Mini Theme 2022: Trapped! [Gameover]

[Prof Fridays]

^

[Prof Fridays]

Awk.

I'd be fine with ofrhz

^

[Irrelephant11]

Favorite post ever

[Prof Fridays]

SHUT UP IRRELEPHANT I'M SENSITIVE

[Feysal]

Like I actually thought Pine's explanation was notable

because

he explicitly stated that he thought NK15 was a saboteur, and this was a completely new thought compared to his D1 ISO.

I had a thought about this. If it was the phrasing that caught your attention, Pine may have used it because it seems to come up a lot in the show this game is based on. I don't know whether Pine ever watched the show, though he did pre-in to this game.

~~~

Now, there are some things I would like to talk about. And I mean discuss them with other people. I may not post much content, but I do put effort into what I do. As it is, I don't know if anyone is even listening to what I say, and I would like that to change. It might take me a while to respond to comments and questions, but I will.

Like I was saying last time I posted, we seem to be doing fine, and the more I think about it the more it bothers me. Our collective list of potential suspects consists only of low profile or low content players, and no one seems to have an actual case on any of them. My own short list consists of Enigma and Prof Fridays, and maybe Ofrhz. I recognize I'd have to be exceptionally lucky if they were the scum team, particularly in the case of Prof Fridays, who is only on that list because he replaced a lurker. More than likely, one or more of my town reads has to be wrong.

GuiltyLion is the last player I thought had pulled the wool over my eyes, but I did take Pine's case seriously enough to look if he had ever played the scum mayor before. I would expect people to keep similar styles across games, that is what meta is all about, but I found no examples of GuiltyLion ever playing like that.

Speaking of meta, I rely on that a lot, and that means I have a problem. Excluding ongoing games I have never played with most of you, or it has been too long for me to remember much more than your names. Doing meta research properly takes time, but if that is what it takes to figure you out, that is what I must do. Just don't expect me to do everyone at once. For now, since many people seem interested in Ofrhz, I tried looking at him.

What I learned is that apparently he does have a distinct scum meta, and he is aware of it. I don't see any of that here however. It could be because he has not yet posted enough to show his true colors, or he has gotten better at hiding them, or the mechanics of this game are messing with his meta - or he is in fact town. That is what meta points to, but the read is not exactly strong.

My time was not wasted however. I noticed that Northsidegal had been in many of those games with Ofrhz, and I got curious what she had learned and what she had said about him in them. And that is when I found this.

I'm pretty strongly townreading Ofrhz and Draynth off of meta. All three of us just finished an open game together (one in which I did quite a bit of meta diving for Draynth), so I feel pretty confident in these. For Ofrhz, I'm pretty sure (?) I've played with him in every game he's played since he's joined, and speaking from memory he's playing fairly similarly - similarly enough that if he were scum here I would be very surprised with how little of a difference there was from his town game.

If this does not ring any bells, it should. This is strikingly similar to how Northsidegal declared a town read on Myloninja, also using meta. See, while I said I believed Northsidegal was town, it is what I wanted to believe. In the back of my mind I wondered, what if she and Myloninja are partners? I dismissed that thought because I did not expect scum to defend their partner like that, and later this was part of why I looked at Myloninja, to solidify my read on them both. But now I see this,

scum

Northsidegal defending

scum

Ofrhz after replacing in,

doing the very thing I thought she would not do as scum

. Add the fact that Ofrhz was mislynched in two of the games Northsidegal was also in, and while neither was her fault I'd expect her to realize Ofrhz is liable to being misread.

Forget ringing bells, this should be ringing alarm bells.

@Everyone: Does the above give you pause?

@Prof Fridays: Did you have any second thoughts before dropping your scum read on Myloninja, after voting him last night?

[Pine]

I've never seen the show, but the question was "You must now vote for who you think is a saboteur and why?" Further, the first posts spell out the flavor of Town/scum as unfortunates/saboteurs, so...

I'm not a big fan of strawman attacks.

[Prof Fridays]

@Everyone: Does the above give you pause?

Sure, I think your assessment is fair. Not sure where I land specifically, but it does create doubt for my town-read of nsg.

@Prof Fridays: Did you have any second thoughts before dropping your scum read on Myloninja, after voting him last night?

