Newbie 1596: Exotic Birds (Game Over)

[Cephrir]

Vote Count 2.1

Skold 1 (singersigner)

Not Voting 6 (Argos, Plotinus, Wanderer-nl, Wyvernite, saad, Skold)

With 7 alive, it takes 4 to lynch. Deadline is in (expired on 2015-05-02 10:00:00)

.

[Plotinus]

saad, what do you think of wanderer's 211? what do you think of singer's case against skold?

[Plotinus]

Skold, I happened to see your username on the active users a few hours ago and I was hoping you'd drop in and share your thoughts with us, but you didn't and its gone now. Why didn't you drop in? It's been over 2 days now since you posted in this thread, but you posted somewhere else yesterday. I think you are lurking.

[singersigner]

Spoiler: quoting a big post

@Saad Townlean is weaker than townread. I don't have a list of towntells memorised and most of them can be faked anyway. I just have some early game positive feelings towards Argos for now.

@singer: Thanks for the explanation. I think I will avoid pressure votes until I have some idea of what I'm trying to accomplish with them, then.

About the "best scumhunter" thing: BBT was very enthusiastically scumhunting on Day 1. You weren't because you were at work and the day was cut short. However, as IC, and as a person with a green name, as someone who has been here for 4.5 years, we can guess that you know something about this game, that you have learned something about how to read people, that you know when to trust your feelings and when not to, that you've seen newbie scum in many different games and you have some idea of what to look for. Of course this is all conjecture because we haven't seen it in action, but it's an educated guess. As IC, your advice is more likely to help us pull off a town victory.

I'm not saying we should all sheep you because we do need to learn to think for ourselves (or I need to learn anyway), but I do think that if I were scum and if I didn't have any leads on powerroles, if nobody was mod confirmed town, and there was nobody I wanted to policy lynch for being annoying, then I would go after the best scumhunters, the IC, and leave alive whoever looked the most confused. I've given it some thought (especially the policy lynch part), but I keep drawing town-aligned roles so I can't actually test my thoughts.

So that's why I think both that you are more likely than the rest of us to be night killed and why I think you weren't killed night 1.

Plotinus has several posts like these that are very eager-sounding and transparent. Scum don't like giving away information that could condemn them, so they're not as willing to be as forthcoming with information. I know this isn't always the case, since in one of my more recent Newbie games, I was fooled by someone who posted a lot, but I realized in retrospect he was trying to cover up his potential mistakes by talking in circles. I don't feel this is the case for Plotinus.

PEdit (yes in front) wow this post turned out big. It's my stance right now and would like everybody to respond (agree/disagree+reason)

Spoiler:

Hey BBT. Been a very short while

short while is an oxymoron and an oxymoron is a contradiction between two words (the word oxymoron in itself is an oxymoron; with oxy meaning dull in latin and moron meaning sharp). only the scum contradict because THEY are the ones lying.

VOTE: Skold

Other way around, and greek, not latin

reason still stands, blame my source.

This thing is making me think saad and Skold aren't scumbuddies. saad seems very newb to me and I don't think he'd bus as scum.
Maybe saad and plotinus are scumbuddies. saad was overly defensive with my random vote, and also when plotinus was voted.

I would be inclined to agree if it wasn't an RVS vote or he gave any seriously reasoning for voting for skold. I think it means nothing, and if anything, if either one of them flips scum, I'd be more suspicious of the other

specifically

because of this RVS vote. As newer players, your attention is drawn to familiarity, and scum buddies are familiar.

This sounds coach-y

I'm glad you didn't claim a powerrole. Way too early in the game for that.

Agreed.

And the only interaction they have is first when plotinus corrects saad with the oxymoron stuff, and later when she suggests to saad to replace into games. I think that's odd because saad was at L-1 at some point and to me it feels Plotinus was avoiding that bandwagon, and very happy to join on mofo. Her explanation on finding BBT suspicious to joining the bw to disliking his tactic after BBT flips town seems a little convenient to me.

Good point.

Spoiler: connection between plotinus and saad

Defending saad:

Actually, I don't believe him at all. He claimed villager. It clearly states in the setup and the sample role PM's that the role is called Vanilla Townie.

I'm inclined to agree with this.

