Open 569 ~ Hope + 1 ~ Game Over!

[GreyICE]

God is here and town, children.

Let me review and figure things out.

[GreyICE]

TN is such an unbelievably excellent vote from the last post alone.

Now let me read, plox.

[GreyICE]

Varsoon is town. Depressingly, the three headed lolhydra from that Vesperia game is town too. NS accidentally became a good player at some point in the past year, that's weird. Oh and town.

[GreyICE]

Titus is probably a scumfuck this game. Honestly we should lynch her. Who is she now? Thesp? Cool, he's obvious scum too. Seriously notsci, lets do this fucker in.

STLX Gaiden is mod-confirmed town.

Bins is town.

[GreyICE]

On the real, GreyICE, what's informing those reads? Don't Metal Sonic me and say you read 113 pages in two minutes flat.

Scum never changes, bro. The first few pages are the most important. Once people have sussed out the feel of the town and how they think it's going to play, they're just going to act out whatever role they've chosen for themselves, and actual posts become increasingly irrelevant.

You can shake that up if you knock away all their preconceptions, like a giant wagon that's building force suddenly collapsing and forcing people to rethink things, but the spam is going to bury that under miles of bullshit.

By the by, my Titus read is bank.

[GreyICE]

Fuck though, TN is like a bank made out of banks stacked on top of banks. He's the federal reserve of scumminess.

Tempted to lynch Team 9 to slow down the rate of posting in this thread. Or any of the spammers really.

Bulge is town, but if people don't start slowing down and modering themselves, I want to lynch him anyway. Here's a guide.

TN or Thesp... hmmm...

Vote: Thesp

There's a few other people I should give a crap about, but w/e.

[GreyICE]

I dunno, I really like TSP's direct questions, general attitude towards the games, and so on. Feels genuine town to me.
What's giving you a scum read there, Grey?

Thesp's attitude is excellent, and his approach is admirable. He's clearly a good player who most likely is used to producing solid analysis in games.

Sadly he is not aligned with the town. 'tis not that subtle.

[GreyICE]

Show me.

Okay.

We both agree Thesp is smart, yes? And we agree that he has represented himself as having materially read the game, yes?

This is his ISO

Now just grab a sheet of paper, open Notepad, whatever, and make a tick every time he says something insightful about the game that is

not

setup speculation. Remember, setup speculation is alignment neutral - it could be happening in Mafia Discussion, about this exact setup, with zero game roles, and people will tend to post in game what they would in MD. We are not talking opportunistic "X said something scummy, FOS/Vote/etc". Something that indicates that Thesp - an intelligent person - is looking and analyzing the players. Not the roles, not the claims, the players.

Double dog dare you to find a single thing that wasn't opportunistic finger pointing, setup discussion, general philosophy winges, or random "my thoughts about events on the past few pages". What does that say? Is he smart enough to have insights on player's mentalities? Or is he too stupid to have that insight? Or is he just finding it really hard to do actual analysis of a player for

some reason

?

[GreyICE]

Although I admit an absolutely terrible line of reasoning has struck me.

It doesn't matter, because Thesp is scum, but.

[GreyICE]

Honestly, Thesp's ISO feels like general catch-up malarky, engagement with topics being discussed (setup spec, wagons, etc), and sussing out other player's positions on things.
Maybe he just doesn't want to throw down in analysis.
I don't think that constitutes absolute scum-or-town.

Oh?

Interesting.

So you see what I see, but you don't wish to draw conclusions from it.

No conclusions at all, Varsoon?

[GreyICE]

I'm still quite happy with my vote on SXTLHGaiden, who continues to not contribute in meaningful ways. I'd like to see the two votes on Team 9 (from The Bulge and Team 9 (‽)) move somewhere useful. (Same with Flubbernugget, unless he's convinced he can break the bloc of ~7 voters who have expressed disinterest in a The Bulge lynch, particularly since he's now solo on The Bulge.)

I'll ignore your biased and inaccurate review of your own posting (scum argues their posting is not scummy, news at 11).

Now why do you appear to be voting or threatening to vote people based on some arbitrary "utility" to the town? Do you really think this is how scumhunting occurs? "SXTL is of lower utility than X, so I am voting him"? Is that the base standard here?

Because Thesp, I wouldn't expect that sort of logic outside of a newbie game. "The IC is really helpful! They must be town because they're providing so much help! This other guy doesn't even seem to know what the game is, that must be scum!" The IC should helpfully dispel these misconceptions, and assure the players that just because one player seems to be helpful, in a generic sense, and another player doesn't seem as vocal or helpful, doesn't mean the better player is town.

