Newbie 2011 - Game Over

[gobbledygook]

Ok gonna read this soon

[votato]

We're not robots. Everyone has a different level of motivation for everything, even if they think they always play optimally. They "shouldn't" be more motivated, but they are more likely to be imo.

trying to elicit PR tells is relatively lower-cost behavior as a goon rather than scum PR though, since trading town PR for goon is lower cost. i dunno, in either case id be pretty interested. why are you assuming theres a scum PR?

[SleeperSoul]

why are you assuming theres a scum PR?

I'm not. I'm just saying it's more likely.

[Freddiethelady]

hmm im leaning towards the scum PT being more likely, but we will see. if you are scum, your partner is probably (in decreasing order) {gobbles, apogee, GWu, sleepersoul}. gobbles would be the most likely

who are you talking to?

you.

the reason i think it would be those people is that i think the coaching would have to come from someone experienced. for example, i dont think i ever told freddie that scum would be hesitant to take a firm stance, but i think gobbles or apogee might give such advice. or maybe it was me. in any case in both prior games it was immediately obvious to me that freddie was town, but in this game im having trouble, which probably just means that freddie is learning (good), but still gives me the heebiee jeebiees (sp?) (bad).

avalon is a mafia variant that you can buy in stores and has specific role cards etc. its essentially the same, but a bit different.

im just going to risk naming the other players for clarification.

well for one thing, votato, you definitely told me about how scum want to appear. i also learned from reading the mafia thread, that lilith was telling feathers stuff like don't take too strong a stance (on d1), and when you do be sure you sound objective and thoughtful. so applying the other things i've learned like reading between the lines, it is likely a reasonable deduction to make.

another thing, you said my scum partners might be {gobbles, apogee, GWu, sleepersoul} in that order. why did you chose those four? i've yet to hear you scum read any of them. thats super suspicious in my mind. also, gobbles has barely appeared (and been prodded at least once if not twice). which is relevant to my pondering of the question how can you be sure that he would be my likely scumpartner? you haven't seen his style unless you know him from somewhere else and maybe he's a bad player. if he's a bad player and he's coaching me in the scum thread then that would disprove your assumption that he could coach me, immediately. so it tells me you're taking a shot in the dark at assuming gobbles is a good enough player to coach me which is a big assumption to make. i expect more from you votato.

[GeneralWu]

Obviously all scum wants to find town PRs. But scum PRs are more excited/preoccupied about finding targets because they will be doing the targeting.

Actually, it doesn't really matter who is the scum PR when it comes to night actions. Suppose you were a mafia goon and your partner were a mafia rolecop. You can tell your partner "can you rolecop [player]" and that would still allow you to target the person in question.

However, it is a bit less likely for scum to bus their PR, because that will make it more likely for the scum PR to be lynched, tracked, jailed, etc.

Also in my experience it's actually very difficult to distinguish mafia goons from mafia PRs and purposely go for the mafia PRs. The best thing to do is to try and find scum (regardless of whether it's a goon or a PR) rather than to hunt for scum PRs.

[Freddiethelady]

I missed this earlier.

hmm im leaning towards the scum PT being more likely, but we will see. if you are scum, your partner is probably (in decreasing order) {gobbles, apogee, GWu, sleepersoul}. gobbles would be the most likely

Are you saying you think Freddie could be scum PR? I tend to agree. I keep getting the feeling she's looking for town PRs.

the whole conversation about scum PRs got started with this misunderstanding. votato said he thinks i learned from scum PT not PR, right?

[midwaybear]

yes lol

[GeneralWu]

mmm, i think we should refrain from speculating too much about people's exact roles, as it only serves scum interests. all we need to do is speculate about who is scum. and putting someone at L-1 is generally not a good idea that early on, but at the same time, it draws a lot of attention to you if you are scum. either way, its a bad play imo, so i dont really know how to sort it without more info.

This post is pretty towny.

AGar is generally pretty aggressive. If its AI, i'd say its town indicative.

Trying to solve the game.
Also have you played with AGar before?

i realize that BM always plays like this, but is it a good excuse for doing so? if deadline approaches, i would like to suggest BM for PL

Why would you suggest BM for PL? I didn't see any post where you explained this (although I might've missed something here).

There has to be scum between AGar and BM. I'm leaning towards BM being scum.

With that out of the way, we should be focusing on players that haven't been pushing the game forwards so much or making themselves readable.

why does there have to be scum there? is there no chance that its TvT?

This post also makes votato pretty towny, since it's asking a question.

VOTE: sleeper

also willingish to go for GWu

This post seems pretty opportunistic.

hmm im leaning towards the scum PT being more likely, but we will see. if you are scum, your partner is probably (in decreasing order) {gobbles, apogee, GWu, sleepersoul}. gobbles would be the most likely

Why did you say this? And where is your explanation?

