/Invitational 11: Pick your Poison 5 (Game Over)

[Elmo]

..oh, yes, you are. What I would do in your position is to reread his posts and maybe try and make a case if I found something, because I think having that as your only reason is not hugely convincing, albeit I think it's correct. If I've also managed to miss this then I apologise unreservedly >_>

I'm going to sleep now. :V

[Elmo]

BTW HAY TAJO AM I SCUM THIS GAME?

I HAVE NO IDEA. ARE YOU VOTING ONE OF VASUDEVA, AMISHED OR MIKE? IF YES, TOWN.

Oh, yeah, also that. Huh.

zzz

[VasudeVa]

Suffice to say thatI am being persuaded partly against my will of something akin to a too-scummy-to-be-scum-argument, except it's more like too-attention-grabbing to be scum. It's one thing in a small game (where there's little leeway for policy/VI/annoying playstyle lynches/misvigs), but in a Large game like this - one where scum-VV would know there's a Vig who'd like as not be perfectly happy to shoot someone who plays like that Day 1, Day 2 - I do think we would be seeing something less provocative, less 'full of buzzwords' to paraphrase Rhinox.

I was waiting for someone to say this! It would have been especially bad if it came from my own mouth since everybody hates WIFOM.

@Elli: Why do you think Tajo is correct about someone?

[Patrick]

Votecount

ekiM (2) -- Ellibereth, Rhinox
zoraster (1) -- Kmd4390
VasudeVa (3) -- Seraphim, ooba, SpyreX
ooba (3) -- Papa Zito, VasudeVa, Plumegranate
DrippingGoofball (2) -- mith, ekiM
Seraphim (1) -- SaintKerrigan

Not voting: Zorblag, Elmo, DrippingGoofball, Herodotus, zoraster
17 alive, 9 to lynch.

Deadline: 11th of September, 6 am GMT.

[Rhinox]

Zoraster > VasudeVa

Unvote. Vote: VV

No mention of zoraster at all today from ooba. What changed?

UNVOTE: ekiM
VOTE: ooba Wagon HO!!!

[Kmd4390]

unvote, vote ooba

[ooba]

I'm sorry but there's something I have to do for this game and I didn't have the time for it .. Will finish that and post tonight ...

[Papa Zito]

I....don't understand. Because he thinks tajo is the scum kill? Amished is on his earlier scum list and tajo is in his neutral list?

Argh.

We had two green kills last night. We know that we gave the scum roleblocker and janitor, and we know that there are only two factions in this game, so that means one of those kills was town. In other words, we have a vig.

Now, review ooba's Day 0 and tell me what you see.

[ooba]

Regarding Vas:
a) oGaM has ended and I had him pegged as the same (scum\town) in both games
b) It's almost as if he does not care much this game. I reviewed his scum game in Descent into Chaos - fights any accusations against him vehemently, posts cases - generally makes up effort to be viewed as town. (He does use WIFOM arguments here)

However I "First off, I don't understand what's so different about me here and in DeathNote's game (NY111). I was so lazy over there, refusing to post for weeks." is blatantly false.
- He keeps referring to his "laziness". He never talks about late day play D1 where he really did a lot of analysis. (I used his meta of SnowBunny in oGaM since I thought it was good)
- Plus the difference in way he asks questions when scumhunting. Compare P.801 to ISO 33.
Please look up his Greek Mythology game in ISO. I'm getting conflicting signals but I'd have really expected scum to have jumped on this if he was town. It's being ignored for the most part and like I said - too many people calling him a VI and giving him a free pass.

I feel he's being coached into this playstyle by more experienced scumpartners.

---

@Rhinox
Post 801.

- Both Plum and Rhinox are very weak jumps onto my wagon

[VasudeVa]

I....don't understand. Because he thinks tajo is the scum kill? Amished is on his earlier scum list and tajo is in his neutral list?

Argh.

We had two green kills last night. We know that we gave the scum roleblocker and janitor, and we know that there are only two factions in this game, so that means one of those kills was town. In other words, we have a vig.

Now, review ooba's Day 0 and tell me what you see.

Ohh, I think I see it now. He kept pushing for the Mass claim, and then favoring Rolecop without explanation.

[VasudeVa]

@ooba: Why are you still pushing for me when you've had firsthand experience of how lazy I can be as Town in a recently finished game?

[ooba]

@ooba: Why are you still pushing for me when you've had firsthand experience of how lazy I can be as Town in a recently finished game?

Clearly you haven't read 933 yet ..

