Mini 391 - Fairytale Mafia, Game Over

[Ripley]

Three names beginning with an animal, counting bird. Two beginning with a pretty color. Just right for Fairyland.

Random

Vote: LuckayLuck

[Ripley]

divestment of accountability.

Well I don't know about the rest of you, but

I'm

impressed.

[Ripley]

Heck, if everyone else has avoided giving as much as 1/1000th of a scum tell you people must be really good. I'm suitably alarmed.

Hello again IH btw. I almost didn't notice you over there.

[Ripley]

I'm struggling to get into this game at present. There's an argument seems to have been going on for a while about "reaching to make a post" and "Weak suspicion" and for some reason my eyes just glaze over every time I come to it, like a paragraph in a book you know you really ought to read and understand but somehow you can't get to the end of the first sentence.

I believe townies as well as scum may start off a game trying to find a reason to post just to post something. And that in most games, the first person to break the string of random and joke votes and witty one-liners by expressing some suspicion is likely only to have found something very, very small (most people don't, unlike LuckayLuck, even provide the size in fractional form, but whatever...) because there's simply not going to be anything bigger most of the time. And inevitably Player 2 comes along and jumps on Player 1 for exaggerating something tiny. Happened to me in my first two games, where I got accused of making "elephant out of fly" and "a mountain out of a molehill" respectively. But somebody has to be willing to do it or the game would never get moving.

Now Seol in particular has managed to find a huge amount to say about posts that to me just said "nothing much going on yet". I don't have this hi-tech scum detection apparatus. It's quite possible I'll see things in these early posts later on, with more information and context, than I do now.

I disagree with Seol about GC deliberately misunderstanding this:

In other news, I think that Echo419 demonstrated a 1/100th townie tell. CONTRARY to what you think actually GC. I think the more posts that happens, the clearer a pitcure and story is painted for townie observation.

I think that "CONTRARY to what you think actually GC." does not feel like a sentence, and so one instinctively looks to attach it with a comma to what went before or what comes after, and as one is reading forward that's the natural direction to go. Especially with the word following being "I", and therefore still capitalised after a comma, the natural place to mentally substitute the comma for a full stop is there, rather than before CONTRARY. Not saying you'd do this consciously at all, but this could easily lead you to the reading GC gave it.

Is there really no such thing as a townie tell? Are there not power role tells, which by extension would be townie tells?

Leaving my vote on LuckayLuck for the moment. I like the elegance of "Honestly" being a dishonesty tell, and IRL people who say "Frankly", which is

almost

the same thing, irritate me beyond reason.

[Ripley]

My goodness. "1/1000th of a scum tell Ripley-buddy-basher LuckayLuck coldly rebuffed in shock dual-best-friend proposal". How much pathos and irony am I supposed to be able to take on a Monday morning?

[Ripley]

I'm back, though after today I'm unlikely to be able to post again for a few days.

I just tried rereading the thread and it was

very

hard work. There are a few people in this game who will argue even the smallest point in minute detail, and it only takes a few. An unusually high proportion of posts are addressed to a single other player. There have been detailed debates going on between Seol/Green Crayons, IH/Green Crayons, Seol/LuckayLuck, LuckayLuck/Green Crayons. And an entirely separate one between Wolfsbane/Dodgy that has dragged on and on and on.

I'm aware that I'm free to chip into any of these arguments but I feel entirely detached from them all. Not a single thing that any of you has said in these posts has made me think the poster or the postee more or less scummy, only that you are people who really,

really

want to be sure you are correctly understood, however many pages of posts it may take to achieve that.

Consider Seol. Now, Seol is a person I would very much like to have on my side in a court of law, though I might worry that I might not live to enjoy my acquittal, so long would the proceedings take. He has a fine line in putdowns and a relentless grasp of detail. It would be incredibly hard to defeat him in an argument. I profoundly hope that Seol is protown in this game. But I have absolutely no

opinion

on the matter.

The earliest major skirmish was between Green Crayons and LuckayLuck, and it seemed even those involved (GC, at any rate) had detected that the argument was getting way out of proportion and were trying to limit it:

If you respond to anything above the line, I'm going to let it die with what you say, as there's no point in continuing arguing over confusion caused by punctuation.

But immediately after this comes Seol with post 56 which I think really kicked off the descent into microanalysis. I have seen people make this kind of PBPA post before, and I fully believe that Seol makes a habit of it in all his games, but on page 3? Before some players had even got started? Inevitably the effect was to focus on the players who had posted the most, and Seol himself notes this:

In summation, both GC and LL look scummy to a degree, and they're the two who have posted the most.