Overall, I think votato has made some efforts to solve the game, but not explaining things and being opportunistic makes him a bit scummy.
I'd say he's at a townlean for now.

[GeneralWu]

yes lol

You still haven't explained why you think Sleeper is town.

[midwaybear]

i am typing that up right now

[GeneralWu]

the end of my post to general was supposed to say: where did you get this "why do you say my defense of BM was "way too informed"?" not:

why you think BM also about his read being too informed

Here:

BM and Agar in your posts 169 168 id like to ask you both what are the chances that sleeper is making rookie mistakes in your opinion? his continuous references to his gut-feelsies is bad town behavior, and equally bad as a scum behavior. from what i gather, i assume that a newbie scum would probably be far more hesitant to take a stance on issues since he has to fake his town role, where as a town newbie might appear flaky because of his eagerness to participate. my read on him leans town right now. i think he is an easy target right now because he is active in the game...it feels a bit scummy to shade him for that Agar and BM imo.

I don't think gut is indicative of alignment in either direction - plenty of the best players I know start their reads off with gut and then progress from there. Sometimes it's just a perception of how you're posting or interacting that can't be defined that gives someone a tell on alignment. I lean mildly scummy on Sleeper based on what I said in 169, namely his seemingly trying to keep a lot of avenues open, but it's not anything that I'm looking to pursue with a wagon at this point. I'm much more happy trying to garner steam on a GWu wagon at the moment, unless Sleeper moves themselves more firmly into a scumread. It looks like you're townreading Sleeper by this post - why are you pushing on midway's townread of him, then?

GWu's posted some surface level content and interaction but doesn't appear to be making any :real: effort to divine the alignments of other players. The defense of BM in 94 still reads too informed to me. 170 uses the word "cautious" a lot when describing Sleeper but that post comes in basically reiterating what BM and I had already posited about Sleeper - it's not a new stance, and it's even - to borrow the descriptor - cautious in and of itself. It hems and haws on the possibility that Sleeper's being cautious but maybe he's just new. Or maybe he doesn't have reads yet. GWu seems very content right now to appear to be scumhunting but not actually contributing to anything.

@midway, gobble

Some scumreads/leans please? Posts that pinged you?

@Apogee

How do you feel about Sleeper at this point? There's been a good bit of posts since #121. Has the read evolved at all?

[Freddiethelady]

why are you assuming theres a scum PR?

I'm not. I'm just saying it's more likely.

why are you saying this? and why is it relevant?

[SleeperSoul]

Yeah, I just realized that votato was talking about the "private thread".

At this point I feel pretty reluctant to share my thoughts, because it seems everything I do is wrong.

I think I need to hard claim noob here. If at any point I gave the impression that I was good at this game, that was my mistake.

I'll try to keep helping town, but expect me to mess up. I know this is a bad defense but what can I do?

[Freddiethelady]

The defense of BM in 94 still reads too informed to me.

how is this too informed agar? you've been dodging the question

[SleeperSoul]

I do like freddie more now, though.... I understand my pr hunting theory was way out there.

[SleeperSoul]

I mean I town lean on freddie more.

[votato]

hmm im leaning towards the scum PT being more likely, but we will see. if you are scum, your partner is probably (in decreasing order) {gobbles, apogee, GWu, sleepersoul}. gobbles would be the most likely

who are you talking to?

you.

the reason i think it would be those people is that i think the coaching would have to come from someone experienced. for example, i dont think i ever told freddie that scum would be hesitant to take a firm stance, but i think gobbles or apogee might give such advice. or maybe it was me. in any case in both prior games it was immediately obvious to me that freddie was town, but in this game im having trouble, which probably just means that freddie is learning (good), but still gives me the heebiee jeebiees (sp?) (bad).

avalon is a mafia variant that you can buy in stores and has specific role cards etc. its essentially the same, but a bit different.

im just going to risk naming the other players for clarification.

well for one thing, votato, you definitely told me about how scum want to appear. i also learned from reading the mafia thread, that lilith was telling feathers stuff like don't take too strong a stance (on d1), and when you do be sure you sound objective and thoughtful. so applying the other things i've learned like reading between the lines, it is likely a reasonable deduction to make.

another thing, you said my scum partners might be {gobbles, apogee, GWu, sleepersoul} in that order. why did you chose those four? i've yet to hear you scum read any of them. thats super suspicious in my mind. also, gobbles has barely appeared (and been prodded at least once if not twice). which is relevant to my pondering of the question how can you be sure that he would be my likely scumpartner? you haven't seen his style unless you know him from somewhere else and maybe he's a bad player. if he's a bad player and he's coaching me in the scum thread then that would disprove your assumption that he could coach me, immediately. so it tells me you're taking a shot in the dark at assuming gobbles is a good enough player to coach me which is a big assumption to make. i expect more from you votato.

ive played quite a few games with gobbles and gobbles is a good player. gobbles lurking is unrelated to skill, and NAI. gobbles is good so could be coaching you. i know that, so can draw the comparison. but yeah pre-flip associatives are bad so its unlikely that you are both scum. why pick out gobbles from that list to attack me for?

