Newbie 1732 [Game Over!]: InnocentVille

[implosion]

Hello, everyone! I'm implosion, and I'll be your IC for this game. More or less, what this means is that I'm here to help you adjust to playing mafia in the meta of mafiascum. My actions in this game are governed by the article Being a good IC, so while I may lie to you as scum, I will never lie to you while in a teaching role. So you can trust me when I talk about game theory, common tells, and so on - but you should put me under the same level of scrutiny as everyone else with regards to whether I'm town or scum.

The mafiascum.net wiki has a ton of useful information about the site, about common roles, common setups such as this game's Matrix6 setup, etc. I'd highly recommend perusing the wiki a bit - if you have any other questions, don't hesitate to ask me! Either way, I'll be talking about various relevant topics as they come up.

For a bit of information about me: I've been on MS for about 6 years now, playing on and off (but mostly on), so I have a lot of experience with the site and its meta. I've ICed once before, a very long time ago (in fact, I think that game was lost to a site crash in 2011-2012!) I generally try to be very transparent with what I'm thinking at any given time, so don't be surprised if I'm giving a lot of weak reads early and refining them later. I also tend to focus more than the average player on finding players to townread, rather than just finding scum - this is just a playstyle thing because I often find it easier to pick up on towntells than scumtells. If you ever want me to justify anything I've said, please don't hesitate to ask.

Games on MS often start with a random voting stage, or RVS (for other acronyms, see this wiki article). This is simply because in the early game, we lack information as a town, so we attempt to generate information by voting for players, reacting to those votes, judging each others' reactions, and so on.

On that note:

VOTE: thenewearth

Above all, remember - this is a game. Have fun!

[implosion]

The general consensus on selfvoting is that you should basically never do it as town. In joking situations like this it's generally not the end of the world, but you're likely to earn some extra attention, so it's not advisable. If you are actually under pressure, you absolutely should not selfvote as town. It can accelerate a mislynch that may or may not have even happened in the first place, and denies the town the valuable information of an extra person being on the wagon, among other reasons. Scum will sometimes selfvote when they're at L-1 (one vote away from being lynched), if they see their lynch as inevitable, for much the same reason (it can deny the town information). But as town there are, with very few exceptions, never really any good reason for it.

---

@shannon, hello.
@AstralFlare: imp-losion isn't even in standard anymore so you don't get to complain :p.

I'm also willing to weakly call Chrimi town for now, but only very weakly. I'd also say AstralFlare is slightly town.

[implosion]

I'm curious as to how you were able to get a read (however mild) on Chrimi and I after two or three posts each. Is this purely based off tone?

The read on Chrimi is essentially based on tone. The read on you is because your jump onto the Chrimi wagon is a tad more conspicuous than the moves I'd expect scum to make at this stage of the game.

Implosion, do you have any reads on stuff that was posted since you were here?

Vaguely scummy vibes from Penguin. But nothing concrete. Still,

Unvote

VOTE: Penguin

[implosion]

@Penguin: there are two really convenient ways to link posts in case you don't know them:

Code: Select all

[post]24[/post]

[post=24]Blah blah blah[/post]

The former is useful if you just want to link the number, the latter lets you put in whatever text you want for the link.

The penguin scumread is also tonal, based specifically on his vote moreso than on the post that came after it.

[implosion]

Implosion: To rephrase, are you saying the tone which he used when he voted me was scummy?

Yes. Again though, it's a very weak read.

Implosion has attributed most his readings to people's tone. Is this normal for early mafia, or at least the random vote stage?

It's normal because we don't have very much information to go off of right now; there aren't any interesting interactions or particularly noteworthy actions that have been taken yet, so in order to generate content, I'm trying to figure out what I can based on tone or other signs that emerge early.

By the way, what does NAI stand for?

Not alignment indicative.

[implosion]

Are you guys seriously taking my first post's RVS joking self-vote as somehow scummy?

Are you actually surprised at this? Historically whenever I've seen people selfvote in RVS they drew scrutiny for it. Well at least the one example I can think of.

I honestly can't tell if you seriously believe in what you're saying right now or if you're just trying to set up a strawman here. Nobody is voting you just for having alts. Nobody is saying alts are against the rules. I'm voting you for contradicting yourself and then refusing to give the username of your other alt.

Contradictions aren't actually as good of a scumtell as you'd think they are in cases like this. To discern a town post from a scum post, you have to discern whether the post was motivated by town intent or scum intent. A contradiction like Chrimi mentioning that she has multiple alts then only mentioning one of them is extremely unlikely to be scum motivated - scum would not have motivation to intentionally lie in that way, both because it's very unlikely that hiding that extra alt account's information is actually going to help them as scum and because people may notice the discrepancy and call them out (but moreso the first). It's not indicative of Chrimi's alignment because it's far more likely that Chrimi simply misspoke or, as she said, simply didn't consider the hydra worthy of mentioning.

a reaction test

@implosion

I've seen this a couple of times. I understand what a reaction test is in terms of testing someone's reaction. How is it actually used/intended to be used in forum mafia?

It's kind of an overused concept. Reaction testing is a lot more potent in face-to-face or IRC mafia where you can get an immediate reaction to something and judge it quickly, whereas on a forum the typical IRC reaction test doesn't work because scum have as much time as they want to craft a response. On forum mafia the phrase reaction test is more often used to refer to someone intentionally saying something that they don't believe, or something that they think is incorrect, or pushing more strongly on a read than their confidence in the read would actually back up. Each of these is done for the sake of seeing how people react, but again, it's a different kind of reaction.

[implosion]

To me Chrimi's talk of alts is uninteresting. A more interesting post is this:

Chrimi, why are you

still

not voting?

Because.. Not voting at this stage isn't scummy?

You guys do realize we're on page 3 right?

This reads to me as potentially scum-motivated in how defensive it is. The question was why she isn't voting; saying that "not voting at this stage isn't scummy" doesn't actually answer that question, it just deflects it. The second sentence sort of implies the answer of "it's page 3 and there's not enough for me to be confident on to vote," but if that's how she feels she simply could have answered the question that way.

[implosion]

I

believe

Chrimi is at L-2 but I'm not certain; I'd recommend not voting her until we get another vote count.

I may as well explain this aspect of site meta now as well: lynching Chrimi now would be bad because it's so early in the day (so we have very little information), but also because we wouldn't be giving her a chance to claim. At MS, the typical procedure is to put someone at L-1 (that is, one vote away from lynch) and then instead of hammering (voting the final vote), someone declares "intent to hammer" and asks for a claim. This is to prevent accidentally hammering a power role, especially one with useful information (like a cop with night results). It of course has the side effect that scum can sometimes claim power roles and still live, but the claiming post itself is often a very useful source of alignment-revealing information. I've had at least one game in memory where someone I was scumreading claimed cop, and there was a lot of hemming and hawing over whether we should still lynch them, which we did (they flipped scum). So it's not like claiming a power role automatically means we should take the pressure off, but especially on day one it usually will result in moving the lynch elsewhere. If they claim vanilla townie, the lynch will usually continue (but not always, if people change their minds).

[implosion]

People going afk isn't usually a big problem, because of replacements. There will always be lurkers who don't post nearly as much as they should but you kind of just need to learn to deal with them, either by reading them through what little they post, or pressuring them until they post more, or putting them off until later. And if some people aren't active near deadline, the active players usually loosen up on who they're willing to lynch to get a lynch through. Although I actually did see, in a recent game of mine for the first time that I've seen on MS (I think), a town fail to lynch anyone on d1. You don't want that to happen. I was scum so I didn't really care, I was sort of just basking in the chaos around me.

Day length depends on a lot of factors. I think the prevailing mindset among good players on the site is that towns on MS often spend more time than is necessary in early days. Once there's a consensus on who to lynch it shouldn't take a long time to actually push the lynch through. The real problem isn't people going afk necessarily, as if someone is too inactive then they'll be replaced. The bigger problem is that if days last too long without concrete new information being generated from things like alignment flips and roleclaims, towns will often lose motivation and suffer a lot as a result. That's not to say that we should lynch this early though .

I'd say a typical d1 lasts anywhere from half of the deadline to ~a day before deadline. Before then it's relatively rare (but it happens) for a wagon to form with enough support. Near the end of the day people tend to conglomerate more because they want to see a flip. It's not necessarily a bad thing if a lynch happens before then, though.

[implosion]

implosion, I shouldn't have to explain this to an

experienced player

, but here you go anyways:

Here in Mafia, when people ask questions, it's generally to try and help find scum. So I usually answer questions with the assumption that they think whatever action they're questioning me about is scummy.

VOTE: implosion for pretending you don't already know this.

Yes, questions are generally to try to find scum, but that doesn't mean that if someone asks you a question they already think you're scum. To clarify my point, the way you reacted to that post showed that your first instinct was not to answer the question, it was to defend against it, and that potentially betrays a mindset where defending against potential attacks is more important than expediting others' scumhunting by answering questions.

Especially in the context of a newbie game, it's very silly to assume that being asked a question means that you're being scumread by the questioner. In this case it's obvious that you were being scumread (since AstralFlare was voting you), but that's not the point of what I said. The point of what I said is that your first reaction to the question essentially appeared to be that of preventative damage control. Mafia is certainly partially about defending yourself, and it's obvious that AstralFlare was scumhunting; the point I was making is subtler than what you make it out to be in 83. I find it a bit odd that your first instinct is that I'm fabricating my understanding of the game of mafia and not that you misunderstood what I was saying; I as scum would not pretend that I don't know simple aspects of the game.

[implosion]

So then town shouldn't defend themselves?

Mm, I'm going to go ahead and say you're wrong.

Once again, not what I'm saying at all (in fact, I explicitly said the opposite of this).

Yes, questions are generally to try to find scum, but that doesn't mean that if someone asks you a question they already think you're scum.
Especially in the context of a newbie game, it's very silly to assume that being asked a question means that you're being scumread by the questioner.

"Why would you assume you were being scumread???"

In this case it's obvious that you were being scumread (since AstralFlare was voting you), but that's not the point of what I said.

"I mean, it was obvious you were being scumread, but..."

Man, contradictions in the same post. This is astounding!

The first point was a general comment on what you were saying about mafia as a game in general; the second was a comment on the specific situation. Again, I think this is pretty obvious.

implosion- you can't honestly tell me you (as an experienced player) think the entire playerlist reading my meta because I self-voted RVS, and assuming that because I don't want to give the names of every one of my alts- is actually useful in some way, right?

Actually, maybe you can, considering you just asked "Why would you defend yourself as town???"

You're right, I don't. And, again, I've explicitly said I don't. This isn't what AstralFlare was asking you about in the post in question!
He was asking you about why you weren't voting yet. Which is a totally legitimate question, which deserved an answer.
I have never once agreed with any of the questioning of your alts, and in fact spent half a post explaining why I see it as irrelevant. I don't know why you're trying to conflate the two.

