Mini Normal 2170: Stuff I’m Listening To [Game Over]

[Gamma Emerald]

You skipped part of the question but in doing that you also digressed into your own original thought process which I like.

So my thinking about the scum is the Shea very much resembles rb in that game: a very vocal scum who got off to a strong start and then got tepid in the mid-stages. I was originally thinking Pooky resembled Flubber as the openwolf operative, and either nm/tw or Blitzo was the quiet TFL-like scum. Now that I’m set on Blitzo being scum, though, I realize Pooky and Blitzo are a really weird partner choice. Maybe NM is the open wolf in the scenario I’m working with rn? As for the town players, Noraa is 100% a parallel to Tywin in that game, beyond that the image gets hazy. That’s where your idea might clear things up. I remember Panzer making those 2 player pools, I also recall I sussed him for them after a good number of those players flipped town, as such it might be that that’s where the “two opposed townblocks” have manifested in this game?

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

you must be on crack if you think im scum with blitzo

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

shea can you convince gamma that he's on crazy pills

thanks i cant talk to him every word out of my mouth he seems to think is "blah blah blah blah scum blah scum blah scum"

[Gamma Emerald]

you must be on crack if you think im scum with blitzo

I just blew up at Shea about taking me to say something I’m literally saying the opposite of. Are you daft?

[Thestatusquo]

Ugh I just got a third of the way done with this and then my computer crashed and I lost it all so uhhh time to redo it I guess. Fuck technology.

Day 1:

{Thestatusquo}
{Panzerjager, PookyTheMagicalBear, The Bulge}
{Not_Mafia, Noraa, Kasumeat, duppin, OutWorldER, UneducatedGuesser}
{Gamma Emerald}
{Blitzo}

pedit: Was just about to post this for content but ok

what's the rush to get a list like this out?

seems like most of the people outside of your true null territory are for pretty shallow reasons? so idk how much content this really provides, unless you're hoping for reactions, which judging by the list it doesn't seem you are.

This is a minor point but I really didn't like this entrance into the game. Yes, a frequent town strategy in the early game is to be hyper nitpicky in order to generate discussion, but if you look deeper at this it actually discourages discussion. At its base bulge is questioning the very concept of putting out read lists this early which seems to me to be the opposite of what town wants. You want people to say as many things on the record as possible so questioning it in this way seems dubious to me.

This is the part of day 1 where I started thinking bulge was starting to pocket me:

This last page and a half of gamma reads really earnest to me.

I agree, but be careful not to lean too hard into his flattery

also welcome back shea, good to see you!

I don't like it. I can see why Shea didn't like Kasu's reaction but it's fairly standard for his meta as town to get engaged in stupid shit-fights.

ok, what do you think of kasu's shitpush on shea?

I'm not pressing you, just trying to develop my kasu read

This is the big one. I just at the time and still don't understand what the town motivation for telling a person who I am unsure of their alignment (this is day one, remember) that you're not pushing them. I want all people to think I might be pushing them because I want them to react to me. I see plenty of motivation for scum to want to avoid a big day one confrontation with one of the most well established town players in the game though. I brought this up and bulges response was not inspiring to me either:

I'm not pressing you, just trying to develop my kasu read

Honestly I don't like this post at all.

What in my post made you think that you needed to reassure me that you weren't pressing me? Why would you do that even if you thought I wanted it?

looking back I read the last line of your 472 too fast and thought you were implying I was trying to trap you into answering a certain way

Which does not in any way answer my concerns. He is basically saying he thought that I thought I was attacking him. But that's not at all responsive to what I was saying which is why would a town player reassure a player of unknown alignment that they're not pushing them. It doesn't make any sense to do so. Especially when you look at bulges posts later in the game where he says that he gets his best read from making people react to him specifically.

Analysis of play:
Fundamentally he does not seem to be particularly interested in determining alignment or even saying what he thinks peoples alignments are for other people to read him. Here are literally the only posts he made all of day 1 that at all expressed opinions on someones alignment:

i could go for outworld rn, prob not anyone else

gotta run for now but I'm reading up and I really don't like murdercat

Noraa how about you attempt to contribute to the game by explaining your scum read on me?

I don't think the main intent of this post was really to help noraa contribute.

ur telling me that activity determines whether or not they are scum?

Noraa this is why we think you look scummy, this is clearly a misrepresentation of the point

tmi?

Why didn't you answer my other questions?

didn't feel like it. my scum radars gone off too many times for each time to be a scum so its not determined who my SRs are rn so I didn't elaborate

Except you explicitly named Outworld?

I want to dig more there but he's slightly absent from the thread

Is this in reference to me or Outworld?

u

MCat already said this, but MCat hasn’t really been absent in any real sense.

VOTE: Noraa
My town vibes on her dried up very fast.

