mystery box of silver 10. (done)

[mastina]

It's likely that jjh is indeed ascetic, and if he is ascetic, there's a decent chance he doesn't claim it as scum, but a smaller chance he doesn't claim it as town. So mild preference for not him.

^For the record I agree with this, and would like to add that I also feel the way jjh handled his claim was town indicative, and also feel like setup spec wise, jjh's role is more likely to be town than scum.

[mastina]

It's that you're doing all that, while giving us little reason to believe that your motives are what you say they are.

We lynched scum D1 and the push on D2 was, while

wrong

(April flipped town), very very very obviously an

intent

to try and lynch a second scum--had April flipped scum, we'd have spearheaded the lynch of not one but TWO scum.

I feel that'd have been proof enough, yes? (You say that there's little reason to believe our motives are what we say they are, but we've said our motives are to lynch scum and we did so on D1 and tried to do so again on D2, albeit failing.)

Admittedly, April did not flip town, but the evidence that I really thought he would flip scum is pretty damn self-apparent.

[mastina]

You guys did the chess thing with the April execution. I predicted that the reasons were dumb, and when they were revealed today, lo and behold they were in fact dumb.

The reasons were not dumb. People keep going, "mastina thought April was scum, confbiasing the mechanical reasons to be stronger", OR, "the mechanical reasons were the only reason for suspecting April, and they were weak", but neither of those viewpoints is an accurate representation of the facts; it's simultaneously both and neither (but far more of the former than the latter, that is to say, while neither is accurate, the former is much closer to accurate than the latter).

I had a very very legitimate, reads-based, play-based, actual ingame no mechanics involved, good reason to scumread April and this was not something kept in the secret of the neighborhood; if you iso me, these reasons were on display on D2. Those reasons were not dumb. Wrong, but not dumb.

There were mechanical reasons for April to be scum. These mechanical reasons were things that of the members of the neighborhood, everyone aside from me said they were less damning than I thought they were. They were right, the reasons were in fact less damning than I thought they were, because April was town, not scum.

But I cased April as scum based on believing FL had TMI, defended scum D1, was trying to fight back on D2 while knowing if he didn't scum would lose from the townbloc due to the 3p, and

then

the mechanical reasons

on top

of that. That he was trying to tailor his claim to what he thought was evidence in the setup supporting that as a fakeclaim, a low-risk high-reward claim that he thought would fit while not actually fitting.

I was wrong, but that doesn't mean the reasons were dumb. They were wrong. Not dumb. I will take full blame for being wrong; it was a fuckup on my side for pushing it so hard while being wrong--but it was not for dumb reasons. It was for reasonable reasons that were incorrect. A mistake, but not from idiocy. No less of a mistake, it was still one, a rather bad one, but it was not a moronic mistake, it was a mistaken-mistake.

[mastina]

scum HAVE to break the hood up. They know they can't hunt outside of the hood b/c any lynches outside of the hood just result in them being POEd.

how can this be true? wouldn't the game be absurdly townsided if this were the case?

The thing is.

I feel like the game was designed, by the moderator, with the expectation that both three-man third parties would not trust each other and that the town wouldn't trust both of them, that the town would trust either neither of them or only one of them.

If the game was designed where the town wouldn't trust both 3-man 3ps as town, and that the 3ps wouldn't trust each other, then the setup makes a lot of sense. That distrust in one another means that no massive townbloc forms and that the scum cannot be easily poe'd.

But

with

the mutual trust going on, with all six of the 3ps trusting each other to be basically conftown, and the town at large largely trusting them to be conftown...it was probably not designed to happen that way, but with it having happened that way, scum are in a position where they can be easily POE'd.

Thus, it is within scum's best interest to try literally every tactic to break up the townbloc, to make the 6+ conftown try to think of each other not as conftown, to regain suspicion on them. If scum succeeded at this, then poe wouldn't condemn them; the setup would have less information confirmed, the scum could hide much easier.

Which is why that sort of paranoia is incredibly antitown and pro-scum.

I happen to be of the opinion that of the players doing it, the only one actually scum is DDL.
That you, Mathblade, Pickaxe Pete, and DiamondSentinel, in spite of participating in this paranoia-behavior, are all town.

