Open 566: Murder on the Oriental Express (Game Over)

[acryon]

acryon just felt like buddying up to ckd and myself through the day.

What? CKD and I were at odds for the entirety of our Day 1 interaction, and then even mentioned that I felt a Beli scum-flip would increase the chances of CKD-scum. Regarding you, I have no idea where you are getting the idea that I was buddying you. And I was one of the people pushing Beli as scum day 1 as well, until I ultimately decided we didn't have time to finish out a Beli wagon and switched to my other scum-read: Skelda.

[ChannelDelibird]

Thing No.1 (i.e. the only one that really springs to mind right now but, who knows, there might be more later): @CKD

CKD, as I've said before, I think it's very good that you're looking at nightkills but I want to state again my strong belief that you have drawn the wrong conclusion. I don't think that the main thing implied by the kills is that scum are trying to silence people who suspect farside.

That is not impossible, but I think the fact that farside was the target of Belisarius's supposedly righteous vote early in this game is a strong point in favour of her not being a buddy, thereby making such a nightkill reasoning less likely.

You are ignoring what seems to me the most important part of the nightkill analysis - that Dry-Fit flipped Jailkeeper. I actually do intend to have a look at his suspicions now that I'm writing this but the fact remains that the scum picked out a power role on Night 1. It could have been a good catch or it could have just been a lucky guess from scum following the template of 'kill someone suspected by few people and, if they're quiet-ish, maybe they're a PR'.

But the fact that they found a PR on Night 1

strongly

suggests to me that NakedJogger was killed because he fit a similar pattern (kinda quiet, not much suspicion). Given that NJ wasn't putting an awful lot of pressure on anyone in thread (suspected farside? sure, but not pushing on it that hard compared to others' cases), it seems obvious to me that scum were applying a previously successful formula for killing power roles to their nightkill.

[curiouskarmadog]

Thing No.1 (i.e. the only one that really springs to mind right now but, who knows, there might be more later): @CKD

CKD, as I've said before, I think it's very good that you're looking at nightkills but I want to state again my strong belief that you have drawn the wrong conclusion. I don't think that the main thing implied by the kills is that scum are trying to silence people who suspect farside.

You are ignoring what seems to me the most important part of the nightkill analysis - that Dry-Fit flipped Jailkeeper.

two

3 points and then I really got to to go back to work.

1.) the two dead people thought farside AND YOU(chaos) was scummy.

2.) If I AM on the right track, what would CDBscum say right now? Something similar?

3.) Who cares if Dry-Fit flipped a PR? I went back and reread him I dont see anything that remotely looked like a crumb. or a play that looked like how a typical PR would play...or anything that screamed I AM OBVIOUSLY A PR! I think scum got lucky on that kill.

[farside22]

I was reffering to this and I know later you had a lean to scum read on skelda.

Call me easy to convince, but that analysis makes Skelda look

really

bad. Interested to hear the response.

I believe the fight happened after you felt strongly about ckd and I think rereading it was based on ckd's belief that skelda was scum and you thought he was scum but voted beli after.

[farside22]

Thing No.1 (i.e. the only one that really springs to mind right now but, who knows, there might be more later): @CKD

CKD, as I've said before, I think it's very good that you're looking at nightkills but I want to state again my strong belief that you have drawn the wrong conclusion. I don't think that the main thing implied by the kills is that scum are trying to silence people who suspect farside.

You are ignoring what seems to me the most important part of the nightkill analysis - that Dry-Fit flipped Jailkeeper.

two

3 points and then I really got to to go back to work.

1.) the two dead people thought farside AND YOU(chaos) was scummy.

2.) If I AM on the right track, what would CDBscum say right now? Something similar?

3.) Who cares if Dry-Fit flipped a PR? I went back and reread him I dont see anything that remotely looked like a crumb. or a play that looked like how a typical PR would play...or anything that screamed I AM OBVIOUSLY A PR! I think scum got lucky on that kill.

I feel like pointing out Beli's post again about his read on dry-fit.
Lucky, probably. But if beli's comment was there for wifom.

[ChannelDelibird]

1 & 2) Sure. But in literally my last post I noted that this was something I wanted to say so that it was there in case of my dying (in which case I would flip town and this concern would no longer exist). I am willing to accept that you may not take this as seriously as I think is necessary while I am alive.

3) You're missing the point. The point isn't that the scum were brilliant PR hunters on Night 1! It's that once they got proof of what one PR in this game looked like, it stands to reason that they would be attracted to the idea of killing someone with similar traits in the hopes that they would get lucky a second time.

[farside22]

Thing No.1 (i.e. the only one that really springs to mind right now but, who knows, there might be more later): @CKD

CKD, as I've said before, I think it's very good that you're looking at nightkills but I want to state again my strong belief that you have drawn the wrong conclusion. I don't think that the main thing implied by the kills is that scum are trying to silence people who suspect farside.