You're not going to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. S*Gaiden will not make long cases, write stunning insights, or sugar coat his words. He is not the man for multi-paragraph eloquence. He is, however, being honest to a fault, and it comes across in his writing. We have four days until deadline, Thesp. Why the panic about vote moving? At the pace of this game, that's another 500 posts or so. We could have wagons form and die in that time.

And what are your thoughts about me

[GreyICE]

Double dog dare you to find a single thing that wasn't opportunistic finger pointing, setup discussion, general philosophy winges, or random "my thoughts about events on the past few pages". What does that say? Is he smart enough to have insights on player's mentalities? Or is he too stupid to have that insight? Or is he just finding it really hard to do actual analysis of a player for some reason?

while I have Thesp's slot as mostly null, I disagree with your reasoning here

for one Thesp has already said he has a bunch of townreads, but isn't elaborating on them. it is possible he's scum using this as a preemptive excuse for not having to elaborate on anything, but as long as his explanation checks out, I don't think this is a good angle to push. do you disagree?

second, if he was looking for an opportunistic lynch, his switch off the Bulge doesn't make sense imo. he unvoted Bulge bc "it doesn't look like Bulge will get lynched today". now that I'm looking at it again, his switch came, iirc, before most of the ppl had unvoted the Bulge.

My feeling on the Bulge wagon, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that people were voting for the Bulge because people were voting for the Bulge. I saw more descriptions of the wagon as a "leftover" wagon than I did of "this is scummy, we must murder this post haste". It's damn hard for scum to stay on a predecessor wagon - if nothing else it looks scummy. If you want to say the bulge wagon died because of anyone, it died because of notscience. Thesp actually came in AFTER not science started pushing the wagon away and tried to Kickstart the wagon, on the basis of "noncontributions" (which seems to be his new defining mantra - apparently all this scumhunting shit has gone out the window, and Thesp lynches based on post count and post length (the only explanation for him not being on TN's ass, besides the fact they're currently sharing a QT and shit)

Look at this post!

The Bulge isn't going to be lynched today. Looking at the people not on the wagon, enough have expressed disinterest in the wagon (or active opposition) that it can't make.

UNVOTE: The Bulge
VOTE: SXTLHGaiden

I want real pressure on the people who are deliberately not providing content. I would happily move my vote to startfromtheheart (

especially

if it puts an end to the posting diarrhoea).

He admits the reason he has for not pushing the wagon is that it can't happen! He wasn't instrumental to it collapsing, he just moved his vote because he wants a lynch on a "lurker" (The Bulge and Gaiden are town, by the by)

Please, you've admitted I'm a good scumhunter. You had a town read on my predecessor. Can I snow a town? Sure, but I can't snow my predecessor's ISO.

Why is this guy town? Look at that post. LOOK AT THAT POST!

[GreyICE]

Is this the question you're referring to? If it is, I suppose I don't know what you're looking for in the question. I've seen scum fake paranoia (I was fooled by it once pretty hard fo' sho'), and there's certainly legitimate paranoia. If that's not the question you want answered, I don't know what you're looking for - could you restate it?

Ooh, can I do question and answer?

Did tn post before the game started in the QT, or are you flying completely blind on your partner's motivations?

If you want to go after non-contributors, where is

Davesaz

on this radar? The man has done literally nothing. Why does he get a pass? Is it because he's your scumbuddy? Because the man is fucking obvious.

If you wanted to name your scumteam, would it be "Captain Obvious and the Obviousteers" or "Oh my fucking god why did I replace in"?

[GreyICE]

I've noticed this a couple of times and wanted to get clarification. Are you talking about tn(4digit number) or Team 9? Because at least once it looked like you meant T9 and wrote tn. The question comes up because tn(numbers) posts are a bit more rare than Team 9.[/quote]

Oh, sorry! Didn't mean to be confusing, it's tn numbers. I usually call Team 9 either Team 9, "that hydra" or "oh god not again".

So you're adapting pretty well to MS I see, even though you're 2014. First scum game? It's not bad at all.

[GreyICE]

dave, why does that post ping me as scummy?
WHY?

'cause obvious

[GreyICE]

Today I learned I'm Moriarty.

[GreyICE]

Flubber

Team 9 is not getting lynched today

So whatever the fuck you think you're doing, do something else

[GreyICE]

There's a bunch of other people in this town, Flubber

Discussing Team 9 is a literal waste of time, a null action. No Lynch = No pressure = No point. Either they are scum, at which point we'll figure that out right quick and they die, or they are town, at which point they cannot do anything scummy.