[implosion]

I'm at work so I'm not really reading everything right now (I haven't even looked beyond page 5 yet) but this stuck out to me:

The implosion-Chrimi fight felt like a huge distraction, but I think the game is progressing nicely otherwise. I should be back tonight for all you North Americans.

I very much like calling this interaction as a distraction; I realized as I was going to sleep tonight that I probably wasn't really getting anything useful out of this line of discussion with Chrimi, but got sucked into a pretty significant back-and-forth that really doesn't have a ton of useful info. I think Jibs calling it as a distraction and not trying to read into it is a decent towntell. I'll figure out what I really think of Chrimi later as well.

I've mostly skimmed so I'll have more substantive content later, probably after work.

[implosion]

Probably gonna make several posts here. I personally find it a bit easier to read/digest than just catching up over several pages at once and posting a giant wall.

Hiding alts is more harmful to town than it is to scum, because it makes it harder to get accurate reads. I guess it could be argued that that information also helps scum get pr reads, but the benefits of town having that information far outweighs the drawbacks of scum having that information. Hiding an alt is almost strictly an anti-town play, and is therefore scummy.

Even if this is true, there's a very important distinction between "harmful to town" and "indicative of scum." I don't think that hiding an alt is really particularly harmful to the town, but even if we grant that it is, it doesn't follow that it's scummy behavior. Most players aren't going to consciously make a decision after entering a game of "hm, I'm scum and I don't want them to know my meta, I guess I'll hide my alts." It's much, much more common and likely that someone would just hide an alt because they don't want people knowing that they have the alt for out-of-game reasons. I'd doubt extremely strongly that Chrimi or really anyone here would make a conscious, game-specific decision to withhold that kind of information that isn't even all

that

useful to the town (meta is not the end-all be-all).

Not everything that happens in a game is alignment-motivated - so when you say:

The only legitimate reason for town to hide information is if the information is more beneficial to scum than to town, which is obviously not the case here.

it's based on a false premise that hiding that information has to be based on the motivation of trying to win this game, rather than motivated by out-of-game reasons or in this case not really motivated by anything in particular (I really have a hard time doubting Chrimi when she says that she simply didin't find listing the hydra account relevant).

[implosion]

implosion: I congratulate you on actually getting Chrimi to say something about alignment. Did you learn anything from the long exchange which happened after that? Have your other reads evolved?

Eh. Chrimi honestly hasn't really done anything that pings me strongly in either direction yet; 58 still feels slightly off but

shrug.

Her reactions to this discussion (essentially being indignant) aren't really strongly alignment indicative to me. They feel like someone who believes they are right but that doesn't mean town. I am getting a townread on you from your reaction to it (as I mentioned) and I still think AstralFlare is town. I want to get a read on 0x40 from it but the main thing I'm seeing from him is a playstyle; although I strongly disagree with the content of his push on Chrimi I'm not convinced it's scum motivated

yet.

It is quite possible - the line of thinking of "Chrimi is withholding information that could potentially help town, therefore she's scum" is lacking to me, making a big thing out of something very minor and in my opinion irrelevant that was said.

implosion attempting a serious case on me before page 5 is asinine,

And here you go misrepresenting me again :/. It wasn't a "serious case." It was a casual observation. I didn't vote you with it, it was just something that struck me as off. It's not like I saw that post and said "oh my god scum caught on page 3, gg." You're really making a mountain out of a molehill here.

Again I don't really see your reaction here as particularly scummy but you are really misrepresenting or misunderstanding the things that I'm saying.

[implosion]

Alright, so let's make this whole alt thing crystal clear.

There are plenty of players on this site who have alts. Those people have many reasons for those alts but the most relevant here is that people sometimes make alt accounts for the purpose of playing games with a different style or without association to their typical meta. In the latter case, people often keep those accounts hidden

in general

, not just hiding them from a specific game.

Chrimi and thenewearth not wanting to say who their alt accounts are is, I would say without a shadow of a doubt, not for reasons that are related to their alignments. It's simply for the reason that those accounts were made for the purpose of not being associated with their main accounts. They're not trying to hide information from the town of this game for the sake of subterfuge, they're most likely hiding information from the entire site for personal reasons that they aren't obligated to share if they don't want to. They're under no obligation to explain why hiding that information is beneficial to the town of this game, because their hiding of that information is almost certainly entirely unrelated to this game.

[implosion]

How do you feel about PP? You are still voting him if my notes are right.

The points you make against him are decent. He's an alright candidate for scum but not particularly solidly so. I don't really have any scumreads at this point except for 0x40 contingent on his play in the near future. I'd say {AstralFlare, you, shannon and thenewearth} are town in no particular order right now but all of those are subject to change and my reads aren't particularly strong even for being this early in the game (shannon is because of the reaction test which I think looks decently town, tne is gut for now based on tone near the end of the exchange with 0x40). Chrimi I've talked about, Rocnix is another decent candidate for scum I think. Her more recent reads list has a tone of IIoA (information instead of analysis) to me. Out of 8 players she gives 3 reads, and the other 5 are essentially straight descriptions of their play that don't really mean anything.

Also just as an FYI Rocnix - NAI is typically used to refer to an action that someone takes or an event in the game (i.e., "I think shannon's reaction test is NAI for her"), not to describe an overall read on a player. Most people will call them null reads (as opposed to townreads or scumreads)

Using unflipped associations to make reads is terrible play which rarely works. Having unflipped associations is just part of being town. If you post your unflipped associations, and especially the reasoning behind them, it makes you easier to read. I also wonder why you didn't just say this at the time.

While I agree with your first sentence here strongly (and this is something that I wind up explaining my stance on in like half of the games I play >.>) I don't agree that having unflipped associations is part of being town on d1. It's a playstyle thing. I won't usually have any unflipped associations on d1 - I'll occasionally (very infrequently, because I don't think these things are really feasible to pick out) see something that looks vaguely like a scum connection between two unflipped players but I typically ignore them just because statistically the odds that I'm correct about them are extremely low.

In terms of the actual point you're making, essentially I think this may just be you imposing your playstyle or the way you view the game onto penguin. That said I do sort of agree that Penguin takes on a conciliatory tone in his response to you here which is a bit odd. Kind of. Idk I'm about to go to sleep so I might just be spouting nonsense at this point.

But yes, my instinct is to call people bad at mafia and yell at them. Isn't everyone like that?

I'm not

[implosion]

Oh and forgot to mention, Jibs - I'm curious if you could explain why you're townreading Rocnix.

[implosion]

You all sure do like being active when I'm at work.

A note here, it's typically considered nice to spoiler really really long posts just so that the pages they're on are more readable, as otherwise anyone scrolling through the page has to scroll through the wallpost.

Spoiler: Long wallpost

Implosion: Could you separate the IC part of your posts from the play part? It's difficult to tell which is which. In my previous game the IC's theory posts were a different color.

Sure. There's a line in this post, everything above that line is me speaking as the IC.

(Speaking of which, there might be some reverse-OMGUS messing with my read on Jibs. Is there a term for that?)

I don't think there's a term for it but it's certainly a thing that you can be suspicious of in some situations. Scum will sometimes "pocket" townies which basically just means townreading a townie in an attempt to get the townie to reciprocally townread the scum. Like everything in mafia it's just a matter of whether you think they're being genuine; if you think the read on you is genuinely motivated from a place of scumhunting then it's townish, if you feel like they're trying to manipulate you and can explain why it might be scummy.

@IC: How do you differentiate between anti-town townie and anti-town scummie?

Because I'm having a hard time deciding which Chrimi is right now.

Lots of experience mostly I'd say. I mean, imo, scumtells are all about intent - you have to read the intent behind the post and try to figure out if it's a townie who is accidentally being anti-town, or scum who is intentionally trying to be anti-town. There are lots of ways to be anti-town (lurking, bogging the game down, quickhammering, etc) and it's always about the context around it. If you think Chrimi or anyone else is being anti-town and that it may be scum-motivated then the first thing you should ask is "could Chrimi potentially have done this as town?" And then if the answer is yes then you need to weigh how likely you think it would be that she'd do whatever actions you perceive as anti-town as town vs to intentionally bog the game down or whatever other reason as scum. There's also a hidden third option here, which is that she could be scum but isn't really acting that way in an attempt to be anti-town (she may, for instance, simply be trying to emulate her town meta). And then of course there's a hidden fourth option, which may be the most common of all, which is that a personality clash can lead to one party seeing the other as being anti-town or scummy. Etc, etc.

So yeah. It's tough sometimes. Like I said, probably mostly a matter of experience. There's no real formula for it.

This has to be one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever seen from an IC. This is based on a false premise that Chrimi cares so little about winning the game for town that she's using out-of-game reasons to justify making an anti-town play, which by the way, would even go against the site rule of "Play to win the game."

Although it is a hard and fast rule, there are limits to the rule "play to win the game," in a sense. For instance, we don't demand that you spend 24 hours a day staring into your computer screen trying to deduce the scum if you're town - we don't even really demand that you're particularly active, even though one could easily argue that, say, posting less than once a day is not playing to win. It's just an aspect of the site that there are hidden alts. The existence of those hidden alts, again, is not related to specific games. By hiding those alts in general, people are not refusing to play to win the game in a particular game.

Even if you are still convinced by this point, and are still factoring it into your analysis, I'd recommend you not pursue it much more - it's okay to scumread Chrimi for refusing to list her hydra (even if other players disagree with you, and even if I would recommend that you not), but it is not okay to repeatedly demand that she give up information that, to her, is personal information not related to this game. If someone hypothetically demanded to know my schedule at work so that they could figure out when I was most tired while posting and attempt to use that to figure out when my posts were most likely to give me away as scum, I would rightly tell them no. Likewise, if Chrimi does not want to say who her hydra account is then she has every right to not say it.

---

---

Alright, everything above that line is IC stuff, everything down here will be not-IC stuff.

My gut feeling says not to trust him, but there are more scummy candidates. (Also, there might be some OMGUS messing with my interpretation) (Speaking of which, there might be some reverse-OMGUS messing with my read on Jibs. Is there a term for that?)

My main interpretation of shannon's behavior is "impressed." Her reaction test focused on the larger picture, so she's probably townhunting more than scumhunting. My guess is that she's either a power role exploring the situation or scum searching for ideal targets.

thenewearth seems quite detached from the whole situation, which seems kind of scummy to me. However, it's consistent with her meta, so I'm at a null read until she has some pressure on her and/or actually gives her interpretation of things, which isn't likely to happen.

