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[Trendall]

Somebody does something in a mafia game and their reason for doing it is because they want to see how other people react to that. I have a hard time figuring out why anybody would find that contrived or unbelievable?

[Trendall]

If it's a random vote, everybody comes into these games knowing that there are going to be random votes placed on them at the start of the game, it's expected so there's no actual 'pressure' or whatever being applied. My not voting thing catches people off guard and from how they react to it I get to see a lot about what their playstyle is, most particularly whether they the kind of person who will just vote for anybody who does anything out-of-the-ordinary, or whether they're going to analyse in some other way. This information is useful to me in figuring out the motivations behind players' arguments later on in the game.

For example with you, I know now that you think 'if you were mafia you would do this' and other such things as though every single person acts in exactly the same way in the same situation across the board. Therefore if you have some similar argument against somebody else later on in the game and I think 'this is a bad argument', I know that I have no particular reason to suspect you off the back of it and it's just the kind of thing you would normally say as town.

[Trendall]

'if you were town you would do this'* rather

[Glitch]

If he truly thought I were scum, he would engage me, ask me question, poke around, and then case me. But he doesn't.

So this is the crux of the problem for me, the guy's way of playing this game is going 'mafia act like this, and town act like this', and in reality people act in all different ways irrespective of their alignment due to personality styles and play styles and whatever else. So I know already, if I don't 'act right', he's going to think I'm mafia, and if I do make any attempt to 'act right' he'll accuse me of contriving reasons and so forth, he's completely inconsistent with what he wants from me. So I'm just stuck here, aren't I? There's nothing I can do about it other than hope that if I get lynched the other players in the game are capable of interpreting what's happened.

What does scum hunting look like to you then?

How do you sort players without looking for pings on mafia and town playing in a way that gives away their alignment? If one cannot observe, "mafia act like this and town act like this," then how does one sort between players? Of course, play style and personality styles have a major influence on how people play. If you've paid attention to my other posts, particularly ones targeted at Noraa, I have actually talked a good bit about the importance of discerning the difference between playstyle/personality, and alignment-indicative content.

I'm really sad that you're feeling frustrated by me because from what I've read of your posts, you seem articulate and willing to contribute quality content (unlike some others *coughderpcough*), but your response to me grilling you and SRing you seems to be that you're just throwing your hands up and acting like I'm some kind of hard-headed monster rather than someone who is indeed tunneling you hard, but wanting answers so I can sort your alignment and get a clearer read on your slot.

I'm asking you questions, making a case against you, and building a wagon on you for pro-town reasons and I feel like that is fairly clear, but I think your response is emotional and it's clouding your ability to engage me in a good conversation. Instead of discrediting me as a hyper-aggressive player, talk to me. Let's talk content, alignments, playstyle, strategy, quotes, cases...

anything

. But it seems like you're only willing to talk about how bad of a player I am, not talk to me about your thoughts anywhere else.

I'm sorry if I'm continuing to frustrate you. I'm not trying to; but I am trying to sort you because you're at the top of my SR's right now and I think it's only fair when you join a game of mafia to expect that when you do something that someone else interprets as scummy, regardless of whether you are scum are not, you are going to come under scrutiny for it and should respond and engage in a way that helps others sort you and your alignment.

[Glitch]

Why does it feel like Trendall and Noraa are both scum?
If Trendall flips scum I would be inclined to vote Noraa next.

we can maybe be friends actually, could u elaborate on this?

It seems to me Noraa is trying really hard to strike a balance between deflecting the Trendall accusations without seeming like they are buddied. See post 198.

Keita is shortwinded but this and a previous analysis of their's I saw earlier were both spot on and I'm liking this slot a good bit.

[Trendall]

-

I am responding and engaging, you just don't like the way I'm doing it.

As to how I would sort players, I don't think 'mafia act like this and town act like this' at all. My thing with deception spotting generally is you need to establish what a person's baseline behaviour is first, what their sort of go-to behaviours and attitudes are in any given situation. And then in a mafia game if a person starts to deviate from what I'd expect from them, then I start to question that.

To give an example, in that last newbie game, one of the players presented a meta argument against one of the other players. However I'd already checked their post history and found them saying 'meta is garbage'. So if they think that meta is garbage, why are they suddenly using it to defend themselves in this game? There's no way that a form of argument that they themselves don't believe is a valid form of argument unless they were fabricating it, so you know that person is mafia.

