tired and coming back to this game is the opposite of relaxing. But I will start putting some time in and try to get my second (or third) wind. My currently very uninformed general feelings about people are starting like this:

Tammy
Ginngie
CooLDoG
Eddie Cane
insanity018
Old Man
---------------The line of: everyone over this line did something at some time to make me actively think they are Town. Historically speaking, someone here if not multiple someone's is almost certain to be scum, but I'm not seeing it yet.

Lycanfire
---------------The line of: scum or we are the victims of a very, very unfortunate series of circumstances.
Firebringer
roflcopter
Kison
MagnaofIllusion
Pine
---------------Everyone else.

Since some people are talking about it, my assumption with 15 people would be 4 scum, which generally seems too high, but can be sort of accounted for with power roles. I assume this because 3 seems more low in the other direction, unless there were some other factor/force in the game which there isn't any evidence for yet.

I'm going back to the KMD flashwagon now.

[Axelrod]

Gingee was third on the flashwagon @Post 871. Arguably this vote even more than Pine's vote coming in such quick succession made it a thing.

It's consistent in as much as she had previously indicated she didn't like the Lycan wagon, and more recently said she didn't like the me wagon, so in that sense it was just another place to go. And she sort of even indicates that's exactly what's going on in her next post. That she has to go sort KMD now, who she previously hasn't had much of an opinion of.

It doesn't look like she ever got around to doing that. So that's not great, but on the other hand, there wasn't a lot of time left to do other things either. I don't see any reaction to KMD's claim in #892. Gingee seems to ignore it completely. I'm wondering if she saw it, and had any thoughts about it. Even a "well, might be true, but no time to do anything different" kind of reaction. Or a "I don't believe you" reaction.

I kind of just want Gingee to be Town, and it is possible I'm a teeny bit biased. One could argue that if Lycan is Town then it was only Town on the block so scum wouldn't care, but I do still think they'd try to justify a vote on a townie a little better than this? Maybe?

I can't say this vote specifically does anything to bolster my Town feelings about Gingee though.

[Axelrod]

Insanity is someone who got on my Town-side early and never did anything to make me feel like taking her out. It seemed to me that most everything she was saying was logical and reasonable, and no red flags. I have not been paying any attention to why some people think she's suspicious. In that sense she's probably ripe for re-review. She was also 4th on the KMD flashwagon. Given the wagon was the alternate to me, however, and she had been saying for some time that she was not in favor of my lynch, there's nothing inherently suspicious about the vote.

In the post just before the vote, responding to Tammy feeling her out re: a KMD vote, she said that KMD was on the list of possibilities, but just below some other people. So that's not inherently suspicious either. She was already voting Lycan, though, who was higher on the list - and presumably still in the running to get lynched yesterday - so I do wonder a little about the basis for jumping to KMD there. What she said was "better than Axelrod" (which, totally true) but presumably Lycan was also better than me and higher on Insanity's personal list. I do get that Lycan wasn't getting a lot of traction, however, and had been sitting at roughly the same amount of votes for a while. The appeal of a flashwagon can be strong.

She then wasn't around anymore after the vote, though, for the claim or for the hammering. Personally, I'm hyper aware of deadlines and am almost always around for them if I can be. And if I can't I usually say that I can't, so I'm not a fan of people missing them. But it's dangerous to read too much into that.

[Axelrod]

Eddie was the 6 person on the flashwagon, with no further explanations. He'd also said he was against lynching me, and was also moving from Lycan to KMD, so this switch is a lot like Insanity's in that sense. But he had KMD on his radar also from very early in the game, and also specifically said he'd be open to flashwagons on not-me people, so that's all fine as far as I'm concerned.

Eddie is also doing as much as anyone current to try and solve the game, agree or disagree with his conclusions, and if scum would

really

be working overtime here. I am not seeing that.