This whole reads post (184) also feels a bit off to me, in a somewhat similar way from the previous one. There's a lot of her sort of building in room for her reads to be wrong. These are a couple of examples of that. It's not just that she isn't committing to reads - it's that she's putting her reads in terms that are really never likely to be resolved. Gut says not to trust me but there are scummier people so she isn't focusing on me, and may not for a bit. Shannon might be scum or might be a pr, but there's never really any way to use that to figure out if she's scum without her claim. tne is scummy but it's consistent with her meta, and she says it's unlikely that she'll be able to figure out tne's alignment based on that. What these reads have in common is that they're sort of dead ends - they all explain decently well why Rocnix isn't sure about people, but they also give excuses for why Rocnix won't be able to read people in the future, which leaves her more maneuvering room if she's scum.

Chrimi does have a point that AstralFlare's post is misleading but I don't think it's in a scummy way, I think AstralFlare simply saw her quoting his post (and just saw the question in between by PP as rephrasing his post) and thought she was responding to that question.

It's still anti-town, and therefore it's indicative of being scum. Even if it's just a minor scumtell, it's not like we have much else to go by at this point in the game.

Like I mentioned above, anti-town is not strictly indicative of scum. And what do you mean, we don't have much else to go by at this point? There have been tons of substantive posts to analyze, multiple players have given full reads lists, and even if those reads lists are lacking (have a lot of null reads) they're still a good place to start analysis.

Gonna post this before starting on catching up on page 10 because >.>wallpost

[implosion]

From now on any short posts that are me speaking as IC will be specifically marked as such; any longer posts, I will use the same method as the previous post (IC stuff above the line, non-IC stuff below the line). This is not an IC post.

FTR I really do strongly disagree with the characterization of Chrimi as an anti-town VI. She's providing a lot of reasoned content, and just because you disagree with that content does not make her a VI, or anti-town. This refers to both AstralFlare and 0x40. And I really do think in both of these cases it is mostly just disagreement.

nice to policy

And finally something that's actually really alignment indicative is said. A lynch for reasons other than trying to lynch scum is only nice for scum. You are the scummiest right now by far in my opinion, and we're not policy lynching anyone this game for any reason. That will only benefit scum.

You seem to view a lot of things in black and white: hiding information can only be done by scum, being anti-town can only be done by scum, and now the mere mention of a policy lynch in a post that isn't even advocating it is the scummiest thing yet in the game. I'm curious to see if this same tone pervades your reads list - there's a lot of nuance in the game of mafia, because all of the black-and-white scumtells were phased out back a decade ago when scum realized that they were black-and-white scumtells and that they shouldn't do them (and when towns realized that they aren't actually black and white because townies do them sometimes too), and any black-and-white towntells were phased out when scum realized they could just emulate them.

[implosion]

Anyway, right now I feel like this is the best vote (at least for now):

Unvote

VOTE: Rocnix

[implosion]

@Jibs

I think if I had to take a guess atm I'd say 0x40 is town. The way in which he's being stubborn seems a bit more likely to come from town to me. The fact that he kept being obstinate after pressure was put on him shows he values that opinion more than he values not being pressured, which is likely town. It could be scum who just held to their laurels but I'd lean town on him atm.

AstralFlare is still a townread but probably one who I should re-evaluate, although not right now. Different people will always perceive the game differently and so disagreeing on, say, whether something is alignment-indicative isn't really reason to scumread someone in and of itself. I'll read Chrimi's case later when I'm fully awake.

[implosion]

Implosion as very weak scumlean. I don't know. On reading his ISO, his recent posts seem waffly. 182 in particular. It is flippy floppy sit-on-the-fence, with him looking unwilling to really commit to anything, while simultaneously trying to reserve the "it's late and I'm sleepy" backdoor if he gets called out. In fact, after another readthrough I seem to notice he's just following the flow of the game, following the majority, lynching someone when others do, townleaning someone when everyone else does. Like right now, he says he's re-evaluating me, after Chrimi voiced her opinion that I was scum. His posts thus far have also been more I agree/I disagree. There's a lack of question marks. Not sure if this is a playstyle thing, but even if it is I think he should be more active in scumhunting.

I mean, this is sort of true. But you ignore the things I've done that haven't been following at all (notably both of my votes). I'm reconsidering you because there was a case on you that I haven't read yet and it's possible that case has substance. Would you rather I be obstinate, and unwilling to change my opinions?

I'm willing to accept the characterization of my play as waffly. It's just a byproduct of me not being confident in things yet.

As for Rocnix's case:

In posts 78, 79, and 80, Implosion scumreads but does not vote Chrimi (who is at that point at L-2), and explains why we should wait before voting to lynch her. Regardless of whether Chrimi turned out town or scum, Implosion can say he acted correctly.

I wouldn't say I was scumreading her at that point. I was suspicious enough that I would have voted her had she not been at L-2, but I thought there was a decent chance that her response to me would diffuse my suspicion.

In 84, Implosion tells Chrimi why her accusation against him doesn't make sense. He's defending himself rather than moving the game forward.

Two things here. One, defending yourself is a part of the game, and does itself move the game forward because it helps others form reads on you. Two, I personally as a player tend to focus on defending myself whenever there are any existing attacks against me that I haven't refuted. I've had games as town where I've been just completely unable to get into the game and wound up lurking as a result, and the only way that I really managed to stop lurking was when there was pressure on me. I just don't like being incorrectly read as town.

In 156 Implosion takes the opportunity do dismiss his fight with Chrimi as irrelevant, now that town is more or less convinced that she's a frustrated townie.

I disagree that town is more or less convinced that she's a frustrated townie (or was at that point) - at that point (at least I think at that point) both AF and 0x40 were scumreading and pushing her.

Implosion gives null reads on 0x40 and Chrimi. Implosion corrects 0x40's assumprions (who is only at L-3 but is definitely not popular), but reads his play as NAI. 0x40's OMGUS behavior means that, if Implosion voted for him, Implosion could expect a kneejerk reaction, so the null reads are again the safest response.

I mean, a townread would accomplish the same thing here. I also don't think I would be particularly scared of giving a full scumread on him here if I were scum - he wasn't really being arbitrarily OMGUS-y, he was tunneling Chrimi for the alt thing.

[implosion]

Read Chrimi's case on AF. Most of the points she makes are decent in the sense that they're pretty strong evidence of him being scum if she's right about how she's interpreting them, but it looks to me like Chrimi is interpreting pretty much everything AF has said in a scummy light, or like she's assuming worst intentions. In particular calling post 59 a misrepresentation and her interpretation of him saying "Other SEs, what do you think of this" both strike me as looking at the worst possible reason he could have said those things - the former to me is not even really a representation at all, just an opinion, and the latter obviously could also just be AF wanting a second opinion. The strongest point she makes is that he called her scummy for not voting but didn't call PP scummy for not contributing content, but his response is reasonable and again just makes me think that it's a difference in how they're interpreting the game (like Chrimi said she views questions as implying scumreads, while it sounds like AF doesn't).

So I'd still call him town. I see where he was coming from on the Chrimi read and I also like him 180ing and now calling her town since the reasons for his scumread have faded, so I'd expect him to re-evaluate her if he's town.

[implosion]

And now I want to call rocnix townier. That's a really, really weird 180 to make if she's scum. She just got a case on me and I think it's not that hard to rebut what I said if she's scum and wants to keep pushing.

I'm actually ironically gonna join the tne wagon for now, I know I called her gut town just a little earlier but I think some pressure on her right now will be beneficial - her unexplained vote on 0x40 is a bit troubling, particularly if it's the obvious justification of him pushing on the alt stuff which imo is a bit one-dimensional to push on without further explanation. She hasn't really said anything of substance in the past couple of days. She's implied some stuff wrt shannon but never really explained it or followed up on it, and has been getting bogged down in the 0x40-Chrimi interaction even after she pointed out that it's probably best to ignore it.

Unvote

VOTE: thenewearth

I think I'm starting to get a better handle on reads this game. I actually think Rocnix's push on me was somewhat town and her backing off has cemented that it looks to me like it's coming from a genuine interest in finding scum. AF is still town, Jibs is still town, 0x40 is likely town. Chrimi is moderately townish at this point as well I think, or at the very least the way she's been playing the game is enough for me to not really be interested in lynching her today. shannon still has a little bit of towncred but we'll see how the game plays out because I'm not confident on her in any capacity yet. Penguin/tne are where I think I'll focus my efforts for a bit unless I see good reason to look elsewhere. I am interested in what tne was looking at with respect to shannon.

[implosion]

(I believe that's L-2 but am not 100% certain).

[implosion]

0x40, you really need to cut out calling Chrimi a VI. It's starting to get a bit beyond rude and frankly you're just wrong, she isn't a VI. She's playing fine. She just has a playstyle that's oblique to what you seem to be used to. All you're doing by repeating things like this:

Let's just agree to disagree on this one. I don't think convincing a VI that they're a VI is really worth the effort.

is insulting Chrimi and distracting the town from focusing on important issues like, y'know, who's scum.

So let's cut out with the insults and focus on scumhunting.

---

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@0x40: with regards to your objections to policy lynching, I just remembered that you posted this...

A VI getting mislynched is a lot less bad than someone who knows how to play the game getting mislynched, so you being a VI is a valid reason to lynch you even though a VI has the same chance of being scum as everyone else here, as you won't be of as much use to town compared to a non-VI player.

which is literally a justification for why it's okay to policy lynch VIs. Do you not consider this to have anything to do with policy lynching? What is it if not advocating a policy lynch to say that we ought to lynch someone because they're a VI even if it doesn't make them more likely to be scum?

I somewhat like shannon's posts on this page. In particular 312 sounds like a townie genuinely frustrated, especially since it was effectively a double post, so it's not like she could be scum who was concerned that they hadn't said anything in too long. So I don't think I'm interested in pursuing her today.

Still most interested in tne/pp.

[implosion]

That brings me to my final point--I'm pretty sure this is my last game of forum mafia. It eats up a lot of time and energy, but it doesn't provide what I got from face-to-face Avalon. Nothing against you guys, you've all been great, but I'm pretty tired of this game.

Yeah - it is a very, very different beast. I also played a lot of face-to-face resistance with my college friend group, and it is a lot more of a sort of direct mindscrew where nothing makes any sense and you have to gauge things in the moment as a resistance member, or you have to focus on not giving behavioral tells as a spy. Forum mafia gives a different kind of thrill for me - because of all of the effort, it's a lot more rewarding to have been correct about a divisive read as town, or to fool a town as scum. It is really easy for it to get tiring.

If anyone is interested in my town meta, one excellent little piece of it is a large normal that I just completed that shannon was in. By two real-life days into the game, I had 11 townreads out of the 18 other players in the game.