Now everyone starts voting Noraa, guess I'm a trend setter.

I am still going to resist my urge to scum read Nora for everything she says until I read meta though

this is where my gamma/murdercat/?? solve kicks in

noraa is still town also

There's a couple of other posts where he hints at possible belief in alignment, like when he drops this bizarre speculative gem:

caught up. still liking mc/gamma/and maybe a sleeper pick like panzer

actually here's a fun little thing: vig is obviously currently trying to decide between nm and panzer if there is one. i think nm would be a missed shot.

but there's just nothing there for the most part that you can come back and say "day one bulge thought X about Y and that's something we can contrast with later positions."

There's no pressing with votes, there's no progression, theres no development of reads. There's just lots of fluff questions and maybe one or two token references to people's alignments that can easily be walked back.

He says that's a good description of his town play and maybe thats true, but my take on this day one is that he did not put a lot of effort into solving anything. Came up with a random hypothetical scum team and then jumped fourth on the wagon of the miselim with very little justification or reasoning.

I shall now do day 2.

[Gamma Emerald]

I could probably find more to ask, but one question that pops into my mind is why wouldn’t Bulge potentially find it more effective to sort someone who is in a relaxed state, which would motivate him to make it clear he was not applying pressure?

[Thestatusquo]

Day 2

VOTE: noraa

Noraa is now being voted by the bulge despite the fact that one of the few things he said day 1 on alignment was that she was town and despite the fact that nothing had changed in her play at all since then.

I asked why and his answer was the following:

Can I get an explanation? I'm kind of following your progression but its spread out over so many posts.

very soon, but if you're anxious to know it's pretty recent in her iso

I perhaps let him off the hook here because I was focused too much on noraa but his response to me asking him why he did a complete 180 and now was voting noraa was Soon TM. He then has these posts to explain himself:

I agree they've been good but they dont feel like guesser's town game.

Actually, this post pretty well implies you like the content of 1744 but only find it shady for meta reasons,

and

that you concede it is not an obviously scummy post.

it's not exactly the hook-line-and-sinker I was hoping for so yea I'll have to let that one marinate for a bit. but I'm glad we talked.

I agree they've been good but they dont feel like guesser's town game.

I agree they've been good but they dont feel like guesser's town game.

Why? How are they good but not townie for him?

I played one game with guesser as town and town!guesser didnt sus everyone or have walls as long as the ones here. Guesser was also more present and the tone was less .... idk passive?

perhaps but I'm not feeling a lot of town!guesser vibes...
then again in the last game I was in with guesser, I jailed guesser cuz I thought they were scum but they were actually vt :/

But also Bulge, the majority of Guesser's SRs on me are meta related and just saying I'm not seeming as town as I did in the last game. Isn't that the same?

No the first few of his major reads had me as scum bc of meta reasons and guesser has done a total of like 4 of those so I think its absolutely fair to say that.

If you don't know why I'm voting for Gamma then I just don't think you're reading the game, I explained my vote in detail already.

Anyway, my read on you is not the topic of discussion here, your read on me is the topic of discussion, we're here because you engaged with me, not the other way around.

Have you got an answer to Bulge's question yet, or nah?

I made it very clear why I SR you.
ur tone is off.
ur play style is different.
your tunneling(which I'm fairly certain is AI for u)
your vote's not matching ur focus(ur votes on gamma yet u continue to tunnel me and not expand on ur case on gamma)

I did not engage you. I have no interest in talking to someone that's just going to tunnel me rn. You engaged me.

this is not something you say to someone you are scumreading. especially with the timing of where that scumread sprang up.

And like maybe I'm stupid but I still don't really even understand what this is getting at. I pushed further which gave me this reply:

is that really the basis for the vote?

i mean it's not anything I'd vote a TR for

Which like the interesting thing here was noraa WAS a town read. A pretty strong one I can only presume because he took the time to single her out as town day 1 when he did that for literally no one else except maybe in passing N_M. I think what happened here is that bulge saw noraa floundering and decided she was the best miselim target and was able to increase pressure on her and let her do herself in. I for one obviously bite into this critique again a little bit but then again I was scum reading her from the start. There was not a huge different from when bulge went out of his way to describe her as town and when he decided she was the person he should be voting. With this as his "case?" Maybe someone can clarify for me what's going on here but I simply don't get it. It's nothing. It's fluff. It's so nothing that when pressed on it he literally shrugged and said he wouldn't vote a town read for it. Maybe he was forgetting that voting a town read for it is exactly what he was doing?

Then noraa gets more votes and he parks his vote on blitzo and disappears for the rest of the day:

whatever I still trust it even if gamma has seemingly forgotten[?]