... and these two, already shown to be more prolific by disposition than the average, naturally respond in great detail, in what I'll call PBPRs (Point by Point Rebuttal? Paragraph by Paragraph Response?), creating another sea of words to be picked apart, and the whole ghastly cycle starts to repeat.

I do query the usefulness of Seol's post 56 at such an early stage in a game which appeared to be evolving naturally at a reasonable pace (ie it did not require unusual measures to kick it into life). One effect has been to divide the game pretty much into two groups, those who are involved and those who aren't. I wouldn't

choose

to be uninvolved in a game. It just seems to have happened.

One reason Seol might do this is that lengthy analysis often has the effect of impressing people with the player's protown credentials. It is simply harder to believe that a scum player would take so much time to do an analysis. So by getting one in at a very early stage Seol could plant the seed of his probable goodness in all our minds. In fact I noticed on my reread that Dodgy says almost exactly this:

More often than not, I have found that this type of post is there to sway the town that they are on the towns side, as subconsciously, when you read such a post, you feel it helpful, therefor catorgarising that player as town (Seol).

... though he later retracts his suspicion on being assured that Seol always posts like this. Seol, in the absence of any search facilities can I ask you to name other games where you've made posts like this

at such an early stage

?

I can't promise to give future PBPRs, that are addressed to other players and on issues I don't think interesting or relevant, the kind of close scrutiny I would normally give to every post in a game. (And I suspect I may not be the only one.)

LuckayLuck I'm finding quite entertaining at least. Who could fail to be moved by the last line of Post 101...

Seol, someday...someday, we'll be masons.

... for all the world as if he's about to burst into song, maybe in a minor work by Andrew Lloyd Webber, though it can only be a matter of time before Seol arrives to crush his dreams brutally, yet again.

[Ripley]

I hope my post made clear the distinction between :

1. a PBPA. which I took to mean a post that analyzes a number of different posts, maybe but not necessarily by a single player, and addressed to everybody, and

2. what I called a PBPR (later called PBPB by others), the defining characteristics of this being that it is addressed to a single player, and responds, point by point, and often in excruciating detail, to points made by that player, also usually in a single post. This is the kind of post I meant when I said the following:

I can't promise to give future PBPRs, that are addressed to other players and on issues I don't think interesting or relevant, the kind of close scrutiny I would normally give to every post in a game. (And I suspect I may not be the only one.)

The responses from Rathyr, Dodgy and Echo (which seemed to support the suggestion that I'm not the only one) also, I think, referred to that kind of post. Echo's description of "epic point-by-point battles, the intricacies insignificant to all but those directly involved" makes it certain that he was, at any rate. But then IH:

I'm a big supporter of PBP's myself. It helps me organize my thoughts, and I can make connections better, but they are only useful once in a while.

Also, Rathyr, Dodgy, and Echo(and possibly wolfsbane), I know you stated your stance on PBPA's, but you could just be doing this to avoid posting anything worthwhile. Would you at least skim them for us, and see if anything jumps out at you, or... something.

I just don't like the idea of you guys sitting out with the excuse "There's no point in posting, long PBP's turn me off".

... seems to be referring to the traditional PBPA-type post. Seol sees the distinction:

This style (PBPB) can be effective, but it's also selfish. This is, after all, a game - it should be fun, and too many posts that are too big can turn the game into a chore.

but spectrumvoid doesn't:

I skimmed through a little, and I really don't like people who choose not to go through PBPAs.

I really don't think people have said that.

More things I need to respond to, which I'll try to do later tonight.

[Ripley]

Are you saying I'm too townie?

Not at all. Writing such a detailed analysis at such an early stage was not necessarily good for the game, and may actually have been harmful: focusing attention on the few people who had posted most, starting a trend for epic PBPBs that clogged the game, causing uninvolved people to pay less attention to the details of what was going on. (While at the same time tagging you as probably protown in people's minds.) So I was interested to know if you had previously done this so early as a protown player. I looked at the two games you linked to. In one of them you did indeed make some massive posts. starting on page 4 when the game had been going for just over a week. (In Band Mafia you were much quieter. In fact you didn't post at all. This seems very out of character. Maybe you were operating under an assumed name?)

In any case, this rings true:

Also, I've been away from Mafia for a bit and I was itching to get into a logical rampage almost for the sake of it.

... so I'll leave it at that.

LuckayLuck. It seems from your frequent references to timing that this is a key feature of your townie-detection methods. Surely in a game like this, the timing of posts is determined more than anything by people's schedules and when they're able to find time for Mafia? Or are all your deductions of this nature along the same lines as the one you've described to us, that is: "a mafioso would never make this post so soon, therefore I have found another townie"...?