But the suspicion on your slots for shading people that should be treated as conftown is understandable because

shading the people that should be treated as conftown is

literally the only way scum can win this game

.

[mastina]

scum HAVE to break the hood up. They know they can't hunt outside of the hood b/c any lynches outside of the hood just result in them being POEd.

how can this be true? wouldn't the game be absurdly townsided if this were the case?

The thing is.

I feel like the game was designed, by the moderator, with the expectation that both three-man third parties would not trust each other and that the town wouldn't trust both of them, that the town would trust either neither of them or only one of them.

If the game was designed where the town wouldn't trust both 3-man 3ps as town, and that the 3ps wouldn't trust each other, then the setup makes a lot of sense. That distrust in one another means that no massive townbloc forms and that the scum cannot be easily poe'd.

But

with

the mutual trust going on, with all six of the 3ps trusting each other to be basically conftown, and the town at large largely trusting them to be conftown...it was probably not designed to happen that way, but with it having happened that way, scum are in a position where they can be easily POE'd.

Thus, it is within scum's best interest to try literally every tactic to break up the townbloc, to make the 6+ conftown try to think of each other not as conftown, to regain suspicion on them. If scum succeeded at this, then poe wouldn't condemn them; the setup would have less information confirmed, the scum could hide much easier.

Which is why that sort of paranoia is incredibly antitown and pro-scum.

I happen to be of the opinion that of the players doing it, the only one actually scum is DDL.
That you, Mathblade, Pickaxe Pete, and DiamondSentinel, in spite of participating in this paranoia-behavior, are all town.

But the suspicion on your slots for shading people that should be treated as conftown is understandable because

shading the people that should be treated as conftown is

literally the only way scum can win this game

.

Let's bring this to the next page for emphasis.

The tl;dr:
I feel the setup was designed for the town/3p1/3p2 to not trust each other.
By and large, the town/3p1/3p2 ended up trusting each other--due to the setup not being designed for this, it is inherently townsided as a consequence due to a massive "town"bloc forming.
Scum can easily be poe'd because there are at least seven names that their only respite from is to nightkill them, because those seven names cannot be eliminated during the day due to having formed a "town"bloc.

The only way scum can prevent this is by shading/doubtcasting/ceding paranoia about the "town"bloc and trying to make them less town than they are--thus

doing this is a pro-scum move, and if you have done it,

this is largely why suspicion on your slot has grown

.
But while I recognize the antitownness of the behavior, I happen to think the majority of the people doing it, contrary to those who're suspicious of the behavior and think it makes the slots scum, are town, town who don't realize the consequences as outlined above.

[mastina]

Tbf, i feel like a lot of this game has been whataboutisms recently. “Oh what if xyz thing is true about the alliance? What if we tried to elim outside mod confirmed scum? What if we didn’t protect our confirmed town?”
I feel like i am fighting just to maintain occam’s razor here

For the record, superbowl9, I didn't know you well before this game but seeing you in this game you're a pretty awesome player.
I vibe with you a lot here. <3

[mastina]

i'm claiming gossippee, i target a player and get told how many actions targeted them that night and get a reaction to it
night 1 i targeted titus and was told one person visited her but the result (which i will fullclaim as soon as i double check that i can) didn't seem to match up with april's claim
my n2 has info that's probably better not outing until a massclaim or something happens

titus n1 "glad to see it", mathblade n2 nothing

For the interest of full disclosure to non-neighborhood members: I have talked about Misty and this claim rather a lot, in the neighborhood, with the full intent of also sharing it in the thread when I got to that point in my catchup. I realize it's a bit annoying; Almost50 doesn't like to read basically the same post twice, and the public gamethread deserves to have that discussion out here and will be miffed that it's not, it'll certainly not help them no longer feel like complete outsiders, I need to air those thoughts out so that they feel included rather than excluded.

But I'm sorry, my mind is shutting down so I can't quite put it to words here right now and I do apologize for that, my intent was to express it privately while not breaking the flow of my catchup so that when I reached this point I could express it publicly fluently and with refined eloquence with the pt version being a rough draft of the refined finalized in-thread version, but.