You are ignoring what seems to me the most important part of the nightkill analysis - that Dry-Fit flipped Jailkeeper.

two

3 points and then I really got to to go back to work.

1.) the two dead people thought farside AND YOU(chaos) was scummy.

2.) If I AM on the right track, what would CDBscum say right now? Something similar?

3.) Who cares if Dry-Fit flipped a PR? I went back and reread him I dont see anything that remotely looked like a crumb. or a play that looked like how a typical PR would play...or anything that screamed I AM OBVIOUSLY A PR! I think scum got lucky on that kill.

I feel like pointing out Beli's post again about his read on dry-fit.
Lucky, probably. But if beli's comment

maybe

was there for wifom.

fixed in bold.

[acryon]

-Scrambles still doesn't seem to understand what Titus (and others, but Titus particularly) have been meaning when they ask about his other site and previous experience. He seems to have taken personally people's confusion over his statements of experience because things that are implicit for him are not obvious to us (primarily, he doesn't seem to have grasped that people could genuinely have believed that he meant 'I've only finished one game before' when he said 'I just finished a game' when his meaning was 'I just finished a game [but I have played several before it]'). This frustration is not in any way scummy; it's completely natural to unconsciously assume that people are inferring the same things as you. His reaction to it is genuine, but not alignment-related, and I would be wary of anyone focusing on that rather than more relevant things like his relationship to Belisarius. With Titus specifically, he seems to have taken her enquiries about exactly where he was playing as her suggesting that she would be thoroughly meta-ing him, whereas I was inclined to read that as her making sure that he could actually back up his unintentionally confusing statements regarding experience.

I don't agree with this at all. I honestly don't see how anyone could have interpreted 962 from scrambles as "I've only finished one game", but that's not my main point.

My main point lies here:

It's my second game on mafiascum. I was just in a game with your hydra as well where I specifically talked about my experience. I've played before on another site, which I've mentioned here as well a couple times already.

I looked at that game, and scrambles did talk more than once about his history on other sites including phrases like "I've just played enough to know [x]" and when he came up with the name of Titus' hydra in this game, Titus just completely ignored that part of the conversation. Doesn't seem odd that in that game, Titus/her hydra seemed to have no problem with his claims of playing many times, but in this game, she all of a sudden cares?

[acryon]

I was reffering to this and I know later you had a lean to scum read on skelda.

Call me easy to convince, but that analysis makes Skelda look

really

bad. Interested to hear the response.

I believe the fight happened after you felt strongly about ckd and I think rereading it was based on ckd's belief that skelda was scum and you thought he was scum but voted beli after.

I did think that analysis made Skelda look really bad, but that was obviously just my initial reaction on the case, and I certainly don't base my decisions entirely on the case of one person. I also thought that there was a chance that Skelda was scum, but thought Beli was by far the better lynch. And the fight was about CKD thinking my case/vote on Beli sucked. The only strong feeling I had about CKD is that he was town, but barking up the wrong tree by going after me.

[Green Crayons]

@CDB:

I really want to hear why GC in particular was led to unvote, but a word from farside on why she felt it looks more likely town than scum would be welcome as well. Honestly, assuming you give Scrambles enough credit to at least make the effort as scum, I'm not exactly sure what you would have expected to see done differently in some of those posts.

The explanations come across as genuine, and reduce a lot of the suspiciousness I had about his play. I credit a degree of the genuineness to the fact that he actually owns up to pretty anti-town play in Post 1377, which scum would not want really want to do.

I'm not against a scrambles lynch, but it's not my favorite any more.

Here's a question right back at you, using your own phrasing: Honestly, assuming you gives scrambles enough credit to at least make the effort as town, I'm not exactly sure what you would have expected to see done differently in some of those posts.

-----

@Kalimar:

I don't particularly have much of an opinion on scrambles' ISO, but I'd probably lynch AFF and/or CDB before him.

I actually liked the post where he told GC he was wrong because he was, since scum is more likely to break things down into tedious semantic arguments,

but I don't like that the thing he's actually bothered to address in detail - the newness or lack thereof - is probably the least alignment indicative and most easily debunked claim there is. I'd call it a gut town read but it's got no proper basis to it.

I don't know how to feel about the bolded, and I've been thinking about it ever since scrambles posted it.

I've had town refuse to engage my questions before, and so I do see it generally as a town response. That said, it's usually been done in reference to questions I pose to another player and not to an actual case. Plus, scrambles doesn't appear inclined to engage in a playstyle of "breaking things down into tedious semantic arguments" (scare quotes because, man, that sure was a pejorative way of putting it), so I don't know how much town credit he can be given for simply not adopting that type of play style -- similar to Titus not getting scum credit for adopting another type of play style.

