The Initial Scum-Read:
17: I really hate this type of comment. It's the type of "helpful" strategy advice that is tailored to be insightful/strategically pro-town yet really quite agenda-y.
I think it's possible that I have really been jaded by "appeal to authority" type approaches to pushing an agenda from certain news outlets so when someone says this I feel they are being somewhat duplicitous.
On a strategic level I don't agree with the idea of picking someone based on their "charisma" or "thread-control" level;
On the simplest level you can flip this 180 degrees and look at it from the scum point of view - if you are a highly charismatic player would you want to end up getting master'd if you can set your partners up with buff'd up roles and pin the blame on the town? I know if I were holding a red role pm I would definitely try to get mastered. Being Charismatic Scum is
difficult
, it takes quite a bit of effort to continue to weave the narrative. Sure you can fool the town for a day or two easily but it gets much harder as the days go on.
I find it much more natural and believable for a player to think about getting Master'd in terms of mechanically whether their NP can make a real difference in the game than whether they would be highly charismatic/townlead -> townleaders tend to be loud and influential even if they do not receive the IC card. Later he expands on his Appeal to Cabd by claiming that he’s the only suitable candidate in
50. So he creates the criteria, then he fulfills it himself – I just don’t feel this is genuinely being helpful – it’s more agenda-based setting yourself up.
Lastly in terms of pro-townness - I'm not sure it's as important to be a town leader in terms of getting people to work together as it is to be a good scum-hunter. You can foster thread-health / getting the team on the same page when you are not IC'd - good ideas are clearly good. However it's not as clear-cut what type of scum-read you have as it's less obvious what type of scum-hunting is genuine and what type of scum-hunting is not. Having an IC that is good at scum-hunting is pretty important in my opinion and I don't think Berserker or anyone has made claims that they have better than average read-rate and that's very disappointing to me.
23 This post pinged me because it felt a bit like TMI.
"make you town leader" seems to imply that giving the master to Assassin would end up with Assassin as town leader, this is something that Berserker can't know without knowing what Assassin's alignment actually is.
The first reaction I had when I read Assassin's post was to think about whether this is likely to be a town approach or a scum approach for a thread opening, it's something that I still don't really think I have a good answer one way or the other, it just feels weird to me that Berserker immediately leaps to the "this is not a good reason to make you town leader" from a strategic point of view instead of actually thinking about whether Assassin is scum trying to get Master'd on mech,.
Expanding Beyond
When I thought about how to figure out the difference between a scum versus a town trying to become mastered, I thought about how I would go about getting mastered if I was to be holding a red role pm. I feel that Berserker's play is closest to the way I would've done it. Not too hard, not too soft. Subtle yet firm, don't insist on getting master'd early, but gather the townreads and let the decision eventually turn to me in a natural kind of way.
Out of the three contenders, I feel his path was the most
sophisticated
with tactical and strategic thought behind how he planned this day to play out – whereas Assassin/Saber were more blunt about the mechanical side, I don’t think either of them made a sustained effort or really thought much before-hand about how to get across the finish line.
When I asked him when he decided he wanted to become Master, his response
542 was simply that he thought he had no choice when he looked around and nobody else was qualified in his opinion.
I am in agreement with this sentiment – of all the players vying for mastery, none really can hold a candle to Berserker, it is unfortunately not a game where we have multiple attractive candidates.
Whether this is because the entire scum team felt they could not match him, or because they made a tactical decision to simply not try for it and let themselves get POE’d out of the game? I really can’t tell, but if this is a game where Berserker!Scum was coronated without resistance while the entirety of the town had not a single player put forth an effort that could have won the day, I’m not sure how I will feel about that tomorrow - I might not have it in me to try much more.
When I read through your iso in retrospect and in realtime, I keep getting the feeling that you don’t have any takes that are “unsafe” or really display thinking that’s willing to ro the boat. You admit you are mostly a POE player so it makes sense for you to adopt this style of play where you build ties with allies who townread you but scum you would also be doing this in order to glide through and pocket allies. I guess this is just part of who you are naturally and that’s why you’ve managed to attract so much support but I can’t really see what part of your ISO makes me stop and think "Berserker is definitely town" - and I don't really know what to make of this game state where everyone seems to townread you and be ok with pushing your coronation through.
I confess I do tend to be more paranoid of people who treat me well, you’ve been most kind and generous to me, probably more so than I deserve. The more I think about it, the more I hope you are just town so I can kick my shoes off and let you carry me for the rest of the game.