[midwaybear]

Spoiler: sleeper quotes

You know, originally my BM vote wasn't that serious, it was just a pure gut-read with a silly justification added on top. But now that I've reread everything, I'm starting to actually suspect BM a little bit.

The amount of activity this early comes off as LAMIST to me, and the overall tone seems a little too paranoid. Too bad he's away for 3 days. Maybe the flurry of activity early on was in anticipation of being away for a few days.

But it's the activity in combination with overall tone. He seems slightly more tense than in the one game of his I've read (newbie game 2004).

So rather than my vote being pretty much random/pure gut-read, it's actually slightly substantiated now. Either that or I'm confbiasing because I want my gut-read to be right.

It's early, so this read is not very strong, but it's the only one I have and I figured I'd share what I'm thinking.

His reasons for scumreading are an extreme reach, and it almost sounds like he is scumreading someone just for the sake of a scumread. However, he does back it up with meta, and high effort is generally townie(not always though). Additionally, it is redeemed by what he said in the bolded part. He sorta acknowledges the read is weak, but that he wanted to share his thoughts. This is definitely town motivated.

3. How upset will you be if you're lynched on Day 1? (out of 10)

How does asking and/or answering this question help town? It almost seems like scum rolehunting.

This is actually an interesting quote because it relates to sleeper talking about scum rolehunting like he suspected freddie of doing. I know in Avalon, it's really important for scum to figure out who certain town PRs are, so perhaps this is why he has brought it up.

I pretty much agree with everything GeneralWu just said in post 94.

It seems like AGar is too eager to lynch BM. To me it would have seemed townier if AGar toned down his scumread on BM, but instead he doubled down with even weaker arguments. I wanted to see some stronger arguments, or a retraction, not a piling-on of weaker arguments. Like, I want my initial gut-read to be right too, but I'm willing to be wrong on that.

Now he flips onto Agar attacking Battle Mage. The argument for scumreading Agar here is good, and this also shows that he reconsiders reads which is also good.

The wiki says Chainsaw Defense is only a reliable scum tell when we already know mechanically that the defendee is scum, and I have to agree. Pretty sure that as an SE, AGar would know/agree with the wiki, though I'm not sure if him bringing it up is AI.

meh some light shade. I don't think this is necessarily scummy even if shading is generally considered so.

Yes, I see your point. It seems like AGar might be playing 'bad' on purpose... the question is, why?

ok this quote is pretty weird lol

Actually his overall game seems fine to me so far (in terms of optimal play, regardless of alignment), I was just referring specifically to his mentioning of the chainsaw defense.

now, Sleeper backtracks and says that he meant Agar's use of chainsaw defense was bad, and not overall play. I'm not sure I buy this, and it is sorta of sus.

There has to be scum between AGar and BM. I'm leaning towards BM being scum.

With that out of the way, we should be focusing on players that haven't been pushing the game forwards so much or making themselves readable.

this progression is weird because he doesn't really explain why he reads BM as scum, and he was just focused on Agar.

Can I hear from you what you think of my vote on you?

Sure. I don't mind your vote on me. I think you're picking up on my over-eagerness to move the game forward.

I am having a general feeling throughout this game that everything is moving too slowly. But this is my first forum mafia game. So I think I just need to get used to the pace of forum mafia.

Also... I haven't addressed the following because I wasn't sure how useful it would be to bring... But I have been somewhat holding back my reads this entire game. Up until now I ~feel~ like the general consensus has been that I'm obviously town. I have a (silly?) fear that by revealing my reads, mafia will know which of them is under the most danger. I do have a tendency towards tinfoil hattery...

I can see how your vote on me is probably coming from a town perspective. I was about to ping you for reads like I did freddie and GG, but your vote on me gave me a slight town read on you. So I pinged the remaining players who I have no real reads on.

This reads as really LAMIST now. Yikes. I don't see scum ever saying that they are a consensus townread in this situation, so this is one of those little moments that make a townread.

I was waiting for AGar to comment on you two being TvT before touching my vote, but sure, I'll change it to you now.

VOTE: Battle Mage

I feel you've consistently been the scummiest player this whole game.

why out of the two did you select BM as scum?

Because AGar seems to agree with me more, and BM was my initial gut read.

If you're town, this is V bad.

I agree that this is bad, but I don't really know how to justify my reads that well because they are mainly based on gut.

Yeah, that was also a bit strange, but Sleeper seems honest about admitting where his game can improve which is townie.

Also why were you "intentionally serving as bait for scum to jump on"?