I think Seol brought up an interesting point about Echo. It seems like he wants to tie GC and Seol together for some reason. I don't see this connection. Why are these the same two players that LL chose for his wacky mason scheme? I don't see the connection between GC and Seol and why it helps us to think that they are both town. Echo seems too happy with this really messed up situation.

As Seol has already pointed out, this isn't right. Echo makes only one reference to GC and Seol as a pair, a reference which isn't unreasonable considering the amount of interaction between them. The GC/Seol thing did pretty much dry up in post 90, which is a while before Echo posts (post 105), but it's his first post since they stopped so I don't see anything odd about it,, certainly not the nefarious artificial linkage that you seem to be suggesting.

Welcome to the game btw spectrum.

[Ripley]

currently in this game no one seems so much scummy as simply argumentative.

Agreed.

The opening pages of this game are an incredibly difficult read. Pages 3-5 in particular are a nightmare. I suspect they've seen off some of our early casualties from this game. Do we really need our replacements to wade through these posts? spectrumvoid is struggling to get anything from them. The arguments contained within seem to have died away without any real scumminess being claimed as a result. Seol is done with LuckayLuck and has presumably got the need for an early logical rampage out of his system. Three new players all at once feels like a fresh start in a way. Why don't we welcome them by unvoting and agreeing to begin the game again?

Unvote: LuckayLuck

[Ripley]

I've decided, after looking him over, it's his playstlye, and not inherent scumminess. Unfortunately I can see scum WIFOMing this a lot in future days... beware.

This sentence struck me as incredibly suspicious - not quite sure why, though probably due to the reference to what mafia might do; I've seen scum do that before (not saying it's a tell or anything, just something that popped up at me).

This is actually the first thing anybody's said that resonates at all with my own (admittedly very limited) experience: a player saying what they expect mafia to do rings alarm bells with me as a result of my one completed game. However. The references by the player in that game were both more general and more frequent than seen so far from Echo, and were offered in a tone of detached instruction, so it's not exactly the same thing. I didn't even notice it till Green Crayons picked up on it. But ... now I do notice it - as I said, alarm bells going off.

Echo419 is a townie based on his posts. Similar reasoning to that of Seol's. Obviously different type of style/timing/townie tells for him as he's a very different person than Seol, but Echo is a townie.

LuckayLuck seems to have gone really quiet, which is a bit odd when he was so prolific at the start, and also when there's so much heat on somebody he believes with 95% certainty (if I understand his chart properly) to be protown.

[Ripley]

Also, I'm waiting for replacements for bird & yellowbounder. Getting the word from those 2 will likely alter my perception a lot.

You really don't have the faintest idea what's going on, do you?

[Ripley]

First of all, sorry for the silence during the last few days when I haven't been able to post.

Ripley- Why are you not in the votecount? Are you voting/ suspicious of anyone currently- if so, who and why?

1. Not my responsibility.
2a. No.
2b. No.
3a. Not applicable.
3b. Not applicable.

I think fights are good for the game. When people get emotional, they tend to slip up more, which can be useful for finding scum. Forcing people to defend themselves can tell you a huge amount about what they are really thinking.

I think there are fights and fights. A townie is a townie, so it doesn't matter how emotional they get, there's no slipping to be done. Probably a high percentage of really wordy arguments are actually townie v townie, because townies are more inclined to post at length and less careful about watching their words. I suppose what I'm saying here is they're more likely to be useful in ruling out scum than finding scum. And it does seem, looking back at what's happened here so far, that this has been the most common reaction to the people who have engaged in wordy arguments - that they're likely protown.

Rathyr does seem very detached from the game, and is not even trying to hide it. His last post, the only one from him in 6 days:

Checking in.

I have no idea who I am voting at this point, so I will Unvote.

just screams "Not interested".

LuckayLuck. Your towniedar - which is what we have to call it since the technique seems to identify townies exclusively, the scum being pinpointed by process of elimination - certainly did work for you in your newbie game. However.

In, say, 30% of the games you play, you're going to be scum. Your style as protown is to bound about like a happy puppy sniffing out townies and presenting them proudly for approval. tail wagging. So, when you're scum, if you want to avoid being instantly identified as such and lynched on the spot, you have to

pretend

to bound about like a happy puppy sniffing out townies, etc etc etc. How are we supposed to know that's not what you're doing now? (Incidentally, I didn't even understand what you were saying in the first two Echo tells you listed.)

[Ripley]

Ripley- Why are you not in the votecount? Are you voting/ suspicious of anyone currently- if so, who and why?