[Axelrod]

Here's something I came across which raised a tiny eyebrow for me. Interestingly enough from something Firebringer said re: Magna. In #247, Firebringer made this remark:

Old man: yes MOI does that regardless of alignment though, what is alignment indicative is his delegating read responsibility

It was not clear to me what comment of Old Man's Firebringer was responding to here, but what I took as the gist was that Firebringer saw a scum-modus operandi for Magna when he delegates his reads on people to other people. That stuck out to me in as much as it's largely what Magna did later when he ultimately decided to vote for me, delegating his vote to rolf who he was Town-reading. Magna and Firebringer had a little argument after about whether Fire actually had a good record of catching out Magna as scum, which was a little weird in as much as it would seem to be pointless for Firebringer to lie about his ability to suss out a scum-Magna. He could certainly me mistaken, or mis-remembering, but actively lying about it would seem silly.

Now Firebringer's gone and I can't ask him about this. I suppose I can ask Magna how often he gifts his vote to people he is town-reading without having strong feelings about whether the person he is voting is scum or not.

[Axelrod]

Jumping ahead to argue about pointless things....

Since some people are talking about it, my assumption with 15 people would be 4 scum, which generally seems too high, but can be sort of accounted for with power roles. I assume this because 3 seems more low in the other direction, unless there were some other factor/force in the game which there isn't any evidence for yet.

another dumbo /sigh

{sky, gaiden, kiana, Dunn, text generator, Brian, lexa, dle, hebi, human}
this contains all

3

scum

viewtopic.php?f=127&t=74588

15 players has 3 scum almost always. I say almost to be generous, but it has been every time I've seen it. 11:4 is crazy scumsided. If it was 11:4, I think that pretty much guarantees a traitor (fits w Gunsmith fwiw pointing to OM!town if thats the case) because 4 full mafia wouldn't be close to balanceable. 11:1:3 is more possible, but for purposes of setup spec SK is pretty much town. Very little changes otherwise. IDK why this is new to ya'll.

Dude, I've been playing a long time. We used to have these things called "mini" games with 12 or less people. Maybe those are still a thing? And what I can tell you, is that in 12 player games that I have played, in my experience, there have almost always been

3

scum.

This game has 15 players. Therefore,

3

scum seems a tad low to me. I'm not saying it can't be the case. Just that it seems low. On the other hand, we're kind of in this middle/grey area because normally you don't go up to 4 scum until you hit 16 player size. So, we're less than that, but more than 12, but we're closer to 16 than to 12.

I do know how to balance a Mafia game.

[Axelrod]

Oh Lord. Is this game even salvagable? So many people leaving.

I guess the level of angriness has been a bit high. Maybe I have contributed to that, some, but is it really that much higher than other games? Or is this the new normal?

[Axelrod]

I get angry in the moment. But then I get over it. Just a game.

[Axelrod]

It's like, really hard to get motivated in the midst of all these replacements. At the same time, I feel like that's a cop out. But what can I say, I'm not motivated. How many people are we waiting to get replaced and caught up? Four? That seems like a tall order.

[Axelrod]

It's hard to play a game when literally 1/3 of the people are missing from it. That's not being whiny, that's just reality.

I had two questions for you though, so I guess I'll go ahead and ask them.

(1) How often would you say you delegate/sheep your vote to someone who you think is town without having a particularly strong opinion on the person you are voting? Firebringer (who I take it you did not have tremendious respect for his ability to read you) seemed to think this was some kind of tell, and at the very least it looked like you guys have played a lot of games together. Is this something you do a lot? Got any quick examples?

(2) Re: KMD, when you went back to voting him at the end of the day, I'm curious about your reaction to his claim, which appeared to be esentially no reaction. What were you thinking at that point? I know I felt like he was probably more likely Town than scum at that point - not that I was sure, or that there was anything to be done about it - but you didn't say anything.

[Axelrod]

In reply to Axel –

Regarding it being “hard to play” when we have 4 replacements – this is factually correct and absolutely not an excuse for Town players to not be putting in effort. You have a whole Days posts to analyze and two flips with which to parse players. Just because there are empty slots who you can’t directly interact with doesn’t mean you can’t see what the previous inhabitants posted before for digestion. Frankly it is a cop-out response and why despite my head saying you logically are more likely Town my gut screams coasting scum. And as to the questions –

1. Are you not reading the thread? This information has already been provided in the game by myself and Tammy. To re-iterate – I rarely delegate my reads because there are rarely players in the games I play who I would trust to sheep before even considering whether I Town read them. “The Thaw” (Mini Normal modded by Nexus) is a recent example cited by Tammy – I sheeped Grey on a read early on while trying to get sorted with him. I’ve also cited the Nearly Vanilla game where I worked hand in hand with Tammy (part of a Tammy / Nacho hydra) to vet reads. As to my thoughts on Firebringer now that he flaked out – I have zero respect for his ability to read me as my evidence presented showed.