I take things on a case by case basis like that, I would off the back of that game codify it like 'oh if someone presents a meta argument they are scum', that makes no sense to me. It's hard to articulate why I don't deal in 'tells' as such, but it's like, there's a lot of variation in how different people respond to the same situation. In real life, when somebody gets accused of something, one person might get defensive, another might stay cool and collected, one might start offering a logical argument, one might start offering an emotional argument and so on. And then you have to sit and decipher all of this, like 'how would the person normally act and are they deviating from that right now?'. So to me if someone says like 'oh you are being emotional and this is a tell, mafia would try to make an emotive argument here' then it just makes no sense.

Don't apologise at all, I'm having a nice time!

[Trendall]

I'm going to unvote Glitch actually because he's clearly like, trying different approaches to try to communicate with me and actually get stuff out of me. You would have thought that if he was mafia he would continue piling on 'pressure' or whatever rather than sorta backing off in the way that he did there.

Honestly I have no other reads on anybody at this point other than like I say, I had a slight town read on Flubbernugget. I'm sorry but if that's the situation, that's the situation. Most of the time I find all of day one null, and this is no exception.

So Glitch, help me out here. Hypothetically if I flipped town, what would be your opinion of the people who are voting for me so far. Because intuitively to me it feels as though it's unlikely that they're all town but I can't decipher between them?

UNVOTE: Glitch

[Glitch]

Adding my thoughts in bolded blue.

If we're struggling to get serious stuff going, how about we get no one today and try on the next day? We'll have a night of information then to work things out VOTE: Skip?

1) I don't know why anyone is saying we are struggling to get serious stuff going; there's enough to start discussions and get things moving a good bit.
2) Getting the "should we no lynch?" Conversation out of the way is an unfortunate necessity in every D1.
3) We are not no-lynching.

What's the point of this post?

#1 because I want to encourage people not be lazy and excuse D1 as a time we can't make some good progress.
#2 just recognizing the fact that in every game I player the "should we no lynch D1?" conversation is a necessary evil that must be completed before the end of the deadline. It's like a prophecy or something. It happens literally every game
#3 because we AREN'T no-lynching today, that's dumb and shouldn't need to be explained.

If he truly thought I were scum, he would engage me, ask me question, poke around, and then case me. But he doesn't. He just tries to make it look like I'm some big bad wolf who uses scary acronyms and bad logic. But what is actually bad logic? Hunting, sorting, and generating AI content; or refusing to answer questions and shading a player for poor reasons?

I agree with this but I'm not on board with the fact that Trendall is an "abnormal" player either. I need to dig up that first which includes doing the one thing I despise doing.

Maybe I missed something but when did you get the impression that I was trying to say Trendall is an "abnormal" player? I like that he's willing to clearly communicate with quality writing and he doesn't seem to be a lurker. While I SR his slot I don't think he's weird or abnormal, just acting sus.

@Trendall: What is your pronoun? I checked but didn't see it. Hope I got it right, just a guess.

I think you just didn't vote and weren't thinking about it. But when pressured you came up with a forced reason. The whole, "oh I actually am contributing by not voting," thing was sketch. Why did you say that? You could have just said, "I frequently don't vote right off the bat," and posted game numbers just like you did but on top of that you had to explain how not voting contributed.

I don't buy this.

Fair, but what specific part don't you buy? That he didn't vote early game and wasn't thinking about it, or that when asked about it his response was sketch?

So I know already, if I don't 'act right', he's going to think I'm mafia, and if I do make any attempt to 'act right' he'll accuse me of contriving reasons and so forth, he's completely inconsistent with what he wants from me. So I'm just stuck here, aren't I? There's nothing I can do about it other than hope that if I get lynched the other players in the game are capable of interpreting what's happened.

Correct - I agree with you here. Here are the problems -

1) If you're not being cooperative, then what are you doing? This is mafia. This is a game where you need to figure out if X, Y and Z are scum and then get A, B, C, D, and E to vote for X, Y and Z. If you find X, Y and Z but Y is also making A through E think you are scum, you've effectively done nothing. I honestly smell a lot of miselim bait on your wagon which is why I am super apprehensive on my vote on you. However, you are not helpful to town at the moment.