This game is starting to stall out a tad - we'll see after the weekend if it's just because of schedules, or because different people are waiting on more posts from specific players, or other reasons. Hopefully it's just that people in this game are more active on weekdays.

[implosion]

Do you still think she's not a VI? Is putting someone at L-1 without declaring that it's L-1 something that players that know how to play the game would do?

Yes, and I can probably point to countless instances of it in games I've played. In practice, like I've been saying for this entire discussion, it winds up being a playstyle thing; more cautions players will tend to announce L-1 votes (or sometimes even L-2 votes). Less cautious players will often not announce it, for one reason or another. It's certainly never a problem to announce when your vote puts someone at L-1 but it's not really considered a site norm to always announce it (maybe in newbie games, but it still doesn't mean it's a terrible thing not to do). Typically caution is expected to be exercised by the person joining the wagon to ensure that they aren't accidentally hammering.

I don't think that lynching a VI for being a VI would be a policy lynch unless that was the primary reason.

This is sort of arguing semantics; if that is part of the reasoning for a lynch, then it will be a policy lynch to the degree that it is driven by the target being a VI rather than thinking that they are scum. Again, things aren't black and white; lynches aren't just policy lynches or not-policy lynches.

---

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Eh. I don't like this post. For one thing you're cherry picking a game for us to look at, where you've had a reasonably good prediction rate, at least for this early in the game. For another thing you're appealing to ethos. Sure, you might be correct this game as well, but it's different players and a different setup now.

I picked that game for a couple reasons; one, it's fresh on my mind because I've been playing it for the past month and a half and it just ended, two, jibs mentioned my meta with regards to me having a lot of townreads. I wasn't trying to use that meta to argue that my reads are likely correct, sorry if I misspoke - I was just giving an example as town where I gave a lot of townreads on d1. I agree with shannon that it was a very different game; I was simply citing it to make that one point.

[implosion]

Yeah because making it easier for scum to NK the towniest player is the greatest contribution

bzzt

I've always disliked this reasoning. Scum are perfectly capable of reading the game themselves and figuring out which townies are likely to be townread, and seeing who no one scumreads. Scum have various reasons for killing any given person, either because they're being townread or because scum think they're a PR or for psychological games. So the cost of giving townreads is fairly low, because it isn't really giving scum that much useful information that they can't glean themselves.

Meanwhile the benefit is great: it can help clarify your stance on the game, which makes it easier for others to scrutinize your reads and enables better back-and-forth discourse, and it makes you easier to read because you're taking more justified stances. It provides more links between people so that once there's flipped scum, we can analyze reads more effectively to see who is a likely partner, whereas if you list two scumreads out of the seven other players and never comment on the other five we will never get this information for you if one of those five players flips scum.

I agree that you can make a concise case on a player but your case on 0x40 is just so simple; he's pushing a player he perceives as weak, so he's gunning for a mislynch on the weak player. That doesn't imply scum at all, and there's a lot more nuance to his play and his push than simply "pushing a weak player."

[implosion]

Anyway (speaking as IC) as I mentioned earlier, no one should hammer thenewearth yet. If someone else wants to vote her, they should announce intent to hammer and give her a chance to claim, so that we can evaluate her claim and decide what to do from there. If no one wants to hammer, that's fine as well; we can continue through the day and the wagon might dissolve and another might form. Just because a wagon reaches L-1, by no means does that mean that person is getting lynched; I've seen games with several L-1 wagons in day one alone.

[implosion]

Part of it is that Chrimi seems really nonchalant about voting with her top scum, and AF is quite nonchalant about voting with imp, who he is suspicious of. I also worry about imp's vote, since it feels like he adjusted his reads so that he wouldn't have to vote with his top scum. Finally, I agree that it would be very weird for Rocnix to play this way as scum, but this feels like a weird game to begin with.

This is an interesting way of looking at things but isn't typically how I like to approach day one in particular; we have so little information that not wanting to vote with someone because you think they're scum just seems silly to me. Votecount analysis is useful later but not at this point.

tne's string of posting just now is pretty good. I think I prefer to swing a PP wagon right now; I really dislike the way he's posturing around the tne wagon. He called her null and then started criticizing things she was doing but never really committed, either to calling her scum or voting her or declaring intent to hammer. It looks to me like he doesn't want to impede the tne wagon, but doesn't want to appear committed to it or responsible for it in the event that it is hammered. This is further bolstered by his most recent post in which he asks Jibs why he's so worried about hammering, while Penguin doesn't offer to hammer himself or really give a strong sense of where he's at with regards to his opinion on tne yet. Overall the way he's playing around the wagon feels like scum who wants a mislynch but doesn't want to be on it.

tne overall reads as having a lot of genuine conviction, which could come from scum who thinks that 0x40 is town who does look objectively scummy, but It's still some amount townish. I think it is a bit more likely that she is just town who isn't sure why people don't see what she sees.

Unvote

VOTE: Penguin

I'll of course re-evaluate my townreads more later as well. But penguin is also the only player who has yet to really do anything that strikes me significantly as town.

[implosion]

Why would I call her scum, vote, or declare an intent to hammer on my null read - who was a null read due to not providing any information - who had still not provided any information? I am still waiting for something substantive, but I'm not going to be responsible for a PR outing or a mislynch on someone who I don't even had a weak scum lean on. I criticized her play because it's not helpful, but it's NAI at this point - with 5 days still remaining.

I mean, in 335, you very heavily imply that you find tne's behavior scummy, asking "it's scummy to do this, right?"

The fact that you implicitly called her behavior scummy and then your next two posts continued being very critical, to me, imply that you were scumreading her, not nullreading her.

And this is what I see as scummy: you keep saying that you nullread her. Yet you've spent most of your time recently up until I attacked you criticizing her posting, and are even criticizing my reasons for townreading her and calling them into question. Those aren't the actions that I feel like you'd be spending most of your time on if you were really town with a nullread on tne; I feel like you would be more interested in trying to determine tne's alignment, or the alignments of those on the wagon, or something like that. Jabbing at tne's play and questioning townreads on her while you have a nullread on her and don't want to apply any additional pressure is more or less wasted effort, and the fact that you were specifically criticizing my reasons for townreading her but haven't been calling anyone's scumreads of her into question just doesn't seem consistent with your claim of having a nullread.

I don't want to be responsible for it at all. I didn't need - or have the chance - to impede, because the intent was placed and removed before I had a chance to see it. I did question that move as nothing occurred between when it was placed and removed. I also didn't see anything wrong with having tne at L-1 because then she may finally post something.

I mean, just because the wagon is at L-1, even with intent, doesn't mean you can't impede it if you did think tne was town. But this is a moot point.

I think it's townish because you want to see it as townish. I don't see genuine conviction.

For me I really do see it as genuine conviction - the issue is whether or not it's town-motivated. I really do think she is either town who has conviction that 0x40 is scum, or scum who has conviction that 0x40 deserves to be lynched for his play.

Really? 0x40 has done things that strike you significantly as town? Rocnix? Tne? Their contributions have been significantly town? To call their contributions townish, and to say that I have done nothing townish, is ridiculous.

Towntelling isn't just about contributing; nothing you've said so far has really read to me as particularly indicative of town, whereas I can cite things (and have cited things in my ISO) for all of those players you listed that I believe are indicative of town. Even if you're town, in what way is it ridiculous of me to have those reads? It'd simply mean that more of my reads are incorrect.

When I get a bit of time I'll probably relook over your full ISO and see what I think of it.

[implosion]

Alright...tne is town. 1723 just wrapped up. Exact same play style. Can you please start participating a bit more? Your behavior there got you lynched D1.

I am curious about this though - were you just randomly meta-ing her?

[implosion]

I'm kind of stuck in confbias mode on imp right now. Before I opened the thread I was thinking "if imp digs in his heels on pp then he's mafia, but if he reevaluates then he is also mafia". I'm suspicious of the fact that he never reevaluated his townreads on me and 0x40--players who came into the game very strong and then dropped off rather conveniently.

I do want to re-evaluate you. I still feel like 0x is probably town a bit more strongly. But I mean, I'd

like

to re-evaluate all my reads - it's just a matter of time. I'm in my third week at a new job and am still settling in to an extent to my new apartment, so I don't have a ton of free time - certainly enough to play, but not enough to re-evaluate my reads quite as much as I'd like to ideally. It is also d1 and re-evaluating reads is usually more useful on later days when there are flips for context.

I didn't say anything about your reads being ridiculous...though maybe your reading comprehension?

Uh...

To call their contributions townish, and to say that I have done nothing townish, is ridiculous.

Literally my calling their contributions townish is me giving townreads on them and my calling things you've done scummy and not calling your contributions townish is me giving a scumread on you. That's literally what reads are...

[implosion]

Actually scratch me being more confident on 0x than on you. I'd say you're two of my weaker reads at this point. I think if I go with my gut at this moment the people I have no interest in lynching today are shannon, af, and chrimi.

0x's jibs scumread actually feels more off to me than his chrimi read. It feels similarly like he's just latching on to something and pushing it, but it feels more like he's doing it because he's realizing people aren't interested in the chrimi push or like he feels like he's supposed to have more than one scumread at this point. It just doesn't feel like it evolved naturally.

[implosion]

Not really speaking as IC but this is advice that's generally applicable to a lot of games:

We are starting to close in on deadline (4 days away with a replacement pending) so it might be worth it to start consolidating votes soon, within the next couple of days. It's at the point where we're not going to get a ton out of continuing the day, and I think we're going to be better off if we end the day soonish. I think I mentioned it earlier but a lot of the stronger players on MS are of the opinion that towns often tend to drag days out longer than necessary, which can lead to apathy. This is especially true d1 when we're dragging out the day with no flipped information.

Looking a bit more at 0x he went from slight town to "scummiest by far" on jibs in the span of 8 posts and jibs mentioning the possibility of a policy lynch in passing. Actually,

@0x40: is there any reason other than the "nice to policy" post from Jibs that caused this shift from you between 237 and 245? Because you had been calling him town, then suddenly call him the scummiest player in the game in 245 seemingly for one thing, and then six posts later in 251 you suddenly have a plethora of reasons for scumreading Jibs that seemingly weren't influencing you at the time when you posted 237. You heavily cite his reads list seeming overconfident, but that same reads list had already been posted when you made post 237, yet you were calling him slight town at that point. I'm curious about the mental process behind your read on Jibs forming in that span of time.

[implosion]

I think that reason alone was big enough to justify that.

To some extent I have trouble believing that you put this much weight into this point alone, about him mentioning the possibility of a policy lynch, given that I think an honest reading of what he said made it clear that he had no actual interest in policy lynching you, and even if he did, I sincerely doubt that an expression of interest in policy lynching is highly correlated enough with being scum to justify such a large swing in your read of him.