2. KMD’s claim required no response. He claimed VT. I don’t care how Town you think that is you don’t let a VT claim who played suspect enough to get to L-1 or whatever to claim live. That’s Mafia 101. Proper play Day 1 in that situation is hammer that slot 100 out of 100 times. It prevents scum from claiming VT under the WIFOM that “Only Town claims VT” (which is a bad stance, seen scum claim it before and have done so myself). It also prevents the possibility another Town who isn’t a VT gets run up to claim. Frankly he never should have claimed at all which is the proper play for a VT in his situation Day1.

Now … some questions for you.

1. Why should I not see these questions as scum perspective filler? You are either asking for information already stated in thread or asking pointless theory questions. What sort of response to these do you think would possibly “help” you find scum?

2. Why are you softly piddling around talking about the KMD wagon when you don’t know Lycan’s alignment and seem to be leaning that it is scum? Why do you think it is reasonable for scum to flash wagon KMD if you think Lycan is scum when you were widely scum-read and could have been lynched and have already stated you would be a “better mislynch” for scum?

3. What do you think about my reasoning about you and Lycan sharing the same alignment? What is your read on insanity and what do you think of the wagon that developed on that slot?

4. What do you think of the discrepancy between Firebringer's claimed ability to read me and the evidence I presented and what do you think that Fire refused to engage on that point when I refuted it?

I already said it was a cop out. However, the simple reality is that my motivation to play this game has tanked hard, and that is kind of just the way it is. You saying it's no "excuse" is wrong. That is the excuse. You might not like it, but there is it. I'm still here, and frankly, I'm also playing with about as much effort as anyone else atm. Thank you for answering my questions.

I have not re-read this thread in quite a while, so if your history of sheeping people you read as Town was something discussed between you and Tammy before, then okay, I did not remember that.

The KMD thing is more relevant, in as much as, I personally feel rather strongly that when you vote someone - especially in a deadline situation like that - you say why. If they have made a claim, you give your opinion on the claim. You say "i believe that" and then, presumably, don't vote them. Or you say, that's "BS" and then, presumably, you do vote them, or keep voting them. You can also say "I don't know if I believe that or not, but we're in a deadline situation and I think this is still the correct vote." You just didn't do any of those things. You appeared to default to simply your previous vote, without accounting for the new information/situation. Frankly, as you even suggest, it could be possible to believe the claim but conclude that you still had to vote the person, in as much as it was close to deadline and VT isn't confirmable anyway. You didn't say that either though. I will disagree strongly with your statement that you

always

lynch the VT claimer. That's just wrong.

1) So, the responses you might have given to this question - it seemed to me - were:

a) Yes, this is something I do all the time, here's where I did it. It's a neutral response. But in as much as it's a play you do as Town, it's then not something that signifys scum, whatever Firebringer seemed to think.
b) No, I don't typically do this as Town, so I can't give you any examples, but (I would look for an explanation) here's why I decided to do it in this case. That might be a Town response depending on the explanation, but it's probably also what you would say as scum. And the way you say it could matter.
c) This is something I have done when I was scum before, here are the times, but (explanation). That's a Town response.

I gather what you are saying here is that, while it's

rare

, you have done it as Town, in whatever games those were? Are you acknowledging also doing it as scum, or has that not actually happened?

2) I don't even know what you're getting at about "soft piddling" the KMD wagon. I'm being fairly transparent about all this. I was looking at all the votes and how they happened and making judgments on how likely those votes - given whatever reasons were given or not as the case may be - could have been Town vs. scum motivated. Knowing Lycan's alignment isn't essential for this - it's still going to be educated guessing - though it would be rather more useful. I'm trying to look at it from both perspectives of Lycan-scum and Lycan-town. I don't know his alignment. What I think is that the

odds

lean towards him being scum, vs just our bad luck and unfortunate coincidence. The number of people who seem perfectly willing to accept that explanation is making me hesitate though. And possibly it's just correct to let him have a night an give us a "result", for the future anyway.