VOTE: blitzo

i'll go either way but don't want to leave noraa at e1 unattended

Again, nothing had changed. He had been pushing her all day and yet when she starts to get votes he jumps off and then yeets off into the sun.

This happens after the claim and this is really important. He has several times yesterday and today made the argument that noraas role of a checker makes a lot of sense with his role in the game. He has gone as far as to make the claim that the checker in the setup implies that his role is real. If that's the case why didn't he do more to stop noraa from being yeeted? He can go either way? Really. Really? With your role which you claim makes a lot of sense with the checker that she is claiming? You have nothing further to say on the claim? You think this is the way a town player with a role claim that makes sense with their role reacts to someone being on the yeet block? To hell with that. I don't know if the bulge hadn't yet formulated his fake claim or if he just didn't think about this at the time or if he just decided that getting the easy mislim was more important but this is just 100% not the behavior of a town player with the role bulge has in this situation.

[Thestatusquo]

I could probably find more to ask, but one question that pops into my mind is why wouldn’t Bulge potentially find it more effective to sort someone who is in a relaxed state, which would motivate him to make it clear he was not applying pressure?

Perhaps, but how does that square with the way bulge has asked questions to literally everyone else this game AND how he has claimed he best gets reads?

[Thestatusquo]

I'll do day 3 and 4 tomorrow. There should be plenty of things to talk about in my analysis of bulges reaction to noraas claim for right now.

[Thestatusquo]

Gamma has called my play tepid multiple times and I do not think its an accurate description of how I've played so perhaps you should explain what I've done thats tepid or stop making that claim because last time I asked you about it you basically just shrugged and said that I didn't get the bulge yeeted as if that's up to me alone.

[The Bulge]

gamma, you believe in ro3 yea?

[The Bulge]

My mindset today is "don't fuck up again and get yourself yeeted for the immediate loss". this narrative is weak as hell.

And yet its true.

why would you think my number 1 priority right now would be to get to step 1/3 in killing scum, rather than preventing step 1/1 in losing the game immediately?

IDK why was your number one priority on day three trying to yeet the confirmable town role despite the fact that it was clearly the wrong play to do so?

between quotemarks is what my mindset is. not what I'm accusing you of positing. are you even following your own push?

as I've explained many times, I believed 100% that outworld's claim was a last-ditch effort, possibly a rogue decision, to self-preserve for an additional Night. this has always been my stance. I'm not interested in explaining myself again.

[The Bulge]

So you're saying you did it on purpose? If so, why?

just to see what other kinds of off-the-wall theories you and your buddies would dare test before admitting the obvious :^]
but no I wouldn't call it premeditated or anything. initially I hadn't voted you simply because I had not submitted a vote. it was after the worst mentioned it that it became a source of information.

that's weak as fuck. how often does scum just "forget" to crossvote back lmao

big caught for the wrong reasons energy in this post.

the only reason that's wrong here is yours for why I'm not voting you yet. the post you quoted should make it pretty obvious that it's bait.

[The Bulge]

shea can you convince gamma that he's on crazy pills

thanks i cant talk to him every word out of my mouth he seems to think is "blah blah blah blah scum blah scum blah scum"

scumptposting

[Gamma Emerald]

gamma, you believe in ro3 yea?

Yeah. It’s not a great tool but it’s one I try to find use for. Why?

[Gamma Emerald]

Also looking at what you quoted, Shea, it does seem like Bulge actually did make a decent effort to prevent Noraa’s yeet? I need to actually comb that myself maybe.

[The Bulge]

[the whole big first part i guess]

I listed in 3091 every post of mine that states or implies (and I know my own intentions) a read on another player, as well as my voting record. I admit I don't divulge many reads but this is typical of my townplay.

There's a couple of other posts where he hints at possible belief in alignment, like when he drops this bizarre speculative gem:

caught up. still liking mc/gamma/and maybe a sleeper pick like panzer

actually here's a fun little thing: vig is obviously currently trying to decide between nm and panzer if there is one. i think nm would be a missed shot.

I've already explained this was a crumb/signal to any possible existing vigs that I would be targeting panzerjager.

[The Bulge]

Day 2

VOTE: noraa

Noraa is now being voted by the bulge despite the fact that one of the few things he said day 1 on alignment was that she was town and despite the fact that nothing had changed in her play at all since then.

lmao what is this. we have differing views of the game? cool. imo her play day 2 looked scummy.

Which like the interesting thing here was noraa WAS a town read. A pretty strong one I can only presume because he took the time to single her out as town day 1 when he did that for literally no one else except maybe in passing N_M. I think what happened here is that bulge saw noraa floundering and decided she was the best miselim target and was able to increase pressure on her and let her do herself in. I for one obviously bite into this critique again a little bit but then again I was scum reading her from the start. There was not a huge different from when bulge went out of his way to describe her as town and when he decided she was the person he should be voting. With this as his "case?" Maybe someone can clarify for me what's going on here but I simply don't get it.