-----

VOTE: CDB
Moving to my second choice. Sorry bud.

[Green Crayons]

Oh, and this is just a thought that I never vocalized previously, but since I mentioned Titus off hand:

@acryon

, how did you feel about SnugglyDuckling's play?

Personally, I thought Snuggly's play was strong town on my read through, and that's why I'm allowing a lot of leeway for Titus's absentee play.

[ChannelDelibird]

I honestly don't see how anyone could have interpreted 962 from scrambles as "I've only finished one game", but that's not my main point.

Not at all? Seriously? All I can say to that is "pfft".

I looked at that game, and scrambles did talk more than once about his history on other sites including phrases like "I've just played enough to know [x]" and when he came up with the name of Titus' hydra in this game, Titus just completely ignored that part of the conversation. Doesn't seem odd that in that game, Titus/her hydra seemed to have no problem with his claims of playing many times, but in this game, she all of a sudden cares?

In fairness, said Scrambles post did happen just before the thread exploded into a clusterfuck and I can understand it getting a bit lost, but I do think that this is interesting and would like to hear Titus talk about it a bit more or point to where it was addressed previously if I missed it.

Here's a question right back at you, using your own phrasing: Honestly, assuming you gives scrambles enough credit to at least make the effort as town, I'm not exactly sure what you would have expected to see done differently in some of those posts.

Nothing, particularly, and that's exactly my point. All that's there is the effort, which is null, and the fact that he probably believes in his approach to the game, which is null.

[ChannelDelibird]

Thing No.2

Should I die, still think acryon, my original vote of the pair, should be the bigger priority to get next.

[acryon]

Oh, and this is just a thought that I never vocalized previously, but since I mentioned Titus off hand:

@acryon

, how did you feel about SnugglyDuckling's play?

Personally, I thought Snuggly's play was strong town on my read through, and that's why I'm allowing a lot of leeway for Titus's absentee play.

None of it super stuck out to me TBH, but I'll make some notes on some of his posts just to think out loud.

Amy seems town to me and Mr Blonde's "shall we dance" comment seems like false bravado.

This post seems like stretching.

Generally players that hand out reads for seemingly arbitrary reasons get the stink eye from me.

Fair enough but I rarely find reasons to suspect people other than arbitrary ones so prepare to give me a lot of stink eyes.

This is a bit of a cop-out.

Duckling

I'm impressed because I felt this exact same way.

Unvote and Vote acryon

Why didn't you say something sooner? What is acryon scum motivation for doing it?

I don't know, maybe Toby wrote it in the thread before I read acryon's post and by the time I got around to writing my post I had read both of their posts. That's what I'd assume anyway. I did think the same thing though. Scum motivation would be waiting around until somebody mentions you before popping your head in to write a few words. Anyway all things considered I'm going to

unvote acryon

anyway because there was something later which made me think he was town (but I don't want to read 2 pages again to find out what it was).

His reason for voting me because he agreed with Toby was a little weak, and his reason for unvoting me was even weaker.

I didn't die? Inconceivable!

This is odd, but it's null.

Overall, a lot of the way he was posting can, I think, be attributed to it being his first online game. I would say he was overall a null to me, and Titus has over twice the number of posts as Snuggly at a time in the game where the posts overall have had more weight, so I'm mostly deferring to my Titus read for that slot.

[Riddleton]

Sorry, been rather busy.

First off, I'm against the CDB wagon. I do think CDB is town, albeit rather weakly. His latest posts read as genuine to me. Still am for CKD or scrambles wagon. Maybe Acryon.

[acryon]

Sorry, been rather busy.

First off, I'm against the CDB wagon. I do think CDB is town, albeit rather weakly. His latest posts read as genuine to me. Still am for CKD or scrambles wagon. Maybe Acryon.

What's awkward is that you are one of my top town-reads, but I have zero interest in any of your wagons.

[Riddleton]

@Riddle:

I dislike Scrambles' responses and "oh my god Riddleton is scum for pushing me" post. He doesn't say it, but it's clear he's referring to me when he says "trying to push something", due to his disagreement with my earlier joke post. It's OMGUS minus the vote, even he implies himself it would look awkward if he pushed me right now. Would still be OK with his lynch.

What in particular about his responses don't you like?

The responses are very generic and read as insincere to me. I also don't like how scrambles scumreads me because I am voting him and pushing his lynch. I would ordinarily attribute it to newbie-play but considering the fact he's played many other games off-site, and gone to great lengths to hide that, it's definitely a strange statement and 'case' to make.

It's worthy of a think, but I don't think he should be unvoted and given a presidential pardon because of it.

[Riddleton]

More detailed stuff w/ Scrambles to follow

Point 5
You'll find that unless im really on the fence about a player, I will (even with time) never interact with someone I think is scum. I have no reason to talk to scum or give them a reason to try and argue a point.