3) I would say that there's some logic to the argument that scum would not care so much between a Town-Lycan and town-myself, and having staked whatever position they staked on us respectively, wouldn't want to change it on a dime, and also might not have wanted to be the one to hammer whichever of us ended up being it, which could possibly explain some of the stall out on both our wagons.

I'm not scum and I rarely engage in hypos in which I am, but in as much as it helps me trying to see the other argument through your "presumptive" Town eyes - if we were both scum, it would seem to me that the scum would have to have been pretty much resigned to the idea that one of us was going under as the deadline approached, and I would generally expect some more bussing. As opposed to waiting around and hoping that a miracle last minute wagon on Town would spring up out of nowhere and save us both.

I may disagree on the likelyhood of the wagons stalling like they did if we were a scum/Town split. Again, from my perspective, if Lycan was scum, then he got up to a certain vote and stalled out, and that was pretty far ahead of the deadline, so his presumptive scum buddies wouldn't necessarily have written him off yet, and could have hoped for an alternate. Then, as you may recall, the votes on me started happening rather quickly after you voted, so they could have seen that and been hopeful of a me lynch instead. And, despite some resistance from some people, I still feel that was what was most likely to have happened, given the number of people not voting me, but saying things like "well, I'll vote him at deadline..." or something like that. That leads to a situation where scum just sit until the deadline, and then they have an easy justification for the vote. The flashwagon would have been something unexpected.

I think it makes even less sense in a scum-Axel/Town-Lycan scenario, but I guess I'm biased.

It is a completely fair question what my read on Insanity is, but I'm currently punting that one down the road. I got an early Town read on him and never saw much cause to revisit it. I have not followed what the arguments are that he's scum, but I have noted that several people are making them, so it's just another thing on my list of things I'm not currently doing to re-read that slot and assess the arguments people are making. The fact Insanity bailed has played a large part in my not doing that yet, like it or not. I did look at his vote on the KMD wagon, and it, at least, didn't do anything to make me think he was more Town.

4) See, that's just the thing about Firebringer. What exactly does he get - as scum - by completely making up a false claim of historically being able to read you correctly, when, as you apparently demonstrated, that is just not the case? I don't think it benefits him at all. I think it makes a lot more sense that he would be mis-remembering his powers of Magna-reading than that he would be lying about it.

[Axelrod]

So the next three to get the ax are Firebringer, Tammy, and Cooldog?

I think that could easily just be T/T/T and would probably want to concede if that happened.

[Axelrod]

Right, we got a Firebringer replacement.

[Axelrod]

I'm sticking with Fire and Tammy town, CD scum if theres scum

Axel cant uou use these flips?

I mean, I was going to look at the arguments against Insanity to see if they had any merit. Now I guess I don't do that anymore. It's "look at them to see if I can tell if the person making them is being genuine or slanting w/ agenda."

The first scum flip tends to me more useful than Town flips, but there's still stuff you can look at. Now we have a second replacement and maybe 1/2 the game isn't getting mod-killed maybe I can get back into it.

[Axelrod]

MoI

I am not scum

Please don't make me prove it

I multi-quote tagged this as I was reading because it stood out. Obvious question was "what do you mean 'don't make me prove it'. You can prove it? Why wouldn't you prove it?" Etc, etc. Wtf.

I feel you missed my point

And then I was going to say "I think I missed your point too."

look forward to axelrod supporting or not supporting an actual pine wagon

Also looking forward to you calling it scummy whichever way I might come down.

Ugh fine

I can prove I'm Town

Please don't push me to reveal more

And then here's the rub.

Claims like this just bug the hell out of me. I'm not saying that it's not

possible

for you to have a claim that both (1) proves you are Town and (2) would be a bad idea for you to claim right now. But they aren't exactly common. And we already have a PGO claim, a 1/2 Gunsmith claim (which has at least been semi-demonstrated), and a 1/2 Cop claim in this game.

I am a mechanics oriented player by nature. I like more information, not less with assurances it will all make sense later.

Ah, figured it out - Friendly Neighbor. I'm not that either.