1. Not my responsibility.
2a. No.
2b. No.
3a. Not applicable.
3b. Not applicable.

This, oh, how shall I put it...

just screams "Not interested".

A poor attempt at a cut-and-paste stitch-up by Seol. The minute or less it takes to pull up all posts by Rathyr and then by me and to contrast the two sets is ample to show the difference between a player who is interested and one who isn't.

But for now, I feel like going

vote: IH

.

You know people are going to ask why, so why not save time and tell us?

How can you not suspect anybody? I just don't understand. You must have some kind of idea? A twitch, a figure of speech, a glass eye- any of these can be a clue.

How are you not suspicious of anyone after eight/nine pages? I'm not talking vote-worthy, merely suspicious. Are you saying that all 11 other people are acting like saints?

Sorry to disappoint you both but I cannot manufacture suspicion where none exists. This isn't a situation that I'm enjoying particularly. It's more fun to have a suspect.

I said some time ago that the game had divided early into two groups, those who were involved and those who weren't. The people who aren't involved in a game are the ones who would normally get my attention, but in this game we have the unusual situation that nearly all of them have left it. We're now awaiting our fourth replacement. Really, the only one left is bird1111, who's made only 1 real attempt at post with content. post 92. Though when you look closely at this apparently lengthy post he wrote scarcely a word of it; two sets of mistyped quotes disguise this at a casual glance. He seems fairly fixated on something to do with IH and post 68, something I had classified as "some miniscule point about almost nothing at all". I have no idea if this is in any way related to Seol's vote.

So, the lurkers have left, the prolific posters (Seol, GC, LL, IH) come across as innocent almost from the sheer volume of words and the effort it would take to produce them. I'm not ready to give an opinion on the replacements yet. Who does that leave? bird1111, about whom I've said all I have to say at this stage. Since so many others have left I'd like to get a confirmation he's playing on. Wolfsbane: I just don't have an opinion. Echo: I'm not convinced by the arguments against him, and the outcome of a lynch in another game of a player accused of one of the main charges aganst Echo (I hope it's OK to refer to ongoing games in such general terms as this) has inclined me more to give him the benefit of the doubt.

As for Luckay being scum- if he is he's in trouble because he either will point out genuine townies, which helps us, or establish clear links between him and his scumbuddies, which also helps us. Of course, noone is above suspicion, but I see no reason to mistrust him yet. Do you, Ripley?

Not really. But I do wonder how well he's able to pull off the LL persona as scum. It would be useful to have a completed game where he was scum to look at.

[Ripley]

His angry tone notwithstanding, I am getting VERY strong townie vibes from Ripley based on this last post.

I'm astonished by this. I'm not the slightest bit angry with anybody, and certainly had no intention of sounding as if I was. Perhaps I just don't pick up my own tone... in any case, apologies for the misunderstanding to anyone who may have thought I was angry with them.

[Ripley]

Still, I suggest you have a read through, and if you get anything, even if it’s just a twinge, let us know.

Anyway, Ripley, don’t stop posting because you have nothing to say

I will let you know, you can be sure of that. Maybe that's enough of focusing solely on me now? I mean, I'm not the only one without suspicions. spectrumvoid found nothing despite her 4 readthroughs. She has voted but only to pressure a player to talk, not because she thought him scummy.

Still, I really want to know what Rathyr has to say for himself. He hasn't posted much, but every post he has made lights little flames of doubt in my mind. C'mon guys, you get what I'm saying, don't you?

Mmm-hmm. As for all the prolific posters being town, I disagree. There’s at least one who I consider a good candidate for being in a scum group with Rathyr.

Did you find something more in Rathyr's posts than you've told us? (Maybe it's poor etiquette to be discussing this while his replacement's still catching up, I don't know...) As I said, I just saw lack of interest. There was one thing I didn't understand but I put that down to me being dense:

However, without sounding like a scummy counter-OMGUSer, I think that GC is rather agressive today,

What's a

counter

-OMGUSer? Green Crayons hasn't said anything about Rathyr at this point, though he votes him on the next page. But I don't think "counter-OMGUSer" can mean "someone who attacks another player as retaliation against that player's future attack" - appealing though the concept is.

I agree, it's probably lazy/naive to assume a player who posts a lot is innocent. I would think it's harder for scum to manufacture a lengthy analysis of the game (tough to pretend interest in a puzzle to which you already know the answer, plus the plentiful opportunities for a slipup) than to engage in an equally lengthy dialogue with another player over relatively small matters (less danger, fewer pitfalls, in fact a good opportunity to pour out loads of words that are unlikely to ever incriminate you) - and the long posts in this game have been of the second kind. So I'll keep my mind open.

