Newbie 2086 - Reaction GIFs | End!

[butterchurn]

Hey, played a lot of similar format mafia in the past on a different site, so I have some experience but not with this site's meta and culture. And it's been 8 years, so I'm probably rusty (and also excited to get back into it). We were generally pretty anti-RVS, but that seems to be the standard here.

VOTE: FancyPants because their pants are unnecessarily fancy.

[butterchurn]

If I jumped off a bridge would you follow me? VOTE: butterchurn

I would assess the reasons for which you may have chosen to jump off the bridge -- Is it on fire? Is there some greater danger compelling you that makes jumping off a bridge a more appealing option? Are you a reasonable, trustworthy person, who I would expect to only jump off a bridge if there was a good reason to do so? Is it, perhaps, a safe distance below to the water, and it looks like fun? Based on the conclusions I draw from this, I would decide if jumping off the bridge is my best course of action moving forward.

[butterchurn]

So... anyone want to get in an argument over something minor that is probably a null tell, thus creating some content for everyone to discuss and react to? That's how things usually get started, right? Silence is good for scum.

Oh, and sorry if I get mixed up and use the wrong terminology (if I ever say "rogue", I mean "mafia"). Old habits. Y'all use "NIA" instead of "null tell", I think.

[butterchurn]

I noticed that as well. I personally don't think either are that suspicious of an action (the self-conscious mafia I think is somewhat balanced by the town-leaning-quality of wanting to give the most information and keep people up to date on your intentions). However, I agree that the fact that he voted over it (at least partially) while doing something similar himself is strange, and would like to hear why he thinks the situations are different.

And for that matter, does catboi see them as different? Considering the first one was vote-worthy, and the second didn't get a mention.

[butterchurn]

I too noticed that notscience's post was kinda similar about being busy. But to be fair, he did call out 2 scum reads he had in that same post. For me personally, I did not find cape's intro to have scum vibes initially but the more I think about it the more I don't like it. Also, this could just be me looking too hard into it but the wording of :

I have the tendency to want to post early in games

no matter what

. But really idk.

seems scummy to me especially the bold part.

Slight scumread on this. A little parrot-y, and just feels to me more like trying to manufacture reads and content rather than natural thoughts, while also leaving himself open to go in either direction on the topic. It just feels fake.

Both notscience and catboi's latest responses seem fairly reasonable to me, no further questions there. I did actually read 2084 while waiting for this one to start (and just looked through it again) and don't really feel like cape's behavior here is incongruous with his early posting there. The retaliatory response doesn't feel especially scum to me either, as that's a pretty common town reaction, and I can't say I'm convinced by notscience's narrative of "newer mafia trying to intimidate a more experienced player into giving up on a chase".

[butterchurn]

To explain, I did notice that even before you posted about it. I just did not think it was worth mentioning at the time since notscience did participate by calling those two out and it wasn't just a "busy, will post later" post like cape's. But I still did notice a similarity. I thought it was worth mentioning once I saw that someone else did notice it and there might actually be something there.
I guess I am trying to make reads from the little we have. As for leaving myself open, I do lean towards a scum read on cape but you are right I could go in either direction as I am unsure about it.

Alright. This doesn't do anything to diminish my suspicion, but it doesn't increase it either. Seems like a response that would be in character for either side. Thanks for the further explanation of your thoughts.

This sort of flip-flopping kinda post probably only comes from town. I feel like if mafia were to do something like this it would make a lot less sense or heavily favor one side over the other.

FWIW I'm not sure if you misunderstood that section or if I was unclear in my phrasing, but I wasn't flipflopping in that. All of those sentences were on the same track, of saying that notscience's response seems to be a reasonable explanation of his thoughts (first sentence), but I'm not convinced by his case (next three sentences).

----

ahhlo, thought you'd be posting every day, where you at?

[butterchurn]

RE: further VOID discussion, I was hesitant to let myself find his response suspicious partially because to me it seemed like it would be a particularly bold (read: dumb) scum play to respond to a charge of having wishy-washy and manufactured-sounding content with... more of the same tone, and even more extreme hedging. It certainly could be new player not sure how to effectively play scum, but to my eyes it also believably reads as new town who is lacking confidence in their own thoughts, and remaining consistent in that.

It does seem like an easy (albeit fair) thing to pick on, though, and I was interested to see who would.

[butterchurn]

To expand on that last point a bit -- there's certain tells that people tend to find "objectively" suspicious, as in, they don't really require any nuance or gut to notice, and they usually are immediately obvious to people with experience. It's certainly not bad town play to call these out (as giving them a pass can allow scum to get away with obvious mistakes), and some people like to play with that "see tell call tell" mentality. I read a couple newbie games before this and saw multiple cases of experienced town tunneling on newbie town for making a flagrant tell or two, so it definitely happens. However, especially in games with a mix of new players and more experienced players, focusing on these tells is a pretty safe place for scum to hide. The "mistakes" (as they are mistakes whether the perpetrator is town or scum, since it's either suspicious scum play or bad town play) tend to be more prevalent among newer players, and it's hard to argue against someone who is calling them out since it's easy for them to make a logically sound argument.

Now, most of this isn't suuuper relevant here, especially because I'm still leaning scum on VOID from that earlier post even if the later one didn't push the needle for me, and if he is scum then obviously this doesn't apply. But, especially later in the game once we know some alignments, if I'm still around I'll be keeping an eye on those who make a habit of relying on this type of play.

[butterchurn]

It was more of the thought that you suggesting that my behavior here doesn't reflect my last town game in terms of my beginning.

Not really a point worth belaboring, but I meant the opposite of this. Perhaps the double negative ("not really incongruous") was confusing.

[butterchurn]

VOTE: Not Known 15

Seriously? I know it's a slow game so far and it's holiday season, but surely you're capable of at least putting one single thought out there.

[butterchurn]

Cape, why did you think it was someone taking advantage of a scummy post instead of someone thinking that the post identified as scummy came from scum?

This is... just a repeat of what notscience said. And apparently prompted by him saying it, since you only asked it after his post. Not sure that really counts as an original thought, but thanks for trying. The weird thing is, I'd think either alignment would be trying harder than this. But if it was from a town perspective, I'd guess the most likely reason would be lack of caring. That doesn't really mesh with trying to fake/force it, like he does here.

[butterchurn]

i don tknow who to vote

The game isn't just about voting. Explain your thoughts on things you've read. Anything that stood out to you, anything that looked suspicious, anything that looked like something a town player would be more likely to do, etc.

[butterchurn]

I've been surprised by people's confidence as a general trend in games I've looked at, seems like the meta here is that there's a lot of people who like to jump to immediately solving the game. I know I personally don't put a lot of faith in my early reads (except for in live games), but I'm also used to much bigger and longer games. That level of somewhat pushy, largely unsupported confidence is something I'm used to reading with suspicion, but I see it from town a lot here too so I may have to recalibrate that.

I don't necessarily see how what he's done so far

can't

be taken as a deer in headlights look.

Newbie town can be caught in the headlights too. I know it's generally accepted to be more common for scum to feel caught out, but personally in my first few games as town I was really worried about making a mistake or causing a distraction. I still am careful as town about what I say, but that probably comes from being that way out of game as well. I also got burned for being a puppy (not sure the term used here) in my very first game and trusting someone who ended up being mafia and losing us the game, so I learned that lesson quickly, and I'm still careful about that too. But I do think that the new town instinct to trust/look up to/sheep the more experienced is more prevalent in new players than the more advanced and manipulative new scum strategy of playing that up for cred, especially since that can be a delicate balance. notscience went hard on cape for his retaliatory reaction, so it does seem in line with that scumhunting philosophy for him to read VOID as town here. My understanding is that you seem to be leaning in the opposite direction on both, which also seems consistent.

Personally, I read the cape reaction as feeling slightly more town, and the VOID reaction as mostly NAI at the time, but my mind has changed to lean slightly town as well as time passes. Related to this, I think as I've grown I've become more of a understanding/forgiving person since the last time I played mafia, which I'm worried is making me overthink reads and see too much town in everyone. I'll have to ponder this and see if I need to adjust my thought processes.

Around here butterchurn, why were you still voting notscience?

The vote was leftover from RVS on who he replaced. But at that point, he was pushing a narrative that didn't really seem believable to me, and that gave me pause. I didn't feel my suspicion of VOID was enough to warrant switching my vote. I'm still getting used to the more... cavalier attitude towards votes that this site has. Since he was my highest suspicion, I guess I could have, or just unvoted. Didn't seem to matter much, still don't think it does, but I hope that clarifies. Also, for what it's worth, notscience's posts since then have read much more town to me, although that first push still rings alarm bells for me whenever I go back to it.

---

Really would like to hear something from GeorgeBailey, (and VOID and zefiend), although I guess it's only been a couple days.



Not sure what to do about ahhlo either. Oh, preview edit, here he is, hi ahhlo, give us your thoughts please!

[butterchurn]

Also I think I agree with most of both you and catboi (60) on V0id at least to a degree, which probably just makes V0id town IMO.

Can you explain this? Why do you agree with both, when they (notscience and catboi) have/had significantly differing opinions? And why does that make VOID town?

[butterchurn]

Although I tend to give the benefit of the doubt in such situations, I suspected that may be the case. I hope they were a troll, as I think that's preferable to the alternative. If not, hope they can get the help they need. Either way, though, I don't think there's much to glean from the little posting they did, and I'm looking forward to their replacement adding some more life to the game.

[butterchurn]

Greetings, Greeting!

[butterchurn]

Also, just want to say that this post might have been made prematurely as if my predecessor had come back in the period between the host seeking a replacement and before I volunteered to substitute them, they would have successfully returned to this game.

I believe they were banned from the site for two weeks, hence the replacement.

[butterchurn]

Are both pretty towny, and I don't find the whole "Maybe I am missing something" thing to really be all that scummy. Pretty sure I have already said I liked the comment about the whole thanks for the tip thing, and honestly idk how to put the reason why I like that. It just seems like a random new town quip.

I know you had other reasons for thinking VOID was town, but I still don't follow the logic (at all) for why agreeing with some aspects of both sides of the debate between notscience and catboi directly leads to implying VOID as town, as you originally stated.

[butterchurn]

it's more of a townlean and I feel like one argument holds more weight then the other. It really isn't this 50/50 split you may have going on in your head about my argument here

I'm just trying to understand what you meant, since it didn't make sense to me. Would it be accurate then to say that it's less about the fact that you agreed with both, and more that you found the town arguments to be convincing?

[butterchurn]

That's telling of an experienced player who seems acquainted well enough with the way the game mechanics usually work, so much that they already got bored of it. I'm just wondering why did they feel the need to let everyone in the world know that. This could easily be an overinterpretation, but it's staying in the back of my mind.

Fair! At the least I've been a bit hesitant around the townleans a few people have been giving me, because I'm pretty sure I'd have acted fairly similarly if I had ended up as mafia. I guess, if I think about it, I

was

probably trying to let people know my level of experience, because I think that helps them have more accurate reads on me, and may give more context to future things I say.

[butterchurn]

Would it be accurate then to say that it's less about the fact that you agreed with both, and more that you found the town arguments to be convincing?

yes

Okay. notscience was the one who made the town case. At the time you seemed pretty convinced that notscience was scum. Why did his case convince you of anything? And if you only were saying that the town case was what convinced you, why bring up your agreement with catboi's scum arguments? What relevance did that have to do with the final clause of that sentence, which again, for reference said:

Also I think I agree with most of both you and catboi (60) on V0id at least to a degree, which probably just makes V0id town IMO.

[butterchurn]

I won't repeat everything what Cape and catboi said, but basically they are right.
These reads are fake. At this point, there is no way that notscience should have reads like that. Only two nullreads, and 3 high confidence reads?
BS.

His reads post was made prior to the last time you posted (and you clearly read it, since you parrotted it). Why is it only now worth a mention, despite being so significant you're voting over it?

[butterchurn]

"more confident" is different from "high confidence". 2 is more than 1, that doesn't make it 100. I find the collective misinterpretation of this a little strange. You could argue that the word choice reveals some deeper subtext, and I might at least understand that, but nobody actually has, unless I missed it somewhere. You're just taking at face value that he revealed some inappropriately extreme level of confidence, and sourcing this from the general narrative that has appeared, rather than any original evidence. Seems like strange behavior. Then again, notscience hasn't exactly said anything since then to imply any less than a high level of confidence, but I wouldn't really expect him to as either alignment.

[butterchurn]

By the way, "you" in that post refers to both Not Known and Greeting. I find both of those behaviors strange. It feels like appealing to some sort of town "common sense", like "ah yes, as everyone knows, x happened, and I find that suspicious", but without ever supporting the idea that x did happen. That has a scummy feel to it for several reasons -- it's secondhand, it's continuing to push a narrative, and it gives an impression of agreeing with the general consensus even where there isn't one. I would likely have little to issue with the suspicion if the "high confidence" idea was more supported, but I find the fact that it was taken for granted to be strange.

Greetings post just felt slightly weird to me in general though, it seemed at first like he was going to push back against the point (the wording of the opening sentence doesn't feel like comes from a place of agreement to me, and if that's wrong then I don't understand the intent of it), but then ended up agreeing with the point that was made.

