Death Curse

[Isis]

Hey everybody!

I felt like this was a bit townsided when I reviewed it but I let it pass anyways. We're good if we just don't throw. VOTE: Fidget for hammering the game before I could /out. Pooky dragged me into this game.

There will probably be pedits and I won't read them

[Isis]

VOTE: Pooky

[Isis]

VOTE: Pooky

[Isis]

It’s somewhat an annoying curse
When one is forced to speak in verse
Though this from Hectic I’d expect
It harms my power to detect
Yet this trifling impediment
Does not mean I’ll be negligent
The game begins with a full day
Easy to hide out of the way
I could just lurk and survive this
But I’d prefer to be LAMIST
‘I’m town’ I’ll cry from my rooftop
Not kill nor vote shall make me stop
Now all, convinced I’m innocent
And may I add, magnificent
Shall back me up as I scumhunt
Leading the town right from the front
The scroll will pass from hand to hand
And on the scum shall surely land
The mafia we won’t acquit
We’ll kill them all, it will be lit

frankly, this site does not deserve hopkirk

[Isis]

Hey Isis you were the reviewer
How should we best make scum fewer
You must have thoughts on the setup
I'd recommend you cough 'em up

Uh, if I wanna do mech thoughts

every time you hit scum on the final pass you deny the scum an entire NK
which seems pretty dope

so maybe like
decide on 2 consensus scums, vote the less scummy of the 2 consensus scums

The less-scummy-consensus-scum passes the scroll to town. If they didn't pass the scroll to town, I'm plenty happy enough, my plan is fine
The town that got passed to always passes to that person we decided was heavy consensus scum. They have a strong chance of flipping scum and missing the NK

[Isis]

every time you hit scum on the final pass you deny the scum an entire NK

I do not understand the setup well enough to grasp this. Please elaborate.

I understand it now. Ideally we would want to hit scum in position 3, since that player can't pass the scroll again. Position 1 is ok, since position 2 can in theory catch another scum in position 3 again (the ideal situation). Position 2 is the worst position for hitting scum, since we would only hit 1 scum, and that player would have a choice whom to pass the scroll to.

I.e. the possible scroll passing options are:
T > T > T (the worst)
T > T > S (pretty good, deny scum a "NK")
T > S > T (gives scum a "NK")
S > T > T (as bad as the above)
S > T > S (the best, but very difficult to achieve)

Is this correct?

Spoiler:

[Isis]

I am concerned about Isis content

I bookmarked the topic!!!

[Isis]

Why hasn’t LLD been vigged yet.
I feel like if I were scum I would have sent that message in yesterday.

[Isis]

Am I townlock yet

[Isis]

this is very underwhelming tbh

Please townlock me

[Isis]

Spoiler:

appearing to forget the game is nightless in particular is probably a bad town slip to do though

unless you really want to appear like you did not check to see if the setup was nightless before signing up for the game
because that is not a town slip

p-edit
and that was the answer i was looking for
UNVOTE:

i will think about voting noraa
but i will probably wait for her response to the vote on her first
as i do not know if noraa is known to read setups or not

Prior to this game, Noraa talked about joining this game on discord. It's how I was able to join it, I usually don't look at games like this so they tend to pass me by.

Noraa was definitely excited to play this game, I would find it weird if she did not know the things she was claiming to be ignorant of in that post.

The truth is, this is just the best play on odds as well as likely to flip scum.

In the off chance Noraa is town, she can use that power of the death scroll to interrogate some people and do some solving for us.

And if she's scum I'm sure I'll get the scroll from her instantly for doing this, which will let ME fill that role.

It's win win. People should want to see Noraa die here, I think.

I think there's too much perfectionist in you for this to be townposting.

not a big thing to note but "Pooky dragged me into this game" reads towny. As town, if someone else tells me to join a game, I would absolutely put that out there along with most likely a thing being like so yeah its their fault if I die of having too many games rn.

I don't think you should townread survivalistic behavior, in general, you should scumread it in general.

however since the scum know who each townie are likely to murder, they will generally pass to people who won't murder them.