Truthfully, not really. I was like, "Alright, I'm hard town-reading northsidegal, so I'm gonna trust her and move on." I'm willing to re-look at it, but recall my vote was based on Day 1's proceedings, and there simply wasn't much there, so I had no real qualms with flip-flopping.

[Feysal]

I'm not a big fan of strawman attacks.

Does this refer to what I wrote? I was saying your wording did not matter, because I thought you were answering the question literally, the way it typically is on the show.

[Pine]

Yeah I was building on that.

[GuiltyLion]

Feysal - that's definitely a point I am going to need to think about. My own impression of scum!NSG's meta is that she has a hard time replicating the effort she puts in town and I've seen her lurk her way through scum games and only engage at a shallow level, so I wanted to instantly town-lock her based on the intensive effort from the start and her involvement today. However, if she's capable of playing a similar game of scum then I'm obviously gonna have to reset the read their a little bit, but I'm hesitant to do so immediately without seeing her response, reading the game you linked, and digesting it for a bit.

I'm not a big fan of strawman attacks.

If you say "I think NK15 is a saboteur"

and I then go on to ask you questions like "if you thought NK15 was a saboteur, how would my interactions with him have made any sense as SvS?"

that is not a strawman.

[Pine]

But questioning my alignment due to the phrasing of publicly-available information, as Feysal suggested, would be strawmanning.

[Pine]

Still not liking GL’s penchant for misrepresenting people’s comments.

[GuiltyLion]

But questioning my alignment due to the phrasing of publicly-available information, as Feysal suggested, would be strawmanning.

I questioned your alignment for a whole host of reasons, one of which being that your scumread on NK15 as literally expressed by "I think NK15 is a saboteur" came out of nowhere and didn't seem consistent with the rest of your reads/thought process.

Still not liking GL’s penchant for misrepresenting people’s comments.

I'm going to ignore everything you say from this point forward because you seem almost comically incapable of grasping what a misrep is, incapable of engaging with me in good faith, or even incapable of recognizing the irony of complaining about misreps while committing plenty of them yourself

[GuiltyLion]

basically like the only way he can possibly think I'm distorting what he said today is if he somehow thinks the fact that he wrote "I think NK15 is a saboteur" in his vote explanation should not actually be taken to mean that he seriously thought NK15 was a saboteur

and like that's really stupid but I'm not sure it's something scum would come up with. maybe he's just decided to fight with me today and he's committed to doing that beyond any logical reasoning or attempt at genuine communication, but maybe he's also just a stubborn/proud townie

just dropping this here again

[Myloninja13]

@Everyone: Does the above give you pause?

Uh... not really? I'm pretty sure NSG is town lol

[ofrhz]

Pine, what are your other reads?

[ofrhz]

Townreading Pine.

His case on GL is persuasive IMO

, though I'm not 100% convinced as of yet. {Kokichi, ofrhz, Feysal, GL} seems like a good lynch pool for me. Also, when are we gonna choose a number? I'm getting impatient!

Really? Pine's case was enough to put Guilty in the bottom of your reads? What convinced you so?

Not the bottom, per se. Among the bottom. I'm also of the opinion GL's lynch would reveal a good lot, and cut out a lot of noise, should he flip scum. The benefits of lynching scum!GL are really high IMO.

Also, I wanted to announce that I am now 13% sure fairies exist, but the scientific struggle continues.

1) I don't think Pine's case on GL was persuasive. That doesn't make Pine scum (the jury is still out on that one), but I would like to hear what points Pine laid out were persuasive to Friday.
2) When asked what about Pine's case was persuasive, Prof Fridays dodged the question (and again in 992) and instead decided to list a bunch of random reasons to justify a GL lynch.

Feysal

, Enigma,

Kokichi

and

ofrhz

are questionable for me. GL and

Chickadee

slight town for now.

Can you explain the bolded reads?

Awk.

I'd be fine with ofrhz

^

Also, this post is weird considering you have Kokichi in your lynchpool.

VOTE: Prof Fridays

[ofrhz]

I'm pretty strongly townreading Ofrhz and Draynth off of meta. All three of us just finished an open game together (one in which I did quite a bit of meta diving for Draynth), so I feel pretty confident in these. For Ofrhz, I'm pretty sure (?) I've played with him in every game he's played since he's joined, and speaking from memory he's playing fairly similarly - similarly enough that if he were scum here I would be very surprised with how little of a difference there was from his town game.

If this does not ring any bells, it should. This is strikingly similar to how Northsidegal declared a town read on Myloninja, also using meta. See, while I said I believed Northsidegal was town, it is what I wanted to believe. In the back of my mind I wondered,