[Ripley]

Ripley, you say you don't have suspicions, but when I look back through your posts I see plenty of digs at Seol, plus some on Rathyr, and LL.

I was asked am I suspicious of anyone now, not have I at any time been suspicious. I had resolved the issue I had with Seol. I haven't been suspicious of LL that I can recall. I've enjoyed him for his entertainment value, which continues to be first-rate. As for Rathyr, I don't think I said anything about him until my last few posts; what I did say was in response to M4yhem and I don't see that it contains digs.

Sometimes you say the prolific posters seem town, sometimes you say they could be faking these arguments.

Thoughts aren't fixed in stone but change and evolve, sometimes as a result of input from other players, sometimes on their own. Particularly in your first few games where you're seeing situations for the first time.

You really do seem to have suspicions, but they aren't especially consistent and you aren't voting on them. I get the feeling you're just throwing stuff out there to see if something will stick.

I thought the complaints that have been made were that I was

not

throwing anything out there.

This quote below where you try to deflect M4yhem's focus on you over to spectrumvoid rubs me the wrong way. Why shouldn't we be focusing on you?

Because I think the point has been sufficiently made, that people are surprised I don't really find anybody suspicious at this stage and would like to hear from me the moment I do. I have absorbed this thoroughly. I don't see the game benefiting from this being repeated again and again right now. Your reaction actually makes me wonder if you (and possibly others) had an interest in keeping attention focused exclusively on me. I'll think about this some more.

Ripley made a GREAT post, and I'm sure it was unintentional "anger"...casting suspicion, perhaps, but there -was- something in the tone. (Not just that post either, earlier, you have to admit there was some definite hostility -

Also, I'm waiting for replacements for bird & yellowbounder. Getting the word from those 2 will likely alter my perception a lot.

You really don't have the faintest idea what's going on, do you?

don't worry about it, I deserved it

No, no, no. Not hostility at all, not the smallest bit. Amusement, mostly, but not

mocking

amusement even. Friendly amusement. Sorry it came over so badly. Maybe I'd be less misunderstood if I used emoticons, but for some reason I've never liked them.

LL- I don't quite understand this: How is the remark you quoted by wolfsbane: "It looks like to get a 9.5 rating on LL's spreadsheet of doom you just need to attack him - pretty convenient if he's scum." - a slip up that shows he has nearly complete information?

[Ripley]

Seol's post feels a couple of days out of date, raising some things already raised by others and to which I've responded. Anyway, I'm not about to launch into another of the epic PBPBs that characterised the earlier pages of this game.

I will make a few points. Firstly, the vehemence of this attack in the wake of so many others pressurising me to name suspects has made me wonder if the real point here is that I'm not sufficiently experienced at finding scum to be playing outside of newbie games. I certainly don't feel at all confident that I recognise scumminess when I see it. My original expectation, that a player who took no interest in a game and posted as little as possible was likely scum, was severely challenged by my only completed game in which both players who fell under that category were town. It may have been an uncharacteristic game, but it's left me a lot less certain about things. Maybe I don't really have the experience to tackle Minis, but haven't been able to play a second newbie game. I've been waiting to do so since the end of October. A newbie I replaced into never started but took weeks (weeks in addition to the site downtime) to be officially abandoned; you aren't allowed to join another while waiting. So it's been Minis or nothing, and it looks as if this is still more of a learning experience for me than many of you approve of. M4yhem has even said he feels sorry for me, which I hate to have to hear. So if people think I'm not ready for this game and want me to request replacement, I'll gladly do so.

Is there something wrong with getting angry? I certainly get emotional over my games.

You don't need me to point out that emotional and angry are not synonyms. I think it's important that these games are played out in an atmosphere of good humor. I certainly wouldn't want to be contributing in any way to one of hostility, which is why I was alarmed that my tone was clearly being misread. I'm being more careful now.

Finally, a word about IH. I thought it was interesting how Seol's vote, accompanied by not a word of comment, seemed to trigger quite a lot of anti-IH feeling. With LuckayLuck his stock plummets. Mayhem says he may get his vote once he hears from Ogre. And he does get Green Crayons vote.

I had noticed IH's second unnecessary vote, the one on Echo. (I managed to leave out the last few posts of page 3 from my notes, so I missed the one on GC.) It did make me wonder if this was might be a thing more likely to be done by scum (forgetting who one was currently voting for) than as townie, because as a townie you'd be likely to have thought about and come to a logical reason for your vote. Such reasoning would not necessarily be there behind a scum vote, so the knowledge of who you were voting for could be less firmly imprinted. But Seol thinks that because IH does it twice it's a conscious technique and that he was aware the unvotes were unnecessary.