Yeah, so why are you against fixing that by leashing the final pass? This isn't like leashing a vig where you lose the ability to read the vig based on their decisions, because the "vig" is always dead.
Leaving the first pass un-leashed should provide plenty of entropy

to restate my read on noraa

i fully expect them to die today
i believe a different wagon will generate better connections between people because i believe it is fairly obvious that noraa will die soon at this point
so i see no reason to continue a wagon on someone when they will almost certainly die today and we can probably get better information somewhere else

I think this is someone with a green role PM

Spoiler:

FIRST

VOTE: Tayl0r Swift

also in the event that we hit scum first, we should still do our darndest to hit scum on the second shot. i think its a bad play to hit town on purpose.

I was gonna vote myself coming into the game if I rolled scum as a WIFOM tactic

Isis are you allowed to tell us how many scum there are?

...

I like this UNVOTE: wait I was voting Pooky VOTE: Pooky

the way noraa is responding to pressure is increasingly the way shed do it as scum, but its not unlike her town meta.

This doesn't seem like a townie thought process, it seems like a scum thought process about where Taylor needs to eventually land.

So in my mind, you just want to let the person we voted do what they want, and then let the middle person be treated as a confirmed townie, ask questions and work together to help them make a good informed choice but not control them.

Ok this is actually adjacent to what I want I guess
I quarterback all the board game nights, you know.
But like, I think it is actively good to leave someone super scummy alive (don't make them the voted person) so person2 has the possibility of passing to that person.

If anyone "accidentally hammers" tho, I'm SRing you to hell and back, scum and ur going down with me 100% if u try to get that towncred.

...did you just say people who hammer you accrue towncred?

Spoiler:

Skipped the last page. I hit LLD's explanation of the perfect town play, and -- perfection. That was solid. I had to stop right there. LLD is basically confirmed town to me, I don't see a hole in that reasoning -- either the second person in the chain is scum (and we hit our 1-mark anyway so who gives a shit) or they aren't (and we get to work with them.) Yes I'm just restating the post I don't care it was that good.

In the first 13 pages I read, I came to the conclusion that Noraa is town but doomed and Tayl0r and LLD are town. LLD is, as far as I'm concerned, locktown until and unless I see undeniable, game-long associatives to the contrary. (FWIW, I see no associatives with any slot at all here unless that was the bravest and dumbest early game bus you ever did see on the back of probably the easiest player to explain as a mis-elim waiting to happen in history, so I'm going to go out on a limb and stretch real hard while saying that from my POV LLD is conftown and leave it at that.)

Tayl0r is more wavery, but this is identical to past Tayl0r play I've seen first-hand, so I'm going to stick with it. Tayl0r is a good player, but three things I've learned: her posts look iffy, her reasoning is complete garbo and her reads are pretty wonky (not unspeakably bad, just.... yeah). I'm going to say I don't think it's possible to use Tayl0r sucking at explaining herself as a scumtell. I'm sure plenty will disagree, but I think this is solid based on past experience.

If I was someone else or if it was someone else, I might try to defend Noraa's slot. But I don't think I can: the arguments have been put forward and the stage is set, Noraa's going down, I see no hope for her. Always possible to see a last minute wagon swap, but Noraa's play is poo and dirt. Doomed. Sorry bud.

Since there's no power roles unless I missed some whopping big habanero in some hidden fine print somewhere, my reads are going to be more confident than usual when I'm whiffing a scum scent. (Past performance indicates I almost always mixup scum and PRs, far less so VTs and scum.)

So then! Since I'll be more confident, how about those scumreads?...

Shelly and I have tangled in the past and I never win that scum matchup. She's elusive and I trust myself to read her play approximately 0%. Her town play is nigh indistinguishable from her scum play unless there's a binary choice to be made. I agree with uh, someone not sure who who said that knocking her out early is a good idea. She's a dangerous player to have around as scum, and while her intuition is good for town (I highly trust a conftown shelly's judgement), I get the feeling from past banter in this thread that this is going to be the sort of game where it's easy to just point at someone and watch half the town put on the Big Boots and go a-stomping. Big risk having her around.