There are half a dozen roles off the top of my head which fit my soft. Stop digging into it, it's not pro-Town.

You are wrong here. It is completely reasonable and "pro-Town" to question a vague claim like this. What's the alternative? Take it on faith, because we'll totally understand when the time comes that you

do

have to claim (which isn't now, but apparently will totally be coming later.)

Again, it's possible, but wtf? This is like Old Man all over again. He had barely any pressure on him and came out with that IC claim, and of course when someone claims that you say "all right, just wait until he "proves" it. And then he did his little reversal...

I feel like if I had a role that could "prove" it was Town, and someone else claimed IC, it would have raised more than a few of my eyebrows. Even if you weren't technically an IC yourself, because a game can only have so many roles that can "prove" themselves Town.

Can you at least answer this, Pine, without blowing whatever secret you are trying to keep: Approximately how long should we have to wait for this?

Besides..."I can prove it" technically doesn't have anything to do with the mechanics of my role. Suffice to say there *are* no mechanics to my role.

I really would prefer to just leave it at that. When I claim it all this will make sense.

I hope so. But, again, just how long do you think that might be?

I also don't understand why you said this in that spot. What did you have, 2 votes?

[Axelrod]

The number of votes on me is irrelevant. With the low energy of this game, every vote counts, and bad momentum needs to be stalled early. I was particularly focused on MoI, who is locktown to me and critical to the townbloc which *should* exist.

Besides. I haven’t revealed anything, any if it comes to it, I’m expendable anyway. I don’t have any active powers, and will happily eat the night shot if thirsty scum target me. The only reason I haven’t fullclaimed is to keep them guessing.

See, this just sounds like such bunk. You start with "Don't make me claim" almost like it's a threat, or something real bad will happen if you did, and then "I can

prove

I'm town" like it's going to be something dramatic - but now is apparently not the time. And now you're like "eh, I'm expendable" and "I'm just trying to keep the scum guessing" with no "active" powers anyway....

Is the answer to my question "I have no timeframe for when it would be appropriate for me to actually claim?"

[Axelrod]

oof. Prodded.

So far, I've read up through page 10 and the last few pages and have been skimming in between and looking at VCs. So, forgive me for working with incomplete information but I need to go ahead and start engaging with people in order to get into this and get up to speed.
--
Axel did you ever explain why you weren't voting anyone at the end of D1? I know the KMD wagon formed quickly but there was quite a bit of time between that and your unvote off of Pine.

Well, essentially, given that I was one of the people up on the block for possible lynching, I did not feel comfortable voting someone else that I didn't have a particularly strong feeling about just to save my own skin. It is entirely possible if not likely that I would have voted if we had got to the deadline and someone was L-1, to avoid a No Lynch. But I just wasn't feeling the various options as they were under the circumstances.

Okay, this game needs an inflection point. It needs to be shaken up. Normally I wouldn't ever claim without real pressure, but we're four days from deadline in a slow, Balkanized game in which the only wagons of any substance are on Town PRs. Apathy and low effort have really fucked us to this point, so I'll come clean to move us along.

I am a Town Universal Backup

I crumbed my role in the following two posts:

It also deserves to be said that I *want* you to be Town. We

universally

work well together when we're on the same side. But let me

back-up

and say that my TR on you is derived from our convergent logic thus far.

Rofl you make me sad

There is no

universe

in which I am scum bro! So how about you

back-up

off my tits?

Bolding added. "Back-up" is gramatically incorrect in context, and is in both cases followed by a version of "universal".

This is what I was referring to with regard to proving my role.

So for Christ's sake, get off my tits. Get off of Lycan, too.

Kinda

like this. The first sub. claim is definitely better than the second, coming at post #154. That's still early enough to mean something at least. The second is a little weird for me, coming 1000 posts later, it seems very random. Why did you sub. claim again and, and if you were trying to show the first was a real sub.claim, why wait so long to do it?

[Axelrod]

I am wondering about the interaction of an IC and a Universal-Back up. How would/does that work? If an IC dies first, does a Universal Back-Up then become another IC? Does IC not "count" for that role?

I realize we have no IC in this game, but Pine presumably would not have known that.

[Axelrod]

Also wondering how it works with a PGO? Presumably the PGO is not getting Night-Killed, but only ever getting lynched.