It just doesn't seem natural that this single point would be enough to completely overhaul your read. That's a very one-dimensional view of the game of mafia for someone who says that they have a lot of experience and who isn't hesitating to call other players bad at the game.

I don't really mind the 0x lynch at this point. Again if I had more time I'd look more into everything but eh. Motivation to re-look over everything is hard to muster on d1. Hopefully, Drone will have time to weigh in today at least a little before we wind up lynching.

[implosion]

@Drone, welcome - feel free to take the game at your own pace. It's nice if you have a general idea of what's happened so far but it's often difficult as a replacement to get a strong sense of reads from what's happened in the game so far since you didn't get to experience it in real time, so it's fine to focus on getting reads from whatever happens from now.

---

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@0x40, the biggest reason that delaying a claim is anti-town is because it stifles discussion; many people are waiting on your claim to be able to continue their line of thought in the game, and we don't really care that you say it's anti-town for you to claim because we don't know your alignment. Someone is going to be run up and forced to claim; the fact that it's you doesn't make it anti-town to claim, even if you are town.

PP also brings up a good point re: the weekend. This game stagnated very hard last weekend. We don't want it stagnating as deadline approaches and we have a looming L-1 wagon with no other real wagons, especially if 0x claims a power role and we decide to unvote him.

I'm also going to push for a claim asap; it's very clear with 4 people voting and 3 more (Chrimi, Drone, myself) expressing suspicion that 0x is going to be the lynch today unless something significant changes out of nowhere, which is unlikely to happen at this point from anything but a claim.

[implosion]

Cut your rude and pestering attitude out.
And no. I won't.
Sorry to inform you, but I can't get into business all that quickly, you might have a memory of w/e you want.
Mine is limited.
Mine is to start working my way, and yours is to calm down.

"I'm not gonna bother giving reads on more than 2 players, because the guy that criticized me for not doing so sounded rude to me!"
"Getting reads is way too difficult for me, because my memory is so limited I can't remember anything meaningful!"

Yeah. You may as well claim scum then, because I doubt that even a pr claim would save you from getting lynched if you refuse to give reads on more than 2 players.

UNVOTE: Chrimi
VOTE: Drone

Yet again, you're taking a very black and white approach to things - not everyone has the time, motivation or attention span, even as town, to re-read over a game several times. There are plenty of good players on this site who will replace into games and then not even read them because it's more productive to focus effort on deducing reads from actually interacting with players.

He literally made his first post 3 hours ago; only having reads on two players at that point is not a scumclaim.

[implosion]

0x, you have been asked to claim explicitly by more than half of the player list.

Claim in your next post, or I will hammer you.

[implosion]

If you are town, you should recognize that stifling half of the player list from being able to do anything until you claim and possibly inviting a hammer without a claim is far more anti-town than letting the scum know what your role is.

[implosion]

I'd say this was a somewhat typical d1 I think. We had a variety of wagons that rose and fell and ultimately got probably a good amount of information out of peoples' opinions and voting patterns. If you're town, don't worry too much if we hit town with the lynch; d1 is always the most difficult day to hit scum in because we have no information from either flips or night actions, and relatively little from peoples' actions.

Day one is really more about feeling the game out a lot of the time, so also don't worry if you feel like there's a lot of information to parse through.

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I'm pretty fine with that hammer. In a sense it's somewhat disconcerting that so many people were willing to push 0x but ultimately it wouldn't surprise me if he is scum and someone was bussing him, particularly late on the wagon once it became clearer that he was gonna be the lynch over tne. Once we have his flip and a nightkill to go off of, we should be able to get more traction.

[implosion]

If you are a town pr, this is the time to think about your night action. If you have a protective role, try to use it on someone you think is a PR. If you don't have any idea about other PRs, target someone you think is town. But please prioritise suspected PRs first. (I say this as someone who was once killed the same night I would have got a result on scum, because the doc protected her favourite town player instead of me).

This is a philosophy I tend to disagree with; it's typically good town play as a PR to not make it clear that you're a PR so that scum won't target you, so theoretically if a PR is playing well another PR won't be able to figure out who they are.

Additionally a lot of tells that look PR-ish are often similar to tells that look scummy (flying under the radar, etc) so you might wind up protecting scum.

A protective role (well, a doctor) should try to predict who the scum are going to kill and target that player. Because otherwise their role doesn't do anything. A cop or tracker can pretty much do whatever they want, investigating someone they're unsure of is fine but I think investigating a scumread is also perfectly fine; it's a scumread for a cop but not for everyone, and getting a guilty means that there's no more uncertainty. A jailkeeper, which is the only other PR we can have in this setup, will typically attempt to target scum for a few reasons: it's easier to figure out who's scum than it is to figure out who scum are going to kill a lot of the time, it serves as a pseudo-guilty if you target someone who was unlikely to have been the nightkill, and targeting town has the risk of blocking a power role (although the last reason doesn't matter in this setup because jailkeeper will never exist with another active power role).

[implosion]

On the 0x40 wagon, we have:
-tne: pretty consistently pushed 0x40 all day. Her vote isn't really scummy.
-PP: he switches from rocnix to 0x40, after Rocnix disappeared. This in and of itself is fine. I'm not sure what I think of the vote itself.
-Jibs: pretty strange vote. He votes immediately after PP, having not said anything about 0x40 in a long time. Would be nice if we could ask him about this but ah well.
-shannon and Chrimi I don't feel like can be read in to at all, given that they were to some degree simply "the day is ending" votes, I believe. I think they're both fine though. shannon maybe a little but it doesn't really make me feel much either way.

I sort of feel like one of pp/jibs was being opportunistic scum here to some degree but -shrug-. Myself and Drone were also expressing suspicion near the end so the hammer in particular is meaningless. The fact that literally every other player expressed suspicion of 0x40 to at least some degree frankly makes me a bit suspicious of AF, who before disappearing due to sickness expressed a tone of criticality towards 0x40 without actually expressing suspicion.

AF, what do you make of the wagon and in general the play that occurred while you were gone? Would you have joined it, do you think? Do you think it was a good lynch?

[implosion]

shannon, I think calling for consolidation is still relevant even with those additional votes on 0x; it wasn't clear that the wagon was going to take off (I didn't interpret your 415 as saying you were going to vote 0x specifically), and just looking at the vote count before I posted there were three singleton votes, one 2-vote wagon, one 3-vote wagon, and one non-vote - hardly consolidated. Your point is fair but if I were scum with Chrimi I don't think I would need to signal to her to do anything; she's an experienced player, she'd know when it's appropriate to vote or hammer as scum. And it's not like I would be concerned by that vote count if I were scum with her (there was one vote on her and 0 on me) so I don't see why I would need to signal to her to hammer in the first place.

[implosion]

AF, what do you make of the wagon and in general the play that occurred while you were gone? Would you have joined it, do you think? Do you think it was a good lynch?

I think it was town's only option for a lynch with so little time left on the clock, especially with the surge of replacements and my unfortunately illness. I don't really have an issue with the people just joining the wagon because "day ending soon". (I've expressed my own opinion on 0x40 before. If you're too lazy to look through my ISO I called him town.) So no, I would have tried to push another wagon instead.

I saw that you called him town; a lot happened between you calling him town and the day ending, and I was curious if that would have made you re-evaluate. But I digress.

Also @Cass, welcome; I would also like to hear what your first impressions are, and what you make of the end of yesterday in general.

[implosion]

All I can say is that I just played with Implosion (we were both town) and he seems different here. He seems, in my limited experience, like a really good player and a really close reader. I expect him to pick up on things like my intended vote, and he says he didn't. I expect him to remember that TNE's wagon was disbanding, not building up. If someone else made those sorts of mistakes I'd expect him to call them out on it, so for him to make the mistakes himself suggests to me that they're scum and not actual mistakes.

A few things here.
One, there are a lot of important differences between these two games:
- I played the majority of that game while on break, this game started a couple of weeks into my new job.
- That game was a ridiculously active large normal with twice as many players as this game.
- I'm an IC in this game, so of course my play is going to feel different on that level.

There are certain things that will be similar between the games (I mentioned earlier that that game is a good example of me getting townreads early). There are other things that won't be.

Two, I don't consider myself a particularly close reader. I don't typically double check the semantics of posts when I read them; semantics aren't as important as motivation when scumhunting. And I wouldn't 'call someone out' if I saw them make a mistake like that; I might mention it but it's not like a mistake like that is indicative of scum. I wouldn't intentionally misread something as scum (it's conceivable that I would put less effort into reading and therefore miss more things as scum but I don't think I really put less effort into games or would be more likely to miss things as scum).

I am curious about tne asking for the bp to claim (specifically in light of setup A as you mentioned). It makes sense if there are no other protective roles because obviously scum would know who the bp is and we wouldn't, but the possibility of a jailkeeper does make automatically claiming potentially bad. That said I can see a scum kill on chrimi as a possibility.

But I don't really want to draw as strong of a conclusion as you seem to be drawing without hearing what tne says.

[implosion]

PP's posting so far today is very lackluster:

That's.. very interesting? So we've got a JK, BP or both.

Wait...why just those two? Could there not also be a Doctor?

2) at some point, I believe a scum started directing the lynch (although not sure which).
When I say "directing" I mean, actively directing fire at him, as he already was the easiest and weakest candidate for a simple elimination.

Who do you think it was?

4) Why, if the priority to lynch and get info, did implosion ask 0x40 questions, and not add his vote? Especially since 0x40 was at L-2, and Implosion didn't consider this a 'sure' wagon? An info seeking vote could have really helped put the pressure on 0x40 to give us useable stuff instead of just attitude.

I agree with this being concerning. He's calling for consolidation on what ends up being town, but remains off the wagon himself.

Me forgetting this setup might have a doctor is suspicious? Oh boy.

Why would it be weird for someone to see a scumslip in that?

He's very much playing on the edge of the game, poking at various different things. In particular the way he says what I've done is "concerning," but doesn't really call it scummy nor join the 2-vote wagon on me; similarly to what he's accusing me of he's sort of applying pressure without committing, which is interesting if he thinks that my calling for consolidation without joining the wagon was scummy. He implies that it is reasonable to see what Chrimi said as a scumslip, but doesn't vote or really pressure her at all either. He's just looming on the sidelines. I think town-PP would probably have voted me in that post; it's 5 to lynch, so being a third vote to apply pressure on me isn't unreasonable. I think he's scum who is concerned how that vote will make him look, or who is trying to get a feel for how d2 will be playing out.

VOTE: PenguinPower

There's also some miscellaneous stuff from yesterday in his ISO I'm noticing like this:

Absent a scumslip, significant new information, or us getting within 72 hours of deadline, I don't see my vote changing until Rocnix - or her slot - returns and starts participating. You're still on my watchlist.