what if she and Myloninja are partners? I dismissed that thought because I did not expect scum to defend their partner like that

, and later this was part of why I looked at Myloninja, to solidify my read on them both. But now I see this,

scum

Northsidegal defending

scum

Ofrhz after replacing in,

doing the very thing I thought she would not do as scum

. Add the fact that Ofrhz was mislynched in two of the games Northsidegal was also in, and while neither was her fault I'd expect her to realize Ofrhz is liable to being misread.

I think NSG has a pretty good track record of reading Mylo. Any read she gives on Mylo is likely correct regardless of what NSG's alignment is because of the high likelihood that she'll get BoP'ed if she's wrong on that slot. This is different from when I was scumpartners with NSG because at that time, I didn't have any completed scumgames on site for people to compare my scum meta to.

[Chickadee]

Townreading Pine.

His case on GL is persuasive IMO

, though I'm not 100% convinced as of yet. {Kokichi, ofrhz, Feysal, GL} seems like a good lynch pool for me. Also, when are we gonna choose a number? I'm getting impatient!

Really? Pine's case was enough to put Guilty in the bottom of your reads? What convinced you so?

Not the bottom, per se. Among the bottom. I'm also of the opinion GL's lynch would reveal a good lot, and cut out a lot of noise, should he flip scum. The benefits of lynching scum!GL are really high IMO.

Also, I wanted to announce that I am now 13% sure fairies exist, but the scientific struggle continues.

1) I don't think Pine's case on GL was persuasive. That doesn't make Pine scum (the jury is still out on that one), but I would like to hear what points Pine laid out were persuasive to Friday.
2) When asked what about Pine's case was persuasive, Prof Fridays dodged the question (and again in 992) and instead decided to list a bunch of random reasons to justify a GL lynch.

Feysal

, Enigma,

Kokichi

and

ofrhz

are questionable for me. GL and

Chickadee

slight town for now.

Can you explain the bolded reads?

Awk.

I'd be fine with ofrhz

^

Also, this post is weird considering you have Kokichi in your lynchpool.

VOTE: Prof Fridays

This is a good post, and something I didn't notice. Nice catch. I want to go back and look over Prof Friday again now.

[Irrelephant11]

so Feysal's analysis weakens my townread on nsg, but I agree with ofrhz it doesn't necessarily make mylo scum.

I still think we should pick someone soon, like halfway through our self-set time limit (which I like btw) to pick the first number. That way we have time to assess, and it's not just immediately the end of the day. My first nom would go to irrelephant11, for being so widely town read. Thoughts?

I don't necessarily love the idea of it being me, though if we're trying to pick town I guess I know I'm town
I do think it might be a good idea to have the first guess be halfway through the day, so we can decide if the same player should guess or not

I agree Prof Fridays didn't really answer my question.

@Mylo please provide some scumreads

[Enigma]

Guilty why are you scumreading enigma? Also why can’t you read someone without scumreads? Townreads are helpful too

I'm not like actively scumreading him I think, but I don't feel good about putting him in a townbloc to POE the rest and I kinda already have too many townreads as it stands. I guess the biggest thing is I feel like he's not making any waves, he's kinda riding the general town opinions and none of his content feels especially hard to fake

The problem with townreads is that it's easier to make plausible townreads as scum, because you know that person's town. Occasionally scum will go too far in 'townreading' someone to an implausible degree - what I thought Pine may be doing with Chickadee's slot - but generally it's much easier for me to sift through genuine scumreads vs faked scumreads because scum

know

that the conclusion they're advocating for is ultimately false, and it shows in how they write arguments to justify it.

Tbh, trying to be town read is pretty easy for this game given the lynch mechanics, so PoE and townblocking is a rather iffy approach until late game where mechanics will be useful for townblocking and PoE.

[Enigma]

Looking through the votes, Pine's and Mylo's explanations rub off on me the wrong way, and to a degree ofrhz. I feel their justification came off as weak and uncommitted. Whilst we (myself included) would naturally tend to associate those with lengthy and in-depth explanations as more pro-town, I would also be a bit cautious with this since it is an appearance you can easily make.

I don't really understand what you're saying here. If I'm understanding this right:
- You think Pine/Mylo (and sort of ofrhz) wrote weak uncommitted explanations for their votes
- But you also think it's easy to fake lengthy and in-depth explanations as scum

so...