[VasudeVa]

My play in minis and large games differ though. I like minis, it's easier to keep track of games. I don't think I've ever played well in a large before. Then again, I've never been scum in a large before too. I seem to play better as scum, it seems.

Also, I think I've explained my disappointment at getting into a 20 player game when like, 95% of the mods in the /in-vitational thread were putting up minis. Why do you think that this laziness of mine is scum motivated/coached? So because I'm scum in this game, I'll just let myself be lazy despite having probably awesome buddies to coach me and knowing the existence of a vig somewhere out there?

More ooba votes, please.

[Seraphim]

Seraph: is anyone besides VV scum?

I could definitely see DGB as scum. Part of that stems from her useless Hider claim gambit. Another part of that is the strange exchange between herself, Rhinox, and VV. Rhinox defends VV, KMD calls it out, and DGB dismisses it. I don't think this is evidence of a Rhinox/DGB/VV scumteam, which would be highly ridiculous, but we do see DGB indirectly defending VV.

I don't think wagoning on Day 1 is interesting, and 'not scumhunting' doesn't really grab me since there wasn't much going, and it seems a lot of people fall under that - but those obviously change as the game goes on. The part about attacking people who suspected him passed me by, I'm afraid - I should probably go back and reread, but I, uh, haven't yet. Reiterating your reasoning might be good.

Alright. Whenever one plays with "Village idiots" or perhaps you prefer the softer version "unconventional playstyle", it becomes more difficult to take the actions the VI makes to get an accurate picture of alignment. One needs to look at intent and try and get a feel for the player.

I have never played with VasudeVa before. Well, that's not COMPLETELY true. We were technically in the same game but he replaced in after I died. While ooba has already posted a great meta case on VV, it's interesting to go back and check out this game. At first glance, there are a lot of similar components. There's the bandwagoning, the one-line posts. But there also seems to be SCUMHUNTING in his post. His intent seems to be to catch scum.

If you look back at his posts in this game, he seems to be bandwagoning just for kicks. A lot of the time, he can't even articulate why he's voting a player(i.e. ooba). Playing the "too scummy to be scum" card works to a point but unless VV is a troll(which I don't think he is) he seems to be making more excuses for his play than actually playing. Just check out his last post:

Also, I think I've explained my disappointment at getting into a 20 player game when like, 95% of the mods in the /in-vitational thread were putting up minis. Why do you think that this laziness of mine is scum motivated/coached? So because I'm scum in this game, I'll just let myself be lazy despite having probably awesome buddies to coach me and knowing the existence of a vig somewhere out there?

Excuses, excuses. I'm in a large game, I don't play well in large games. I play better as scum. Awesome playerlist, wouldn't my buddies be coaching me better.

And then he OMGUS'd ooba a while back, a wagon I don't buy.

Do you understand what I'm saying? VV is scum because his motivation is not to scumhunt, but to make noise and bandwagon. I suspect he's being coached to do this. His play right now doesn't match up with his town or his scum play which makes me think he is being coached to play his "town" meta rather than butting heads. Does that make sense? Sorry if I'm a little incoherent.

[Seraphim]

I'm listening...

Your flaw in your case on ekiM, BTW, is that you assume Elmo-town which isn't necessarily the case. That's all I have to say on that subject.

[Kmd4390]

Dgb, do you think ooba and vas could be scum together?

[SaintKerrigan]

So I started typing a long and wordy argument for why Seraphim is scum, but I decided against posting that novel and giving you the short version.

Why Seraphim is Scum

1: His case on VasudeVa is fake.

Seraphim's case, by and large, spins VV's words to make them look scummier than they actually are. The following is the example of this that I was going to post with my long case.

Example 1

Well, I obviously know I'm Town. And seeing as Tajo and a few others started voting for me, scum thought "Hey, there's a pretty cool guy to counterwagon to save our buddy.1.". The fact that this wagon on me is building up at a suspicious pace raises eyebrows.

This is what I'm talking about. He's basically attacking everyone who votes for him(except for Tajo) by lumping them into scum.

In the part of the quote belonging to VasudeVa, he (VasudeVa) is expressing concerns (legitimate or otherwise) with the growth rate of a wagon on himself (who he views as a target of opportunity). Seraphim, however, reinterprets this as "[VasudeVa] basically attacking everyone who votes for him [sic] by lumping them into scum," which makes VasudeVa look considerably more suspicious than VasudeVa expressing concern with the rapid growth of his wagon, and is certainly a much better point to attack with.