Not a plays-the-game-on-some-other-site-too slip?

He may well do.

I find it more likely that he would use the terminology given in his role PM though.

fair enough.

re:94 I think it can be a good tactic for scumbuddies to fight each other early on and then make up. that logic would make more sense of saad was also scumreading BBT though, especially since he's doing OMGUS for everyone else.

To me this looks like Plotinus disagrees with BBT but is letting it slide. Plotinus is entertaining the idea of BBT and saad as scumbuddies but seems to come to the conclusion that saad sn't bussing BBT so that theory makes little sense. (That's my interpretation of her words)

Plotinus basically saying she doesn't suspect saad right now but might later:

It will depend on how they behave today. I think it can be hard to distinguish between newbie and scummy -- to use examples from our last game, ducks who seemed (to me) scum but was newbie and mainez who seemed newbie but was scum, but it's worth keeping an eye on them.

people only wanna play as town, if i replace i'd likely get a scum slot from a guy who lurked because he flipped scum.

So what I'm reading from this is that Saad doesn't want to be mafia, he wants to be town, and that if he were mafia he would lurk until he was replaced. I disagree with his premise about what other people want to play, but do think that he believes it. Him not lurking is not evidence either way (because he could have been lying), but if he does start lurking after this I'll be more suspicious of him.

I think if we're dealing with two newbie scum, then it's 2 of [skold, saad, argos] (mostly by process of elimination on "newbie" and "scum"). We've only seen 9 posts from Skold so far, and only a few of substance. We've seen even less of Argos (just 2 posts). It is entirely possible they were sleeping or at work like singer during the entire 7 hour day, so complete null read on them.

House said something last game -- even though he was scum I think he was telling the truth about this part -- about a good way to distinguish IC town from IC scum, so I think we can fairly confidently wait and see what will happen with singer and how she plays this week. If singer is town then I do think we're dealing with 2 newbie scum. If singer is not town it is entirely too early to be guessing who her buddy is but probably one of the candidates for newbie scum.

Anyway, I'd trust your instincts about who to watch.

who even is our remaining SE? *checks* oh, Skold. But he's only been on the site for a couple months so he might still feel like a newer player? I looked over his completed games very briefly and I didn't find a completed scum game, so if he is scum then i'll count him in the newbie category.

This is actually a really good eye. I feel better now that I don't think it's my second theory of you keeping me around because I initially townread you.

Additionally, Plotinus' 226 looks like he could be deferring to his scum buddy for advice, not onlly with how to hedge his own suspicion, but potentially to see if there's a way to deflect suspicion onto skold. I'm withholding this read a little bit because I would like to see skold more active and I'm worried that now I'm reading into everything with confirmation bias (

if you already have it in your head that something is true, then everything else is going to serve to confirm that feeling

).

Disagree. I was spectating his last game, which is ongoing so I can't talk about it, but it gave me some pre-game impressions of him, and my early interactions with him, including the "coaching" were based on those impressions. I have impressions of you too from last game. As the game progresses, I'm forming impressions based on this game, which are more valuable than any pre-game impressions.

Careful. Even this is too much. I'll explain more why after the game or you can take this to the mod to find out why now.

Confirming I agree with this. -C

[Wanderer-nl]

Spoiler: quoting a big post

@Saad Townlean is weaker than townread. I don't have a list of towntells memorised and most of them can be faked anyway. I just have some early game positive feelings towards Argos for now.

@singer: Thanks for the explanation. I think I will avoid pressure votes until I have some idea of what I'm trying to accomplish with them, then.

About the "best scumhunter" thing: BBT was very enthusiastically scumhunting on Day 1. You weren't because you were at work and the day was cut short. However, as IC, and as a person with a green name, as someone who has been here for 4.5 years, we can guess that you know something about this game, that you have learned something about how to read people, that you know when to trust your feelings and when not to, that you've seen newbie scum in many different games and you have some idea of what to look for. Of course this is all conjecture because we haven't seen it in action, but it's an educated guess. As IC, your advice is more likely to help us pull off a town victory.