Then why does he interact with my rebuttal of his case against me?

[Green Crayons]

@CDB:

-Scrambles's self-analysis regarding how he gets lynches done, things like "it's not about who says what, it's about who has the conviction to move on it", is consistent with things he's said before and I wouldn't be at all surprised if it genuinely is how he sees things. His explanation of his relationship with Belisarius, which GC rightly points out looks suspect, boils down to this sort of thing. But this philosophy is inherently blustery and difficult to read because it's pretty impossible to hold such views to account - and it isn't something that would be harder to keep up as scum than town because, as Scrambles admits, it's so arbitrary. So the fact that he's probably telling the truth about this philosophy doesn't make his actions in this game more likely to come from town than scum.

Here's a question right back at you, using your own phrasing: Honestly, assuming you gives scrambles enough credit to at least make the effort as town, I'm not exactly sure what you would have expected to see done differently in some of those posts.

Nothing, particularly, and that's exactly my point. All that's there is the effort, which is null, and the fact that he probably believes in his approach to the game, which is null.

These two posts make it look like you think scrambles' explanation about his play is null, as it simply goes to playstyle. Flowing from that conclusion should be that because much of the scrambles suspicion is based off of a play style that is not alignment indicative (that is, the playstyle is null), much the suspicion on scrambles is no longer valid. You don't appear to that up that position, but I cannot see why.

[Green Crayons]

@CKD:

(1) I never saw your response to this point made by Riddle. Please provide a response:

3) CKD's rant at #830. When I replied to it afterwards, I didn't quite catch onto what he was implying. But on careful examination, I do see a minor change of stance. He went from defending Beli, to complaining that he's a "horrible player" if he flipped town, at least vaguely implying he doesn't quite think Beli is town anymore. It strikes me as strange considering CKD has consistently been on the Beli-town stance throughout the whole game. The stance change is quite abrupt. The swearing and anger at him perceiving Beli to perhaps not be town after all is very different from his #563 regarding Skelda where it's quite the opposite. 'Well darn, he's town after all! Not to worry'.

(2) Are you justifying your suspicions against CDB and farside solely based off of NK analysis? I haven't seen anything else from you on that point.

If not, what else do you got?

If so, why are you content with pushing a vote based solely on grounds that aren't exactly stellar?

[Green Crayons]

More detailed stuff w/ Scrambles to follow

Point 5
You'll find that unless im really on the fence about a player, I will (even with time) never interact with someone I think is scum. I have no reason to talk to scum or give them a reason to try and argue a point.

Then why does he interact with my rebuttal of his case against me?

Fair point.

[ChannelDelibird]

Hmm. Originally the first paragraph of my post re: Scrambles was two which I attempted to cut down for brevity's sake. Seems like I might have oversimplified and lost something in the process.

I think that a lot of Scrambles's defence is based on waving things away as his playstyle. In the case of his mysteriously changing opinion of Belisarius, I feel that you originally presented that as a pretty good case implying that Scrambles didn't know how best to react to his scumpartner - that being the best explanation of the changes of reasoning behind reads, the strange distribution of posts relating to Belisarius, etc. Scrambles has since replied that his reads changed because of "vibes", basically, and while I think that's probably what he'd say as town, based on what we've seen, it's also what scum who didn't have a better explanation would say. Just because his reaction here is null, that doesn't make the original behaviour less suspicious, especially when we can't take what he's saying now about it and apply that to evidence of how he was thinking at the time - not just because there wasn't much (he was away) but because, when your response to anything is "the vibes did it in between", there's just nothing to compare.

What do you think of the fact that I pointed out a new mysterious change of interpretation from him, regarding my questioning of his Riddleton read?

PEDIT: That point from Riddleton there only makes it more likely that we've got a "this is how I am, just go with it" defence from Scrambles because there's not a lot else that he can say in the circumstances.

[Green Crayons]

PEDIT: That point from Riddleton there only makes it more likely that we've got a "this is how I am, just go with it" defence from Scrambles because there's not a lot else that he can say in the circumstances.

I disagree. It makes scrambles' explanation about his play less genuine, because it provides a real life example of scrambles not playing the way he says he plays.


Looking into the other points you made.

[Green Crayons]

Or maybe I don't disagree, because I'm not actually sure what you're saying with the "this is how I am" comment. But I'm explaining why I think Riddle's observation is important for me.

[ChannelDelibird]

Or maybe I don't disagree, because I'm not actually sure what you're saying with the "this is how I am" comment. But I'm explaining why I think Riddle's observation is important for me.

Yeah, I think I could have expressed this better (the perils of quick reactions in PEDIT). My point is that it makes it more likely that all the "this is how I am" stuff is just what he thinks is the most likely thing to get suspicion off him, even though I think we're agreed that it's at least built on some likely truths about how he plays generally.