This implies he's keeping his vote on Rocnix specifically because she's gone missing and he wants to continue pressuring the slot, but he switches to 0x40 specifically because she had disappeared (for reference, a little over 96 hours before deadline I believe). That to me belies that he didn't actually have an internally consistent motivation for pushing Rocnix; the fact that he justified both keeping his vote on her and unvoting her with the fact that she had been gone suggests that he is not town, as town would either consider it a reason to keep voting or to not keep voting, as opposed to both.

[implosion]

Quickie reply because I'm on lunch -

1) I'm going to ISO Chrimi next and see whether there's anything worthy of a NK attempt. From memory nothing sticks out but I'll re-read in light of my new theory. (It's also possible that Chrimi is having a gambit of some sort here).

2) I'm drawing strong conclusions because usually, I equivocate over everything and it's not doing me any favours. This has led me to be obv town in every single game (including the scum ones). I've never been lynched, but I've also never won as town. So, time to shake things up a bit.

3) I acknowledge that my case is mostly circumstantial, but I think all those circumstances add up. We have someone who's not doing any significant scum hunting, has no town reads, and was the D1 first wagon. He discouraged me from giving advice to PRs, then comes back today asking whether we have a BP amongst us. I can't see any town advantage to knowing that info. I can see definite scum advantage. Assuming that the question was in fact scummy, by POE it is most likely to have come from a team with a roleblocker, and if this is the case, we need to 1) lynch TNE ASAP, and 2) prevent the scum team from finding any hint of our JK. If Chrimi was lying about being BP, same goes, but substitute 'other PRs' for JK.

I mean, honestly I don't think there are a ton of players who weren't potential nightkill targets last night. Chrimi makes sense because she was an active poster who could potentially take the fore in future days. I could see a lot of other players as well.

Drawing stronger conclusions isn't really the kind of thing that I think of as a playstyle experiment; I try to draw conclusions based on how strong I perceive the evidence to be. Winning games of mafia is a very complicated matter. But alas. I understand what you're saying about tne, and it makes complete sense that this is something that could be the case. I think the strongest piece of what you've said so far is that she mentioned rolefishing as bad earlier, but again I think there are simple possible explanations with her as town.

I think your train of thought right now reads as very town, though. So you're becoming a stronger townread. As is Chrimi I think (although we'll see later if the claims add up of course, so no need to focus on sorting her right now).

[implosion]

Why wouldn't town want to do the same? We're less than 2 days into D2. We've had a claim, but not everyone has responded since then. Why would I start/hop on a wagon so early? Re: Chrimi's possible scum slip...see post 552. I did the same, but shannon corrected. And yes, I haven't been very active D2...it's been a busy workweek this week. Sorry you're allowed to have that happen, but not me.

I'm not criticizing your activity at all, your activity level has been fine. But there are lots of reasons town will typically want to start or hop on a wagon early; as town, a vote that's on no one accomplishes nothing. By voting you can put pressure on someone, make it clear where you stand, and make yourself easier to read. By avoiding voting and listing a large pool of potential scumreads, if you're scum, you're setting yourself up to go with the flow whoever winds up being pressured among your scumreads without having to put yourself out there as much.

It implies that Rocnix was my strongest scum read D1, but I wasn't going to risk the town getting a no lynch or rushing at deadline. I previously said that a deadline rush to lynch cost town the game in my last newbie. You can read whatever else into that you want, but I pretty objectively stated that.

You're case against me is that I don't play this game like you do.

You also pretty objectively stated that your vote would remain on Rocnix until there were 72 hours left in the day (or until there was a scumslip or significant new information, neither of which I think appeared in that span). The fact that you sounded both eager to keep your vote on Rocnix and eager to take it off is just strange - I'm fine with the attitude of not wanting to rush at deadline, but I don't think your attitude in 389 is consistent with that attitude, especially given that there were about 24 hours between 389 and 410 which is a very short period of time to go from keeping your vote in one spot until further notice to avoiding a deadline rush.

[implosion]

OK, here's a question for everyone. All else being equal, at the end of D1, who did you think would be the D2 lynch and why?

This isn't something that I think I've ever considered at the end of an early day. Honestly i don't really think about games much at all overnight, particularly as town of course. I didn't have any amount of thought at the end of d1 as to who would be the d2 lynch. My best scumread at that point was pp if that's what you meant.

@Cass, the points on rocnix are by and large not bad on first glance. Not sure what to make of him "distancing" from the 0x lynch. It looks like he just calls it a policy lynch repeatedly, and I agree that it is a little strange to frame it that way so much. Potentially in a scummy way. It's not really distancing himself from the lynch, it's sort of like he's discrediting the lynch as being meaningful.

I can see drone potentially being a good candidate. My reason for townreading rocnix was her doing a 180 on me but eh. I can think of a couple of reasons why that's a bad reason. Curious how drone responds to the part of the iso on him.

[implosion]

I'm also not sure what she means by it being PR-solvable.

	A	B	C
1	Town Jailkeeper	Vanilla Townie	Mafia Goon
2	Mafia Roleblocker	Town Cop	Town Doctor
3	Town 1-Shot Bulletproof	Mafia Goon	Town Tracker

The existence of a BP claim doesn't tell us a ton; it's not confirmable in the event that we're in setup 1, the fact that there's two setups with only one power role means that having two PR claims doesn't make them both true. And even having three PR claims you can't always figure out which one is fake (if there's bp+jk+tracker claims it could be that the jk is fake, the tracker is fake, or both the bp+tracker are fake).

So yeah really idk what she means.

[implosion]

You also pretty objectively stated that your vote would remain on Rocnix until there were 72 hours left in the day (or until there was a scumslip or significant new information, neither of which I think appeared in that span). The fact that you sounded both eager to keep your vote on Rocnix and eager to take it off is just strange - I'm fine with the attitude of not wanting to rush at deadline, but I don't think your attitude in 389 is consistent with that attitude, especially given that there were about 24 hours between 389 and 410 which is a very short period of time to go from keeping your vote in one spot until further notice to avoiding a deadline rush.

I like the manipulation here...well done. I especially like the appeal to emotion with the "eager" wording...which I was never in either situation. At the time of that post, it had been four days from Roxnix's last post. Yeah, there were more than 24 hours - not by much - but there was also a difference of a possible return or replace out. As of post 410 it was obvious the slot was going to be replaced and a D1 focus wasn't going to accomplish anything.

Care to present post 432 442 and 451? At this time, we were heading into a weekend deadline and I wanted to get a claim...which should be apparent.

"eager" may have been inaccurate.

When you call my post manipulative, are you implying that it is in a scummy way?

Why do you think it was significantly more obvious that the slot was going to be replaced as of post 410 compared to 389? Essentially what I see right now is that you flipped this over the span of only one day, which to me doesn't seem to be enough time to go from thinking the pressure on rocnix was worth it to thinking rocnix was probably going to be replaced.

Also I'm not sure what you mean with regards to 432, 442 and 451.

[implosion]

Why do you always try an attribute my actions to be scum reading someone?

I specifically wasn't doing this. Accusing someone of being manipulative is often accusing them of being scummy so I wanted to clarify.

Gonna try this and see what happens.

Unvote

VOTE: Drone

[implosion]

Yeah I don't know what PR solvable means to begin with. In that post I was attempting to guess X_X

[implosion]

If PP is right in 586, that we had gone past the prod deadline and that's why he changed votes, then this is the second time that I've noticed Implosion misusing post timelines to try to imagine reasons for things. The first is when I asked him about questioning but not voting 0x40, and he blamed it on there being two competing wagons - the first of which was pretty clearly disbanding after already reaching L-1.

Point me to exactly what you're referring to here.

[implosion]

I don't usually do this but when an IC says this:

Yeah I don't know what PR solvable means to begin with. In that post I was attempting to guess X_X

Then that means the IC is scum. If he were town he'd agree because IC would usually be super experienced with this setup AND would know that this game would be easily solved. Heck even newbies with a bit of thought can think about why. And trust me I've been caught offguard by newbie games alot 3 years ago

Uh. What.

First of all I've literally never played Matrix6. Back the last time I played a newbie game they were still using c9 or whatever it was called.
Second of all again, what? Why would I lie about that as scum. What advantage do I possibly gain by lying about not knowing what PR solvable means.
You're being extremely cryptic. I don't even know what is meant by the phrase "pr solvable" to begin with so I don't know why you expect me to apply it to a setup I've never played.

@AF I'll get to what you said after work, don't have time atm.

[implosion]

I'm going to call you scum partners with PP that's what. He rebutted your argument, you didn't seem convinced by his rebuttal, and yet you took your vote away and put it on Drone.

Alright. Several comments here.
1: just a general caution: pre-flip partner hunting is still really bad. The a priori odds that you're correct are sufficiently low that it's barely if at all worth doing. With that out of the way,
2: I actually was somewhat convinced by his rebuttal. I didn't make it obvious, though, which was somewhat intentional because I wanted to see if he'd have any interesting reaction to me unvoting seemingly "out of nowhere" but. I feel like 583 has the emotional content of a townie who feels like they are being unjustly misrepresented. He also was in a sense correct that I was being manipulative. At the point of 580 I wasn't really convinced by the argument I was making; I just wanted to see how the argument would wind up playing out.
3: I feel like I've gotten a fair amount out of this pressure; I want to turn somewhere else and give PP some breathing room so he can develop more reads since he still hasn't really "committed" to anything and if he's town he may just not have the time to reassess if he's constantly rebutting me.

Sure you want pressure on Drone to see his reaction to the ISO, but your pressure on PP has yielded no scumhunting from him, so why not keep it there? Why go from a 3 man wagon to a 0 man one?

For why to leave a 3-man wagon, see above; at this point I don't think the pressure is helping, if anything it's stifling him from scumhunting if he's town. Scumhunting is not the only way to give off towntells; you can also do it through something like betraying genuine town motivation or a view of the game that only town is likely to have.

[implosion]

In response to my questions, you claimed that there were two competing wagons and that's why you didn't vote 0x40 when you questioned him late D1. But looking back at the day, one of them wasn't an active wagon - it was two votes on a wagon that people were moving *off* of, and one of those votes belonged to the inactive Rocnix.

It being an inactive wagon is, if anything, all the more reason to see that vote count as not consolidated. Yes, there was a three-person wagon, but my point is that there were also 6 other players in the game (including myself) who weren't really doing anything at the time with their votes.

In PP's case, you've tried to make it look like he was committed to voting Rocnix and then jumped, and that's plausible on the face of things, because PP did put a time limit on his support of Rocnix. But PP has shown that he changed vote because Rocnix went beyond prod during that period and was going to be replaced, so staying on her wagon didn't make sense. Which I think is fair enough. (PP could still be scum, but this act wasn't scummy IMHO).