But this isn't really a read, per se, now is it? No, it's just "meta suggests this player is scary." That said, it's just the closest I have at the moment. Lots of very light townreads and total nulls for me currently. This back and forth with Bell and shelly, normally the sort of thing I can get a ton of reads out of, is meaningless to me -- largely because Bell's play is not the play I have an easy time reading. Short posts and me disagree with each other, it's like feeding rice to water fowl, it just turns into a mess. Functionally, I have no read on Bell and that makes me nervous enough that I might want to add pressure and see if I can get content my brain can work with. We'll see if I see someone I'd prefer more for that, or maybe if I even find scum. It's happened once before, after all.

Future's boundless, folks, and anything might happen.

If Lady Lambdadelta flips green I'm worried about this being a way to placate the town leader because I think even to a newbie it should be intuitive that good mechposts are the most fakable content, and that's being focused on instead of the better reasons to townread her.

[Isis]

I want to vote someone other than Noraa who is scummy no matter what Noraa flips

For now I think VOTE: MUSHGANA

Hopkirk is kinda scummy but also delightful

[Isis]

I'm sure I didn't shade more than 5 people, maybe they're all scum!!

[Isis]

Shelly's pretty scummy too, this game has fewer easy townreads for me than most games, but it has more scum than most games, so that makes sense!

I am already efforting more this game than I want to

pedit: HAHAHA meaning I will definitely not read any mush games, for one

[Isis]

Taylor is probably town.

*can you elaborate on the *why* on your shellyc read

You care about being right, which tends to be a red thing.

[Isis]

You care about being right, which tends to be a red thing.

???

where did I care about being right

I don't want to look

my WIM for this game is pretty low

[Isis]

Bell will you help me with this game? I think you're town. I guess you could be scum doing fancy soft defend anticatalyst stuff people said but you feel like town and I don't care
should I feel different about MUSHGANA

[Isis]

I don't want to look

my WIM for this game is pretty low

so you just misrepped me for no reason, voted mush for thinking mech = good (which is fine imo)

+5 scumpoints

LOL SHE QUESTIONS FOR EVIDENCE OF CARING ABOUT BEING RIGHT

THEN SETS UP A SCOREBOARD FOR MAFIA LOLOLOL

[Isis]

LLD am I locktown yet

pedit: yeah it's just ironic in a symbolic way shelly, it gave me chuckles

[Isis]

VOTE: Isis
I want to vig

[Isis]

I claim scum

[Isis]

Pooky please vote me I have a scum PT with four other players, Nero Cain, and Hectic

[Isis]

noraa if you give me the scroll second I promise to use it right

[Isis]

It's not in the spirit of the rules to call into question whether you're playing to your win condition, but I think "vote: Isis, I want the vig, I claim scum" is pretty hard to misinterpret.

[Isis]

I want to kill someone I don't think will get voted this game and that matters more to me than whether my slot dies.

[Isis]

Sometimes early reads are better than the late reads Bell

[Isis]

The iso doesn't matter. LLD doesn't want to interact with me whenever she's scum and she passed up an opportunity to interact with me. She's probably scum

[Isis]

oh lol
that ruins the tell
nevermind

[Isis]

VOTE: shellyc

[Isis]

everyone ignores people sometimes

[Isis]

LLD has several scummy posts
but some towny posts too
she's back to eh now

[Isis]

Hi Bell

[Isis]

LLD, please don't be toxic.

[Isis]

Okay, time to bury you. Here is where you made your mistake, calling this "discrediting". (Another buzzword, btw.)

One second.

This felt inductive to me.

I have a brain in here too, and I've been calculating and considering how we act and how scum win this game from the minute I got my green pm.

This seemed lamisty to me.

[Isis]

It seemed stretchy to call discrediting a buzzword. I kind of could have picked a lot of different anti-noraa posts, but they generally felt like looking for additional little reasons to scum read her beyond what's natural where I would expect a townie to harken back to stronger core reasons. I think inductive was perhaps the wrong word.
The second one is LAMISTY because you mention getting

green

role PM, and that being the brainstorming moment. I speculate you thought about the setup a little bit before getting your role PM and a lot more after getting it, but to look town you want to be slightly incorrect and emphasize that resurgence in interest upon joining the town.

I called you nullscum. You don't have to think they're amazing.

[Isis]

I'm not sure I still scumread you MUSH

[Isis]

yea ok but there's no reason to insult her for it. That's just mean =/

She obviously thinks you are very good - otherwise she wouldn't do the whole suicide-gambit.