[butterchurn]

Then again, notscience hasn't exactly said anything since then to imply any less than a high level of confidence,

but I wouldn't really expect him to as either alignment.

Could you elaborate here?

Both from this game and from prior games of his that I've read, he doesn't strike me as the type to really back down or concede much. He seems to generally play with that sort of aggressive confidence. I don't remember if I read a game of his where he was mafia or not in my earlier research, but I'd be surprised if that doesn't apply there too.

[butterchurn]

I'm always a bit concerned when people start talking about "if x flips this, we should do this the next day", especially in a small game like this, but I understand the town rationale/thought process behind it.

[butterchurn]

Why does scum catboi shade me for the townlean like he did? I feel like his reaction to my townread on him was kinda knee jerk to come from scum catboi

I don't know how catboi plays scum since I haven't read a scum game of his, but I find that pushing back against townleans is a pretty common scum tactic, since it usually gets some town cred and is relatively safe. Not exactly a scumtell, but I don't see it as evidence for town.

[butterchurn]

Out of curiosity, what games of mine did you read?

Not sure, I skimmed a few and read at least one more in depth but can't find it on a quick look. Can find it later if you really want. While I was looking, though, I did find some relatively recent newbie games as mafia so I'll probably look through those later.

[butterchurn]

It is not a misinterpretation.
Catboi was shaded differently, as a townlean.(different shade of green, not shading)
So those others are strong townreads.
saying more confident means in this case high confidence, because the other read was definitely not shallow confidence. That would definitely have been worded differently, no?
But there is an easy way forward.

We push notscience for the exact reasonings for all of the reads - all of them - they displayed and for why the confidence in each of them is as it is.

Notscience produces them, and then we will be able to come to a conclusion based on what they showed.

Notscience, I await, in your next posts, all reasons for the reads you gave us, and why these reasons set your confidence to that level. Full explanation.

Not sure I agree with the first part that we can know the level of confidence, but I accept that as a reasonable interpretation.

Second part I'm in favor of.

[butterchurn]

I am, just humor me.

There’s one in particular I think is a good idea what I aim for as scum- I’ll get you it later.

Ah, found it, the one I read more closely was 2206.

[butterchurn]

How would you "keep an eye on someone" for doing something that YOU are doing? What nuances can you point to that would make this activity scummy? If we win the game based on this style of play alone, would the "see tell call tell" mentality still be something worth keeping an eye on in future games?

What I'm trying to get at is; how can you resolve your stated read of scum!VOID with apprehension towards others who are using the same thought process? It kinda reads like hedging a bet or future-distancing from a lim on VOID.

If I do that too, then I should hope people keep an eye on me as well. As for VOID, I believe I mentioned this at some point, but I found his post 40 to be suspicious, but found his post 47 to be fairly NAI, and leaning town as I thought about it more. The second post seems like an easier/more obvious thing to pick on, though, and that's why I was watching the people who did. My general point though is that I was watching for a pattern rather than a single instance -- I certainly pick on easy things as well, because they're often generally considered suspicious for a reason. Someone who only does that, though... that's where, in my experience, scum can hide. Calling it out also had the intention of seeing if anyone would adjust their play afterwards. Results on that are still inconclusive. Let me know if any of that is unclear or doesn't fully answer your questions; happy to explain more.

[butterchurn]

I like both of those posts for the most part. I also felt questionable about cape's latest, and it appearing potentially opportunistic is a good point that I hadn't considered. Was leaning towards suspicion with GeorgeBailey, now trending slightly the other direction.

That vote puts NK15 at E-1, correct?

[butterchurn]

I honestly don’t understand your argument. I re-read what I had written and nothing is „logically inconsistent” here. If I didn’t think there was nothing to vote you out for, I wouldn’t be doing it.

I see it, although it looks more like just weird phrasing to me. You said you don't have much hopes or enthusiasm for their slot (implying either that they are scum or that they aren't useful town, I guess? I realize now you may have meant something else by this, in which case please clarify), and then said "but otherwise" you would be okay with flipping them. One would expect that the clause prior to "but otherwise" would be some counterargument or hesitation to them being flipped. The sentence would make more sense if you used a word like "so" instead of "but otherwise", since the first half implies the second, at least how it reads to me.

That said, I don't entirely see it as coming from scum perspective, as I don't think it makes a lot of sense there either. It just feels like a grammar/phrasing mistake -- or an unclear first clause which is being misinterpreted. There was another one in the last sentence of what I quoted -- the triple negative is one too many. You're saying "if i thought there was something to vote you out for, I wouldn't be doing it", which is clearly not what you meant, but also to my eyes not really a scum-indicating grammar mistake.

[butterchurn]

I like both of those posts for the most part. I also felt questionable about cape's latest, and it appearing potentially opportunistic is a good point that I hadn't considered.

Was leaning towards suspicion with GeorgeBailey, now trending slightly the other direction

.

That vote puts NK15 at E-1, correct?

Because of Dunn's intro or because of something else?

Yes, from the two posts he made. GeorgeBailey seemed generally useless at best, and low-effort mafia at worst. Dunn's first posts on their own seemed insightful and I generally agreed with them, which to me is a much more positive sign for that slot's alignment. It's not much content so it's not a strong lean at all, but essentially his posts took him from "still suspicious here" to "willing to give this a relatively fresh slate".

[butterchurn]

Hmm. I was thinking you would say that the first clause meant "I don't have much hopes/enthusiasm that knowing the alignment of this slot will give us much information due to their minimal posting". That, at least, makes sense coming from a town perspective, and was what I meant when I said I realized I might have misinterpreted.

With your explanation, though... I actually am a little suspicious of it, since based on how you explained what you meant, it reads instead as potentially pre-emptively distancing yourself from the result that you're voting for. And following that narrative, once that draws attention and potentially some suspicion, your play would likely be to just go all in on NK15 and give up on your original expression of doubt, which is what you've done. I wasn't particularly suspicious before, and still am not enough to vote or anything (especially since this case depends on NK15 being town, which I'm currently extremely skeptical of), but I do at least see a potential scum-aligned reasoning behind this pattern of posts and that concerns me.

[butterchurn]

In case it was unclear, by distancing I didn't mean distancing from a scum partner (I realize that's how it's often used, perhaps it was a poor choice of words on my part), I meant how you were expressing doubt on a wagon that you had already joined. If NK15 did get eliminated and flipped town, I would read that behavior as scum. And of course you would do it before his elimination is guaranteed, because doing it later and drawing attention to it is much more obvious and suspicious. From 2084 you didn't seem like the kind of player to hedge your bets or fence sit very much as town. If you were suspicious of someone you tended to have a bit of confirmation bias and twist more reasons into suspicion, and see anything through that lens (mostly noticeable when you made a case on marcistar). In this case it felt like the opposite.

But again, I'm still most suspicious of NK15, and if he is eliminated and ends up being scum, this point would be irrelevant, and I would probably townread you instead. So all told, I'm not that suspicious now, but it did stand out to me as a pattern of scumplay if certain conditions end up being true.

[butterchurn]

@butter- here’s a link to my newbie scumgsme that’s a good marker for how I like to set up a game as scum. I’ll go into this more later. If you linked the game of my meta you reviewed can you point me to it? If not please do

I did mention it by number a while ago but didn't link, here it is, hopefully this is how you link things:
viewtopic.php?f=54&t=86336

The one you linked was one that I had looked over since then. My main conclusion was that as mafia you seemed a little weaker on early content and felt like you were following more of a formula for what you were looking for rather than reacting to whatever naturally stands out to you. And tone/attitude felt pretty similar to me.

[butterchurn]

My read on NK15 continues to remain aggressively neutral, the assessment he's "desperate" is maybe true but not alignment indicative, I don't think what he's arguing about greeting is impossible for him to believe, if that makes sense. If he gets flipped my opinion is basically *shrug*

I'm feeling tired (a bit overgamed at present) and am having trouble focusing on the conversation taking place right now

Simple question then, what would you say is your strongest alignment opinion at the moment? Asking because I feel like I've seen a few "meh"/"shrug"/"neutral"s from you. I know you've stated some opinions, but I'm wondering what is strongest.

[butterchurn]

I did mention it by number a while ago but didn't link, here it is, hopefully this is how you link things:
viewtopic.php?f=54&t=86336

Apparently not. Fixed: (?)
viewtopic.php?f=54&t=86336

[butterchurn]

"this" in that is referring the case I was making, the one the rest of that post was about, not other people's general case on Greeting. I thought that was pretty clear.

[butterchurn]

Actually, I was just looking back, and I don't see much else of a case. The only other thing I see that was pointed out was NK15 thinking that quote was a perspective slip. Can you elaborate on your reasoning for voting, zefiend?

[butterchurn]

This just feels like throwing suspicion at the wall in various places and seeing what sticks. And that's like the third time you've jumped on something that ended up actually being a misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Doesn't read to me like genuine suspicion, more like mafia struggling to find something to talk about.

[butterchurn]

This just feels like throwing suspicion at the wall in various places and seeing what sticks. And that's like the third time you've jumped on something that ended up actually being a misunderstanding or misinterpretation. Doesn't read to me like genuine suspicion, more like mafia struggling to find something to talk about.

I am at E-1 and the wagon is not going down, and there is no counterwagon. Why is desperately trying to find something AI for you, in this situation?

Because to me it doesn't read as trying to find something that you actually find suspicious, it reads as trying to find something that you hope others will latch onto. I think town in this situation would be more concerned about expressing their thoughts fully and finding who they think is scum, but it feels like you're more concerned about trying to start a counter wagon on anyone you can.

[butterchurn]

I think the fact that zefiend is seemingly behind in catchup mode but hasn't actually weighed in on the NK15 wagon, the single most significant thing in the game so far, to be fairly scummy, in addition to my earlier dislike of his questioning.

So... do you think they are scum together then? I agree it's strange that he hasn't commented on it, but if NK15 is town, I see no reason why scum zefiend wouldn't comment on his wagon, especially if he's not planning to vote there. That only leaves the possibility of them being partners for this suspicion to make sense to me.

[butterchurn]

UNVOTE:

[butterchurn]

I've never played with masons before. Is it correct that their only power is the ability to talk to each other?

[butterchurn]

Important thing to note, I think, is that due to the cop flip we know are in column A or C, each of which has masons as a possibility. This means that on NK15's initial claim, neither mafia had any reason to privately doubt the claim, unless zefiend is scum. What they say publicly in the thread is a different matter of course, but I don't see a reason for them to throw that much doubt on it except for the potential to look more town. notscience of course had a very good reason to doubt it, and the rest of town could reasonably doubt it just because NK15 could have easily been scum making a last-minute role fishing play. Only mafia already knew he was town.

Yeah what NK15 was doing was obviously town LMAO. The self vote in 343, the legacy stuff in 344 & 347, the obvious backtracking in 346 of 345.

Look I understand what what NK15 did was bad and they should know better, but you all should learn to read between the lines and not just ooga booga it. Maybe that is me speaking on behalf of my personal experience with chat mafia where I see a lot of questionable fake claiming from town.

Nah. I don't think there's any way you can keep someone around who fakeclaimed, especially in such a standard setup. Not worth the risk, and from a meta perspective, it's a terrible precedent to set.

[butterchurn]

Somewhat suspicious of Greeting already from what I mentioned in 243 and 245. I would think that scum currently would be pretty excited due to the cop kill and generally being at an advantage at the moment, so I was thinking that at least one of them would be posting early and would want to control the narrative of things from the start of the day. Cape and greeting's posting early today both fit that bill, to some extent. Also still never was particularly satisfied by cape's answer to my line of questioning in 175, especially now that we know notscience was town. Would not be surprised for town catboi to be somewhat discouraged, feeling relatively neutral there.

Scum could also aim to lay low here. Would like to hear more from dunnstral especially, since his first post he's given a few opinions but with little to back them up.

[butterchurn]

On a quick reread of day 1 knowing NK15 and notscience's alignment, I come away from it still feeling most suspicious of Greeting and Cape. I think it's pretty likely at least one is scum. Note that on this reread I also know my alignment, and am judging the behavior around the NK15 wagon from that perspective, your results may differ -- me and notscience were the first two to vote, so it already had some town momentum, so I doubt both scum jumped on it right away. I would guess at least one tried to look elsewhere. Will try to do a more thorough post later (back to work today, so my time will be more limited than so far this game), but the key points are:
- Cape's posts around notscience feel weird, as if he keeps forgetting that he (cape) is convinced that notscience is scum. A few things only make sense if he actually thinks notscience is town (or knows he is), and I already questioned him on the biggest one and didn't find his response at all convincing. He then seems to completely forget his suspicion on notscience and switches to zefiend based on very little. At this point NK15 is at 3 votes, and notscience hasn't really looked like a promising target for scum to successfully elim. And just before this, as noted by dunn on entrance, catboi had unvoted notscience and had expressed suspicion on zefeind.
- Greeting right away joins and puts the 3rd vote on NK15, but frames it almost as a push for more content rather than one of suspicion. After there is more content, he responds to it in a very hedgey way (as I previously noted), and then dives all in on suspicion after he gets a little pushback. After that, his posts on NK15 almost feel overcompensating in how aggressive they are in his suspicion.

