Newbie 1723 - Game Over!

[thenewearth]

Nacho's fence sitting is actually really stupid as fuck

Also if Vecna is actually town then he's the worse lynch bait ever

Lynch Priority is: e > harry > Nacho > Vecna

[Errantparabola]

Okay, so I was busier at work than I thought I would be, meaning that I'm still only about 4 pages into my reread.

I'm going to share a theory that I have about mafia that I think will make how I approach games and scumhunt a lot clearer. I've never shared this before, but it's nothing really that groundbreaking.

Keep in mind that with all my theory bullshit, I'm still a terrible scumhunter, so if you're not into theory then just glaze over this, I don't mind, because it's pretty long.

But I do expect it to make the notes that I'm planning to share a lot more clear when I babble about "surface-level town."

Remember the things I said about people looking surface-level town but not actually being town?
That's an important part of a theory that I call "levels," which incorporates a mix of meta and non-meta and is in my opinion crucial in catching the people that are really good at playing as scum (see: Nacho)

I play with a lot of familiar faces and that's an important factor in how I scumhunt, which is why I've never ventured into a newbie game recently until now (and even now was kind of a fluke). Basically with everyone I've played with before, I have a general sense of what level they play at as town and as scum. And so I try and keep in mind what kinds of behavior I would find at what level. Certain things that appear to be "obvious scum tells" might not be, because that's not expected for someone's scum-level but might be expected for someone's town-level.

I try to gauge and anticipate how people think at different levels. For example, there's a level of play from scum that's just "I always look as towny as possible" and there's a level of play that's just "I try and look towny, but I also try to influence the gamestate in a way that benefits scum." Both of these are pretty high levels of scumplay. I hope it's clear how approaching scumhunting these two different levels requires two different strategies. If someone plays at the former, I would look for people that appear town on the surface. If someone plays at the latter, I factor in motive. I assume that they calculate the risk and reward of any significant action rather than "which action will allow me to survive to the endgame?"

[Errantparabola]

Alright I'm back and I want a few questions answered.

e, you've taken several potshots at people that you haven't really followed up on. Do you think they're scum?

rb/Harry/Franky- if I told you that I was skeptical on your conclusion on tne's slip, what would you say? What is your opinion on the rest of the town not also jumping on tne because of this?

Skold, I'll let you know that you're my strongest scumread right now.
Few questions for you.
1. Why did you originally have trouble with distinguishing between e being "bad town" or "scum?"
2. Why did this trouble dissipate as your scumread on e strengthened?
3. Would you consider yourself a player that thoroughly evaluates their reads before making a dedicated push?
4. I'm sure Vecna knows that if they keep up with this posting, their death before LYLO is guaranteed. Why are you making Vecna a priority?

Nacho, e has expressed concern about something that you posted, multiple times. Do you know what it is? Are you consciously ignoring it (which, by the way, I can understand why you'd do that if you're town) or did you miss it (which I can also understand)? If I'm missing your response to this, please point me to where you responded?

[Errantparabola]

VOTE: skold
forgot to do this

[rb]

Okay so my current line of thinking is that either E is scum and was being townread by one of his scumbuddies or he's town and being pushed for an easy lynch.

Why?
I'm not really sure how what you're driving at with this particular piece of analysis; you think that either e is scum and a buddy is in the people who are townreading him (why?) or that he's town and scum is in the people pushing him (why?).[/quote]

Because he did nothing pro-town, so where does the townread come from?
If he's town he's an easy target, so scum would be opportunistic about it.

Or, 3rd possibility: scum are townreading him when he's actually town thinking that he's a likely lynch and looking for towncred. I'm just sure that scum has interacted with E at some point because he's made himself such a perfect target.

Whew. Okay, I can understand that then.

This is interesting. Could you rephrase TNE's argument in a way that makes more sense?
Like, okay, Dirty Harry is WIFOMing himself. What is he WIFOMing himself about?

Harry's openly declaring that he's playing close to his chest and that he won't reveal what it is. He'd obviously know this would be something that people would interpret as scummy, so obviously if he was scum he wouldn't do that because he knows it's scummy. But then what if he's scum and counting on the fact that people think scum wouldn't do such an obviously scummy thing so then they think he's not scum for doing a scum thing...and so on and so forth.

TNE saying Harry is WIFOM'ing himself is that Harry is making himself hard to read because his actions are surrounded by WIFOM. You can't interpret his shady play because he's openly declared that he's deliberately playing shady. That's what I took from her post, and it makes sense that she'd question him on it and try to figure out what's going on.