Yawn at the OMGUS accusation. Does anyone ever believe that scum are more likely to do that? Lazy, lazy~

Nice appeal to emotion, which this totally is. You are leveling accusations on me based on nothing with the intent to discredit my argument by calling it "lazy" while avoiding the actual points presented. Maybe that's not OMGUS but that's exactly what you're doing right now.

Here, VV ridicules the notion that OMGUS is more likely to come from scum than town. Seraphim twists VasudeVa's language into an Appeal to Emotion (also, by the most queer and improbable of coincidences, a trait more often applied to scum than town), which makes the one legitimate point he had in this entire post (avoiding specifically addressing Seraphim's issues) seem even more resounding. Dodging is not always a scumtell, particularly when it's already been partially addressed and it gets more fully addressed in a short while (which VasudeVa did in the post immediately following this exercise post). Thus, when you look at what Seraphim is saying, he's really blowing a lot of smoke, produced by his fat cigar [making his identity as the Red Spy, aka scum, even more obvious (for those of you with literally-inclined mentalities, this last assertion was in jest)]

Unless people really want me do, I'm not going to go back and show every instance of him doing this, but it's been more than once.

2. Theory Attack

Example 2

Let me break it down for you, VV.

You are voting players for reasons other players have provided and then attacking other players for voting you. It's scum play through and through.

You're not scumhunting, you're jumping onto wagons to make it look like you are scumhunting. Then, you attack the people wagoning you while being snide and snotty about it.

This is Seraphim describe VV's "scummy" behavior. Problem, both of the given reasons don't actually qualify as bonafide scumtells. Town players, as well as scum players, have piggybacked on other people's reasoning

and

attacked other players for voting them. When Seraphim tries to qualify why VV's case is scummy, all he does is speculate without proof ("You're not scumhunting...") and attack VV's personality and playstyle ("You attack the people wagoning you..."). [sarcasm]This is quite a lot of smoke blowing from a townsperson, isn't it?[/sarcasm]

3: Overclarification and Positional Shift

When Seraphim backed down from his VV vote to join the Hoopla lynch wagon, he spent a fair bit of time establishing his transformation. First, having argued that VV is scum for a good portion of D1, he suddenly introduces the idea that VV may just be "stupid" instead of scum. He continues to iterate this, while simultaneously building up the idea that he'd be willing to join the Hoopla wagon. Finally, he makes the switch.

Scummy? By itself, not necessarily. But then Seraphim

immediately

follows his Hoopla vote with a clarification that he still thinks VasudeVa is probscum, but Hoopla is also acceptable and he's just making sure a lynch happens. This doesn't sound honest to me; it seems like he's trying to put out a potential fire (shifting from VV to Hoopla) before it starts. That's where the scum factor kicks in.

To kick it off, Seraphim goes back to his D1 vote at the start of Day 2, with no mention (that I detected) of the stupidity line that got him to unvote VV yesterday. Rather convenient, isn't it?

4: The Neutral Reaction to Hoopla's Gambit

Seraphim's reaction to Hoopla's self-lynch was

indifference

. He showed no strong opinion on it one way or the other, unlike other people who were posting at the time. This reads to me like someone who was afraid of stepping on an invisible landmine, and thus chose to wait until the mine was already blown up before moving forward.

So yeah, that's why Seraphim is scum. More votes on him, please.

As for why VV is town, I might do a bit on that later, but basically so far the issues he's presenting seem to stem more from subpar (no offense, VV) play than scum alignment.

Ooba loses a lot of points for using a meta argument on VV. Those weren't in vogue since bell-bottom jeans.

FoS: Ooba

[Seraphim]

I don't have time to respond to everything, but my neutral response to Hoopla's gambit was due to confusion on my end. I thought the Janitor could switch his target until the reveal so I wasn't terribly excited that Hoopla had pulled off her gambit because I thought it had failed. I thought Hoopla had self-hammered too early for it to be effective.

[VasudeVa]

Do you understand what I'm saying? VV is scum because his motivation is not to scumhunt, but to make noise and bandwagon. I suspect he's being coached to do this. His play right now doesn't match up with his town or his scum play which makes me think he is being coached to play his "town" meta rather than butting heads. Does that make sense? Sorry if I'm a little incoherent.

No, that does not make sense. What this is, is refusal to back down despite being shown evidence/explanations to the contrary(of me being Town.). This is a massive stretch and it is getting old. What's the matter? Afraid of looking bad hmm?