It's a strategy I adopted from IRL play. My friends all know I don't like playing as scum, and I'm too easy to read as scum. So I play scummy in the beginning to try to get scum on my side and then turn on them. I was always confident in my ability to be read as innocent. This was in an Avalon setup where scum didn't know who one of their members was.

I was trying to do some 5D plays, but I realize I'm probably not good/readable enough to do it here.

lol another weirdly town post from Sleeper.

And then we have the PR Stuff.

Spoiler: stuff

Idk I sorta read sleeper like Apogee from game 2003, but Apogee was a little less awkwardly honest if you know what I mean. It's just that his explanations are sometimes weird, but he is a newbie and this is probably a result of him being used to a different meta.
There are also some quotes I didn't include which have sleeper prodding people for their thoughts which isn't necessarily townie, but still welcome. Yeah, I'm pretty confident that he's town, and I would like for an elaboration on the BM scumread.

[midwaybear]

VOTE: votato
I'm feeling it again

[midwaybear]

I do like freddie more now, though.... I understand my pr hunting theory was way out there.

I mean I town lean on freddie more.

this is town

[votato]

Yeah, I just realized that votato was talking about the "private thread".

At this point I feel pretty reluctant to share my thoughts, because it seems everything I do is wrong.

I think I need to hard claim noob here. If at any point I gave the impression that I was good at this game, that was my mistake.

I'll try to keep helping town, but expect me to mess up. I know this is a bad defense but what can I do?

hmmm dont be discouraged. the lingo is a bit complicated and takes a while to get the hang of. so far you've made two silly plays (thinking a tactic from avalon would work here, and getting lingo wrong once). the rest of your play has been good though. dont worry about making mistakes. its a newbie lobby, everyone is making mistakes. and making mistakes is a great way to learn.

[votato]

VOTE: votato
I'm feeling it again

care to elaborate? you've given no reasoning before this to suggest that im scum...

[Freddiethelady]

Yeah, I just realized that votato was talking about the "private thread".

At this point I feel pretty reluctant to share my thoughts, because it seems everything I do is wrong.

I think I need to hard claim noob here. If at any point I gave the impression that I was good at this game, that was my mistake.

I'll try to keep helping town, but expect me to mess up. I know this is a bad defense but what can I do?

remember its just a game. i've been there and it sucks. try not to worry too much!! it will get better.

[SleeperSoul]

Right now my read on BM isn't as strong as when I posted my list. I'll reread his iso and get back to you.

Also, I think "awkwardly honest" is a pretty good description of my personality.

[Freddiethelady]

hmm im leaning towards the scum PT being more likely, but we will see. if you are scum, your partner is probably (in decreasing order) {gobbles, apogee, GWu, sleepersoul}. gobbles would be the most likely

who are you talking to?

you.

the reason i think it would be those people is that i think the coaching would have to come from someone experienced. for example, i dont think i ever told freddie that scum would be hesitant to take a firm stance, but i think gobbles or apogee might give such advice. or maybe it was me. in any case in both prior games it was immediately obvious to me that freddie was town, but in this game im having trouble, which probably just means that freddie is learning (good), but still gives me the heebiee jeebiees (sp?) (bad).

avalon is a mafia variant that you can buy in stores and has specific role cards etc. its essentially the same, but a bit different.

im just going to risk naming the other players for clarification.

well for one thing, votato, you definitely told me about how scum want to appear. i also learned from reading the mafia thread, that lilith was telling feathers stuff like don't take too strong a stance (on d1), and when you do be sure you sound objective and thoughtful. so applying the other things i've learned like reading between the lines, it is likely a reasonable deduction to make.

another thing, you said my scum partners might be {gobbles, apogee, GWu, sleepersoul} in that order. why did you chose those four? i've yet to hear you scum read any of them. thats super suspicious in my mind. also, gobbles has barely appeared (and been prodded at least once if not twice). which is relevant to my pondering of the question how can you be sure that he would be my likely scumpartner? you haven't seen his style unless you know him from somewhere else and maybe he's a bad player. if he's a bad player and he's coaching me in the scum thread then that would disprove your assumption that he could coach me, immediately. so it tells me you're taking a shot in the dark at assuming gobbles is a good enough player to coach me which is a big assumption to make. i expect more from you votato.

ive played quite a few games with gobbles and gobbles is a good player. gobbles lurking is unrelated to skill, and NAI. gobbles is good so could be coaching you. i know that, so can draw the comparison. but yeah pre-flip associatives are bad so its unlikely that you are both scum. why pick out gobbles from that list to attack me for?

you didn't answer my question about why you chose those four to pair with me...and followed it up with "i have yet to see you scum read any of them" so while i did only isolate gobbles, you did say he was the most likely to be my scumbuddy, so i thought i would start there...especially since there was nothing to go off of with the others.