I'm not saying we should all sheep you because we do need to learn to think for ourselves (or I need to learn anyway), but I do think that if I were scum and if I didn't have any leads on powerroles, if nobody was mod confirmed town, and there was nobody I wanted to policy lynch for being annoying, then I would go after the best scumhunters, the IC, and leave alive whoever looked the most confused. I've given it some thought (especially the policy lynch part), but I keep drawing town-aligned roles so I can't actually test my thoughts.

So that's why I think both that you are more likely than the rest of us to be night killed and why I think you weren't killed night 1.

Plotinus has several posts like these that are very eager-sounding and transparent. Scum don't like giving away information that could condemn them, so they're not as willing to be as forthcoming with information. I know this isn't always the case, since in one of my more recent Newbie games, I was fooled by someone who posted a lot, but I realized in retrospect he was trying to cover up his potential mistakes by talking in circles. I don't feel this is the case for Plotinus.

PEdit (yes in front) wow this post turned out big. It's my stance right now and would like everybody to respond (agree/disagree+reason)

Spoiler:

Hey BBT. Been a very short while

short while is an oxymoron and an oxymoron is a contradiction between two words (the word oxymoron in itself is an oxymoron; with oxy meaning dull in latin and moron meaning sharp). only the scum contradict because THEY are the ones lying.

VOTE: Skold

Other way around, and greek, not latin

reason still stands, blame my source.

This thing is making me think saad and Skold aren't scumbuddies. saad seems very newb to me and I don't think he'd bus as scum.
Maybe saad and plotinus are scumbuddies. saad was overly defensive with my random vote, and also when plotinus was voted.

I would be inclined to agree if it wasn't an RVS vote or he gave any seriously reasoning for voting for skold. I think it means nothing, and if anything, if either one of them flips scum, I'd be more suspicious of the other

specifically

because of this RVS vote. As newer players, your attention is drawn to familiarity, and scum buddies are familiar.

Saad, I will ask you this; why did you not RVS in your first post?

rvs is shit, my vote was a serious vote.

[Wanderer-nl]

@mod: prod Skold please?

[Cephrir]

Skold has informed me that he's going on V/LA for an unknown amount of time. He was unsure whether he should continue playing. I will be keeping an eye on the situation to determine whether a replacement is necessary.

[singersigner]

RIGHT.

I think I remember not taking that seriously, to be honest. Did he address why his vote was serious, yet?

[Plotinus]

Okay, thanks for that warning. I accept that I crossed the line but that does mean I am not fully sure where the line is. I think I will ask the mod privately for advice on how to answer questions where the answer is something that's against the rules to say.

In 226 I'm scumhunting. My townreads are wanderer and wyvernite. strong townlean on singer. weak townlean on argos pending more activity. i know my own alignment, so that leaves saad/skold for scum, skold for inactivity which does appear to be active lurking and saad for being hard to communicate with. I'm trying to get both of them to communicate more, because I would rather scumread someone for what they are doing than for what they're not.

VOTE: Skold because I want you to come talk to us. I want you to post your reads and to actively participate in this game.

I'm picking skold not saad because the active lurking (seeing Skold's name on the player list for but him not turning up in game) was the tipping point for me. When Skold made most of his fluff posts, we were still in RVS, so it's okay, and I can relate to feeling exasperated by being pressured to have opinions before I'm ready to have them (especially on page 1-2 of a game), but we've had 229 posts so far and this has been an interesting day 2 so far with lots of things to talk about and yet Skold isn't here chattering.

I would be almost equally happy with a saad lynch, though I do find him hard to read. His ISO is all over the place. But there are a few posts of his that give me pause for reasons I don't want to share right now, but 40 made me suspicious and 84 allayed those particular suspicions for reasons that are entirely about this game, but I wasn't townreading him after that either. In today's interactions, 167 was really cryptic and hard to understand and it took a lot of back and forth to figure out what he was talking about and I'm still not sure I understand what he was trying to do and why. and now he's scumreading singer but he won't tell us why and that's weird. His last activity was about 40 minutes after he posted so he probably did see Wanderer ask why he's suspicious of singer, but hasn't seen my own questions for him yet. He ~could~ have answered wanderer but he didn't.


pedit: @singer, yeah kinda. i mean he gave a reason that he called serious, it just wasn't a very good one.

Spoiler: here is what he said about why his vote was serious

OK.

Here are my thoughts on it;

the mafia could be anywhere, watch out!