What the hell are you talking about me not scumhunting? I've called you scum, called ooba scum, called Hero scum at some point, called Hoopla scum and bandwagoned the hell out of whoever. What makes you say that that is not scumhunting? I may be lazy about it but that does not mean that I am not scumhunting.

Also, here's an OMGUS:

FoS: Seraphim

Seraphim/ooba scumteam anyone?

[VasudeVa]

I don't have time to respond to everything, but my neutral response to Hoopla's gambit was due to confusion on my end. I thought the Janitor could switch his target until the reveal so I wasn't terribly excited that Hoopla had pulled off her gambit because I thought it had failed. I thought Hoopla had self-hammered too early for it to be effective.

ie. Daytalking buddies HALP!

[Seraphim]

No, that does not make sense. What this is, is refusal to back down despite being shown evidence/explanations to the contrary(of me being Town.). This is a massive stretch and it is getting old. What's the matter? Afraid of looking bad hmm?

Where the fuck is the evidence to the contrary? All I see is people dismissing you as "too scummy to be scum" and that's hardly evidence.

What the hell are you talking about me not scumhunting? I've called you scum, called ooba scum, called Hero scum at some point, called Hoopla scum and bandwagoned the hell out of whoever. What makes you say that that is not scumhunting? I may be lazy about it but that does not mean that I am not scumhunting.

Just because you're voting a player does NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT THE MILLIONTH POWER MEAN YOU ARE SCUMHUNTING.

[VasudeVa]

Where the fuck is the evidence to the contrary? All I see is people dismissing you as "too scummy to be scum" and that's hardly evidence.

Evidence/explanations. Whatever. You automatically dismiss my actions and interpret them with the scummiest interpretations possible. At first, I was willing to give you some le-way and tell you how wrong you are with your interpretations but I've grown tired of your tunnel and your recent chainsaw to ooba shed some new light of your motivations.

Just because you're voting a player does NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT THE MILLIONTH POWER MEAN YOU ARE SCUMHUNTING.

Yes. It does. Why? BECAUSE I SAY SO. MUHAHAHHAHAHAHAH.

Serious answer: Yes I am.

Serious-er answer: No really, I am.

Serious-est answer: Fuck off.

[ekiM]

Really? You could see that statement coming from town? Let me give you a little more. ekiM just got done making a big deal about Elmo being sorted out through night actions. Presumedly, that means ekiM doesn't want to lynch elmo, but he doesn't think elmo is town either. So, how does questioning elmo about who the other suspects were (besides amished) help town-ekiM lynch scum today? I can't think of a good reason, but I can think of a very good reason for scum-ekiM to try to determine elmo's vig list.

Huh. Seems like you've misread me. I didn't ask who his other potential vig targets

were

(and he already gave a run down anyway). I asked whom he suspects

now

. That doesn't help me figure out whether to lynch Elmo (we aren't going to), but it might help my thinking on other players, whatever Elmo's alignment is.

I see now how revealing Elmotown's suspects could potentially help scum figure out if he's a threat to them tonight, but that's a needle for him to thread however he feels best. And if he's town are scum going to risk not blocking him, really?

Suffice to say thatI am being persuaded partly against my will of something akin to a too-scummy-to-be-scum-argument, except it's more like too-attention-grabbing to be scum. It's one thing in a small game (where there's little leeway for policy/VI/annoying playstyle lynches/misvigs), but in a Large game like this - one where scum-VV would know there's a Vig who'd like as not be perfectly happy to shoot someone who plays like that Day 1, Day 2 - I do think we would be seeing something less provocative, less 'full of buzzwords' to paraphrase Rhinox.

I think this is a pretty good point. It's hard to see scum imitating a VI when they know there's a vig. People saying stuff like this:

I feel he's being coached into this playstyle by more experienced scumpartners.

VV is scum because his motivation is not to scumhunt, but to make noise and bandwagon. I suspect he's being coached to do this

... should explain why this kind of coaching makes sense wrt Plum's point.

---

I still have a problem with DGB going from believing Hoopla wagon was scum driven with 7 votes, to believing Hoopla was scum giving up under pressure with 6 votes. No response. Nobody seems interested though.

I think this Ooba wagon has more legs. Rhinox's 929 is a good point, Zito's point is good. ISOing ooba his scumhunting seems pretty lazy.

UNVOTE: DGB
VOTE: ooba

I wonder though:

I'm starting to agree with ooba. I could see vas/rhinox as scumbuddies

unvote, vote ooba

What changed?

[ekiM]

SK's 941 seems decent.

[VasudeVa]

Hey, SK. Let's lynch Seraphim's buddy ooba first, he seems important.