The real question is more like - was it like for real or just scum-theater?

I don't fuckin' know Pooky.

They need to die for claiming scum at some point no matter what. It's not something you can just do and get away with alive.

I just don't know. Part of me is like "anyone who is willing to do that in a game where you'd basically be trading 1 for 1 with me which people know I am generally willing to do if I think you are scum, especially when I'd get a chance to make it 2 for 1."

Like that's bad play for scum if the gambit is accepted for sure.

The question is like... did they know the gambit would be rejected? Hard to say, given the only way they can back off from their claim is for me to have not recognized them, which they might have been able to key into but thats hard to say for sure?

It's a hard situaiton. My gut leans "probably town, but needs to die the death anyway".

I think I get mislimmed later in the game in this lobby most of the time, so it's not really a 1 for 1, it would actually just be a 0 for 1. Or maybe a 0.25 for one.

[Isis]

Why do you want to kill town?

[Isis]

Tayl0r is more wavery, but this is identical to past Tayl0r play I've seen first-hand, so I'm going to stick with it.

This reads a bit like a fabricated meta read due to the odd confidence mistmatch compared to the reasoning.

Shelly and I have tangled in the past and I never win that scum matchup. She's elusive and I trust myself to read her play approximately 0%.

This didn't read very curious. I usually like when people are curious. And it feels like giving yourself a pass on reading a slot since fabricating reads is a pain anyway and you know it'd be hard as town.

I don't have a ton more, it's not a strong read.

[Isis]

i dont think scumIsis even thinks up this gambit much less tries it but I've never played with ScumIsis before so *shrug*

Isn't the extent of the gambit claiming scum and self-voting? And saying it's because they want a vig shot.

I'm not familiar with Isis, but my first thought would be that I wouldn't do that for fear that my partners interpret it as me throwing. I talked about self-voting earlier, I think it would be acceptable to try and fake some weird town slip with a self vote thinking it's an optimal strat. But claiming scum too? Seems like something that scum partners might take issue with. Makes me inclined to agree.

On the other hand, it's WIFOMy and gross, sure.

This game has daytalk, I would be able to assure my partners in the scum PT that I felt this was the play cause I want us to save the dayvig for someone who gets cleared by good associatives but I want to remove a strong town player early and I think I'll get limmed anyway.

I'm not sure whether I'd do it even if they didn't agree it was a good play. Teammates who aren't known to me likely don't think it's a good play but that feels different.

I'd like to think I could convince four people it's a good play though.

[Isis]

I don't think I've gotten to see town LLD play yet (except maybe right now) So it would be kinda sad to send a D0 dayvig on LLD. I think maybe I would though, with her being such a reputational outlier in this playerlist

[Isis]

Noraa is scummier than either of you, which is why people should stop voting her, so that she is eligible to get the scroll third.

To the extent I maybe thought LLD was scummier than you back then, I'd still hesitate to push LLD because she's an extremely charismatic player and it's not realistic to push her until there's also incriminating associatives or something extremely strong. Noraa seems so likely to flip scum I'm letting a bit of preflip assoc leak in and dampen that read, though, so I can't say for sure how I would have ranked the two of you.

I don't see anyone else in the "shade" post, but I do see that I townread two people, not one, so I demand shelly correct her scoreboard!

pedit: no, I don't think everything is AI. Something like 98% of posts would be AI if you were omniscient and maybe like half of them have something to them that's worth trying to treat the post as sortable for a human person.

[Isis]

I'm not very confident. I like having my vote somewhere at all times, that's how I play. And everyone's readslist has to have a top and bottom, if the person I think is the scummiest doesn't have much I can list, that means my overall reads for the game happen to not be strong.

[Isis]

fidget is at 10 I already want to bet the game on Fidget town

pedit: there's often tonal or difficult to articulate points that are also affecting my read, but I have to present the things that people can engage with

[Isis]

I want to call Pooky's accusation of ghostwriting difficult to fabricate. Maybe I shouldn't though since a sudden shift in grammar pattern is like, a neutral thing to notice, and then when you type up a post to remark on it you could go "hey, this is spinnable?" I want to townread him but I'd definitely like to supplement that reasoning. That was the thing I remember finding most remarkable

[Isis]

664 reads like a townpost to me no matter what noraa flips tbh

[Isis]

Their "am I locktown yet" sounded rather lamisty, and they basically shaded everyone other than fidget in the catchup post which is scummy, simply because keeping the poe wide is the core of scum agenda

Lies! I townread Theta Alpine! You should too!