Would a Universal Back-up show positive to a Gunsmith? I'm guessing the answer would have to be "No" despite them potentially acquiring the "Gun" later.

I''m not reviewing the "Normal" game rules atm, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but we're not restricted on the overall

number

of roles that can be in the game. Just the number of

certain types

of roles?

[Axelrod]

I can't even get worked up about this. Never have I been so apathetic about possibly being lynched. I blame no one else. Clearly I have no time for this game, so I'll just apologize in advance for contributing to this loss.

I am the vanilla-est of vanilla townies, so, nothing to see here.

If I'm not hammered before tomorrow, I might have some time to put into this. If only by way of parting thoughts.

[Axelrod]

Also wondering how it works with a PGO? Presumably the PGO is not getting Night-Killed, but only ever getting lynched.

Would a Universal Back-up show positive to a Gunsmith? I'm guessing the answer would have to be "No" despite them potentially acquiring the "Gun" later.

I''m not reviewing the "Normal" game rules atm, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but we're not restricted on the overall

number

of roles that can be in the game. Just the number of

certain types

of roles?

This reads like asking too many questions to seem active when 90% of this could just be asked to the moderator. There are rules for how Universal Backup works. This is a normal game. This feels like Axel is trying to avoid giving content.

There is, in fact, a point to asking those questions to the thread. I also wouldn't expect a moderator to answer any questions concerning whether someone could be false-claiming.

[Axelrod]

oof. Prodded.

So far, I've read up through page 10 and the last few pages and have been skimming in between and looking at VCs. So, forgive me for working with incomplete information but I need to go ahead and start engaging with people in order to get into this and get up to speed.
--
Axel did you ever explain why you weren't voting anyone at the end of D1? I know the KMD wagon formed quickly but there was quite a bit of time between that and your unvote off of Pine.

Well, essentially, given that I was one of the people up on the block for possible lynching, I did not feel comfortable voting someone else that I didn't have a particularly strong feeling about just to save my own skin. It is entirely possible if not likely that I would have voted if we had got to the deadline and someone was L-1, to avoid a No Lynch. But I just wasn't feeling the various options as they were under the circumstances.

OK, but here's what I'm seeing:

Vote Count

(4) Lycanfire - hitogoroshi, Old Man, Kmd4390, Eddie Cane
(4) Kmd4390 - Tammy, Pine, Ginngie, insanity018
(3) Axelrod - roflcopter, ManaofIllusion, Kison
(2) hitogoroshi - CooLDoG, Firebringer
(1) MagnaofIllusion - Lycanfire

not voting:

Axelrod

8 to lynch

Deadline is 6 PM EST on Monday the 28th of May.

I repeat. Deadline is in

1 day.

Viable options included my slot and KMD, both of which you had expressed concern about pretty consistently :

And at risk of giving people new and interesting reasons to vote me, here's where I am on everyone, with the rather large caveat that a lot of this is based on early game stuff when I was a bit more active and there are a bunch of people I've only got vague feelings about. These are pretty rough orders, especially within groups.

The most Townish:

CooLDoG (I'm currently buying PGO, and that means Town. I feel like that is not a gambit that scum would be likely to make in their first post of the game. I mean it's possible, but not

likely

.)
Eddie Cane (I am currently buying what he is selling. If he's scum he's got some very big *****
Old Man (Even aside from IC claim, and annoying posting style, he's been all right. Rather large caveat: if he doesn't put up with the Innocent Child thing first thing tomorrow, he's gone)
Tammy

Morality chamber

(Tammy has almost completely redeemed the Chamber slot for me. I really like how she's posting).
insanity018 (asking reasonable questions. I "get" most everything he says, even if not always agreeing 100%. I feel he's a little like me, maybe. With a slightly less wordy style.)
hitogoroshi (similar to Insanity. I like what seems to be a pretty logical approach. Maybe trying to be a little too...tricky?)