I AM kinda mentally shutting down all of a sudden so I don't have it in me today to do that. (Sorry! I will try to get it in here when I'm not braindead.)

The basic gist of Misty's claim here is that I can see it either way. I can see it as town or see it as scum, and there is evidence for it both ways. But if I had to take a guess, based on Misty's overall play combined with her predecessor combined with the overall evidence I would loosely lean scum on this claim. I promise to try and give you more elaborate thoughts out here once I am capable of producing them.

[mastina]

Is there any context at all about what the reaction might mean? Why does that reaction not match up with April's claim?

it's indicative of what ability/abilities get used on the target

For the record.
Brand new thought that I never posted to the neighborhood, so y'all not in the neighborhood won't feel excluded, you out here get it first before even they do.

Nobody, to my knowledge.

Has pointed out this:

titus n1 "glad to

see

it"

What are Action Investigation roles, including

watchers

,

voyeurs

, and yes Motion Detectors, generally depicted as flavorwise doing? You know.
Watching someone.
With your eyes.
As in.

Seeing

something.
Glad to

see

.

As in, hinting that Titus was visited by an Action Investigation role.

This leads me to feel that Misty really has the "glad to see" result on Titus.
The only question is whether she has it as town or has it as scum.

But I don't think she'd fakeclaim this detail then not be able to have interpreted it because apparently I am literally the first person in the game to have connected this dot.

[mastina]

I need to finish the catchup and bring everything together. My gut is objectively wrong as it conflicts with info from this part of the game, so I don't think it's worth me putting any of those reads on paper at present

For the record, jjh.

I'm not gonna pull the same mistake as I did in Jingle's large and actively contribute to your death, but.

I will certainly swoop to the level of not defending you if I don't see you air your thoughts out, even if you know they're wrong.

I want to see what you're thinking even if it does conflict.

[mastina]

Didn’t you literally just say play is null?

Not exactly.
I said I felt jjh's relative inactivity, jjh's lurkiness, jjh's lack of contributions to the game, jjh's lack of overall content, which is the majority of his 'play' this game, is null, because I don't think it is an accurate indicator of his alignment, even though it used to be.

I feel that what little content/play he has given in spite of the inactivity, lurkiness, and lack of contributions, does indicate loosely town.

[mastina]

This makes sense and I agree with it but I'm still reserving a doubt card after your april thing

This is fair and I deserve the doubt.

[mastina]

She said by play (no qualifiers null)
Then she said by play (no qualifiers) town. There is something up with that.

Because the first did have a qualifier, about jjh's lurkiness. His lack of activity doesn't tell me his alignment; what he has done, does.

[mastina]

How did your reads change?

Soft-reset on the majority of players.

Before you might've noted that all of {you, jjh, shelly} with potential additions of {Something_Smart, TheGoldenParadox} were hard-locked as the highest tier of conftown, up with the actual conftown tier in spite of no mechanical reasons for you to belong in that tier.

None of those five were completely above suspicion, nor are they even now, although I just so happen to maintain my belief that both you and Something_Smart are far more likely to be town than scum and feel jjh's reasons for being town are still good.

Slots like shelly, GoldenParadox, Bell, Misty, and probably more got pretty definitely reevaluated.
I softened up on Tayl0r being scum because I was more willing to acknowledge the towniness in Tayl0r's posts in spite of the very very scum-indicative interactions from both Tayl0r's end (hard Gamma defender) and Gamma's end (not pushing Tayl0r when he should have pushed her).

Basically everyone in the non-conftown pile got reevaluated with me resolving to not push hard for my stance over any of them, but I also didn't want to go silent, so when I disagree I'm voicing my disagreements and explaining why but trying not to

push

that stance.

I did give extensive thoughts on most players in the neighborhood, again, fully intended to show them to you right now but am too tired to eloquently push them.

A tl;dr version tho, outside the seven confirmed players, this was what I came up with towniest to scummiest, loosely speaking. (I really don't want it to just be a readslist, but it'll have to do.)