[Isis]

Finding scum is a lot more important than finding town if all your townreads are going to get shot by the ~1.5 hero vigs per democratic elimination

[Isis]

shelly could you please manipulate my reads, I'm not actually sure I should townread Bell

[Isis]

You've been multitabling since July shelly. I c u. Don't play.
The first five games or so are where you kind of turn a corner with it I think.

I think zdenek's post is cognitively dissonant like shelly is saying and it's scummy. I will even VOTE: Zdenek because I feel like even though her Bell case is maybe strong I would have to reread posts and I feel lazy.
The post reads like he didn't internalize how townish the thing he was questioning made him -feel- even when his brain goes "you can townread this but also there's a way to interpret this where it can be scum".

As town you generally average it and then it goes inside your feels and the next time you talk about that person they aren't going to be a scumread.
I've worked myself up now maybe it doesn't matter if I get the spoons to read Bell's iso lol

[Isis]

MUSHSHAGANA is spicy and flavorful how have I not played with this person

[Isis]

You've been multitabling since July shelly. I c u. Don't play.
The first five games or so are where you kind of turn a corner with it I think.

what does this even mean lol

multitabling means being alive in more games than once.

I see your name as "last posted" a lot across site so I figure that you do although to be more technically correct I'm sure you didn't play multiple games at once until sometime after your join date
I consider anyone with like 5 games pretty experienced.

[Isis]

If you don't think charisma is a dominating force in forum mafia, I think you're wrong, but I think you're probably wrong because you're not defining charisma broadly enough rather than disagreeing about the kind of posting winning the games. Some players have an extremely low rate of being executed on both sides of alignment. Most of them are also good at protecting partners and finding scum, but some of them aren't, but it's a huge boost to winrate to always survive either way.

[Isis]

ok why do you think the logic is weak because meta itself is quite compelling

This is the meta reason:

The iso doesn't matter. LLD doesn't want to interact with me whenever she's scum and she passed up an opportunity to interact with me. She's probably scum

If LLD scum always tries to avoid a player and they have enough experience together for this to be a thing, then it probably would have come up before and so LLD scum would know to play around it. It sounds like kind of a weak tell to try and take out the most proactive player and yourself over.

It happened in a second game even though it was a pattern in the first, so that counterargument didn't matter to me.
Even assuming she's aware about it, why couldn't it be correct play to just do it anyway and get voted and end up an

eleventh

of the way to getting eliminated? It's unlikely to be compelling to other players.

[Isis]

Like sometimes when you are good at scum you realize "I need to do X thing and that one person will definitely scumread me for it but everyone else will townread me for it so it doesn't matter"

[Isis]

I reread some of Bell's posts, I guess I kind of see it, I think they're a lot less concerning with green!Nora though

[Isis]

It happened in a second game even though it was a pattern in the first, so that counterargument didn't matter to me.
Even assuming she's aware about it, why couldn't it be correct play to just do it anyway and get voted and end up an

eleventh

of the way to getting eliminated? It's unlikely to be compelling to other players.

Well two games experience certainly doesn't sound like enough to establish a pattern.
If you're playing with a player who has a scum tell on you that you can easily counter, then it is surely correct play to just do that?

I don't think I've ever mentioned it before.
I also knew LLD would not consider it valid no matter her role, and when you feel something is invalid you skew even more towards, just do the thing that one weird person doesn't like, the games that aren't rigged are easier to beat.

I don't think you're solving, because the goalposts here should clearly be at "I believe Isis believes this" rather than "Isis is right to believe this", because "2 games isn't actually enough evidence" is a very good argument that in a disciplined scientific way it's flawed but it should be pretty obvious a human you don't know very well could be rather convinced from just a couple games.
VOTE: UNOWEN

[Isis]

Like sometimes when you are good at scum you realize "I need to do X thing and that one person will definitely scumread me for it but everyone else will townread me for it so it doesn't matter"

Why would LLD not engaging with you lead to everyone else town reading her though?
You have a point that scum might take the trade of being scumread by one to be townread by many, but it's not clear why you think that would be the equation at play here.