[butterchurn]

Forgot to conclude -- both of those feel like patterns of how I would expect scum to interact with this wagon. zefiend ignoring it is also strange, but I think it's less strange knowing that NK was town -- feels almost too obvious to me for scum to completely ignore a wagon on town that is dominating the discussion. catboi felt relatively consistent on his thoughts on it, which could go either way. void didn't say much, but a lot of his thoughts aligned with my own, so... shrug. dunn neutral, both readings are plausible.

[butterchurn]

Looks like I failed spectacularly to control the narrative then, because my

catboi

vote was ignored by almost everyone, and even

catboi

himself paid very little attention to it.

Results do not change intent. Second time you've used this argument or a similar one (244) when I would expect you to know it doesn't hold water.

Cape90 had nothing to do with Not Known 15's elim altogether, but has shown strength of conviction in his pursuits into other slots and I like it.

On my reread I didn't see conviction at all, I saw aggressively pushing back against notscience, then occasional comments that seemed out of character with someone who was so suspicious of notscience and seeming to waver between appearing extremely convinced and not considering him scum at all, and then dropping the case completely. He switched to zefiend for not much reason, and followed that for a couple posts and then hasn't continued on that track since. And that's pretty much all he's done, besides call a few people town for relatively minor things. Can you elaborate on where you're seeing this strength of conviction?

[butterchurn]

Okay. The way I see this argument is: "well, things didn't turn out with Greeting the way I thought they would, but I think Greeting thought they would turn out that way". And then you try to force that interpretation on me in spite of me denying it and the evidence suggesting otherwise. May I ask: a) what are you trying to achieve with this; b) why is your interpretation of my actions more valid than my explanation of them?

I mean, it's okay if you think my actions are scummy, you have a right to think so. But your explanation of it is contradicted by facts in the game. If you continue to use that kind of reasoning then I can't really defend myself when put up with an argument like this. The conversation will always just go: "I think Greeting wanted to do x with post nr y" and me saying "no, I wanted z" when actually "b" happened.

My point is that your post to me reads as you attempting to do x. And I find that potentially suspicious. It's not about trying to guess your thought process, it's just about looking at the post you made. What happens after literally is irrelevant to that point, and nowhere did I say that I expected any specific result to happen. What I said was that I expected scum to attempt to set the narrative. That's what your post (and potentially cape's post) reads as to me, and so I mentioned it. My explanation of it is absolutely not contradicted by facts in the game, because all I cared about was the attempt, not what happened after. If you wanted to, you are welcome to defend yourself by giving your own explanation of things, although I don't particularly expect you to or need you to since it's not a huge point and there's not a lot to say. But either way, you didn't, you just pointed to "well, it didn't work, so I must not have been trying to do that!" which surely you can understand is faulty logic.

[butterchurn]

What do you think of:

catboi

,

Dunnstral

and

ɀefiend

, three players I mentioned earlier?

Not very firm reads on any of them.

- Slight townlean on dunn, as almost everything he's said has made sense to me and seems well-reasoned. Not enough posts to have a strong feeling, but nothing has made me suspicious as of yet.
- zefiend I feel like has just not really been on my radar for whatever reason. I've re-read him a couple times to try to get a read, and it just feels like we're on different wavelengths. My instinct is to find that suspicious, but the arguments against him don't convince me much. He's said a few things I agree with, and a few things that that just seem strange but not particularly AI.
- catboi I'm somewhat conflicted on. In general I would say slightly leaning town, but there's been a couple things that give me pause, and his reads don't align with mine at all.

[butterchurn]

Cape's posts around notscience feel weird

also you certainly didn't think this earlier.

You sure you aren't mafia?

As I said in that post, that was my takeaway from a reread after knowing notscience's and NK15's alignments. Knowing that notscience is town, your posts stood out more. And I definitely thought some of your posts were strange earlier, especially the bit about your agreement with notscience on void, which is why I questioned you on them.

But looks like someone knew this was happening beforehand.

Wouldn't even be the first time town has gamethrown by fakeclaiming mason

The outcome of tonight shows that scums definitely know how to rolehunt, which points my attention towards the remaining more experienced players. I haven't seen half the enthusiasm from

catboi

this game I've seen in the other games, plus his earlier actions made me concerned about their motives.

VOTE: catboi

I took 356 as a response to 355, and not as revealing inside knowledge. And 355 was prompted by NK15's two posts right before it.

I don't think this interpretation is correct at all

That's very strange, as I can't understand how anyone could interpret it in any other way, and now both of you have. It seems incredibly obvious that he is responding to the post right before his, and would take some serious mental gymnastics to see it otherwise, since it is... a direct response to it. Like... what? Notscience says "if you fakeclaimed mason as town..." and then catboi says "wouldn't be the first time town has fakeclaimed mason". How can both of you possibly interpret that as anything other than a response? Bizarre.

[butterchurn]

That is... such a scum way of looking at things. I'm actually baffled, because I can't imagine scum-you being so bold as to post something like that, unless you're just completely lacking in self-awareness, but also can't imagine that perspective coming from town. I've never seen you do this kind of analysis in previous games. You understand how looking at things from a perspective of sorting out what everyone else's suspicions are in order to determine where you have room to be suspicious is exactly what scum would be doing today, right? What made you decide to look at things in this way, when to my knowledge, you haven't before in any of your previous 4 games, as town? And if I'm wrong on that, please point me to an example.

Am I seeing things? catboi, dunn, zefiend, y'all have experience, am I just totally off base here? Current mood: confused

[butterchurn]

Putting together a list of who currently has townreads or suspicions on whom in order to determine what directions are viable for you to push is exactly what I would expect mafia to be doing right now. I have no idea why town would organize their thoughts in that manner. If nobody else agrees with me, maybe I'm just seeing things and I'll drop it, but to my eyes it is an extremely scum-perspective thing to do. The comment about lacking self-awareness obviously only applies if you are scum, because to me this looks so clearly scum-perspective that I can't believe scum-you would just put it out in the open like that. That's why I'm waiting for others to weigh in, because I kinda feel like I'm going crazy here.

If you're town, your most helpful response would be to point me to a time in another game where you sorted things out in a similar way, or if it is the first time, explain more about why you decided to do so in this instance.

[butterchurn]

...okay, then.

VOTE: Greeting

[butterchurn]

Alright, I see some merit to the argument that it doesn't quite fit for him to be self-aware enough to replicate a similar tone to what he usually has, while also being unaware enough to post something so overtly. I still see a lot of his behavior and responses as being pretty unlike his town playstyle. To me he looks like someone who is attempting to "play the same game" as scum and pretend to yourself that you are searching for scum (very common tactic), but not quite being able to replicate the town mentality or successfully search. The methods that he's using to search do not feel at all like how he searches as town, and that's what I keep finding suspicious. But I guess it's not as blatant as I thought it was, so I'll try to look elsewhere for now to avoid getting tunnel visioned.

[butterchurn]

You're just over thinking it.

Glad I'm not the only one seeing this. It just looked very obvious to me, and that made me doubt myself because I would expect to not be the only one seeing it. Agreed that his treatment of cape is strange, but I was also worried that was my own bias due to then being my two highest suspicions. Maybe just more overthinking. The main thing holding me back is that I don't think he

has

to make 409 as scum. He's posted a lot already today, and doesn't really need to put himself out there like that yet. I guess if he really feels the need to justify a vote switch onto Dunn as soon as possible? He fished a bit for people's opinions on his three favorite candidates for experienced scum, and then adjusted his own direction accordingly. I just thought he'd be a little more subtle about it, but maybe he sees nothing wrong with his approach there.

Also FWIW, I don't think the faulty logic or failing to see why it is faulty is indicative of scum!Greeting, that's probably AI since he does it out of game too (the logical game theory discussion in 2084 dead thread is actually a very similar case of judging based on results). It's the responses, the way he's approaching scumhunting, and the inconsistencies with his playstyle and his normal town playstyle that I find most suspicious.

[butterchurn]

Also FWIW, I don't think the faulty logic or failing to see why it is faulty is indicative of scum!Greeting, that's probably

not

AI since he does it out of game too

Just a quick delayed EBWOP, noticed I forgot a "not" and that changes the meaning.

Point being that I think Greeting would stand by his own way of doing things and his own logic, even if faulty, regardless of alignment, because that's just who he is. I do think, though, that hiding behind that in order to disregard points made against him (giving a blanket "well, i have my own ideas of how to play the game, and if you disagree then there's no way we can discuss this" as a response to a case that wasn't particularly about that) is a potentially scummy way of taking advantage of his own tendencies. It's moving the goalposts, and cleverly framing any argument against him as if it's about how the game should be played, rather than about his behavior being suspicious. Framing the arguments that way make them much easier to dismiss, and also has the benefit of warping the situation to any outside observers so that it looks like an objective disagreement on game theory, instead of what it is, which is calling out his behavior as scummy.

[butterchurn]

Point being that I think Greeting would stand by his own way of doing things and his own logic,

even if faulty

, regardless of alignment, because that's just who he is.

This (bolded and underlined) is precisely why I cut that discussion short. If the reasoning goes "town does x and scum does y, so if you do y that inherently means you're scum" and I question the assumption as to why town does x and scum does y and that is refuted because game theory, then there just is no way forward. If others refuse to broaden their horizons beyond pure game theory then there is no possible way that I could ever reach an agreement with that person on that matter. I'd rather just back away and try somewhere else.

My point is that the majority of the suspicion from both me and zefiend is not due to game theory disagreements, and you presenting it as if it is minimizes the case and makes it easy for you to dismiss it.

[butterchurn]

Okay, a list, not necessarily exhaustive but these are things that are clearly unrelated to game theory:
- Your post 164 about notscience is phrased in an artificial-sounding way, and I talk about why it's suspicious more in detail in post 169
- Hedging your vote on NK15 in a strange way that seemed out of character with town-you, then going all-in on suspicion of NK15 when called out for that in a way that reads as a scummy response to pressure (as discussed in post 243 and 245)
- Your early posting in day 2 read to me like you are trying to set the narrative of the day, and your behavior in general surrounding that early posting feels like how I would expect scum to behave in this scenario, as discussed at length in various posts
- Setting up some candidates for suspicion, seeing how people feel about them, and then deciding your direction to go based on which one is a viable candidate based on others' suspicions. This is suspicious for reasons already discussed at length, but most specifically because I have never seen you take this approach as town previously, in fact you seem to have a very specific approach to scumhunting as town which has not shown up at all. This is why it's suspicious -- it does not look like your typical town behavior, and this new approach additionally is looking at things from a perspective that scum usually have.
- Your responses to suspicion tend to either miss the point, disregard them due to various reasons, or strawman them. A couple instances of this is understandable, but it's happened consistently.

Those are just the things that I've already talked about. Not sure what point you're asking about zefiend, but he made some additional points about inconsistencies in the way you are handling different people, and how your play does not align with your stated explanation of how you are attempting to scumhunt. Both of those are also suspicious for reasons unrelated to game theory.

[butterchurn]

To clarify the last bullet (again) -- the main suspicious thing about that is the strawmanning, where you misrepresent the other side's argument and then argue against that instead. It's one of the most classic scumtells, and although it can happen accidentally by town due to misunderstanding, it's happened here repeatedly.

[butterchurn]

I think that may be a grammar confusion, the "from both me and zefiend" in that sentence is referring to the suspicion (as in, both of us have suspicion that is unrelated to game theory), not referring both of us making the point.

[butterchurn]

I don't see that with Greeting, who gives a very strong effort and clear scumhunting process every game and, for whatever reason, gets utterly nitpicked to death every time.

I agree with this. But Greeting has only been town in previous games. At some point he will roll mafia. Do you think, if he does in the future (or has this game), he will stop giving a strong effort and stop attempting to give an impression of scumhunting? I have a higher opinion of his abilities than that. My main suspicion of him is due to the fact that I feel like his approach to scumhunting and his interactions in general is not aligned with the approach that I've seen from him in previous games, and it feels like how scum!Greeting could attempt to imitate his usual style, while not quite hitting the mark. I understand you disagree on that point, but that's how I see it. I'm not trying to nitpick his arguments and his logic here, except for to see how he responds to that. I can see a world where this is just town Greeting, and some of his actions do read to me that way, but there's enough that just doesn't sit right for me to be willing to drop it completely.

You're right about the early posting today though, that certainly is not a scumtell on its own. That was more indicating that I would be keeping an eye on those two, because the way they started off the day drew my attention. I certainly was not expecting that alone to convince anyone of anything, I just wanted to share my thought process.

[butterchurn]

Hm. Second-guessing a bit. Don't really see a reason for scum cape to flip opinion on zefiend like that, with things sitting as they are. And I tend to agree with why.

[butterchurn]

So what is your vote on me for, exactly?

I've reiterated that like 3 times now, including in that same post. There's a few other little things that I've talked about, but the biggest trend is that your posting, interactions, and approach do not feel like the same way you play the game as town, and at times feel manufactured or artificial. And when pushed on this, you strawmanned and generally felt like you were doing whatever you could to weasel your way out of being questioned.

