Describe the Playstyle Above You

[Frogsterking]

For shits and giggles (I had some bourbon.)

I have never played with LLD but I have read their guide on playing scum which ironically I think was very helpful for scumhunting. It's probably one of the first sources I would recommend reading to someone who is new to forum mafia though I think the points might not kick in until quite a bit of experience with the game. In particular this is the excerpt which stuck with me:

"As a result, the single most important thing to avoid being lynched as scum is to form connections with the players in your game. They don’t need to be positive connections, they don’t need to be tight relationships, they just need to be connections that you can exploit. It's great if a connection ends with a player believing you are town, but even this is not necessarily required. As long as there are players that are easier to lynch, scummier and even more dangerous than you, you can avoid lynches by the skin of your teeth.

It is a common idea that, at the most basic level, playing scum is being seen as town, but I’d like to suggest that this not only isn’t necessary, but that it may even be actively harmful. If you’re constantly being read as very town for the entire game, people begin to question why you are still alive. It is because of the unpredictable inconsistencies of players that connections, as opposed to general sense of towniness, are important. When you have connections with a player, your posting history is more important to them, and often, your mental progression is more obvious to them."

I think this also works in reverse (or inverse?) when we lack connections with other townies we lose the ability to

easily

perceive their mental progression as something which can be understood, causing us to scum read them. On a small scale (a few TvTs) this leads to a minor delay in Town winning the game, on a large scale (several Town determined to scumread each other) this leads to the complete dissolution of a Towncore or the failure to form one in the first place.

I've read part of a game LLD was in (HDP2) and I might edit this post with more direct feedback about LLD's playstyle once I've finished reading that game.