Do you have something that isn't content-free? Anything at all, Flubber? You have no other scum reads? Nothing else to contribute here, Flubber, 3 days out from deadline? No real opinions on who you want lynched?

[GreyICE]

Why Varsoon wagon?

I love the idea of lynching Thesp. Barring that, I like the idea of lynching TN.

I'm not sold on this Varsoon wagon in the least.

[GreyICE]

... wagon?

I'll probably hop somewhere else but I haven't finished reading up.

I'm currently in a lot of pain because I pulled something in my leg... but actually, that will maybe mean I'll be confined to a chair and can actually get to looking more indepth.

How are you reading Titus' replace out, Grey? Scummy or just null or don't wanna look at that?

I think I was pretty clear Titus was scummy. I'm not going to attack Thesp on the failings of Titus, because first Thesp can just hide behind "I don't know what my replacement is doing" and second people forget who replaced who.

As for the replacement? Titus likes playing mafia, specifically she likes playing mafia as town.

[GreyICE]

Whose house? Ron's house. Whose house? Ron's house!

Everyone doubting me say what? Say what!

Vote: Davesaz

[GreyICE]

Also, ika, Titus would say she would have been pressed past her limit as town in the same situation. Maybe so, but I believe the reaction would have looked quite different.

[GreyICE]

Shit. I wasn't expecting that. There goes my credibility :<

This kind of reaction deserves a sonic cannon too.

Would it surprise you to know he's town?

[GreyICE]

Wait, why the dave wagon?

I see IKA and Bulge as fair scummier. ika's absolute town-defense on Titus coupled with death-tunneling the claimed doc until theSP wagon seemed inevitable. Couple that with the weird mention of SP maybe being a cop earlier makes me think it wouldn't be too weird for a scum team to have an idea for fake-claiming cop, but for ika to bus there.

To be absolutely fair, I was wrong about Team 9 not being a doctor, so I don't really trust my judgment as much as I should.
Kinda fucks me over, too.
Oh well.

WHAT WAS YOUR INVESTIGATE

As for Dave, he claimed fucking scum. Read his last post.

[GreyICE]

Yo bulgy, are you saying you DON'T think Dave is scum?

[GreyICE]

Also Varsoon if you investigated TN or Bulge then I love you

Just so we can stop arguing about those two

[GreyICE]

Varsoon is cop, Dave is scum

Come on, notsci, we had a beautiful thing yesterday, lets keep it going. Dave is the lynch for today, after we get Varsoon's results.

[GreyICE]

oh wait, he claimed his results.

They're idiotic.

Whatever. I don't want a varsoon counterclaim today if that's actual town play, I want dave dead, we sort things out tomorrow. I honestly think the chances of a Dave town flip are less than 5%.

[GreyICE]

Does explain NotSci's suspicions, that's the most worthless copping job ever.

[GreyICE]

Luckily I'm the town's undocumented 4th power role, the daycop

[GreyICE]

The basic summary of events is that either Varsoon is cop and Dave is scum; or Dave is town and Varsoon is scum.

This does leave out a few explanations, such as:

1) Varsoon is trolling Mina and everyone that agrees with her (fakeclaiming cop/guilty as town)
2) They could both be scum together
3) There is a possibility they are both town and Varsoon is the cop.

The actual fuck

[GreyICE]

Okay, let's hammer Dave before the spam starts.

[GreyICE]

'Kay, Dave thought long and hard about how to cover his slip, and then decided that it must be because "The Bulge" was so close to confirmed scum for him that he couldn't imagine any way The Bulge wasn't scum.

Then he stopped voting The Bulge.

Can we just lynch this now?

[GreyICE]

You know, that question is actually fairly relevant on day 1. 3 scum and all. Not good to tunnel.

My primary scum read? He's dead, bins. My name leads the wagon. Mafia goon. Dave is number two.

Number three is TN, you, and flubber, in roughly that order. The bulge is a ringer, if only because I'm not sure on Titus. Would she have replaced out because the town wouldn't bus a scumbuddy with her? It seems unlikely. Maybe if she hates the bulge on a personal level, but my bet is, from previous experience, is that is the voice of someone angry that the town won't listen and lynch a scummy townie. I don't think she has the mastermind complex (aka Fate complex) where she wants to bus on day 1 and lead the town to ruin.

That and I don't find the bulge's play that scummy, just excessively poor. So yes, TN, you, flubber.

[GreyICE]

Oh wait, Titus' final cry was for TN. She did bulge/bins/start/tn. Scum tends to RVS scum much more often than statistically likely (fun facts, kids!) so... Hmmm... Thesp was hard on for bulge though. Meh, prolly flubber, neither Thesp nor Titus wanted to kill him even though his ISO is a radioactive wasteland of dead puppies and broken dreams.