a) Why does scum in Pine or Mylo or ofrhz's spot write a weak explanation when a long one is easy and seen as more pro-town?
b) who are you trying to warn us to be cautious about with the last sentence?
c) what makes you say their explanations were uncommitted? Isn't the vote a commitment?

Like I actually thought Pine's explanation was notable

because

he explicitly stated that he thought NK15 was a saboteur, and this was a completely new thought compared to his D1 ISO.

a)
Probs because they are lazy. I'm saying it is possible to write a long explanation and be town associated from that, though this takes time.

b)
Pretty obv is this in reference to NSG and the quick jump to town reads from some players (you and elephant). I suppose I dislike dishing out town reads so readily, and also view those who do so carefully.

c)
No the vote isn't really a commitment, it is a sheep on the general town consensus and no other viable alternative. And for scum, knowing it is a mislynch, easy to jump on

[Enigma]

I think you're wrong there

aside from his posts regarding you is there anything you scumread?

His whole demeanor is sketchy, though I'll grant you his behavior regarding me is especially suspicious, and I'll further grant you a bit of implicit bias on my part.

GL's approach to the game has been to be big, loud, and in charge. When others have offered alternative views, he has essentially flooded them out or shouted them down. He's taken care not to be especially contrary, but he's been trying to take control of the majority narrative. There's also the problem that he's far too confident. Town don't have inside information, and are inherently unsure of themselves. Good Town are always second-guessing and checking themselves for confirmation bias. True, there's a lot of bad Town out there, and even decent, experienced players can fall into that trap, but I see none of that. He backed down off of me not because of my behavior, but when general opinion was turning against his attacks on me and when I turned out to be not a lot harder target than he anticipated.

Frankly, pretty much everything GL has done is the classic "scum mayor" approach. High-key activity, squelch dissent while pissing off as few people as possible, and push your own MLs. He attacked two of the three people who fumbled the count on D1, though he oddly defended Kokichi and instead drove the ML on NK15. If GL flips scum like I think, imo Kokichi should get turbolynched D3.

+1
IMO trying to be heavily town read, especially when there are no TPRs to be protecting, is not something that townies need to be do.

[northsidegal]

If this does not ring any bells, it should. This is strikingly similar to how Northsidegal declared a town read on Myloninja, also using meta. See, while I said I believed Northsidegal was town, it is what I wanted to believe. In the back of my mind I wondered, what if she and Myloninja are partners? I dismissed that thought because I did not expect scum to defend their partner like that, and later this was part of why I looked at Myloninja, to solidify my read on them both. But now I see this, scum Northsidegal defending scum Ofrhz after replacing in, doing the very thing I thought she would not do as scum. Add the fact that Ofrhz was mislynched in two of the games Northsidegal was also in, and while neither was her fault I'd expect her to realize Ofrhz is liable to being misread.

the great thing about meta reads when i'm town is that people don't have to take my word for it or even believe me or trust me; they can verify whatever i'm saying for themselves. you'll notice that in that exact game that you quoted nacho did that exactly, calling me out for an unsubstantiated statement ("ofrhz is playing similarly") and talking about how she wasn't actually playing similarly at all.

-shrug-

if you're concerned about me or myloninja being scum, look at the meta for yourself; i think that

i'm

an easy sort based on the differences between my town and scum game, but compared to me i think mylo is a far easier sort.

[northsidegal]

Like I was saying last time I posted, we seem to be doing fine, and the more I think about it the more it bothers me. Our collective list of potential suspects consists only of low profile or low content players, and no one seems to have an actual case on any of them.

i'm fine with this, at least for now. i think that one of the main ways that towns lose is by focusing on people who do outrageous things rather than silently scummy people. i don't exactly have some vendetta against lurkers, but i think that just having all of your scum suspects be of a similar post-count isn't that much of a reason for concern.

GuiltyLion is the last player I thought had pulled the wool over my eyes, but I did take Pine's case seriously enough to look if he had ever played the scum mayor before. I would expect people to keep similar styles across games, that is what meta is all about, but I found no examples of GuiltyLion ever playing like that.

huh? you've never seen scum GL try to be a town leader? can you expand on that?