You're correct here and this is part of why I've reneged; I only really realized that the prod duration was a thing near the end of that argument.

Anyway shannon I'm sort of here but I'm also tired and idk how much longer I will be online. I'm not sure what exactly you want to have a real-time chat about - tne being cryptic? Because I feel like that conversation sort of stops at "tne is being cryptic." I still really haven't figured out what I think that means wrt her alignment.

[implosion]

That's fair.

[implosion]

Hm, I think if TNE is scum, it's with Chrime, and they set up the current situation together. But if so, at least one of us would know Chrime was lying. It's not impossible, but for today I'm going with assuming this is not the case.

So, under that assumption (meaning I'm ignoring Chrime and tne for now),

I really dislike this reasoning; do you really find it so definite that tne-scum implies chrimi-scum that that alone is reason to ignore tne for today? I'll yet again reference my earlier argument that partner hunting without flips is terrible practice.

@Implosion If deadline was imminent, would you 'try' to lynch drone? Or do you see a smarter choice?

At this and your other question about lynching tne at deadline, I sort of have trouble answering them because I can't really imagine my reads being in the state that they're in at this moment close to deadline; I mean, for instance, you've been in this game for 4 RL days. Drone is in a similar situation having replaced in at the end of d1. I still need to sort both of you; I didn't really have strong opinions on your predecessors at the times they were replaced so I need to engage with both of you more. If it were about to be deadline I would hammer tne; if it were like a few days off I would be considering you, Drone, tne, and maybe AF and trying to discriminate between you more closely because right now I think I'm satisfied enough with PP's reaction to me to call him town (there's also one other reason that I've neglected to mention which is that the way his tne read has evolved looks genuine, and I think that him metaing her earlier was probably a towntell but I had been putting it in the back of my mind and remembered it on reread). I'm happy with shannon and chrimi as town right now as well.

So eh. Deadline isn't imminent and the game state would be different if it was.

[implosion]

I don't like his use of incorrect information to paint me as scummy. He's saying that "Oops, I didn't realize." But I don't think that's the case since, as shannon pointed out, he did it to her to.

And as I pointed out in response, I didn't actually do this to shannon. I think we just reached a misunderstanding on that point.

Implosion
PP
TNE/Drone

I'd like a bit more elaboration on this as well; from what I can read of your posts today, you seem to think that the way I'm acting is indicative of me being scum with PP, but you also described my play as being unlikely to come from scum who was angling for a mislynch. Has this just changed since I jumped off the wagon? If not, then why am I listed higher than PP, if my being scum is contingent on my being scum with PP? Do you have reason to scumread me individually at this point? Do you have reason to scumread PP individually at this point? Why is Drone on the same level as TNE? Last thing I can see you directly saying about him is calling him a misguided townie.

[implosion]

imp/drone is starting to look like the obvious scumteam.

Implosion - reasons already given, though TNE suggesting we lynch him puts me off a bit. I still like these two for a team

I'm going to call you scum partners with PP that's what.

I know I've said this like five times at this point but people REALLY seem to love trying to tie me to people.

Pre-flip associations are really, really bad. I know some of these are just people fosing me and someone else separately but it seems like people are just making connections between me and half of the playerlist. Which is really objectively bad, because if I'm scum I'm scum with exactly one other player. I'm reminded of something from my very first newbie game on this site six years ago. On day one, someone (who was town) made an ordered list of the players based on how much information we would get by lynching them. The very last two people on that list were scum, which was ironic because they were arguing that lynching for information is good. Obviously I'm not being argued as an information lynch but the point is that having ties to other players doesn't make someone scum; often it's the opposite, and scum (especially experienced scum) are going to avoid making obvious connections to their partners. Which is why seeing three people tying me to three different people as scum with them, and then a fourth (tne) arguing that I'm scum for literally zero reason and essentially not playing the game, is frustrating.

[implosion]

I tend to think AF's vote on me (and his recent play in general) pings townish but Cass's looks extremely opportunistic, particularly if tne is also town; there's a lot of very disparate pressure on me as I just pointed out, and as everyone has pointed out I'm doing much more than tne so if we're both town I'm a more desirable mislynch (and my mislynch would also potentially set up a tne mislynch tomorrow, again assuming we're both town). Like, with mounting pressure from AF and tne (and elsewhere), Cass's vote on me is really an obvious move for her to make if she's scum.

The main point that's been made about me is that I've been misrepresenting things, but as I've pointed out I don't gain things as scum by intentionally misrepresenting things that can be factually proven wrong. That just isn't how I approach the game as scum; I don't try to manipulate what things factually happened in the game to my advantage. It's a silly approach as scum because if one person sees what you're doing then they can catch you. I've misread and misremembered things; it happens.

Something else about Cass's play pings me as off but I can't put my finger quite on it. Someone (maybe AF?) called her obvtown earlier; I'd appreciate if they could justify that.

[implosion]

Weak defense, trying to distract us? The associations are not the reason for the wagon on you, exactly because of the lack of flips. I don't see any player not aware of this. It may seem that way to you, but not to me - but tbh you sound so unconvinced about this yourself that it confirms all my bad feelings about your alignment.

The associations aren't the reason for the wagon and I acknowledged that I'm being fossed individually (and have also refuted those points separately). This paragraph was more of a high level observation that people are focusing too much (i.e., focusing at all) on team hunting.

I can promise you, if you flip scum I'll re-evaluate all possible connections tomorrow with an open mind and I will not impulsively lynch Drone. Btw, How do you feel about Drone's 'intent to hammer' post? And just how convinced are you (as a percentage) that TNE is scum? Could you describe for us a logical line of reasoning behind scum!tne's actions today? Who would make the most sense as her partner, and why?

Drone's intent to hammer post is fine. Doesn't make me feel strongly either way. WRT tne, I'm not sure why you're phrasing it as "how convinced are you." I think I've made it fairly clear that I can't read tne well right now. She's simply being inscrutable. She's acting out a playstyle in a way that I can't really determine with the information that I have what the nuances would be if she were town vs if she were scum. I also don't really see percentages as a meaningful thing to say. Compressing a complex opinion into a number obscures any nuance of the opinion. Really if she's scum her actions are her playing to how she thinks she would be playing if she were town, again, based on her playstyle. She's refusing to engage in logical discourse; if she's town then that's because that's how she plays, so if she's scum it's probably just because it's how she plays as town and she's emulating her town meta. I haven't put any thought at all into who would be a likely partner for her and don't really intend to because, again, I see it as wasted effort. I suppose my answer to that question would be that her most likely partner is you because you're my biggest scumread at this point; I'm not interested in trying to look at the 21 (7 choose 2) different possible pairs of people who could be scum together at this point fmpov and try to get anything out of their interactions.

Ehm... this is very twisted logic. I mean, if you are town, and tne is town, and I am scum - why would I not simply push the tne lynch?

Chrimi summed it up much more concisely than I did:

Lining up lynches.

Unrelated question: Do you think now would be a good time for a lynch, or would a longer day benefit town more?

First of all I don't really think there's an obvious better outcome between lynching now or later; it's fine if the day goes longer because I think we're getting plenty out of it (it hasn't stalled yet) but I don't think it inherently needs to go longer. I still

sort of

need to sort drone (and tne but I know that isn't going to happen) but I'm feeling better about a scumread on you.
Second of all what are you intending to get out of this question? This to me doesn't strike me as the kind of question that you ask your primary scumread; are you trying to get a better read on me based on my answer to this question (and if so how) or are you asking it for some other reason (and if so what)?

VOTE: Cass

[implosion]

(that should be L-2, for reference)

[implosion]

Warning, mostly train-of-thought-y post. And my meeting is ending now so I don't have time to think about the strategy stuff and be sure about it.

You have to realize there's a certain irony in you being jailkeeper after our last game, shannon...
I'm not sure why you said this:

and by the look of things everyone also knows I'm a PR.

I don't think everyone knew you were a PR and I'm not sure why you thought it. People were just townreading you because your play looks town. It looks like I'm not alone in this.

But it's irrelevant now. Now that you're claimed there's a simple optimal play: you should announce your target beforehand and follow what you've announced if we lynch scum today. That way if you die we'll at least wind up with a clear. Although there's a roleblocker if both you and Chrimi are real so it'll only actually be a clear if we lynch the roleblocker today. If we lynch town today then you shouldn't necessarily follow what you announce, instead you should try to guess who will be the scum who makes the kill and jailkeep them. Although again I guess this is irrelevant if there's a roleblocker.

Actually thinking a little more the optimal PR play (for shannon) is this:
-if we lynch a townie then shannon jailkeeps arbitrarily without paying attention to who it was announced on
-if we lynch a scum roleblocker then shannon jailkeeps whatever target she announced beforehand (which she should announce for this case)
-if we lynch a goon then shannon jailkeeps Chrimi. This is because if we lynch a goon, the other scum is either a RB or a goon. If they're a RB they'll just block+kill shannon so it doesn't matter who she jailkeeps. If they're a goon then they're Chrimi.

On that note Chrimi while I do think you're probably town I don't like you calling yourself confirmed; you are not confirmed. Your claim could be a gambit, or you could be scum who was only planning on actually committing to the claim if no counterclaims appeared. That said I'm personally not interested in lynching you for the forseeable future. If we're lucky then shannon stopped the kill last night and you still have a bp shot.

Also, I have an idea: I'm dead anyway, so lynch me today unless you're super sure about your scum choice. Then, instead of scum NKing me, they have to choose someone else - and that choice might be revealing.

This is also a horrid idea. We very probably only have one mislynch left.

Anyway.

Why was that fine? Didn't Chrimi already have an intent to hammer in place? You have seemed to be protecting the Rocnix/Drone slot for most of this game.

I fail to see how saying something doesn't make me feel strongly either way in response to a question directly asking how I feel about it is "protecting". I also don't see how I've been defending that slot most of the game; I pushed Rocnix briefly then called her town, then voted drone, then unvoted drone for Cass and now drone is in about the middle of the pack for me reads-wise.

[implosion]

You guys are attacking her for switching votes quick. Switching votes quick is towny af.

Both of these are oversimplifications.

Lining up mislynches is different from switching votes quickly. The biggest thing for me is that Cass's vote on me looks very opportunistic for reasons I've explained. The reasons I've explained are contingent on tne town but it should be obvious why it also can make sense if tne is scum.

And this isn't just joining wagons for the heck of it, this is joining wagons backed up with explanation on the votes and ISO analyses. So yeah no.

The simple existence of an explanation or analysis is not enough to read someone off of. Joining wagons backed up with explanations is not a tell, it's just an indication that that player backs up what they say with logic. You have to dig into those reasons to actually read them.