[GreyICE]

TN, when it's time for you to die, townies will have all the reasons they ever need to vote for you (not that they need much convincing, your wagon has never been short of people). Today is Dave's day. Don't take away his spot in the limelight.

By the by, I find it interesting that you place a higher priority on defending yourself from a person

who is not even voting for you or attempting to lynch you today

than you do on finding scum to vote for. We just got a day 1 scum lynch in. Any townie would know that a day 2 scum lynch means this game is nigh-impossible for scum to win. And here you are... vote on no one... defending yourself...

Que que?

[GreyICE]

Yes Dave, I caught you for all the wrong reasons, and that's terrible. You may submit complaints to the deadthread and the postgame.

By the by, did you forget that your read on bulge was that he was confirmed scum.

Hammertime!

[GreyICE]

I'm going to laugh so hard when he flips scum.

[GreyICE]

No, I do believe what I pointed out was that his stance on bulge was that there was a zero percent chance in his mind that Bulge was town,

then he unvoted like 1 minute later.

That's some pretty epic 60 seconds. Now he's pushing everyone but bulge.

[GreyICE]

He's also new, and I don't want to use that to his defense, but I'm seeing that too.

I'm just seeing a lot of how I used to play as town.

Empathy, sympathy and guilt are your enemies when you are playing mafia. They whisper in the back of your head that you could be making a mistake, that you're doing the wrong thing, that you might make a mistake and then you should feel bad. These are wrong thoughts that do not help you. Mercy is how scum survive, pity is how they thrive.

If Dave is a mislynch, so be it. You want to know why I don't think he is? Read his ISO. Or I can narrate.

Dave starts off his life placing a vote by explicitly declaring its an RVS vote. I don't really need to explain that that already should be getting him shit on, but it should. Then, after placing an RVS vote, he discusses how he doesn't have a problem with a day 1 lynch on principle, but he needs more data. Bins, that right there? Not good. His vote is already down, and he's discussing the merits of day 1 lynches, and how its too soon for them. Is he trying to catch scum according to his principles, or trying to fit in?

Oh, but the saga continues, Bins. People tend to be inherently honest, or view themselves as inherently honest. Breaking yourself of this to play scum properly is quite difficult. This is his read of Titus' replace out, despite the fact that it's the very first time he mentions Titus all game - yep, not one mention before that.

Then there was this stunning non-defense of Thesp where he attempted to explain how Thesp's ISO contained actual content (spoiler: it didn't), but then waffled at the end and said "could be scum, could not be scum, but lets explore other people today!"

Finally, there's the activity for the past day. Did you get a little rush when scum flipped? Because I know I did. I friggin love a day 1 scum flip. It's motivating as fuck. In point of fact we're seeing a lot less spammy non-play and a lot more cohesion and thought today. Does anything in his play today (after the long walls of yesterday) say "oh my god, I'm excited to be playing this game"? By, the by, Mafiascum has a feature where you can view all posts a person makes. Just click on their name, click "view posts." It's sometimes interesting.

So, Bins, even if you don't want to buy the fact that Thesp's treatment of dave was

scummy as fuck

, because it was - this kind of on again, off again footsies was not particularly convincing as genuine involvement and I don't even want to touch on that nondefense thing - I'd be perfectly happy to lynch him day 1. And that was before the pathetic non-involvement he's had today. Or the OMGUS.

Bins, can I ask you something important? Why would his read on Bulge evolve from "discussion to find the 3rd scum, I'm that certain Bulge is number 2" to "I don't even mention bulge in my post"?

Pedit: holy crap the spam

[GreyICE]

Sakura ragequitting means less than nothing about alignment.

Ika's easy to read as town though. If he's scum, I will boil and eat my shirt.

[GreyICE]

i really appreciate the case

Good, because I hate making them. Making a case ruins all discussion of a player. It makes the discussion about the merits of my case, not the merits of their play. Believe it or not, I'm actually a passible writer, and even if I'm completely wrong, my cases will still sound good. Then we get to play "discuss the case" for 5 pages (or 25 in this town). Scum can hide any genuine reads by playing philosophy critic, town get distracted, paranoia sets in... they're generally cancer.

I make them only when I am fully satisfied a player has exhausted my every doubt and what remains is merely me trying to show others what I see so the votes for the death wagon can arrive.

[GreyICE]

Or shortly after RVS for lulz because the reactions are interesting.

There, way too much insight into my play

[GreyICE]

Welp, good fucking deal. Was wondering if that was the case. Thank you for having faith and hammering Thesp.