Mathblade (you're in my "removed from execution candidacy" list right now)
Something_Smart (also removed from execution candidacy in my opinion)

jjh927
Pickaxe Pete
(Personally I'd remove from candidacy if not for being in the list of three; both jjh and Pickaxe Pete I feel are town)

DiamondSentinel
TheGoldenParadox
(Not removed, but among the least likely of the names: could flip scum, but are less likely to than others here)

Bell
(hard to get locked down)

shellyc/samantha97
Chemist1422/Christøpher
Tayl0r Swift
(Among the most likely)

DrDolittle
(by far the most likely to flip scum)

[mastina]

I'm trying to figure out which people are town rebelling and which one's are scum pretending to be town rebelling. DDL fits neatly into the latter.

Agreed.

[mastina]

I was leaning slightly town on Mastina at this point, but and correct me if I'm wrong I believe mastina was originally named Mastin on this site?

Correct. I was both Mastin and mastin2, tho notably, I have changed with time and each account was remarkably different in very very very major ways.

And even on this account, there's been a major shift.

Notably: scumastina was an absolutely terrifyingly good scum player for years upon years. As mastin2 I was good, and when I switched to mastina, I was just as good if not better. I believe it was 2018 or so that was the year of scumastina where she got scum almost every single game and in spite of being town in a minority of games, performed incredibly well in most of those scumgames with none of them being really the same as the other.

...But then I lost something inside of me. I don't know what I lost, but some time after 2018, scumastina just

died

, because from 2019 and continuing into 2020, I've just. Never had a good scumgame; things that used to never apply to her scumgame, now do. Like, legitimately, for years upon years upon years I insisted that activity was not a tell for me, that me being inactive was not a scumtell...because for years upon years it wasn't, I was just as inactive if not more as town than as scum...but at some point...

I legitimately became inactive as scum

, and I don't know how, don't know why, but I've never been able to be an active scum player playing at my high level since 2018. Not had a single good scumgame since then. It's like instead of being really damn good at the game regardless of alignment, I traded it for being slightly better at town than I was before but significantly worse as scum. (And yes, I am overall, legitimately slightly better as town and I feel overall that I

am

a very strong town player. Fairly good at looking town, fairly accurate reads overall, and fairly able to get people to follow me on those reads. But being better doesn't make me perfect as I still have fuckups. Like April. )

[mastina]

why was a vt claim "ewwww", math?

It’s how she said it.

I actually fully agree with Mathblade on this--
There is nothing wrong with Tayl0r Swift claiming VT.

The way she did so, however, looks incredibly like scum.

[mastina]

counterpoint: S_S's claim to fame is a mechanical wiz. Do you really feel like town him wouldn't recognize what the setup is designed as?

Hasn't he?

I feel like Something_Smart has been quite vocal about his distrust for us and belief that this distrust in us is not wrong and is what was intended of the setup--that's mechanical prowess, not a lack of it.

The shortcoming is in not realizing that the setup becomes townsided if that distrust doesn't happen. And I don't think that shortcoming is inherently from scum.

[mastina]

I feel like later Mastina's going to do a post-reveal about why I'm town or something.

Eh I do tend to townread players who make points that resonate with me even if I later change my mind, which has contributed to townreads on slots like you, shellyc (I feel like shellyc is going to be rather disappointed in me that she's not in my top town in spite of having resonating thoughts with me, I promise I will try to explain that later), GoldenParadox, and probably more, and a lot of what you do/say does look town beyond me agreeing with a fair amount of what you say but I can't nail things down for sure, can't tell that you're definitively town, but do lean that way.

[mastina]

He explicitly said he wasn't gunna get into town set up spec before then going into set up spec when it would out him in a badish position not to.
He's not wrong, but giving up the ghost of set up spec because it's a shadd game is a very, very odd defense.
He even dropped some meta on Mathblade's head (a read) when he just said he probably wouldn't or doesn't like giving reads.

He's contradicting himself a lot. Normally, I wouldn't find this scummy/easy fruit but for a variety of reasons I can't quite articulate this might be one of those exceptions to the rule.

I'm like 95% positive that these exact same accusations, literally these

exact

accusations, were levied against Something_Smart in a prior game...

...Where he was town.

That is to say while I see where you're coming from in the inconsistency I don't think it makes him scum, and if anything, might make him town.