And see, this right here is why I want Trendall to engage me. Because I am trying to sort his slot. I am tunneling him, but it's not a death tunnel. I'm not unwilling to concede a point when I'm wrong, and I really want him to answer my questions. I guess I'm just frustrating him too much to get there though. :/

[Glitch]

Trendall I see you @ing me as I'm posting. I'm not ignoring you but I'm going to continue catching up chronologically and then respond to your current posts when I get caught up.

[Trendall]

Oh yeah totally, I get that, I noticed you read through the thread and reply to things as you read them.

[Trendall]

Oh, and he.

[Trendall]

I have other user names online, and there's one where ppl always assume it's a girl and call me she, and I'd never correct anybody on it, it makes no difference to me, hence why I don't have it listed. But like please nobody get hung up on that.

[Glitch]

Don't see a point in going to in depth with this read as its only page 10

I'm not saying I read this as AI but this kind of thought process really bugs me. I don't think it's fair to say we can't go deep in the early game. We've had some really great discussions so far and I feel like I could get a half-decent readslist at this point in the game. I think it's easy for both low-efforting players and for scum to use, "Oh it's just early game, don't make such a big deal out of things," as a way to discredit valid arguments, and to both deflect and weaken any pressure that is put onto them. Let's not create an atmosphere in this game that is conducive to scum being able to deflect if we catch them quick, just because, "It's only page 10."

[Trendall]

-

I am responding and engaging, you just don't like the way I'm doing it.

As to how I would sort players, I don't think 'mafia act like this and town act like this' at all. My thing with deception spotting generally is you need to establish what a person's baseline behaviour is first, what their sort of go-to behaviours and attitudes are in any given situation. And then in a mafia game if a person starts to deviate from what I'd expect from them, then I start to question that.

To give an example, in that last newbie game, one of the players presented a meta argument against one of the other players. However I'd already checked their post history and found them saying 'meta is garbage'. So if they think that meta is garbage, why are they suddenly using it to defend themselves in this game? There's no way that

a person would present

a form of argument that they themselves don't believe is a valid form of argument unless they were fabricating it, so you know that person is mafia.

I take things on a case by case basis like that, I

wouldn't

off the back of that game codify it like 'oh if someone presents a meta argument they are scum', that makes no sense to me. It's hard to articulate why I don't deal in 'tells' as such, but it's like, there's a lot of variation in how different people respond to the same situation. In real life, when somebody gets accused of something, one person might get defensive, another might stay cool and collected, one might start offering a logical argument, one might start offering an emotional argument and so on. And then you have to sit and decipher all of this, like 'how would the person normally act and are they deviating from that right now?'. So to me if someone says like 'oh you are being emotional and this is a tell, mafia would try to make an emotive argument here' then it just makes no sense.

Don't apologise at all, I'm having a nice time!

Sorry, noticed some typo sorta errors, I guess I got really into the game and forgot to proofread this properly or something.

[Glitch]

Let me try a different formatting so I don't botch this beautiful wall with my blue interjections.

1) If you're not being cooperative, then what are you doing? This is mafia. This is a game where you need to figure out if X, Y and Z are scum and then get A, B, C, D, and E to vote for X, Y and Z. If you find X, Y and Z but Y is also making A through E think you are scum, you've effectively done nothing. I honestly smell a lot of miselim bait on your wagon which is why I am super apprehensive on my vote on you. However, you are not helpful to town at the moment.

2) Why does that make Glitch scum? Because they're wrong? Isn't that the exact same point that you're making? Giving up isn't exactly a towntell in anyone's book FYI.

Everybody knows that this is very early on in the game where little of any significance happens, so if somebody is starting to talk to me about how I haven't done reams and reams of analysis yet, then that is suspect because everybody knows that nobody's reads are massively serious right now necessarily.

^[1]

If something happens that I think is interesting then I'll pick up on it, and as it happens I think that nothing relevant has happened so far in this game other than I think that Flubbernugget is more likely to be town, and that it's unlikely that all of the other players who jumped on voting me are town too.

Glitch's questions are just...I don't know how to explain but this isn't how you get information out of people. Watch a couple of episodes of Columbo or something to see how it's done properly.