She did it in a couple games (wait, actually 3?) so it must have furthered her wincon somehow. I'm not sure how, she's levels above me, but I'm guessing the kind of topics I tend to bring up aren't ones that are easy to engage with in a way that lets her "perform town". Like, bad lines to start an improv skit with, that kind of sense. I don't think I'm a brilliant scumhunter she's scared of, that's for sure.

[Isis]

VOTE: Bell I maybe shouldn't vanity wagon in a 20p lol

[Isis]

eh the thing I dislike about wagoning Bell is that his slot looks so different is Noraa is green and we don't find that out until after this set

[Isis]

Do you believe I believe it, yet? Do you still scumread me?

The bolded was a metaphor saying that playerslots that will read you for more reasonable or rational bases are better to focus on. It's more likely there's a path to getting townread that you can find easier than random guessing

[Isis]

Do you believe I believe it, yet? Do you still scumread me?

the fact that you're willing to consider my case on scum!bell and proactively make reads is ++townpoints
i don't SR you aorn

I was addressing UNOWEN

[Isis]

People need to unvote noraa so she can be flip3

[Isis]

VOTE: Zdenek

[Isis]

Hm, I actually like that response UNOwen

[Isis]

noraa wanna townread theta Alpine w me?

[Isis]

Why is the second scrollholder "confirmed town"?

[Isis]

LLD I'm supposed to get excited about the second scroll holder having an 80% chance to be town when all players in this game have a 75% chance to be town?

[Isis]

LLD I'm supposed to get excited about the second scroll holder having an 80% chance to be town when all players in this game have a 75% chance to be town?

How are you this fucking bad at understanding basic principles.

In the 20% they are scum it DOESN'T MATTER. We've reached out max and best outcome we can get for that day, and more importantly, they will just kill a townie without any input from us.

SO WE CAN IGNORE THAT WORLD.

It's 100 percent that if they start talking and working with us, they're town in that slot, which is huge info.

Because the first cursed person that isn't exactly true for. Once they're dead, their goal is to convince us they are town and hand the scroll to a townie without looking too bad so we don't know we're in a good spot.

how do you not get this?

I follow now.
I disagree with expected first-scroll holder play because I expect first-scroll-scum to just be shameless with the pass a lot of the time. But that's an opiniony part, I follow the logic of it now.

[Isis]

Are you actually scumreading Theta Alpine?

[Isis]

The deadline is a fixed 2 days after the scroll is awarded and the thread is unlikely maintain quite the same momentum, so holding back the hammer can lower the total number of pages divided by days people like Gloria will need to read.

[Isis]

POOKY

[Isis]

Like you seem to be taking me wanting to kill you personally and behaving in a manner that reflects that I've done something wrong for wanting to kill you.

I'm following my belief that you are scum. I'm sorry I have found you to be scummy, but it's not personal and I just...

gahh

how do you not get to do any solving?

My solves in general are shit. With this much pressure, I'm literally likely just gonna hit town. Considering that in a newbie game with only 9 fucking people I jailed two vanilla town and sussed two other vanilla town, I do not think I have any chance of hitting scum in a 20 player game.

This game has more than twice as many scum.
The percentage of scum is actually higher.
I believe in you Noraa

[Isis]

Pooky might be scum either way
But especially in that timeline

[Isis]

The way you're playing with Noraa like toying with food seems scummy Poooooks

[Isis]

but Hopkirk writes poemz D:

[Isis]

I think Hopkirk is a genuine lover of fun like me and wouldn't come to a decision whether to self-post-restrict in a super AI way. But I could see him as scum for the other reasons.

pedit: ok VOTE: Hopkirk

[Isis]

:/
hang in there noraa

[Isis]

I don't think Pooky is town.

[Isis]

Can I be scum for townreading theta pls tho

[Isis]

ok ok i'll ask for a notes PT and draw art of killer teddies to reveal at a certain point in the future.

[Isis]

both town!Swift and scum!Swift seem fascinating and too bold to be true here, in different ways. It's interesting