I always look at both sides and both possibilities, that's how I play -- look at posts and patterns through different lenses, and try to determine which one fits best. I can see the possibility that you are town, but as of now the possibility that you are scum seems to fit much better to me.

[butterchurn]

I've read your posts, but one time you strongly accuse me and then you say stuff like "I'd totally see town Greeting doing this", which is contradictory and hence my question.

I don't think it is contradictory (at least, the way I phrased it, not your paraphrase). I think anyone who can't see both sides is being negligent in their duty, if they're town. In mafia, everyone is wrong more often than not. Recognizing that and keeping an open mind, I find, is the key to success.

[butterchurn]

I've been watching the Void posts, apologies for not engaging with your suspicions of them, catboi, but I was still thinking about them. For a bit I just read him as newbie lacking confidence, but wanted to see if he would make an effort to improve his posting and have more opinions. I didn't want to post about it much because I was curious to see if he would continue to coast and follow along with the general trends if there wasn't much pressure on him and he didn't think he was in danger. He has, and my opinion has changed. I think town at this point would have done more, while scum would likely think they could get away with it. The biggest thing that I notice is that most of the points that he is making against others look specifically to be things that he has made an effort to avoid doing. That reads to me like newbie scum who only has a limited mindset of what things are suspicious, and is trying to both call those things out while avoid doing them himself. I find that newbie town will more often make the same tells that they call others out for, because they are just calling out genuine suspicion and not following any sort of formula. I would be willing to vote here.

[butterchurn]

I'm town and I think it's rather unlikely the scums are hiding amongst you, Cape90 and Dunnstral.

At the moment, I think the scums are amongst these players: ɀefiend, V0ID, Dunnstral.

Why is Dunnstral in both of these lists?

[butterchurn]

Oh, missed the EBWOP. Got it.

[butterchurn]

Also by the way, Greeting's self-hammer call is NAI for me. He's done it before and seems to genuinely believe it's a pro-town move, but I would expect him to do it at some point in his career as scum too. So, no comment, really, and definitely not worth getting into a discussion of whether it's a good idea or not.

[butterchurn]

I don't think whether zefiend is technically a newbie or not really matters as much as how comfortable they are with the game. (The newbie rules are kind of wonky now that it's been brought up, though).

I think Cape is the better vote right now, I don't see the 'conviction', I thought they were scummy day 1, and I don't think their arguments make sense on day 2.

VOTE: Cape90

Dunn, your suspicions at this time (as best as I can gather) included Greeting, Cape, and Void. What made you decide Cape was the "better vote" out of those 3?

[butterchurn]

UNVOTE:

For now. I feel like the new direction of discussion is productive and would like others to weigh in.

[butterchurn]

I'm not sure how the Void thing could be cooked up by Greeting. catboi has been the main one pushing it. What makes you say that?

[butterchurn]

V0ID is very clearly not an SE in my mind and therefore is outside the SE pool - I think they could be a partner who is being coached

This was part of the reason I was hesitant, actually, because he doesn't look like he's had much coaching at all, unless the coaching was "yeah just keep doing what you're doing, really lean into the whole unsure newbie thing". Which... not sure if that would be the best advice. Maybe they thought the more uncoached he looked, the more he would just look like newbie town? That gets into WIFOM. I'm going to take a look later at all the scumteam possibilities and see which seem more or less likely. I don't often do that, but I feel like it could be helpful in this situation.

To talk to myself here, I think cape going into overdrive here is always just town.

Generally agree, he disappeared from the thread for a bit and that had me fairly suspicious, but ever since he's come back his posts read more town to me.

[butterchurn]

Yeah... that was something similar to what that I said about people picking on obvious things from Void Day 1, but it sounds very weird for someone to say that about themselves. This line stood out to me as well:

I think the general consensus is that scum seem to be hiding pretty well

Because I'm not sure I would call that a general consensus, I don't remember many people making statements along those lines. A lot of people have at least some strong suspicions, and so to individuals who are town and confident in their suspicions, they likely wouldn't think the scum is hiding well. But if scum knows that a lot of the people being suspected are town (and 5 of us are, so it's guaranteed that at least a few of the people who are suspected are town), it's a very different picture, and may be an indicator of a common human tendency to, indirectly, forget that others don't have the same information that you do.

To look at it from a potential town!Void perspective, he's mentioned playing live/IRL mafia in the past, where people often make themselves very obvious and things are generally less careful and considered, and I could see someone from that background having trouble figuring out how to find scum in a longform game like this, and thinking that compared to their experience, scum is hiding well. Still, though, even in that case I think it's strange to call it a general consensus.

[butterchurn]

Scum is hiding themselves pretty well here...

This was the only instance I could find, from back near the end of Day 1. I think this would stick more prominently in the mind of new scum, especially if it were accurate at the time, as it could be taken essentially as praise from a more experienced player. I know in my first game as mafia I was hyped when someone said in thread that the mafia were playing well, and I took it to heart.

The only other thing that I could find that's even close to saying that scum are hiding well is from Greeting, here:

I’m trying to make sense of this game by associations, because honestly nothing else seems to be working.

But that's not even quite the same thing, and even then, one and a half instances of it doesn't seem like a general consensus to me, when the first one is pretty much a throwaway comment from desperate town looking for anything to latch onto before getting eliminated.

[butterchurn]

If I were scum in this situation, I'd definitely try to convince V0ID to finally settle on something and make a case on someone and try to make it as convincing as possible. I have a rather strong belief that unnecessary hesitation is a scum tell. V0ID is doing quite the opposite and his behavior is, admittedly, constant in that even though myself and notably also catboi have suspected him for it.

It does remind me a little of StrangeMatter in 2084, where reading along I read him pretty strongly as town by the end of the game because he was very hesitant and noncommittal even after being heavily called out for it, to the point where I thought there was no way scum would continue in that manner, and he must just be a struggling town. Then he ended up winning as mafia. So I've been fooled by that before.

[butterchurn]

Oops, I didn't go back to check, thanks.

[butterchurn]

Alright, if you say so. Void is my preference at the moment.

VOTE: VOID

[butterchurn]

Dunn would probably be my second choice, FWIW. Have come around somewhat on both cape and Greeting, moreso on cape. Still planning to take a look at potential pairings as well tomorrow, although now some of it will be somewhat redundant.

[butterchurn]

Okay, this is pre-written but if I'm posting this, then that means I'm alive. Didn't expect that. Hopefully I can help make scum regret it. Probably means I was on the wrong path before this.
Three things right away, then I will post more in a bit:

1. REALLY hate how yesterday ended. Feel like I got played, and made a big mistake voting when I did and then going to sleep, and waking up to a locked thread (hammer comes while I'm asleep twice in a row, hooray). Never doing that again if I can avoid it.
2. It's a numbers game now, in terms of who is willing to vote whom. 2 scum, 3 town, I think it's most likely that scum nightkilled someone who will make it easiest for them to miselim someone today (and hardest for all 3 town to vote together, since that's what is required for victory). Not much reason to do otherwise, a bus play is possible but probably an unnecessary risk. When I analyzed this, in most cases I think that would be me. It wasn't, which I think actually makes things easier for town here (from my perspective, at least). More on this in a moment.
3. PLEASE do not vote anyone right away. If town votes town, we just instantly lose. Let's at least think about this a little.

[butterchurn]

I think I'm just going to notedump the analysis I did last night here, where I looked at the possible scumteams and what I thought their most likely course of action would be. No guarantees that I can successfully predict the thought process of the scumteam, maybe they just rolled a die to pick a kill, who knows, but my reads have apparently not been good this game so I might as well put my blind faith in meta-analysis instead. I'll go ahead and remove the scumteams that contain greeting to improve readability.

---------------

dunn is the easiest lim tomorrow. if he's town, this will be tough.
zefiend probably second easiest?
maaybe greeting? maaybe cape?


dunn zefiend -> kill catboi maybe, hope to miselim greeting? these are the top two suspicions right now, so this is tough for them. may require a bus.
dunn catboi -> kill me probably, miselim zefiend? in this case town suspicions would be on zefiend and dunn for the most part, bus is possible
zefiend catboi -> this is a win almost guaranteed. kill... anyone? maybe lean cape? miselim dunn, or catboi bus zefiend
dunn cape -> save dunn, elim zefiend. kill me probably?
zefiend cape -> elim dunn. kill anyone. in this case there's 3 town suspicions on dunn, should be easy for them
cape catboi -> elim dunn, kill zefiend. in this case only 2 town suspicions on dunn, so killing zefiend is safest

-------kills-------

zefiend:

this most likely means scumteam wants to secure a miselim on dunn. fairly likely choice if greeting is scum, if he's not i don't think this happens. this one is probably the easiest to read.

• (greeting teams removed)

me:

this could mean a lot of things, but in this case i'm dead so i guess i don't have to think about it. does seem like the most likely though.

• (several other greeting teams removed)
  dunn catboi
  dunn cape
  zefiend cape
  zefiend catboi

catboi

: catboi is about to re-evaluate, maybe they don't want him doing that. hope it isn't this one, this is the hardest to read. could be scum dunn/zefiend knowing catboi may land there, and knowing catboi thinks greeting is town, hoping to miselim greeting? for the other possible teams, this just seems like a suboptimal choice

• dunn zefiend
  zefeind cape

greeting

: kinda weird choice, maybe don't want him leading town anywhere? or they are interpreting differently than me and think that greeting is the clear second choice elim after dunn, rather than zefiend. probably will try to miselim dunn. this in theory pushes me towards dunn, and zefiend towards cape/dunn. i think it's really unlikely that a team with scum dunn chooses this kill (unless they're planning on a bus) since I think it actually makes things worse for him despite the initial impression of it helping him (and that intial impression will draw suspicion),

• zefiend cape
  zefiend catboi

cape

: don't see this as likely, if it happens it's probably in cases where scum doesn't need to kill optimally in order to win

• zefiend catboi

dunn

: ??? no idea ????? who would do this

• zefiend catboi?? but why

[butterchurn]

Brief conclusions: Leaning town on dunn. My gut is much more conflicted, but I'm making the call not to trust it right now since it's been wrong so far. If I were to vote right now, it would probably be for zefiend. I mostly townread him before this, but he looks worse knowing Greeting was town. The question is, would scum know that killing Greeting makes him look worse?

[butterchurn]

Brief conclusions: Leaning town on dunn.

Absolutely why

Because I don't see a scum team with dunn killing greeting here, due to reasoning above. I'm aware I could be wrong on this. That's my first impression, though.

[butterchurn]

I think that's making too many assumptions given greeting was absolutely trashing him for his hammer.

He very much was, and that should be extremely obvious to everyone that killing Greeting makes dunn look immediately suspicious. But zefiend's main suspicion was greeting (2nd cape, 3rd dunn), and my main suspicions at the end of last day were greeting and dunn, so killing Greeting pushes both of us towards Dunn. I think he actually ends up worse off in terms of suspicion on him by killing Greeting, and that's not even including what he likely will pick up due to Greeting's interactions with them and end of day. If dunn is scum with zefiend, killing greeting makes very little sense unless a bus is planned, because greeting is probably the 3rd biggest suspicion behind dunn and zefiend, so there's no viable miselim. If dunn is scum with anyone else, zefiend is town, and so killing greeting has pushed two town (me and zefiend) towards dunn. That makes dunn extremely likely to die, so again, they probably have to bus. And why would they kill Greeting if they're going to bus Dunn anyway? Make it easy for themselves. I think the other paths for dunn scumteams are way more likely. This path is possible for dunn scumteams, for sure, but I think it's a small chance.

[butterchurn]

Actually, after further thought, I guess a dunn/zefiend with a planned bus could be a little more viable than I originally thought, because I think Greeting most likely moves to zefiend after dunn if he's allowed to live.

[butterchurn]

In theory I hadn't voiced a scumread on Dunn and had in fact been rather in between on him, only mentioned being paranoid of you in twilight, possible he saw me as someone less likely to oppose him. Not remotely sold the kill is impossible for scum-him.

By that, do you mean that you think dunn wasn't as clearly the top suspicion as I think? My impression was you were most likely to think either me+dunn or greeting+dunn was the team, or possibly me+cape, from your possible scumteams post. I guess I can't assume scum thought the same, though. Still though, cape and me also had dunn as a top suspicion.

[butterchurn]

Eh. Don't know. If I had ruled out the actual team they might want to keep me alive.

Initial read of this is that it has me leaning slightly more town, since this is my thought process as well. I think scum you could easily stick to one of the teams you had laid out earlier. Doesn't hurt to express doubt, though, so eh.

And if

every

town player was suspicious of dunn, I'm not sure at all there's a "better" kill from his POV?

A reasonable thought. I assumed that a dunn scumteam would go one of two paths -- try to elim zefiend (if he's town), or bus dunn. I didn't think a Greeting kill was likely to be successful at stopping a dunn lim (whereas other kills potentially could have landed a zefiend lim), which was why I said that unless they're trying to bus, I don't think they would lim Greeting. I thought it was unlikely that they would try to bus unless they thought it was impossible to avoid a scum lim. If they did think it was impossible avoid, since most of town did have some level of suspicion on dunn, then it does open up the possibilities of dunn scumteams more. I'll think about that.