It's nothing. It's fluff.

It's so nothing that when pressed on it he literally shrugged and said he wouldn't vote a town read for it. Maybe he was forgetting that voting a town read for it is exactly what he was doing?

apt description of the surrounding paragraph

Then noraa gets more votes and he parks his vote on blitzo and disappears for the rest of the day:

whatever I still trust it even if gamma has seemingly forgotten[?]

VOTE: blitzo

i'll go either way but don't want to leave noraa at e1 unattended

Again, nothing had changed. He had been pushing her all day and yet when she starts to get votes he jumps off and then yeets off into the sun.

being too busy to log on to mafia scum dot net is scum behaviour, got it

This happens after the claim and this is really important. He has several times yesterday and today made the argument that noraas role of a checker makes a lot of sense with his role in the game. He has gone as far as to make the claim that the checker in the setup implies that his role is real. If that's the case why didn't he do more to stop noraa from being yeeted? He can go either way? Really. Really? With your role which you claim makes a lot of sense with the checker that she is claiming? You have nothing further to say on the claim? You think this is the way a town player with a role claim that makes sense with their role reacts to someone being on the yeet block? To hell with that. I don't know if the bulge hadn't yet formulated his fake claim or if he just didn't think about this at the time or if he just decided that getting the easy mislim was more important but this is just 100% not the behavior of a town player with the role bulge has in this situation.

I didn't know anyone else's role. Noraa's role is useless without mine. Mine still has use. maybe there were even others who had synergy? maybe there were other power roles who had synergy with the checker? maybe one of them would step forward? regardless of any of that, it's nothing I was willing to expose myself over.

[Thestatusquo]

Lol @ that response tho

[Gamma Emerald]

@ Shea re: the tepid stuff, I said you didn’t make any effort to see that D3 Bulge push through imo. And while I don’t trust Blitzo anymore I think his meta on you is real, based on how he refused to act on it for an inordinate amount of time. That meta says you don’t push as strong as scum as you do when you are town. Despite being an active voice in the game, I don’t recall you playing a big part in much of the early decisions on who to yeet outside of Noraa, and that one I had probably an equal share in making happen at least. When I say you are tepid, it means that you were “hot” earlier on, when first impressions were being made, but have since cooled off and mostly let town make its own mistakes. As I just said while talking to Kasumeat, rb in this game (since I’m now actually discussing it with people who don’t have the direct concept of what I’m talking about I linked it) is a good example of that sort of playstyle coming from scum.

[The Bulge]

gamma, you believe in ro3 yea?

Yeah. It’s not a great tool but it’s one I try to find use for. Why?

what do you think of a world where 2 scummos are hurling shitbricks at their most established miselim target, while the other 1 scummo believes that target's claim and matches[/surpasses] his aggression with a bus on the other 2?

[Gamma Emerald]

I think Bulge’s role does have synergy with the neap as well (since neap can’t get a clear on anything that can use an ability, bulge can target that player to protect them without stopping a town power role from acting)

[The Bulge]

I'm not interested in picking at every little nitpick you've brought up, shea. I don't care to convince you of anything, my job is to convince blitzo and kasu and worsty to vote correctly or lose.

[Thestatusquo]

Day 2

VOTE: noraa

Noraa is now being voted by the bulge despite the fact that one of the few things he said day 1 on alignment was that she was town and despite the fact that nothing had changed in her play at all since then.

lmao what is this. we have differing views of the game? cool. imo her play day 2 looked scummy.

You had differing views with yourself. Try reading the post.

apt description of the surrounding paragraph

Common scum response when they can't answer an argument. Try again.

being too busy to log on to mafia scum dot net is scum behaviour, got it

You had enough time to come back and make this post and three others. You were clearly aware of the claim since you made several responses to people who were talking about it. Saying "I was busy lol" is not a response to my argument. My argument is about negligence, not activity. Again, try again.

I didn't know anyone else's role. Noraa's role is useless without mine. Mine still has use. maybe there were even others who had synergy? maybe there were other power roles who had synergy with the checker? maybe one of them would step forward? regardless of any of that, it's nothing I was willing to expose myself over.

There's a wide variety of behaviors between "shrug either is fine with XD" and outing yourself to protect her. You did the former and said NOTHING about her role or what you thought it might mean for her alignment AT ALL. I know you know nuance exists. Don't try to pretend you don't when it benefits you.

[Thestatusquo]

I'm not interested in picking at every little nitpick you've brought up, shea. I don't care to convince you of anything, my job is to convince blitzo and kasu and worsty to vote correctly or lose.

And yet you did try to nitpick the post and failed to respond to literally all of it.