^[2]

His questions are very much putting words in my mouth, bombarding me with stuff left right and centre, trying to catch me out. If you're questioning somebody with the intention of making them slip up, like you've already decided what the answers are going to be as he obviously has done, then the person will slip up, it's pointless, it's a waste of time. Like he's certain his technique works, I'll flip town, and he'll just carry on game after game doing the exact same thing without ever evaluating where he made a mistake.

He's already said to me 'if you were town you would have done this instead'. So if he already knows everything about what I would do in a given situation and I have already breached that, then what possible reason would there be to respond to his points further?

^[3]

Then there's all this theatrical stuff about 'oh this should be the definition of omgus on the wiki'. If he thinks something I've said is 'contrived' then there's nothing I can do about that other than say 'no it wasn't'. Saying something is 'contrived' is nothing, it's not an argument, it's just a person looking at a post and going 'I don't like the look of this because of a gut feeling', how could you possibly argue that further? He says that I am 'panicky' and 'feel pressured' which again, I can say 'I'm clearly not' and then we're at a stalemate. You can't reason with a person if that's the extent of their arguments.

^[4]

And again, with your question 'why does that make him scum?', I never said it did, so again that's a leading question trying to paint is as though I made a bad argument as to him being mafia when I never made such an argument at all. Like I say, his original question against Noraa was unreasonable, I thought that made him slightly more likely to be mafia than anybody else at that point given that I have no other reads, hence my vote is on him for the time being. It's not like a strong read, I don't care about it very much, but apparently if I don't vote for anybody then everybody complains about that too. As for the motivations for his arguing against me, that could go either way so I wouldn't present any of that as being in favour of him being mafia. I'm just saying that either way, nobody should be looking at his arguments against me and thinking 'yeah they're good arguments we should eliminate Trendall'.

^[5]

Nothing I have done is tantamount to 'giving up' and I couldn't care less what is and isn't a 'towntell' lol.

^[6]

[1] - 262 addresses some of this topic. I don't think that it's fair at this point in the game for someone to discredit you for not having deep reads, but I also think it's important that we don't simply dismiss all ability to sort players and have serious analysis under all circumstances just because it's early game.

[2] - Tbh I am not going to go watch Columbo, sorry, lol. I want to know why you think grilling people isn't a reasonable way to sort and find scum, and if casing and interrogating isn't your style, that's fine, but then how would you advocate sorting players and moving the game forward?

[3] - I feel like this is a misrep though. I never locked you into a box of "no matter what you say you're lockscum, die!" A hard SR isn't reconsiderable. Just because I read something you do as scummy doesn't mean you can't come back here and explain why it's not.

[4] - OMG this is what I've been waiting for. See, this is why I ask these things and this is why I paint a picture to figure out if it's true. This shows willingness to engage and persuade. As town we have to realize that we are playing a team game and we have to act like it. Persuading people to understand you point is critical and the way you handled it was pretty OMGUSy which intensified a pre-existing SL I had on you.

[5] - That last part is just a bit unreasonable though.

[6] - Why don't you care what is and isn't a towntell? Sorting town is just as important as sorting scum. Process of elimination can lead you straight to the mafia.

[Glitch]

I think Trendall is a townie because that's a looooooot of words and I think it's hard for mafia to write so much right now, because we don't any good information

Playing scum creates a lot of pressure for the player which often results in high-efforting. I wouldn't read him based on word count or post count. I would read him based on what the words say and mean.

[Glitch]

So why would Glitch be held to a higher standard? You said yourself that there's nothing happening because it's early game. Are you content with that? Why can't Glitch just be creating something to talk about to get a lead? Have you never asked questions before in a game to just try and get things moving? I just don't really understand everything in context.

My playstyle frequently lands me in hot water when I roll town and I just wanted to say I sincerely appreciate this thought and the fact that someone sees my effort for what it is. I know you'll read this and have to double-take that I may be scum writing this and so it may be a theater post, but once I flip or the game ends hopefully you'll remember this and just know that I genuinely appreciate you recognizing my playstyle as something that, while controversial and loud, can certainly be pro-town when coming from a town player.

[Glitch]

I never said that he did, I said that on the basis of that element of it it could go either way. I said that the reason I was voting for him was that it's a very light vote based on the fact that I found his point against Noraa unreasonable. If you like, you can look at it as the random vote that ppl were complaining about me not making at the start of the game.