Skold, I'll give a full reads list before the end of the day in order to clarify where I'm standing on people in the middle, but I won't before then.

This is crap. Read lists are the penultimate, "look I'm contributing!" posts. They're NAI really and don't help solve the game. You're saving useless fluff for close to deadline? Why? If it's just to get your opinion out in case you're NK'd - fair enough. But why are you withholding your reads now?

What are your top2 scumreads?
Top2 Townreads?

rb/Harry/Franky- if I told you that I was skeptical on your conclusion on tne's slip, what would you say? What is your opinion on the rest of the town not also jumping on tne because of this?

Why don't you just say you're skeptical and the reasons why?

I wouldn't expect the rest of the town to jump on TNE for it tbh. I pressured her to explain his point because it didn't make sense that he'd tell his 2nd strongest scum-read, "thanks for giving scum some WIFOM". I'd be more worried if everyone suddenly jumped on her than if some people saw it as scummy and some didn't.

[rb]

VOTE: skold
forgot to do this

Skold was my highest scumread before. What's your reasoning?

[Dirty Harry2]

If I am not online today I will be Thursday, to the end of Day 1.

[Skold]

1. Why did you originally have trouble with distinguishing between e being "bad town" or "scum?"
2. Why did this trouble dissipate as your scumread on e strengthened?
3. Would you consider yourself a player that thoroughly evaluates their reads before making a dedicated push?
4. I'm sure Vecna knows that if they keep up with this posting, their death before LYLO is guaranteed. Why are you making Vecna a priority?

1. Because I find them very similar. I should have mentioned - bad town or bad scum because obviously well played scum plays almost exactly as well played town to the uninformed eye.
2. Because the longer he refused to actually scumhunt and focus more on defending himself with theory and meta nonsense it made it seem more likely that he was using the fact that many people are using the ''newbtown focus too much on defence'' as a cover.
3. I consider all possible evidence I have - but I won't say I need all that much to go on something if nothing else is around. This is weird and context dependent.
4. Because I find it incredibly scummy and allowing it to go unlynched means that scum in future games can also use this as a cover. I think it not only cleans up the forum as a whole, but is the best lynch we have. But I'm not a silly person and if my vote is needed to finish a lynch before the end of the day I'll make that happen.

[Skold]

Okay, so I was busier at work than I thought I would be, meaning that I'm still only about 4 pages into my reread.

I'm going to share a theory that I have about mafia that I think will make how I approach games and scumhunt a lot clearer. I've never shared this before, but it's nothing really that groundbreaking.

Keep in mind that with all my theory bullshit, I'm still a terrible scumhunter, so if you're not into theory then just glaze over this, I don't mind, because it's pretty long.

But I do expect it to make the notes that I'm planning to share a lot more clear when I babble about "surface-level town."

Remember the things I said about people looking surface-level town but not actually being town?
That's an important part of a theory that I call "levels," which incorporates a mix of meta and non-meta and is in my opinion crucial in catching the people that are really good at playing as scum (see: Nacho)

I play with a lot of familiar faces and that's an important factor in how I scumhunt, which is why I've never ventured into a newbie game recently until now (and even now was kind of a fluke). Basically with everyone I've played with before, I have a general sense of what level they play at as town and as scum. And so I try and keep in mind what kinds of behavior I would find at what level. Certain things that appear to be "obvious scum tells" might not be, because that's not expected for someone's scum-level but might be expected for someone's town-level.

I try to gauge and anticipate how people think at different levels. For example, there's a level of play from scum that's just "I always look as towny as possible" and there's a level of play that's just "I try and look towny, but I also try to influence the gamestate in a way that benefits scum." Both of these are pretty high levels of scumplay. I hope it's clear how approaching scumhunting these two different levels requires two different strategies. If someone plays at the former, I would look for people that appear town on the surface. If someone plays at the latter, I factor in motive. I assume that they calculate the risk and reward of any significant action rather than "which action will allow me to survive to the endgame?"

Correct me if I have this arse backwards buuuuutttt - Scumtells aren't scumtells because they're too easy for town to make and to find scum you look for people who look towny.

If you are town I think this is a horrible way to go about it. Not only does removing scumtells as scumtells allow scum to get away with anti-town things (because most scumtells are generally just things that are anti-town that need to be punished as if only scum did them because they only make sense from a reasonably intelligent scum motivation) - *GASP FOR AIR* this also severely limits scumhunting to gut thinking. You're assuming the scum-playstyle, that scum aren't just trying to hide by being too obvious and you're assuming that scum are a lot better than they can sometimes be. Sometimes scum slip, make mistakes or play too obviously scummy.
I don't think you're scum, this just doesn't make sense from that kind of motivation to on the spot invent a new kind of silly read in order to push a bad lynch but I don't think this makes a single kind of sense.