[mastina]

No, I mean you cut me out entirely from a list by MM. Where he said he suspected me for pretty vanilla reasons. While responding to the rest.

You weren't the only one cut from the list; I cut only the names I didn't feel like contesting on and while I feel that you're probably more likely town, due to not being able to pin you down better, I didn't really feel so strongly about your townness as to contest MM on fingering you.

[mastina]

at least one of the following players is in

King Doris Donatello's Army

:

• shellyc
  
• Tayl0r Swift
  
• TheGoldenParadox

Honestly I could see this as 1, 2, or even all 3, really.

Also, I hope this is not a lolhammer, but:
VOTE: Pickaxe Pete
Confscum is confscum.

Today's a good day for discussing who the scum are, but I want to actually place my vote on who we'll be removing today.

[mastina]

i guess, although why didnt scum shoot in the mason-pool?

If I had to guess: fear that shooting one will cause the town to universally trust the other five.

[mastina]

mastina hasn't been particularly scummy in this game - she's been exactly like her town-self, aside from being a lot less active.

I'm being my normal active self, but being a lot less controlling, for good reason; I fucked up on April and was a PP defender until last night, sooooooo.

I don't trust myself to lead the town, so I'm trying to be a bit more passive/supportive.

On that note I did have a theorycrafting wheel start spinning in my head but I need to catch up and give it time to sit to get the gear really turning.

[mastina]

and how do you know what roles scum have?

For the record, someone suggested there was a scum rolecop either on D2 or D3, but I don't remember who.

Scum shooting DS who if he 'crumbed nobody in the 7 thought to point these crumbs out and thus likely didn't see them meaning they probably weren't there, seems to support the rolecop theory, because if the collective town didn't figure out he was the vig, how would the scum have figured it out with such confidence as to shoot an unconfirmed player? Ergo, that player was probably correct.

[mastina]

ok hero solve time:
Bell - TGP - Pickaxe Pete - Mathblade

I actually lean town on Bell, here.
Mathblade may or may not be scum, depends on other factors which time will tell on.

There's still a fair chance Misty may be scum here, and while scum put one scum in the list of three last time, there's no guarantee they repeated the strategy, so even if the TGP callout is correct, I wouldn't put it past them to have changed things up, putting 2-3 of them in the list in a last-ditch-effort to throw us off.

[mastina]

i mean masons will have a majority tomorrow, so it might already be too late.

wait youre saying we should kill in the masons? arent you a mason?

I mean there's definitely a faction that needs to kill the masons...

(I so wanna call this a scumslip, just 'cuz.)

[mastina]

Words on a screen can be more meaningful than you realize.

^
There's a damn good reason site staff will ban for ableism, racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry, from bigots who post words on a screen. The words on the screen carry meaning that can and will hurt.

But I digress.

In terms of scumhunting.

I also tend to agree with Norwegian here--I think Bell is town and Mathblade can, conditionally, be town.
Mathblade does raise a decent point about Misty, in that if scum have a rolecop (and they likely do), why would they also have Misty's role, so I'm less sure of Misty being scum than before but not absolutely sure of her alignment either way.

And if all three of these reads are correct.

That means there's three scum in a four-man pool, three of which were in the list of guaranteed scum today. {Something_Smart,

Tayl0r Swift, TheGoldenParadox, shellyc

}.
If that four-man pool has three scum in it.

Then chances would be fairly high that scum did indeed put more than one scum in the list.

But this is assumption piled on assumption, I admit.

[mastina]

i mean masons will have a majority tomorrow, so it might already be too late.

wait youre saying we should kill in the masons? arent you a mason?

Are you outright claiming Scum?

Mindmeld. <3

[mastina]

While nerocain, Titus, and Mastina are not.

Nero, Titus, and I are confirmed to each other, just as 3p not as town.

[mastina]

iirc i'm the only one of the 3 that hasn't claimed. should i do so now, or wait until tomorrow?

All three of the names in the list should claim imo.

[mastina]

The alliance mustn't be broken up.

The fellowship shall not fail, so long as nobody pulls a Boromir.

[mastina]

Mastina are you town?

Technically speaking? Strictly speaking? No.