[butterchurn]

Read some more past games on dunn and catboi, probably should have done that earlier. Was somewhat hesitant on being suspicious of catboi mostly because a lot of tone things have felt town to me, but I see now that while he does have a similar feel as town, he is perfectly capable of recreating that as scum. With dunn, results were similarly inconclusive. General behavior seems in character for either role, didn't feel like there were any strong markers in either direction.

I also thought that scum catboi killing notscience after 194 would be kinda bold, and yesterDay I was waiting to see if someone would try to use it as a reason for suspicion (since I definitely don't think it is a fair reason for suspicion). After reading a scum game I wouldn't necessarily put it past him though, and it most likely was just a rolehunt kill regardless, so it's probably irrelevant. Still a little surprised nobody ever even brought it up, though, since it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the notscience death.

please explain why I ever nightkill greeting

A team of you/zefiend could easily kill Greeting -- he was likely leaning Dunn, but he had both of you as secondary suspicions at some point in the previous day. I don't think it's the best kill option, but I don't particularly think it's the best kill option for any team, and I also think that pairing could get away with killing almost anyone since imo it would be very hard for you to lose.

[butterchurn]

Unsure about Dunn's first post toDay, 616. From what I've seen in previous games, he seems to generally tend to engage directly with whoever he is talking about. In this, it feels more like he is talking past catboi, and the post just really feels way more like an appeal to the town than what I'm used to seeing from him, which felt a little bit off to me. Doesn't quite feel natural. Gonna have to look more closely at his endgame behavior in previous games.

Don't know. Going to bed, would strongly prefer the game doesn't end while I'm asleep.

[butterchurn]

This same chain of reasoning is why I had trouble seeing a greeting kill from any scumteam that did not include zefiend. It's throwing away a free TvT vote otherwise. And catboi's post on it seems fine to me, cape.

Also, I don't really understand the logic behind there being any information to gain out of everyone claiming (in this specific situation), but I also can't see how it could hurt, so... VT here.

[butterchurn]

This is not a major thing, but it was on my mind for a while, so I might as well post about it. Once we saw we were in column A or C due to cop flip, and both of those have masons, I thought that there was no reason for scum to doubt the mason claim from NK15 -- if zefiend is town, it just looks like a normal mason claim to them. catboi had notable reservations about it (325). For a while I had this as a point in the town!catboi column, since it is perfectly reasonable for him to have hesitations about the claim (especially since he recently played in a game with a town fakeclaiming mason), and the post reads fairly town-aligned regardless. I forgot to keep in mind the one other possibility, though -- if catboi were scum partners with zefiend, he would know for sure that the claim was fake. Since this is one of the main teams I'm considering, I think it's worth posting about. This doesn't necessarily add to suspicion of catboi for me, but it does take away one of the reasons why I thought the puzzle pieces for scum!catboi didn't quite fit.

[butterchurn]

If I had felt him unelimable, why wouldn't I nightkill him? The thought is absurd.

I don't see why you would have any need to nightkill me if I were on the wrong track (and in situations here where you are mafia, I was on the wrong track prior to last Night). A townie going in the wrong direction in endgame is very useful to mafia.

[butterchurn]

I think it's fairly obvious you'd be more threatening to me than Greeting here. (I also don't feel like your stances were nearly that solid)

If you're mafia, you have a partner, so it's not all about you. And Greeting voted you at the start of Day 2. I thought that his main suspicions were Dunn/zefiend/you, although he did seem to be townreading you more by the end of day, but that seemed to be in conjunction with his turn onto void. Would not have been surprised for him to focus on you more after the void flip. Then again, maybe he just locks in his solve of dunn/zefiend, and that team thinks that's too much of a threat for him to stay alive.

[butterchurn]

The more I think about it, the more I think the scumteam has to include zefiend. I don't see Dunn and catboi together, and I lean away from cape/catboi and dunn/cape. The most likely two teams to me now are zefiend/catboi or zefiend/dunn. I'm still conflicted on dunn vs catboi. zefiend/cape is possible, I guess, but it seems less likely to me.

[butterchurn]

Earlier you said if I'm scum the Greeting kill doesn't make sense unless I was planning to bus.

I did not. I said that about Dunn. Very interesting that you mixed those up, though. Since before the kill even came in, I thought that only teams with you on them would kill Greeting. The change in opinion that I've had is that I see it could be possible for Dunn to be scum (specifically, with you), where previously I thought the kill only made sense if he were town.

2) Do you think scum!me spends an entire day pushing Greeting instead of lazy sheeping on VOID, only to lazy-kill Greeting the following night?

Yes, obviously I do. I think Greeting is a bit of a weird kill no matter who the scumteam is, but clearly

someone

thought it was the best choice, and I think any team without you on it would be much less likely to opt for that route.

[butterchurn]

Rereading the whole thread with the two pairings I'm currently considering in mind, and here are my thoughts (warning -- most of this is just summarizing what happened, which I found helpful to write out, but might not be terribly helpful to read. I have a few thoughts on it, though):
- Based just on Day 1 behavior, GB (dunn) and zefiend feel slightly more like classic scum partner interactions, acknowledging existence but not really engaging heavily. GB didn't really engage with anyone, though, so it's hard to say. zefiend calling out catboi to specifically ask how he feels about the game state is weird, but feels too obvious to me (then again, if zefiend is scum, I think he's done several obviously strange things, so maybe he wouldn't see an issue with it, although I imagine catboi would not be very appreciative of it if they were indeed partners), and his interactions with catboi early don't feel that scum-partner-y to me.

- Day 2 though... besides the push on Greeting which never really made much impact besides from me and zefiend, earlier in the day it really looks to me like the town is going to head in the direction of either zefiend or dunn. It's interesting looking at how things switched over to void. Timeline is as follows. Near the end of Day 1, catboi has zefiend as his ONLY strong opionion in the scum direction in 292, then he votes him shortly after. He then adds some more suspicion on void in 319. At the start of Day 2, Greeting votes catboi. In 374, catboi says one of void/zefiend/dunn, and says that he still finds void's Day 1 scummy (I actually can't find where his suspicion of dunn begins, looks like just POE since he has townleans on me/greeting/cape?). Soon after, he mentions how he finds zefiend's mason denial to be suspicious. zefiend continues to be noncommital with Dunn. Greeting says there is scum in catboi/zefiend/dunn. I express weak reads on all three of those. Cape shows up and votes dunn, and seems to say zefiend would be his second choice in 403. Greeting then does his associations post and votes Dunn. I get in a debate with Greeting, and vote him. Dunn says he disagrees with catboi's reads, finding Greeting/Cape suspicious and not finding zefiend scum.
------ At this point, there are 2 votes on Dunn (with one more suspicion, from catboi), and 1 on Greeting. There's also three people expressing suspicion of zefiend, but not voting there (cape, Greeting, catboi). catboi has suspicion on void, dunn and greeting have mentioned it as well to some extent, but not particularly recently, except for when Greeting says he could see a scumteam of dunn and void.
- catboi then townreads Greeting, and votes void, in 426. Greeting agrees, and catboi continues the push. zefiend shows up and makes a lot of posts on Greeting, and votes him. In 447, catboi has thoughts, but wants to wait for the response. Greeting then gets in the newbie/SE debate with zefiend, and ends up voting him. I continue pushing on Greeting. catboi posts 472, where he doesn't want to engage with zefiend but thinks his posting on Greeting makes him feel more town. Dunn votes cape in 473. cape flips opinion on zefiend and says he looks much more town today.
------ At this point, there are 2 votes on Greeting (me and zefiend), and 1 each on zefiend, dunn, cape, and void.
- Greeting townreads catboi for not jumping on his wagon, but finds it interesting (presumably suspicious) in 518 that dunn and void aren't willing to jump on it. I wonder what his opinion on this would be now. I express suspicion on void in 510. I unvote greeting, as my suspicion on him has started to fall off. cape appears again, with even more suspicion on Dunn in 533, and then more townread on zefiend. catboi and I both townread cape for it. I talk about some more stuff from void that I find suspicious in 545.
------ At this point, there is 1 vote each on Greeting, zefiend, dunn, cape, and void. Multiple people have now expressed willingness to vote void and dunn, but Greeting seems to be the only one left on zefiend.
- catboi expresses that the votecount is a mess. He then makes his scumteam post in 564. As dunn discussed, 3/5 of his top team picks have dunn in them. Only one has void but not dunn. He then specifically talks about zefiend at the end of the post, to say something noncommital and then that he only sees him as scum with void. This I find interesting, especially that he chose to further discuss zefiend and not dunn. He then says the votecount is unacceptable and that I have to be voting. I get convinced by this, and vote void (a big mistake, even with my suspicion of void. If town loses I feel like a lot of it comes down to this -- my bad). I then say dunn would be my second choice. zefiend stays locked on Greeting, and then goes line by line through catboi's scumteam post, which reads like a lot of content and engagement but doesn't say that much. Greeting then puts the third vote onto void, and dunn has the weird role-discussion-then-oh-nevermind-let's-hammer thing, and day over.

Some notes on this:
- zefiend jumping on the Greeting case when there are two votes on Dunn looks pretty bad for the potential Dunn/zefiend pairing. Dunn's vote on cape feels kinda random, as he has previously expressed suspicions of void and Greeting, both of whom have votes already. There's also a decent amount of suspicion on zefiend still, since this is before cape switched. Could be scum him wanting to avoid being a late addition to multiple wagons in a row, but I don't think that really fits with him then hammering void in a very strange manner. If he's worried about him or his partner being limmed, why not just vote void earlier instead of voting cape? If he's worried about drawing attention, why wait and just hammer anyway, drawing way more attention? In between his cape vote and his void vote, suspicion on zefiend dropped off significantly (from cape, mostly), so if they're partners, there's no reason he would be any

more

worried about them dying by then. Not sure. From zefiend's side, the interactions look fairly scum-partner-y, but from Dunn's side, they don't really seem to fit.
- The timing and the way in which catboi's zefiend suspicion slips in and out feels very weird to me. He never really pressures him in the way he does his other suspicions (208 followed by 211 is weird, although he did end up expanding later). When there's 2 votes on Dunn and a decent amount of suspicion on zefiend, he opts for ignoring both (despite having suspicions on both) and pushing on void instead (who admittedly looked suspicious, but would be an extremely easy target for him to push as scum), and then later complaining about there being a split vote and that we needed to set up a wagon, when he was the one who split things up further. Finding at least some suspicion in zefiend while at the same time thinking his only viable partner is void is also pretty convenient. For catboi/zefiend, it's kind of the opposite as dunn/zefiend, where I feel like the catboi side looks a lot more partner-y, and the zefiend side looks less so.

So, conclusion is... inconclusive. Both pairings still feel viable to me, and there's some odd behavior in both directions. I come away from this a little more suspicious of catboi, I think, because I find his behavior slightly harder to rationalize as town, and closer to a pattern of scumplay that I would expect. It also looks like he ended up with dunn as a suspicion mostly by POE, which feels somewhat at odds with his emotion-tinged interactions with him toDay where he seems to be treating him like he sees him as obvscum. I know he finds the hammer suspicious, but besides that his reasoning seemed to be "he hasn't done anything towny" until dunn made a case on him. Meanwhile, nothing about rereading zefiend made me think he was more town, so I would still prefer to vote there.

[butterchurn]

Ah, well then. I was thinking there was still more to talk about. Guess we'll see what happens next.

[butterchurn]

This is gibberish, btw

As in, it doesn't make sense? I can try to clarify what I mean if you like.

[butterchurn]

The part about dunn? That was a pretty minor point in the post, and I was just pointing out that I found your tone shift over time in your interactions with him to be surprising when I read everything at once. In real time nothing felt out of place, but when I trace the evolution of your thoughts, I don't see that strong of a basis for your suspicion, and I would expect there to be one for you to have the attitude towards him that you do now. You really don't even flip the switch that hard until after he makes the case on you.

[butterchurn]

I find these situations irritating as town and I have an inherent bias against people who write a lot of words because I always feel like it's done for the purpose of being showy, regarrdless of whether not it actually ends up being the case. Don't take it personally.
I feel like you're either minimizing or not really making steps to understand my reasoning for seeing Dunn as scum.

I really would appreciate a more thorough explanation of your suspicion for Dunn, and where it started. I think that would help.

[butterchurn]

Personally, I already think one of you or dunn is scum, so I'm going to continue as if the game isn't lost.