This is scum unsure about how to approach the game. You feel uncomfortable voting 'randomly' because you know everybodies alignments. It's also a subtle way of saying 'Hey, I have no idea who scum are!'

short while is an oxymoron and an oxymoron is a contradiction between two words (the word oxymoron in itself is an oxymoron; with oxy meaning dull in latin and moron meaning sharp). only the scum contradict because THEY are the ones lying.

VOTE: Skold

This is you flat out copying Skold's RVS vote in 9. This is an attempt to fit in, you wasn't sure how to vote without drawing attention to yourself (scum are much more self-aware and careful with their actions than town) and you found what you thought was a good choice in copying somebody elses style of RVS voting.

The fact you're trying to claim that it was a serious vote (to excuse not voting earlier) is laughable.

Votes should be piling onto Saad now.

i like the way ur thinking.

first was just an innocuous comment lol

second, well Skold is 14 and I thought an early vote would put pressure onto him, so no it wasn't a random vote it was a serious vote, putting pressure on him. he's young, so if he's scum, he's more likely to squeal, that's the way i see it. kids aren't usually experienced liars. also his content throughout the game has been non serious, trollish filler comments so the vote sticks for now.

[Plotinus]

just saw the va/la thing. well that takes away some of my argument about active lurking but he's only at L-3 so I'll leave it for now.

[singersigner]

@saad...what experience do you have with Skold to know how old he is?

Also, just as a reminder, because we lost two people (one with the lynch and one with the night kill), we now only have seven people alive, so it takes four to lynch. Skold would be considered at L-2 right now.

unvote
vote: saad

I'd rather a replacement come in now since it's unfair for the rest of us to work with an indeterminate V/LA deadline. Regardless of when he comes back, we won't know when to expect it or what kind of activity level should/could/would be normal otherwise, so the slot is entirely void in this game. Even with the mod is keeping an eye out, I really don't like unknown timelines.

[Argos]

Is saad a native English speaker? That could explain at least some of the oddness of his posts. Singersigner's recent burst of activity puts them on the right side of 'town' for me right now, either that or very good scum. I think I read in one of the threads I was lurking in before I joined that scum are more likely to switch out, so if Skold ends up not coming back that could be a bit troublesome, though I don't know whether his relative experience shifts those numbers at all. Don't want to rush to judgement based on statistics, but I'm eager to hear what he or his replacement have to say.

[singersigner]

I think it would be different if Skold weren't on a claimed V/LA. I would assume that if he was replacing out due to being scum, he wouldn't be waffling about it.

Why do you think being a native English speaker would affect how he's posted so far? Could you site some example of what you'd consider "odd" that you'd attribute to a second language barrier?

[Argos]

I think it would be different if Skold weren't on a claimed V/LA. I would assume that if he was replacing out due to being scum, he wouldn't be waffling about it.

Why do you think being a native English speaker would affect how he's posted so far? Could you site some example of what you'd consider "odd" that you'd attribute to a second language barrier?

To be quite honest a lot of the scummyness radiating from saad for me is just the general tone of his sentences, the kind of kurt and unhelpful responses to questions he gives in something like post 173 (how do you like to posts directly btw?), the generally 'unnatural' vibe I get from him. I could see that as not quite having an expert command on the language and misreading questions and somesuch. I'm just worried that I'm allowing myself to mix up awkward sentence construction and lack of capitalization with legitimate scumtells.

[singersigner]

Yeah, punctuation and grammar aren't really alignment indicative at all. I think you're also loosely throwing around the word "scumtell"--since there's a difference between doing something that's scummy, which can be done as either alignment and you have to interpret/determine which it is, or something that is really only done by scum, which there are very few things that applies to.

For example: saying "villager" instead of vanilla townie could be interpreted as a scumtell simply because the likelihood that town would say something other than what's in their role PM is very slim...versus the construction of his posts that's something you're interpreting as scummy, because sometimes townies aren't always able to eloquently articulate their points in a way that portrays them as town. And then sometimes they're just scum! But you have to weigh what means more to you and how you really feel about it.