But in actuality, in practice, in effect: yes.

I am explicitly townsiding.

[mastina]

Did you guys get a power or any weird machination to share?

As in, did any of us receive anything last night?

Not to my knowledge, no.

[mastina]

Words on a screen can be more meaningful than you realize.

^
There's a damn good reason site staff will ban for ableism, racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry, from bigots who post words on a screen. The words on the screen carry meaning that can and will hurt.

...are you suggesting that i am a bigot?

Nah, just making a generic point (wasn't directed at you, was more just of an 'in-general' sort of thing); words carry meaning in that they can be loaded with harmful hurtful bigotry, so it's best to be aware that they do indeed carry meaning. The age-old statement of "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me", as it turns out, isn't actually true because words

can

hurt people.

But this is probably a topic better suited for a GD/Speakeasy thread rather than a talking point in a mafia game.

[mastina]

Who is misty?

Chemist1422--I use the nickname Misty for her because it's the name of a rather notable female pokemon trainer, which I figure that she might like as a name, especially to help remind people that she is a girl, not a guy. (She's more than free to correct me if I am wrong about any of this, though.)

Basically, when using 'Misty' to refer to her, I feel like it's harder to accidentally misgender her.

[mastina]

Oh, so none of you can be scum unless all of you are scum is what you’re saying?

Correct.

And since none of us are scum and scum refuse to kill us...well. Their funeral. Quite literally.

They've nobody to blame for being poe'd but themselves for leaving the townbloc untouched.

[mastina]

im also calling myself town b/c even though I was 3p I was town in my heart

Very same.

^

Also, why did mastina die?

I addressed this in the dead PT, but basically: I know Mathblade as scum well enough to know that Mathblade killed me so that he could try the gambits he did, knowing he couldn't get away with them if I was alive.

[mastina]

Maybe we were “lurky” BECAUSE YOU MADE THIS GAME A HELLHOLE TO PARTAKE IN!!!! And calling your group “superstars” is so fucking arrogant. What sort of god complex do you have plaguing your mind that made that sound like an okay thing to say?

To be fair.
I seem to recall that you did say, "all the strong players ended up town".

[mastina]

For what it's worth tho.

I do feel this game had far, far, far, far too many pages.

There are genuinely large swathes of the game I didn't end up reading, mostly near the end of days.
I felt that a lot of people were spamming repeats of opinions that only needed to be said first, and a bunch of people were struggling to grasp really simple concepts that should've only required one explanation, but required superbowl9 among others to explain no less than ten games (the number of times that the mechanics of the 3ps needed to be laid out was insane), leading to an ingame meme.

If those repeats didn't happen, the game was probably going to be much shorter and much more manageable.
And, having the PT helps for having buddies inform you of things you haven't read, making it easier to get caught up.

So for me personally, it wasn't a problem, but I do understand why it'd be a problem to other people.

[mastina]

That having been said.
I feel like, just in general, by and large, all of the town and 3ps had largely accurate reads even without knowing about the huge townbloc to form mechanically; with that, we were able to hone in and refine it, perfect it, get rid of paranoia, but I feel like the town players as a whole were more or less looking in the right areas even on D1.

I do think that the 3ps being all trusted as town made the game townsided, but I still feel like we performed well aside from the townsided setup, and not specifically because of it.

That is to say.

I think without the setup being so townsided, we probably don't stomp as hard as we did, but we probably still win this anyway.
But I will confess that as a 3p who was in the group, I'm probably biased in this opinion.

[mastina]

@mastina: Your decision to hood me paved the way to town victory. I guess Titus did pretty well when she took over after you were NK'd.

I'd also like to say that me coming up with the suicide plan for scummy players was pretty clutch.

Butyeah.

While I feel like I had decent reads this game, I feel like my main achievements were connecting the 3ps and keeping paranoia from forming and keeping us working together, with a side of occasional mechanical insights.

[mastina]

I for one am honored that scum consistently deemed me to be the largest threat to them of all the players in the game. <3

[mastina]

By the way I nominated schadd_ for a couple of scummies from this game.

While Nths aren't counted, if you agree with either of the noms you can, so to speak, second/third/etc. the noms by writing your own!