These are all of your opinions on the slot:

• - 220: "GB flaking is disappointing given he's been around to post elsewhere but from what I know he's a lower activity player as both alignments so not particularly damning"
  - 268: "A part of me says Dunnstral doesn't enter a newbie game and immediately E-1 someone as scum because that'd be bad optics, although that's a weak feeling"
  - 292: "murky level of uncertain" (along with most of the players)
  - 374: "Greeting/Cape town, butter weaker town, scum in void/dunn/zefiend." (given previous posting, I don't know how to read this in any way other than POE)
  - 387: Asking him to explain why he disagrees with your reads
  - 388: Clarifying a statement you made that he disagreed with
  - 423: He made a fair point
  - 426: "In my experience he tends to try harder to project being town when he's mafia. If this weren't a newbie game I'd probably be scumreading him, but as it is I'm still iffy because I'd expect him to try to be a bit more transparent in a newbie game."
  - 503: Asking him to explain why he found cape scummy
  - 526: Asking again
  - 539: "He's read me well in a previous game and often doesn't explain things, but yes, that sort of post can easily come from him as scum." and "I mean, hmm. I don't see why him expressing disagreement with my reads is a scumtell necessarily, he can do tat as town. I would say that nothing he's done has blown me away with townieness and I could easily see him being scum here still." (responding to cape)
  - 564: Various comments in the pairings post, mostly that the dunn teams are not implausible
  - 586: "I think this is somewhat unideal but I would have pushed for a hammer regardless of claim." (first reaction to dunn's hammer)
  - 595: "My initial impression is that Dunn is very likely scum off that hammer and in general I don't think his play has been town. If I had to vote at this very instant in time, that's where it'd go."
  - 599: "Absolutely why" (when I express a townlean on Dunn)
  - 602: "I also just think there's been very little to townread in his play overall"
  - 617: "lol ok dunn" (after he makes a case on you)

To me, that looks like things escalate pretty quickly once toDay starts, and that there wasn't really ever much of a basis for suspicion to begin with, at least not one that was at all well-explained. The hammer didn't seem to appear that suspicious to you immediately, but that's understandable since you were leading the push on void, but when the next day started you never really talked about WHY you find it so suspicious. I definitely agree it was strange play, but to go from "eh he hasn't not done anything towny", "him being scum is not implausible", what looks like POE, etc., to treating him as if you have no doubt he's scum is something that I feel like should merit at least a little more explanation.

[butterchurn]

By the way, no idea when cape will check the thread next since he seems to disappear for chunks of time, but @cape if you're town I'm pretty sure it's correct play regardless of your suspicions here to not vote Dunn right away. Same goes for zefiend, I guess, as much as I doubt him being town? I'm not an endgame mechanics expert by any means, but that seems logical to me. We can at least wait and see if the game is over or not, because then we have more information.

[butterchurn]

Hey, just making sure. You never know what people will do.

End of post 54. Sorry, I got lazy about linking every single thing I referenced, if you need any others I can pull them up.

[butterchurn]

I don't feel this way at all on Dunns' push on me as he talked about me a whole lot in detail, meanwhile the V0id thing was like 2 posts and only one of those addressed V0id by name

Random purely from a voting standpoint when looking at a possible dunn/zefiend pairing and where other votes currently were. I think it's a fairly reasonable/consistent vote if he's town.

[butterchurn]

Is it really not all that well explained? I had him as a POE slot from day 2 and never wavered from there, thought his hammer was scum motivated, and then he opened the day with a case on me with atrocious reasoning that was effectively a scumclaim to me. No, I didn't call out the hammer in the immediate aftermath because at that time in the immediate aftermath it could have easily been a scum flip, and it only really was scummy in my eyes on a townflip.

But still, my thinking was towards a POE on day 2 and literally nothing happened to change my mind. Why the hell are you acting like this was out of nowhere?

No, it really isn't well explained. Not once did you directly engage with any of dunn's posts and explain why you thought those were suspicious, until his case on you. The closest thing you got was a response to cape. My quotes in 679 weren't single sentences pulled out of longer explanations. That was literally the entirety of what you had said about dunn. You still haven't explained WHY you think the hammer was scum motivated. I think we can all agree it was very strange, and once void flips it looks bad on the surface, but what is scum!dunn's reasoning behind his actions? Why does he vote cape earlier in the day instead of void? Why does he bring up the whole role thing, then reason his way through it, and THEN vote? Why not just declare intent and let things happen the normal way? Why draw so much attention? I'm not saying that these are impossible things for scum to do by any means. I just want you to explain why they are more likely to come from scum than town, which you never did. And not just a plausible rationalization, I want to know why you were so convinced. You seemed to just come into the day taking for granted that everyone would find it suspicious, to the point where when I didn't, you seemed to get frustrated (which, I think you could easily get frustrated there as either alignment, for different reasons).

Further, butterchurn, why does my read on Dunn escalating today make me more likely to be scum? Why can't that be an organic thought process? I had him as a suspect for a big part of yesterday, my primary read was wrong, he moved to occupy the spot of most likely scum in my mind. Dunn literally didn't suspect me at all before today and sheeped my vote, then came out the gates with a case on me. Your only engagement with it is to say he's "talking past" me in 630, but never actually address the substance of his argument at all.

If you had him as a suspicion yesterday, why didn't you investigate further, look at any of his posts, or make any sort of push on him when the votecount was at 2 on him and 1 on Greeting? Or even later, when the vote is split at 1 each, and you've just finished a votecount analysis that puts dunn on 3 of your 5 most likely teams? If you were so worried about needing to consolidate the votes and bemoaning how the votecount was a mess, why were you not looking into one of the few people who had multiple people expressing willingness to vote them, when they had 2 votes on them at one point and were also one of your suspects? Instead you went down what felt like a "well, I HAVE to vote void at this point, he can't get a newbie pass forever" route. It doesn't feel like you were taking a genuine interest in solving the game and finding scum (or working with your townreads -- you were townreading Greeting and cape, the two votes on Dunn), and that's what I find suspicious. So either you do have him as a strong suspect yesterday, but you never really push or make a case on him despite it making sense to do so, or you didn't have him as a strong suspect, and then it escalated even more quickly.

As for Dunn's argument, I don't think the content of it is bad. I think it is fairly likely that he makes that case or a similar one as scum, but after my reread of the thread, I ended up coming to a similar conclusion about your direction yesterday (see prior paragraph), so I don't think the case itself is an issue. The problem I had with it was the artificial tone, and that's what I brought up, because that was the part of it that I found suspicious.

I mean, it's not like you're really committing to an answer, either - you've left the possibilities as me/cape and me/zefiend, and have taken basically ~no steps to figure things out.

And for what it's worth, I completely agree with this. The behavior reads like someone who knows that in order to win, they only have to get one elim. It may seem like I'm talking about you more, but there's just more to talk about, especially because I had mostly been townreading you before this (and frankly, I think engaging with dunn would be less helpful and not make things much clearer for me, so I'd rather try to solve it from this side). I'm still conflicted. I preferred a zefiend elim today, but that's clearly not happening, and I guess in the end it doesn't really matter which comes first, so I'm just trying to work out who is more likely to be scum between you and dunn.

[butterchurn]

Earlier you said if I'm scum the Greeting kill doesn't make sense unless I was planning to bus.

I did not. I said that about Dunn. Very interesting that you mixed those up, though. Since before the kill even came in, I thought that only teams with you on them would kill Greeting. The change in opinion that I've had is that I see it could be possible for Dunn to be scum (specifically, with you), where previously I thought the kill only made sense if he were town.

2) Do you think scum!me spends an entire day pushing Greeting instead of lazy sheeping on VOID, only to lazy-kill Greeting the following night?

Yes, obviously I do. I think Greeting is a bit of a weird kill no matter who the scumteam is, but clearly

someone

thought it was the best choice, and I think any team without you on it would be much less likely to opt for that route.

This is all post-hoc rationalization. I 1000% do not kill Greeting last night if I'm scum.

Your focus on me today is very telling.

I do not suspect Cape will hand me the hammer, but im not ready to hand it to him either yet. I want to be able to figure out if a bus is occuring. And, like all game, butter is hedging their bets and opinions to be opportune.

Adding more 0s doesn't make it any more convincing. It's also 10000% not post-hoc -- I analyzed the possible nightkills during the night exactly so I could avoid any post-hoc rationalization (I don't particularly care if anyone believes that or not, but that

was

my reasoning for it, so it's kinda funny to me that you're claiming otherwise). You most certainly could kill Greeting as scum, because otherwise you are pretty much locked in to a vote on him. You already basically said you were going to camp there. If you don't think that's a viable miselim (I don't think it really was), killing him gives you way more flexibility, since now you can easily vote anyone and play a more active role in the endgame, regardless of your partner. I think it especially makes sense if your partner is catboi or cape, since it allows you to easily push for Dunn. Any team without you on it, however, would be much more inclined to leave Greeting alive, because if you do just lock your vote on Greeting as town, the game is over.

I'm not really focused on you at all, I'm more concerned about catboi and dunn. I'm already pretty sure that you're the partner of whichever of them is scum. That's not hedging. I'm unsure between dunn and catboi, and trying to work that out.

Who do you think is mafia?

[butterchurn]

and he is close to confirmed scum to me.

Close?

[butterchurn]

Maybe he thinks there's a scumteam among me/cape/zefiend that just really thought this game was a lot of fun and wanted to keep playing.

[butterchurn]

Just was curious why you chose that phrasing, since it seemed odd from your perspective if you're town. I'm not particularly thinking it was a slip or anything.

[butterchurn]

It's very likely he legitimately suspected that void was possibly the doctor, and stayed away for that reason.

This wasn't a major point, but I don't think this is likely. Me, you, zefiend, and cape have claimed VT (Dunn has effectively claimed VT as well by thinking that void could be doctor, although I don't think he ever said it directly). If he were scum, then all of town just claimed VT. I don't see why town would lie on their claims here, so that would mean that we would be in Column C, with no doctor, and the scumteam would be aware of that since they wouldn't have a roleblocker.

As scum dunn lurks hard and akes that kind of play because he knows people will let him get away with it.

Do you remember any example games where this happened? I would very much like to look at them, if so.

I regret using the "carrying water" line on cape earlier because you really are making a ton of excuses for Dunn's play.

That wasn't my intent. I just wanted to hear your reasoning. You've given it now, thanks for that.

I WOULD HAVE COMPROMISED.

I made that post at 1:30 AM my time. The intent was to discuss this with other people. By the time I woke up, the game was hammered. I WAS GIVEN NO OPPORTUNITY TO TALK WITH OTHER PEOPLE. You are willfully distorting the timeline of events here. I did not have him as a strong suspect. I had him as someone in my POE. I was uncertain. I always am. I would have gladly moved to put my vote on him but was cut off from doing so.

I was referring to before that post, so no, I'm not distorting the timeline. I'm aware that you likely did not want things to move on void that fast regardless of your alignment. And if you didn't have him as a strong suspect, then that explains why you didn't push hard for him, although I still would expect you to look into him further earlier in the day when he had 2 votes from Greeting and cape.

Why the hell would you not engage with someone who has provided decidedly less to work with this game? Why would you notangage with his reasoning at all? The hyperfocus makes absolutely no sense.

Because I don't really trust my ability to read his responses or reactions. If you haven't noticed, I've had very poor reads this game (suspicions and votes on 3 of the 4 confirmed town), which is why I entered the day planning to approach things differently. And it's not like I'm ignoring him, I gave you each equal weight while I was rereading, I just don't really have specific questions for him. From my perspective, the only question is which of you or dunn is scum. I feel like I'm learning more from this than I would be if I took a different approach.

In a general sense dunn's scumreads this game prior to today have all been either opportunistic or survivalistic: he has either voted on the lead wagon at the time (as with not known/cape) or pushed back against the people who were pushing him. At precisely no point was he ever actually trying to genuinely evaluate people.

Do you mean with not known/void? When he voted cape, there were 2 votes on Greeting, and 1 each on zefiend, dunn, and void. I assume you meant that cape fits into the pushing back against people who were pushing him category, but he suspected cape before cape suspected him.

I have a harder time convincing people with something I intuitively feel in my head but haven't put into words yet. But as town I'm less interested in "showing" every step of my thought process and more in figuring things out for myself regardless of whether or not it all shows up in the thread.

I think I buy this, and it helps explain some of your behavior if you're town.

[butterchurn]

Also, I know I'm pushing you a lot, but understand my perspective -- yesterDay early I was fairly convinced of Greeting being scum, and for the most part, you talked me out of it. Once I had come around on Greeting, I was feeling a lot of doubt in my own scumreads and suspicions, and you defending Greeting had me townreading you. So I decided to put some more trust in the direction you were heading instead. That backfired pretty badly. It makes me pretty hesitant to follow along with you again, because I REALLY don't want to make that mistake twice, and so I want to make sure I'm doing my due diligence and considering all possibilities first.

[butterchurn]

...it hadn't actually occurred to me until this moment that there was no PR and scum would have known. Blunder on my part. Then he either faked it to look town, or ignored it knowing that my tunnel on void was beneficial to scum and if someone else got eliminated, it would benefit them.

Seems like a bit of a stretch to me that you would get that wrong as scum intentionally for the purposes of appearing town that hasn't thought things through carefully, or attempt to lie about it, so my instinct here is to read you more town for this.

mea culpa: had heard secondhand he does that stuff, couldn't find any record of him quickhammering a town elim as scum though, don't have the patience to dig. Do have an example of him making an opportunist vote on a town wagon that he'd previously been avoiding. Think regardless of player type your argument here is veering into "too scummy to be scum" territory, which is a logical fallacy.

I'll look a bit as well. And I think I lean towards agreeing with the last point here, I may have just been overthinking.

What, exactly, is there for me to "look further into"? I questioned him briefly to try to get him to explain his tances, felt it inconclusive, and moved on. I did not feel particularly inspired to ask more and didn't have much to work with. I wasn't going to compromise and vote him up too early into the day.