This is fair.

I don't know what you mean by 'flailing' exactly so I'm not sure I can 'admit' to something if I'm not even sure what it is. I haven't used this word at all. As I understand the word 'flailing' then I haven't done anything resembling that, I've just sorta...dispassionately addressed the points that have come up against me.

This is not; it's blatantly inaccurate. You frequently refused to address points I made against you and instead chose to discredit me as a player instead of addressing the actual argument. That has changed as of today but yesterday this was not the case.

[Trendall]

I want to know why you think grilling people isn't a reasonable way to sort and find scum, and if casing and interrogating isn't your style, that's fine, but then how would you advocate sorting players and moving the game forward?

Again, I am literally doing it right now. I now have a lot of information about you based entirely on your reaction to my not random voting or not explaining it correctly or whatever, and off the back of that I have determined that you're most likely town. I just need to not vote another 11 times and see how each other player reacts to it and shazam, I've solved the game.

If someone does something I don't understand I'll ask them a question about it, it's not about that I disagree with 'interrogation' or whatever, it's about how it's done. You to some extent conceded yourself that your way of doing it just made me not want to engage with you. For example, if I'd identified that a player was particularly sensitive or they were a new player or something like that, I wouldn't go in hard with a load of questions and accusations because I know full well that that's going to make that player act erratically, and they might just get fed up and replace out or whatever and none of the information I get from that is useful. So it's not that I wouldn't 'interrogate' someone, I would just never use your specific method of doing it.

If I were to 'interrogate' somebody I would rather have them being question under no 'pressure', because then the person is reacting at their most natural. Which again, if I'm trying to establish people's baseline behaviours and so on...trying to actively get reactions out of them is not going to help me with that at all.

Also once I think a player is more likely to be mafia, I will generally stop engaging with them directly because I know they can twist it or whatever and will instead start to try to appeal to other town members. That's why to some extent, if you're arguing that I'm mafia and then asking me questions I would just think 'why do you care if you think I'm mafia anyway, surely you think I'm just going to lie?'. Basically I do everything completely backwards compared to how you do it.

[Glitch]

I did, I said that if it

was

contrived then what's the actual reason for my not voting at the day start?

For what other reason would I do it in every game that you can think of?

I think our breakdown in communication comes in here: I don't think your initial choice to not vote in RVS is scummy. I think your response was sketchy at best when you were questioned on why you didn't vote. It felt very defensive so I pushed there. It erupted into our Glitch v Trendall slapfest and now I'm here trying to figure out what to make of it all in hindsight.

Somebody does something in a mafia game and their reason for doing it is because they want to see how other people react to that. I have a hard time figuring out why anybody would find that contrived or unbelievable?

Because there's a faction in this game that literally is supposed to lie and we as the faction trying to find them are supposed to question everything and not just believe everything people say.

[Trendall]

This is not; it's blatantly inaccurate. You frequently refused to address points I made against you and instead chose to discredit me as a player instead of addressing the actual argument. That has changed as of today but yesterday this was not the case.

It's not about whether I was 'flailing' or not though. This person said to me that I 'admitted' that I was 'flailing' when I did not 'admit' to any such thing.

[Glitch]

For example with you, I know now that you think 'if you were mafia you would do this' and other such things as though every single person acts in exactly the same way in the same situation across the board.

What makes you think this, and then what makes you think that there are not things mafia do that transcend playstyle or can be read through playstyle?

[Glitch]

^Disregard, the answer to this question appears to be 255

[Trendall]

I think your response was sketchy at best when you were questioned on why you didn't vote.

Nobody has managed to explain

why

it's sketchy though other than 'I think that's contrived' which isn't close to an argument. Again, to reiterate, I did something, and my reason for doing it was because people have to generate some sort of content in some way at the start of the game in order to ensure other people also generate content off the back of it and therefore you have stuff to read and determine alignments from.

[Noraa]

I think Trendall is a townie because that's a looooooot of words and I think it's hard for mafia to write so much right now, because we don't any good information

I ... do not think that's how it works.

:<

its ok you will get better. I have only played 2+ months and I'm a pro (not really but I wouldn't say I'm terrible)