By the by, I think everyone should post a reads list at this stage.

[GreyICE]

Mine:

NotSci - General tone of posting is heavily town. The activity level and clear thoughts is just very much more townie excitement than it is scum.
SGaiden - 90% likely to be town, thanks to Thesp's play. I don't see him replacing in and immediately bussing an unpredictable scumbuddy. That sort of shit backfires, and Thesp is a smart player.
Start from the heart - Read the posts, I say town
Varsoon - Mod-confirmed town from the no-kill, basically. If he's gambiting scum he had to first hammer his partner before the real cop could be outed, second no-killed, and third guessed that the real cop would NOT INVESTIGATE HIM two nights in a row. That is what we would like to call "ballsy". Suicidally ballsy, when you could just leave Thesp alive or wait for the cop to counterclaim or something.
ika - easy to read as town, come on people.
The Bulge - I'd agree with Varsoon's hypnocop, this guy has been playing town. Seems like an easy target wagon to me.
Bins - my read on Bins has evolved. I really think her play picked up day 2, and the defense of Dave and trying to push the wagon onto flubber seems genuine and had no scum motivation. Town.

TN - Le scumz
Flubber - would wagon

[GreyICE]

Then he just gave himself two chances to be investigated by the cop. It's an idiotic gambit.

Also, not joking about the reads list, do one on each player. Really.

[GreyICE]

Well that about settles it.

We still need read lists from every player before the day ends. As much or as little reasoning as you feel like, just general thoughts for the future.

[GreyICE]

The entire point of the reads list was to essentially give the cop the ability to soft claim reads while burying the mafia under WIFOM of which they should shoot.

I'm two out of three, and owe dave an apology, but I think it's Flubber.

Mass claim best case is 5 confirmed town, worst case is probably 3 or 4.

Do we think we can win this with 3 or 4 confirmed town? I'm inclined to say yes.

[GreyICE]

oh and I'm assuming no guilty because obv

[GreyICE]

5 confirmed town is win, 4 is near-certain win, 3 is kinda meh.

[GreyICE]

Although thought.

We have a free kill. If everyone hypnoclaims, then we can no lynch. A no lynch gives us 1 more investigate in the best case scenario.

If we do that, the only thing we should hypnoclaim is innocents (at least for living players). Innocent only hypnoclaims will be VERY hard for scum to pin down who the cop is (since they only eliminate someone in the event of a false read on the 1 remaining scum).

[GreyICE]

Okay, proposal:

1) We all hypnoclaim. Three targets, only innocents on living players if you're faking it.
2) We no lynch with no other claims.

Possibility 1:

Scum shoot cop
Result: We have the cop's results, and a confirmed town from doctor. No different from claiming today, really.

Possibility 2:

Doctor OR Confirmed innocent shot
Result: We get a free investigate.

Possibility 3:

Non-investigated, non-confirmed townie shot
Result: Jackpot.

Vote Yay or Nay

I vote yay.

Hypnoclaim

I am the Cop. I chose to investigate strong players who were assets if confirmed over people I wanted to lynch in any case (TN needed to die d3 no matter what).

Day 1 - Investigated NotScience. Town
Day 2 - Investigated Bins. Town
Day 3 - To settle debate. Varsoon is town.

Do not discuss my choices with me, or anyone else. Thank you.

[GreyICE]

Vote: Varsoon

This is just POI at this point.

[GreyICE]

Also S*Gaiden was the whipping boy of Thesp as I recall. I just don't, don't, don't see Thesp replacing in and riding his partner that hard.

Sorry about overrunning you on Dave, Bins My bad

Excellent cop play

The Bulge isn't going to be lynched today. Looking at the people not on the wagon, enough have expressed disinterest in the wagon (or active opposition) that it can't make.

UNVOTE: The Bulge
VOTE: SXTLHGaiden

I want real pressure on the people who are deliberately not providing content. I would happily move my vote to startfromtheheart (

especially

if it puts an end to the posting diarrhoea).

That would shock me if it were to be anything other than two town in that post.

[GreyICE]

I don't know.

Lets say I typed POE

[GreyICE]

With one scum remaining, the utility of claiming cop is actually zero.

[GreyICE]

okay, so lets say the speed lynch goes off. The claimed cop fails to die tonight. Someone counterclaims tomorrow.

We'd have six people left, and scum would be one of two people. That's literally pointless, guaranteed 100% town win.

[GreyICE]

Someone just hammer.

I don't even have strong feelings Varsoon is scum, this game is just a fucking 90% chance to win for town.