Because I don't really trust my ability to read his responses or reactions. If you haven't noticed, I've had very poor reads this game (suspicions and votes on 3 of the 4 confirmed town), which is why I entered the day planning to approach things differently. And it's not like I'm ignoring him, I gave you each equal weight while I was rereading, I just don't really have specific questions for him. From my perspective, the only question is which of you or dunn is scum. I feel like I'm learning more from this than I would be if I took a different approach.

You have simultaneously criticized me for not "looking further into" Dunnstral while not having anything to ask him yourself.

Fair enough. I think the context is different, but regardless, not particularly interested in pursuing this line any further.

False. Cape voted for Dunn in 403, and while Dunn said he disagreed with my townread of cape in 378, he didn't begin pushing back in earnest until Cape had him as a scumread.

I was referring to 222, but I suppose that isn't a huge amount of suspicion.

That seems a pretty drastic overreaction. Part of the game as town is being wrong. It's not to say I wouldn't have pushed void as scum, necessarily, but almost every town player, even particularly good ones, are frequently wrong on their scumreads (I am not particularly good town player, as I have repeatedly emphasized). I had precisely one scumread I was pushing for most of the game, which turned out to be incorrect. Why does that make me more untrustworthy relative to anyone else who's been incorrect? I understand skepticism and due caution at this stage of the game is warranted but it feels like you've put an unusual level of attention toward me.

It probably is. For most of the day, though, I was leaning towards the scumteam being you and zefiend, so I think it makes sense to be questioning you. And I think that doing so has accomplished my goal of getting a better read and better understanding of things and continuing to think things through, and I'm now leaning the other direction.

[butterchurn]

I'm aware people do that, I just think it seems unlikely in this scenario.

[butterchurn]

seemingly trying to get on my good side earlier in the day, wanting to direct the vote to zefiend.

Curious where you felt like this was the case. I guess what's in my head is not always what ends up in the thread, but from start of Day until fairly recently I was leaning scum on you (at some points more so, and at some points less so) and had little to no expectation of working together with you being very likely. Although I do remember at one point I wanted to see what you would do if there seemed to be a possible zefiend elim, because I didn't think town-you was particularly likely to switch off your suspicion of Dunn and onto zefiend. If you had, or if you had started trying to go along with me, I likely would have found that questionable, and would have been paranoid about you bussing in a potential you/zefiend scumteam. But I didn't think I really did much with that, because once Dunn cased you, a cross seemed pretty inevitable. Maybe that's what you were picking up, though.

Also, for what it's worth, I don't think I was ever townreading Dunn the way you think I was. The only townlean I had on him was because I didn't think the Greeting kill made sense for him. Not understanding why scum!dunn would do something is vastly different from giving him a townread for it, in my book at least. I can understand how it would look that way from your perspective, though. And naturally, when I'm looking at things from a perspective of you being mafia, that implies Dunn as town for me, even though I wasn't by any means townreading him in isolation.

[butterchurn]

The reasoning was very puzzling to me because I could easily see someone interpreting my backpedal on my analysis from the day as a way of keeping my options open, but you somehow concluded it was +town, which didn't really make sense to me

Shrug. Still makes sense to me, I stand by it. Wasn't a huge thing though, on a scale of 1 to 10 of suspicion that probably took you from like a 7.5 to a 7. That was around the point I was talking about, though, where I was curious to see if you would consider a switch to zefiend. Just not for the reasons that you're reading from it. Which, I know, I don't really expect you to just accept that, but I might as well explain my thought process.

I don't get the sense there's much consideration of whether or not he could be scum.

This is, to a certain extent, regrettably accurate. I definitely was considering it, but I wasn't really focusing on it. I'm historically pretty bad at reading people who don't post much, which probably is only more reason for me to focus on them even more, but instead usually means I mostly watch them from afar, and put them in the "let's come back to this later" bucket. When I do have reads, I usually don't know how to put them into words, or support them with evidence from the thread. It's a major weakness in my town game; I inevitably end up focusing more on the people who post more. I think if you pulled out my positions on zefiend from the first two Days, it would look fairly similar. And now I'm thinking that the mafia team are two of the lowest post count people in the game, so. Lessons for next time, I guess.

Also, I'm obviously biased, but if I were a scum partner to Dunn, I don't see any value for me to approach toDay the way that I have. Dunn felt like all but a foregone conclusion to be eliminated here, especially after on the surface-level, a Greeting kill will look bad for him to a lot of people. As town, foregone conclusions in ELo are very scary, and make me paranoid. My instinct is to run away from them, or at least be very wary. But as scum, I would absolutely just want to jump on Dunn for his hammer and bus him, and deal with the rest later. Even if for some reason I decided not to do that, I probably would have just kept tunneling on you, and Cape likely would have joined in. As town though, I was still doubting, and wanted to hear more from you. I don't see any reason why, after all this, you think I would then start to turn back to Dunn if I were scum. It would just be making the game way harder for myself for no real benefit. Instead, it's just the somewhat roundabout way in which my suspicions evolved.

[butterchurn]

Can you explain to me what things dunn posted you thought were insightful/made sense?

Sure. His first post 221 didn't particularly say anything new, but I agreed with it, and the reasoning seemed fine. 222 was something that I hadn't noticed but immediately made sense to me, so that's probably what I was calling insightful. 378 was pretty much all things I agreed with, along with 379. In the time between 221/222 and 378/379, I think his content was quite weak, and I believe I thought so at the time as well. But up to this point, even now, nothing that he says reads as particularly scummy to me. It's all just reasonable, fairly logical statements, and most of them followed similar trains of thoughts to what I had. I tend to be inclined to townlean for that, although perhaps I should be more wary of a pattern of weak content than I was (and, now in the perspective of looking at him as mafia, I think they are the kind of statements that are easy to make as scum). Even after that, 420 and 421 are good points as well. The first post that really felt off to me at the time was 473, which I questioned him on. After that I was watching him more closely, although I don't think the posts between that and the end of day activity pushed the needle much either direction, since there wasn't much to them. I had him as my second choice after my void vote because after I stopped tunneling on Greeting, I was attempting to refocus on the low-content posters that I had mostly been giving a pass to, and felt like the weak content both of void and Dunn were enough at that point to be worth a vote, especially since I was doubting my reads on the higher-content posters. I also thought he was a pretty likely partner for void.

[butterchurn]

I'm not always active consistently as town

Right now it doesn't even feel like you're trying. Who do you think is catboi's partner?

[butterchurn]

It was just a response to catboi saying that he would explain later if the game wasn't lost. I didn't particularly feel like waiting.

[butterchurn]

Or are you saying I shouldn't have ruled out a team of you/zefiend already?

[butterchurn]

Speaking of, I'll bring this up again:

Earlier you said if I'm scum the Greeting kill doesn't make sense unless I was planning to bus.

I did not. I said that about Dunn. Very interesting that you mixed those up, though. Since before the kill even came in, I thought that only teams with you on them would kill Greeting. The change in opinion that I've had is that I see it could be possible for Dunn to be scum (specifically, with you), where previously I thought the kill only made sense if he were town.

I didn't push this that hard at the time, but I legitimately think this could be a slip. Especially for someone who puts a good deal of weight on logic, and doesn't usually make honest mistakes of this type. In 596, I said that only teams with zefiend would kill Greeting. In notes about the dunn/zefiend pairing, I said it may require a bus, but it isn't mentioned for the other two possibilities (zefiend/cape and zefiend/catboi). With both of those pairings, I would expect a bus to be very unlikely, and that they would instead try to miselim dunn. In 603, I talk through the possibilities of Dunn being scum, and say that I didn't think a Greeting kill made sense for Dunn teams unless they were planning a bus. In 605, I reconsider my initial analysis a bit and say that I think a dunn/zefiend pairing with a planned bus is more viable than I originally thought. In 614, I continue that line of reasoning. In 629, I talk about the catboi/zefiend pairing and explain why it seems very possible to me, with no mention of a bus. In 641 I explain why I think a Greeting kill most likely comes from a zefiend team, again with no mention of a bus. 656 I talk more about potential catboi motivations for killing Greeting, and then 657 I say I'm even more convinced that the team has to include zefiend.

Meanwhile, zefiend seems to have been reading those posts and only taking in information related to the dunn/zefiend pairing. That was the only case where I talked about planning a bus in relation to a scumteam with zefiend.

[butterchurn]

Here you don't explicitly state I could bus catboi. But this pairing falls apart because catboi is currently crossed with Dunn.

This makes no sense. Obviously a you/catboi team is mechanically possible from my perspective, just as much as a you/dunn team, or a dunn/cape or a catboi/cape team. If the pairing was catboi/you, I said the most likely course of action for that team was to miselim dunn. And what teams are viable NOW does not have any effect on the words I've already said, so why is this relevant to your statement?

As a reminder, again, here's what you said:

Earlier you said if I'm scum the Greeting kill doesn't make sense unless I was planning to bus.

This is just a false statement. I nowhere said that earlier. I said that for a scumteam with Dunn, I didn't think a Greeting kill was likely unless they were planning a bus. That says nothing about you. It's only even relevant to you in the case of the dunn/you pairing. And let's say I'm being very charitable and believe that for some reason you think the only possible team from my point of view that includes you is you/dunn, AND that by "Earlier you said..." you meant to say "By taking what you said earlier and narrowing it down based on what I believe to be the current viable teams FYPOV...". Even if I generously take both of those interpretations, me saying "Team X would likely only kill Y if they are planning a bus" does not mean that Team X is now ruled out if there is no bus. Going into the day planning a bus is different than executing one (and you still might hammer Dunn, who knows). You're actually making the same logical mistake Greeting made earlier, that you explained in great detail, of judging intent based on result. So even in this very charitable view of things, which is the only one where I can see a possible town perspective from you here, you make two significant logical errors, and then double down on them when called out on it. I have a very hard time believing that someone who cares so much about logic would be so bad at it.

As someone once said:

This all sounds pedantic, but it is actually quite important. In scumhunting, logical errors can be honest mistakes. But, they can also be due to cognitive dissonance, which is impossible to 100% erase as scum.

The more likely (and much simpler, to Occam's razor a bit here) explanation to me is that you are partners with Dunn and so that was the only pairing that you really cared about reading about or thinking about. So in your mind, me saying that "a Greeting kill for dunn/zefiend only makes sense if a bus was planned" is equivalent to saying that "if zefiend is scum, the Greeting kill doesn't make sense unless he is planning to bus", because the only world that exists to you is one in which zefiend being scum is equivalent to the pairing being dunn/zefiend.

I'm also obviously not trying to lim you today anymore (I preferred that at the start of the day, but as soon as there's a cross, that's not going to happen). I'm just trying to show why you're the best lim tomorrow after we lim dunn.

[butterchurn]

I'm feeling pretty ready to lock in Dunn/zefiend. I don't mind being the next one to vote Dunn here, cape, you good with that? zefiend, you can even get in on the action and hammer if you want to.

Cape/catboi, if I'm right, one of us will be dead toMorrow. Anything else we need to talk about before that happens? I also don't at all mind waiting longer if you want to think more first, we have 3 more days to deadline, but it seems like Dunn has given up and, to me at least, zefiend is the clear partner. I don't have much else I feel like I need to look into or discuss.

[butterchurn]

Or are you saying I shouldn't have ruled out a team of you/zefiend already?

I was kinda subconsciously thinking about this when I said that.

Cape90/zefiend - 215 doesn't feel like a bus and I don't think cape tries for that on day 1 in a 9p setup.

I just didn't really agree there. Not to mention 1. zefiend wasn't a popular candidate, 2. catboi was literally expressing that bussing in a 9p setup here is not good, however, they argue that themselves/Dunn were not out of the question today.
IDK, I could have seen my vote on ze as like a distancing thing, but whatever

I did think that the pairing was plausible at the start of the Day, but I've been townreading you lately for other reasons. I guess I don't know how you play as mafia, so it's not super strong, but -- I don't mean this in a rude way -- I think you'd put more effort into making sense if you were scum. Your posts just feel very stream of consciousness and like a natural thought process in a way that I think is hard to fabricate.

[butterchurn]

Still ready to vote Dunn, expressing intent to hammer if that wasn't obvious. I can wait for zefiend/dunn to post again if they have anything they want to say, but eh at this point I don't see much benefit to drawing things out that much further.

[butterchurn]

Okay, well. Guess they don't want to. I'll probably hammer in the morning then unless someone gives me a good reason not to.

[butterchurn]

Yeah, I dunno. Kinda seems like they've just given up, which is... weird, since this should've been easy for them. But I'll take it, I guess. I always have some paranoid second-guessing at the last minute, but I really see no rational reason to believe the team would be anything else.

VOTE: Dunnstral

[butterchurn]

Well, I guess I can stop looking for cape games on MU, then.

Gonna give the catboi/dunn pairing one more evaluation, but it would take a lot to change my mind at this point. I don't think the "I'm still alive, I must be on the wrong track" is very rational twice in a row.

[butterchurn]

Oh, well, I guess I don't have to do that either then.

[butterchurn]

VOTE: zefiend

I think there's plenty of reason (and now it's obvious), but I can point out the things that were most convincing to me if you think it would be helpful.

[butterchurn]

Alright.