The I do not knows:

MagnaofIllusion (Asking questions. Scum-hunting. Logical, which is all good. Except when he comes to these conclusions that do not seem to follow. And following rolf because he has a Town read on him is completely barf. yeah, yeah, he came up with his own reasons too! which were pretty trivial. Player I am most paranoid about.)
Firebringer (not doing anything especially Townish, but doing it defiantly? Hard to quantify, but not acting like I feel a scum would be acting)
roflcopter (my best friend)
Kison (one of the most under-the-radar for me atm. I remember very little about what he's done this game.)

The most worrisome:

Ginngie

petroleumjelly

(PJ wasn't great this game. Then he quit. I have barely read anything Ginngie has posted. What I remember did not blow me away me with it's Townieness.)
Kmd4390 (I think I already talked about him. It feels like he's been somewhat better more recently?)
Lycanfire

Tywin Lannister

(Lycanfire is another player I have barely read since he came in. Tywin wasn't great though).
Pine (my second best friend. How's the Pinecone?)

When/if I get the time/energy. I'll do some more comprehensive reads. But those are always more useful after some flips have happened. I feel I'm generally fumbling around in the dark until then.

Also, these are super hedgy reads.

Fast forward: You spend the rest of D1 trying to either defend your vote on Pine or defend your non-voting by saying that you don't want to just jump on another bandwagon. You keep saying you need to reread my slot but you never do. You have something against ISOs apparently. Then, immediately after the KMD wagon forms and the VC above is posted, this:

KMD is probably in the same space for me that Tywin/Lycan is, which isn't great. I could say, sure, better one of them than me, and that's probably objectively true - baring one of them having a particular power role - but I can't get excited about it.

I'm recommencing this re-read. But I have company coming over at 12 and then all bets are off.

If you're town, absolutely anyone is better than you. It seems pretty clear here that you were trying to avoid having to take a stance.

I was starting to regret replacing into this game but I feel pretty good about this. VOTE: Axelrod

I mean, it's all hedgy reads. Even now I don't have anything but hedgy reads, though possibly at this point that's more to do with being very checked out.

And the thing you may be missing about the context is that - prior to the KMD flashwagon which happened literally one day before the deadline - I was the one for whom there was probably the most momentum. Now, call this self-serving if you will, but I don't think the play for a scum in that position is to be all hedgy and non-committal. I had a very easy excuse to jump on KMD, or Lycan for that matter, but even at the end I was hedging, because I wasn't sure. You can try to argue that I was trying to avoid "committing" myself so as to somehow...gain credibility? But I would point out that being dead isn't a viable scum-plan, and the flashwagon could not have been predicted.

Now, would I have hammered either of them in self-defense? I mean, probably. But I didn't have enough confidence to take a stand. Which is, yes, a problem. It a function of really not wanting to be wrong. Also, again, in my own defense, it seems like Mafia games are getting a bit testier these days than maybe they were in days gone by, with more people taking stuff personally and hard feelings. That's definitely been in evidence this game. So, believe it or not, me hedging is also me being polite in a way. I'm not saying you're scum. I'm saying I think such-and-such you are doing is scummy, for whatever reasons.

[Axelrod]

I'm off now. Like I said, I could have time tomorrow, though I'm not even sure what that might accomplish. Maybe something.

[Axelrod]

Well, I've got nothing bad to say about anyone. Game was obviously rough at times. Don't know why there seemed to be such hostility early on, but unfortunately that plus all the replacing really killed it for me. And it's also unfortunate

some

people can't distinguish indecisiveness from scumminess.

I feel like I could have got there eventually, though I might not have come around on Eddie before it was too late. He was really good. Similarly, while I was feeling pretty good about Gingee not being scum, the idea that there might be a SK in the game wasn't even on my radar for obvious reasons, so props to him as well. I had people in rough groupings when I died, and they weren't

totally

inaccurate.

Fairly certain I would have been all over Momrangel after a Town RBer claim though and I'm not sure how that one sailed through so uncontested.

No clue what Old Man was doing and was genuinely shocked to see him flip vanilla Town. For someone like me, when Townies lie like that it just totally borks my whole game. The only reason I was willing to slide on Lycan was because of how his claim kind of/sort of seemed like it could fit with Old Man's. Of course, if Old Man doesn't lie there - and draw that parallel false claim - he's got a good chance of being lynched himself, so maybe it's a wash. Don't know how it would have ultimately played out.

Still, good game. Maybe I'll try one again before two more years go by.