[Skold]

Nacho, e has expressed concern about something that you posted, multiple times. Do you know what it is? Are you consciously ignoring it (which, by the way, I can understand why you'd do that if you're town) or did you miss it (which I can also understand)? If I'm missing your response to this, please point me to where you responded?

This has been clarified, read the thread parabola. Seriously, back to front without skipping a single word read this thread. I'm not convinced you have.

[Skold]

Lynch Priority is: e > harry > Nacho > Vecna

I can take an E lynch and a Vecna lynch and if it's Nacho or nothing I'll bite that bullet but I do want to see much more from Nacho before the 15th. But I'm not lynching Harry. Nothing he says seems to come from a scummy perspective, the WIFOM nonsense isn't even a case worth mentioning but I'll give it it's due here and overall I see him as town.
ps: I want to start lynching on the 15th because that gives us actual time to let less active people actually vote before the day is done. I don't want a no lynch because no showers didn't vote a lynch-able target.

[Skold]

Vecna (3) - Skold, Nacho, rb
e_is_cool (2) - Earth, Franky
Harry (1) - Vecna
Skold (2) - Vecna, Parabola
Franky (0) -
rb (0) -
Parabola (0) -
Earth (2) - Parabola, Franky
Nacho (0) -
Not Voting (3) - Harrye_is_cool
In lieu of the inactive mod and because it's getting difficult to keep track of. I think this is accurate but if someone else can check it that would be great.

[Skold]

Harry has no votes on him because Vecna cannot vote twice. Gj skold, gj.

[thenewearth]

Vecna Lynch is really low prio right now because its really him basically being the lynch bait

We can do it on D2

[Skold]

I disagree because I want to keep active, albeit scummy, players alive over sheep. Vecna isn't going to get any scummier nor do I think at this point he could redeem himself in my eyes if he played seriously from here out. But if it comes to it, I will swap.

[Skold]

To clarify, because my question to Nacho might have confused it, I wasn't talking about Vecna when I mentioned lynching someone because they are ruining the game. I've been reading some other threads that I'm not a part of and that's the most I can say about that without breaking site rules. I am confident beyond confidence that Vecna will flip scum when/if you lynch him.

[thenewearth]

I mean the thing he's doing is just super anti-town and its harmful as fuck

Its almost a required lynch bait if he'd keep doing that

P-edit: The fuck are you talking about?

[thenewearth]

Lynching him right now is really just over a policy lynch

Scum or not that shit shouldn't really be done

Plus if he's scum its better for him to stay and we can lynch the stronger of them

[rb]

Lynching him right now is really just over a policy lynch

Scum or not that shit shouldn't really be done

Plus if he's scum its better for him to stay and we can lynch the stronger of them

Yeah that's how the game always goes. Some scummy lurker sits there and lurks scummily and no one ever lynches because they're all like, "yeah but that's just a policy lynch guys!" and then they flip scum at the end and everyone's somehow amazed.

My vote's staying on Vecna.

[rb]

FWIW: it's not a policy lynch. Vecna is deliberately daring us to fucking lynch him and I'm not losing the game to a scum doing nothing but typing sheep sounds.

[Skold]

The thing I was talking about was a preemptive explanation for something that would've been brought up by Parabola's wagon once he's done reading the game. I don't know if I agree with ''no policy lynches'', but this isn't a policy lynch. Vecna is acting completely scummy, imo worse than e_is_cool and I want him dead. I won't switch unless I it's completely clear Vecna isn't getting lynched and we need something else. Basically putting a pin in this till Friday when the dust starts rising.
peit: Exactly this.

[Skold]

My vote's staying on Vecna.

Please don't be the guy who refuses to swap and causes a no lynch. If it's clear Vecna isn't getting lynched then ----
any lynch > no lynch.

[thenewearth]

yeah fuck it

UNVOTE:
VOTE: Vecna

L-1 or hammer whatever IDC VC plz

[rb]

Uhh I do hope that's not hammer. Not that I would have expected Vecna to do anything even if intent was claimed but still I'd prefer we wait so that we can share opinions before night so that whoever is NK'd still had the chance to give us confirmed town-motivated reads.

[rb]

Looks like it's L-1, okay. Please no one hammer without declaring intent.