Also, with regards to linking to posts:
1. [ url = http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 9#p6785829 ] ENTER WORDS HERE THEY CAN BE ANYTHING [ / url ]
turns into
This: ENTER WORDS HERE THEY CAN BE ANYTHING

2. [ post ] 173 [ / post]
turns into
This: 173

You can also see what kind of coding someone is using by quoting their post and looking at it before you preview.

[Wanderer-nl]

Why is nobody talking about saad's vote and unvote on Plotinus earlier today?

[saad]

Is saad a native English speaker? That could explain at least some of the oddness of his posts. Singersigner's recent burst of activity puts them on the right side of 'town' for me right now, either that or very good scum. I think I read in one of the threads I was lurking in before I joined that scum are more likely to switch out, so if Skold ends up not coming back that could be a bit troublesome, though I don't know whether his relative experience shifts those numbers at all. Don't want to rush to judgement based on statistics, but I'm eager to hear what he or his replacement have to say.

thx for towntelling

[saad]

ill explain singer scumread tomorrow. you're going down sunshine

[singersigner]

[Wyvernite]

okay, so sorry about not posting my reads yesterday, I was on 3 hours of sleep and the tiredness kinda snuck up on me. anywayyyys let's jump in shall we?
------------------------------------------------------------
I have Plot down as: too town. I feel like he's actively trying to be read as town, and anytime he slips up and advises we do something scummy, he blames it on newbiness. I don't particularly like him town reading me either. I don't think I've done too much to be read as town. Especially over singer. who is one of my top town reads (more on that later). I also don't like how in his reads he only leaves room for 2 scum. How are you so sure about everyone else's town reads, that you've already narrowed it down to two? I don't like it. I feel like some of his play has been forgiven due to the sheer volume of his posts. While this could just be overexcited behavior, it could also be him trying to lead town in circles, by drowning them in posts.

Singer: I have singer as my top town so far. If for no other reason that 228 kinda screams town to me. She's been very helpful, and fairly clear in her reasoning behind her reads. I also think I could be reading this helpfulness in the wrong light, as some of it comes just from the fact that she's the I.C., and it's her job to be helpful in this manner. However I feel like everyone else is also on the same wavelength, I think we need to reevaluate her at a later time, as opposed to just giving her a free pass all game.

Argos: I don't have a very hard read on Argos, but what he's posted so far has been town imo. Slight townlean on him so far. Not much more to add here, he's just been helpful, and has actually provided posts with a bit of content in them.

Saad: I think saad is mafia, mainly for the reasons everyone else has posted. I don't normally like to agree with everyone elses reasons, but I believe them to be fairly obvious in this scenario. Not too much to read into, just plain scummy play. ESPECIALLY in posts: 221 222 241 242 I'll let his posts speak for him, as I think they do a pretty good job of confirming my reads.


Skold: I really don't want to read into someone who's V/LA. I want him replaced if he isn't coming back tomorrow or the day after. If I had to give a read, I would say scummy though.


Wanderer: I feel like he's had a few useful posts, but also had a lot of posts where its just quotes, with a sentence or two from him, which I don't like. Null read on him for now.

[Wyvernite]

ALSO, that damn derphammer onto mofo, I just can't ignore that even it it's a mistake

VOTE: plotinus

[Wanderer-nl]

@mod: please replace Skold asap. I'm with singer on this, we now have a useless slot and I don't like the uncertainty of whether and/or when Skold may come back.

[Wanderer-nl]

@Wyvernite: your postlinks link wrong. You can just use [ post ] <postnumber in this thread> [ /post] I think postID's are only necessary when linking to a post in/from another thread.

[Wanderer-nl]

Why is nobody talking about saad's vote and unvote on Plotinus earlier today?

[Wanderer-nl]

[partial quote removed]

Wanderer: I feel like he's had a few useful posts, but also had a lot of posts where its just quotes, with a sentence or two from him, which I don't like. Null read on him for now.

Would you rather I linked to posts instead of quoting them?
I feel like you are reading me over my poststyle and not so much the content in my posts. It's my playstyle to be thorough, so I add quotes to make it easier for all of you to read where I'm coming from. I also tend to not make too long posts (quotes not included) because a big wall of text gets hard to read, and I know I have a hard time reading through posts that have a lot of words but don't really say much at all.
Do you have any questions for me that could get your read off the null-line?