- zefiend's push on Greeting. His case is largely composed of either poking at logical issues, or taking Greeting's stated approach of working by associations and then nitpicking places where he wasn't necessarily always doing that. There isn't really a lot of reasoning from him along the lines of "would this be more likely to come from scum!greeting or town!greeting?". Maybe I'm biased, but I think my suspicion being due to Greeting's game, approach, and responses feeling off compared to his previous town games was more valid. As time went on, I started to come around on Greeting, since I think he started to look more town and your defense of him helped sway me. zefiend stayed tunneled on him, which, incidentally, is what I probably would have done if I were mafia there. I was also going to mention that zefiend's vote on Greeting came when there were 2 votes on Dunn and 1 on Greeting, which looks pretty bad to me, but then I realized that to you, my vote on Greeting when there's 2 on Dunn probably is pretty comparable, so I guess that doesn't help you much. I think the second vote there to tie things up is more suspicious, but again, I'm biased.
- the nightkill on Greeting. If scum zefiend is stuck voting Greeting here, it makes endgame significantly harder, as he has to either come up with a convincing reason not to vote Greeting, or make the vote anyway and confirm one of him/Greeting as scum. I don't think he wins that in the court of town opinion. A scumteam without zefiend, however, would want to keep his vote on Greeting, as already discussed. I also originally thought a Dunn team wouldn't want to kill Greeting, because in theory that pushes both me and zefiend towards Dunn in our suspicions, but if Dunn is partnered with zefiend that doesn't matter. zefiend can go wherever he wants -- he can choose to try to bus Dunn (that's what I think the best play would have been), or read the room and see where else he can go (the greedier and worse play, imo). zefiend is the one partner where I think a Dunn team killing Greeting makes sense, although I didn't recognize that immediately. Especially since Greeting would likely move onto zefiend if Dunn died.
- his approach to yesterDay. After his initial posts, he didn't really seem to have any interest in solving the game, just in defending himself. He cared MUCH more about setting up a cross with me for the next Day than he did about getting the first lim right, even way before it was clear that Dunn was more likely. He also never particularly seemed to come to a conclusion between you and Dunn. Town in that situation have to be considering things a lot more carefully, because all 3 town have to vote the same target and get it right (which I think me, you, and cape did pretty well at). zefiend wasn't really participating in that, and didn't have any sense of urgency or much care at all what the result of that Day was. Because as mafia, he knew that if Dunn was limmed, there would be one more Day to worry about, and if you were limmed instead, he wins.
- his slip, as I discussed in 763 and 770. This was what convinced me. I don't see any way that town zefiend makes that mistake. From some other players, I could see it, but not from him. He was pretty clearly reading my posts only caring about the dunn/zefiend pairing, since that's the one that exists. He also, when arguing back against it, just completely fails to comprehend that other pairings including him FMPOV were possible.


Also, now that it's confirmed (to me), kinda funny that NK15 got it right with his last post of Day 1. If only he had any credibility left after the fakeclaim:

Lim zefiend and dunn, unless they are prs. Tomorrow.

[butterchurn]

[butterchurn]

A few things worth addressing from that:

I was/have been the scummiest townie in this game since D2

I was the scummiest player going into Day 3

It's interesting that you state this twice. I'm not sure most people would agree with that, I certainly didn't on D2, but I guess it makes sense that it would look that way from your perspective, since you know that everything you do is scummy.

Also this line:

zefiend is the one partner where

I think

a Dunn team killing Greeting makes sense

is a cognitive slip because FYPOV you should

know

I'm scum, but you can't, so you wrote "I think" even though it should be 100%. But I won't dwell on this slip because there is enough to show that you are scum by play as well.

Nice try, but this is just silly. The "I think" in that is pretty clearly not referring to your scumminess, it's referring to whether a Dunn team killing Greeting makes sense. I'm still allowed to think things about a situation where I know you're scum. Here's another example: I think several things you've done as scum this game were mistakes. See?

It's not that I neglected other pairings (in fact I commented on several others) - it's that from your "nighttime" analysis and subsequent post, your PoE from the Greeting kill only pointed to me in a situation that was not occurring (Dunn getting bussed). Since we know that Dunn was not bussed by anyone, it is confirmed that your take for {Dunn+zefiend} was logically inconsistent. I was calling you out for that and you've slyly dodged that bullet every time.

First sentence is just wrong. My nighttime analysis actually pointed to you/catboi and you/cape, which obviously does not include Dunn getting bussed. I later reconsidered and added you/dunn to the pool of possibilities. Second and third sentence, I have addressed that already in 770, so that's also wrong.

[butterchurn]

If you have any more questions or things you'd like me to address, let me know.

[butterchurn]

So this and some other posts I probably missed are just establishing Butter is not a newb, for reference:

I don't know why you're acting like I was playing up my newness or hiding behind it in any way. I think I was pretty clear from the start that I have a lot of experience, just not on this site or recently. I think at one point I even said that I wanted people to know my experience level so that they could have more accurate reads on me.

Here butterchurn stages a progression of suspicion to townread on GeorgeBailey (dunn slot) with absolutely nothing in between. He had called out GB for lurking but never outright expressed suspicion and here he doesn't explain how GB is suddenly trending to a townread.

I explained this further in 239. It was not a townread and nowhere did I say it was.

This hesitance to be the first vote is something we see again on the following Day when VOID is actually limmed.

I wasn't hesitant to be the first vote on NK15. And I think my thought process on Void is clear. His first post looked bad, he continued along the same path and so I thought he might just be a newbie lacking confidence, and then the pattern continued for long enough to where it got to the point where I thought he would have improved his content by then if he were town. As town, I'm willing to consider all options and re-evaluate my positions. As scum it would serve me better to stay tunnelled on things and "show conviction", like you did with Greeting. If I were scum and you were town, that would mean that when we both were voting Greeting, I have a townie who is tunnelled on the wagon I started. Why would I ever leave it?

This sort of fingering of someone else while charging ahead on the mislim wagon is typical scumplay. It's a lose-lose situation for the FoS'd person because butter already knows the outcome, AND he gets to absolve himself for a "bad vote." Of course, NK 15 didn't do us any favors by fake-claiming, but in a vacuum this is a lite version of lining up lims.

Not much to say here cause it's a reasonable point. I think scum does do that pretty often, and I'm suspicious of it myself when people do it. All I can say is that it was something I noticed at the time and that I thought was worth mentioning, even if it didn't line up with what I at the time thought was most likely. I think I look at things from this sort of "what if I'm wrong" angle more often as town, though. As scum I'm usually more concerned with keeping an internally consistent view of the gamestate. I don't expect these "I do this more as town" type arguments to be very convincing, by the way, since I have no established meta on this site, but I might as well explain my side of things.

I believe the totality of these posts shows butter's opportunistic shading and hedging. It is hard for scum to take charge and power mislim because instinctively, being wrong looks bad. Butter's initial stance on greeting and cape were being his top scumreads that Day, but ultimately never committing to them. The VOID vote is about as safe as possible for scum to make. When you compare that to my activity, yes I death-tunneled Greeting, but I had conviction the whole way through because I wasn't afraid of being wrong (in fact I truly believed I wasn't wrong).

I generally care more about being wrong as town, actually. I don't want to make a mistake and lead another town to their elimination. And how is you saying that I wanted to avoid looking bad for being wrong cohesive with you saying that my vote on void was as safe as possible? I think that vote looked terrible, and I regret making it.


I will say that I'm glad you decided to put some effort in. I would have been somewhat disappointed if both mafia just gave up.

[butterchurn]

Was Cape really considering me as scum? I don't know why butter killed him - maybe he felt that your turnaround on Greeting and working with him on the VOID lim was enough cohesion between the two of you. Maybe he thought Cape would be more likely to reconsider in ELO. Or maybe he noticed that you've had soft suspicion on me all game and that would be hard for you to shake off. To me, NK analysis in a vanillaish game is very superficial. I know a lot of people use it in ELO but I don't think I could even fake it if I were scum in a leveraged position. Butter used it a lot yesterDay but hasn't said much about it toDay.

Maybe just look at this ELO in a vacuum if you're having a hard time recontextualizing the game from the start? Don't ignore the past, obviously, just use it as reference for what we're saying now.

NK analysis I think is useful when there's more players and more options and yet the options are still narrow enough to allow for some analysis. At this point, I don't think it's that useful. I already know why you killed Cape, and I think you just made it even more obvious to everyone.

catboi has already stated several times that he has a bad record in ELO due to second-guessing himself and overthinking, and that his accuracy of reads are significantly worse when he re-assesses things in ELO. I don't think it would be physically possible for you to be more blatant about your attempt to prey on that tendency.

This also beats the old dead horse about: FYPOV if Dunn and I were scum then we'd have seen a bus since our position was so bad we needed to make a play like that. We don't have to keep doing the old song and dance about this one - you've word wiggled your way out and I don't think catboi is paying much attention to semantics this game.

I hope he is paying attention, because you have apparently decided to just repeatedly say that you came out on top of the point about your logical mistake despite all evidence to the contrary.

As for the first point, I agree with you that you should have bussed Dunn. That's what I would have expected you to try, I think this game would have been a easier for you if you had. But you got greedy, probably because I expressed a townlean on Dunn early in the day based on the Greeting kill, and thought you could sit back and let town convince themselves to vote wrong. I actually think that what you said here is likely true:

Conversely if you look at my scum games, I let better players take charge and I get thrown under the bus/take a bullet if needed. If I happen to be the "better" player then we usually lose quick and dirty.

You were hesitant to bus Dunn even when you probably should have because you didn't want to be the last one alive (a bus the other direction was obviously not going to happen). You wanted to try to win yesterDay so you wouldn't have to be the "better" player.

[butterchurn]

First of all I don't even remember him saying that so if anyone is showing motive it's you, secondly even if I were lying about remembering, we both have access to catboi's meta so I don't see how pointing it out incriminates me only.

In 595, 677, and 725. But good luck convincing catboi that you were genuinely trying to come to a decision between him and Dunn yesterDay when you apparently weren't even reading his posts!

None of your pairings were true because you're scum and when called out on the impossibility of them, you deflect to talking about optimal scum strategy. Instead of you know, explaining your actual reads/progression on Dunn (which you never did, all game). Makes it pretty easy to townbin him when convenient and vote him out when the writing's on the wall.

Kind of getting tired of you just lying and me responding with "that's not true", and then you just lying again. You never called out the impossibility of my pairings because yesterDay all of the pairings were possible at the start of Day, obviously, and even after the catboi/Dunn cross, any team involving either one of them was still possible. That includes you/catboi, you/cape, you/dunn, dunn/catboi, dunn/cape. You just keep doubling down on being wrong about that and pretending like you caught me in some inconsistency, and it's getting ridiculous. I also did explain my progression on Dunn to catboi when he asked (in 751), but you've already shown that you haven't really been reading, so I don't expect you to have seen that.

[butterchurn]

Don't know if anything would be useful to you at this point, but I'm around if you have any questions.

[butterchurn]

I think that most simply, as scum with no established meta on this site I wouldn't have to try as hard. I also haven't played mafia in about 8 years, I don't think there's any shot that I would have been able to keep my thought process coherent and not come off sounding super artificial for this whole game, and would probably end up having a lower post volume as a result. I don't make that void vote as scum. I bus Dunn yesterday to stay consistent with my prior thoughts instead of taking the time to really figure things out. I'm also pretty sure there was a point yesterday where me and cape were both leaning towards you being scum and could have voted there, but as town I wanted to give you another chance to respond. zefiend has taken very little initiative towards actually solving the game and finding scum, and I feel like it's been clear that I have.

[butterchurn]

wooooo raise that ELO win% catboi!! gg wp all

[butterchurn]

Yup, I got worried around 811, I think he made a good case there.

[butterchurn]

@butterchurn, I feel like you've got too tunnelled over me in Day 2. While I understood your accusations and judged them to come from a town point of view, at times your posts felt to me like you had a strong case of confirmation bias. It happens to everyone though! Plus, it is true that I have never rolled scum yet, but I am very moody and my playstyle has evolved even in those few months that I have been here, on MafiaScum.net. In my opinion, trying to find meta by looking into things like "player x has not done this before as town" without having hard evidence of them doing it as scum is risky and can have many flaws.

I definitely did, but luckily I was able to recognize that and reconsider. Opposite to catboi, I think for me this game I'm glad I was able to rethink and work my way past my first impulses. I was also

very

close to voting catboi in Day 3, I was super paranoid for a while there. Not actually sure what exactly changed my mind, but I remember at one point going to sleep thinking "yeah it's definitely catboi/zefiend" and then waking up thinking "nah". If Dunn hadn't disappeared I might not have made that switch.

Kind of surprised at the commentary both from butterchurn and in the dead thread that zefiend's ISO case was strong - I didn't think it was convincing at all (no offense).

It's always hard to know what cases others will find convincing about yourself, but I just remember reading it and thinking "huh, I guess that does look pretty scummy" a couple times.

[butterchurn]

Kind of surprised at the commentary both from butterchurn and in the dead thread that zefiend's ISO case was strong

Oh, also, cape's comment about it in DT was sarcastic. At the time, zefiend hadn't posted the ISO case yet despite saying he was going to.