With regards to lynching tne, -shrug-. I actually tend to slightly townread the previous page from her - I'm not sure if she'd fake an emotional reaction to this situation as scum but gut says it's less likely than town. It's not the end of the world if it happens but I'm inclined against it. I don't think Chrimi is a particularly unlikely scumkill from last night; if she was then I'd be much more for lynching tne.

[implosion]

Meh.

Honestly I still think tne's recent posting strikes me as townish. But not immensely, and if she's town then my poe right now leaves Cass/drone as the most likely and they're relatively unlikely as a scumteam.

I'm not sure exactly what you want me to react to, drone - I think I've made my thoughts on tne clear and the past page or two doesn't change much.

I'll hammer tne tomorrow if there are no objections and no one wants anything else in particular out of the day; I think we're starting to focus a bit much on nightplay which isn't really that important here.

[implosion]

I kinda expected you to notice how some just repeat the conclusions we've already came up hundreds of times.
And btw Imp, tne's lynch would give us all what we need to know on n1's nk fate.

I did notice it, primarily because you already mentioned it so I didn't really feel the need to restate it.
And it also does factor in to my willingness to hammer.
tne's lynch doesn't

quite

give us perfect information on what happened n1; if she flips scum we don't know if she made the kill or if the other scum shot Chrimi, and if she flips town then we don't know if she was shot or Chrimi was shot (though I think the latter is more likely, I've been surprised by scum nks in the past).

tne can also be the roleblocker if Chrimi was shot.

[implosion]

I think this day has gone its course. shannon, I agree that tne/chrimi aren't working together but that doesn't mean tne is a bad lynch. I think I've made my poe fairly clear here; Drone/Cass are the main people who I'm looking at for scum, and tne isn't too far off of Drone.

VOTE: tne

[implosion]

Alright. We're in MYLO now, which means if we mislynch, we lose. This basically gives us two options: lynch or no-lynch to restore parity (i.e., put us back at an odd number of players so that we have a smaller lynch pool). The downside of no-lynching is that Chrimi will probably die; however, while she is very probably town, and she will still insist that she is clear in spite of her objectively not being clear, she is not clear. It is still possible for her to be scum. Because of that, we can nolynch and let her die (assuming that she is in fact town) to restore parity. If someone else dies then we can reconsider things.

There is a good argument for still lynching today, however. It's still theoretically possible that shannon blocked the n1 kill if it was on tne; if she did, then Chrimi still has a bp shot and won't die tonight because scum would be forced to kill someone else to maintain the game in evens (i.e. even number of players alive during day). I really do doubt this though. So I don't have a strong preference between lynching and nling.

tne's flip is unfortunate but I don't really have any thoughts on it.

[implosion]

No. I am making this distinction as the IC, for the sake of education.

You are not clear. It's common for players to call other players or themselves clear when they aren't, and it's often misconstrued in situations like this. Clear is a word that is used to describe players who formally cannot be scum unless a town-aligned player is lying. An innocent child, an un-counterclaimed partner to a dead mason, an un-counterclaimed claimant in an open setup where that role is guaranteed to exist. Your role isn't guaranteed to exist. I agree it would be bad play for you to have claimed in the way you had unless you were ready to retract and say something like "i was just forcing the real bp to claim" which likely wouldn't have flied; however, you are not clear because it is still formally possible for you to be scum.

It's an important distinction because it's important to be critical in general of players who call themselves clear, because there are scum who will attempt to manipulate the game state to make themselves seem clear. I believe you are town; however, it's important that we as town players do due diligence and don't just accept someone who declares that they are clear because they wouldn't have done X as scum as being clear, and check that they really wouldn't have done X.

[implosion]

I am not, nor have I ever since you claimed, questioning that you are town; I do believe you are town and I can't imagine much shaking me of that (even if we no-lynched and someone else was killed, I would still probably think you were town); I take issue with you declaring yourself clear.

[implosion]

So: PP, Chrimi, Astralflare - shall we lynch Drone today? I mean, he is being quite obvious now, amirite?

VOTE: Drone

This level of directness (directing this towards the three specific people she's townreading) is, I think, indicative of scum who sees what they think to be the easiest way to win the game (note that this doesn't preclude cass+drone scum if her plan is to bus drone then lynch me tomorrow) and is pushing it. I really just don't see this degree of strong confidence from town in this situation in mylo when we've yet to find any scum and only really have one person that we can be confident in for setup reasons. Her casually putting me at L-2 as well - it just feels too forward and too confident for town in this position. To a degree this is burden of proficiency but she should know not to put someone at L-2 less than 12 hours into mylo when we have no concrete information. The fact that she voted and then unvoted just feels so off. Town here should be really scared to vote. If she's willing to unvote when someone mentions it's mylo, as town, she never should have voted me in the first place.

@Pengiunpower, I see where you're coming from with the points on me deflecting for Drone, but that just isn't how I would play as scum. Some of the posts you quoted aren't me deflecting at all, either. 498 was literally just a comment that happened to mention him, it had nothing to do with people calling him scum. 636 was me asking for a justification, not defending him. Ultimately it's just one of the slots that I've been having more trouble reading. That's why I voted him and then unvoted when something else came along, that's why I've mentioned so many things that I haven't been able to read about him. I also went back and forth on Rocnix because I saw things that made me feel both ways.

Right now if I were to make a guess I'd say cass/drone. Second would be a tossup between cass/af and cass/pp. But I really do think cass's play is scummy.

[implosion]

Oh, and @this:

Shouldn't you have expressly stated that you were speaking as an IC in that moment? You did state that you would mark any IC posts specifically as IC posts...

Yes. I've been having a bit of trouble with posts that I felt were on the borderline where I've been saying things that are both my opinion and IC information. But given that it was becoming muddled, I felt like it was important to make it clear what the term "clear" means on mafiascum.

It's irrelevant anyway. I'm not trying to muddle Chrimi's alignment. As I've said, I can't imagine myself voting her. I just want to be clear on semantics. I don't think she's clear; I do confidently think she's town.

[implosion]

You mention the level of directness in this post causes you to view Cass as scummy, but what else is it?

I mean, I explained it beyond just the directness in the following paragraph. Her start to today and her having been off the wagon together account for a lot of her play. I also discussed her vote on me being opportunistically scummy here (which, as Chrimi said, can be summarized by saying that her push on me looks like she was lining up mislynches on me and tne), and here near the end I highlight another thing which is actually a trend in her play: she tends to ask a lot of questions that don't have any obvious discriminatory power (i.e., that aren't clearly useful for scumhunting):

Question for everyone: if today were the deadline, do you think we should lynch tne?

@thenewearth: do you also feel this day will yield no more information than it already has?

Unrelated question: Do you think now would be a good time for a lynch, or would a longer day benefit town more?

The second of these in particular comes from 631 which has a question for everyone, lots of asking about reads. Essentially it feels like Cass asks a very large number of questions and doesn't really use all of the responses. In particular the questions I quoted here don't really have any purpose; I don't really imagine her reading people based off of their answers to these questions (although she's free to prove me wrong if she can discern anything based on those answers) and they don't give her any more information about peoples' reads/etc. I feel like she asks a lot of questions so as to appear very busy, while many of the questions are either directly asking people for their reads (most of the time these are discernable from prior posting) or just asking for useless information.

Join me, implosion?

In due time. At this point she is my preferred lynch but I want to hear more of what people think of her and more from her.

And it would be kind of silly for me to vote her at this point after I criticized her for voting so hastily. I do think this day deserves a bit more time before drilling down.

[implosion]

@Implosion
About me/Cass;
If I was scum with Cass and she'd be digging under me like she did day 2, she'd be way too obvious with her attempt at a bus. Although as Jibs and Rocnix, I'd think as you do (#181).
I really don't think Cass would be so obvious, it's almost a newbie slip.

I'm willing to somewhat accept this (or rather, I think it's moderately unlikely you'd make this argument directly if you were scum with her). So eh. Honestly I really have no strong idea on Cass's partner but I will once again be showing why I think Cass's rhetoric today is scummy below.

So... basically you'd link me to anyone (except Chrimi, because doubting her got you under fire before...), as long as it gets me lynched, right? Because it takes only one mislynch right now, so who cares, right?

This is such a horrible argument. It assumes the consequent. There's a perfectly good obvious explanation in the world of me being town, which is that you're my primary scumread and I'm not sure about your partner. To turn it around even, I would claim that the reason you're so confident on your reads of me+drone is because you are scum who has the luxury of being confident about their reads in spite of a game that has been going very poorly for town. Saying that I'm scum for not being sure about who you're scum is is frankly absurd.

Additionally, saying that I doubted Chrimi is a major misrep; I have made it

extremely

explicit throughout the game since her claim that I have thought she was town; again, I have only said that she wasn't clear and that people should think critically. If you seriously think that my rhetoric about Chrimi has left me any room if I'm scum to flip on her then you are seriously disingenuously reading what I'm saying.

Not going to respond to the second half of your post because it's pure rhetoric.

For those considering me as scum, ask yourself the following questions please:
- Why would I have resisted the Tne lynch as long as I did, if I knew she was town? I had a solid reasoning why scum would do what she did, as scum I would have pushed that hard and made it quick.
- Why would I have targeted (as scum) anyone but Shannon on Night 1, considering I believed she had breadcrumbed a PR?

Well let's see.
The first one is ONCE AGAIN that you could have been lining up mislynches... a quick tne lynch isn't as beneficial for scum as a drawn-out day with a lot of vague suspicion towards tne and a lynch on a different townie, which essentially secures the game if tne is mislynched the next day. You say this:

Also Yuck @Implosion for keeping to throw that 'lining up lynches' crap on me to see if it will stick.

and then you simultaneously say "well guys, there's no way I can be scum, I would have just pushed tne!" when that point of mine is

directly addressing that

and offering an clear, straightforward, typical scum motivation for you pushing people other than tne.

The second one has plenty of explanations.
1) you didn't read the game and find the crumb until d2 (most likely)
2) you [or the other scum] also thought Chrimi had breadcrumbed a pr and so targeted her instead
3) you weren't sure about the breadcrumb and went for Chrimi for some different reason, like that you thought she was a big threat
4) you lied about having seen a breadcrumb and made it up after the fact (less likely)

Also another thing you said that I disagree with, just empirically:

Also at me being scum with Drone or Implosion - I want them both dead. And wtf would scum bus their partner in this situation - when town is already attacking town.

I think possibly my best scumgame on this site was a game where it was 3:10, eventually went down to 2:4 and me and my scumbuddy managed to distance from each other very effectively, never really committing to lynching the other one but throwing enough suspicion towards each other that the town was hook, line and sinker convinced that the scumteam wasn't the two of us, so in the event that one of us was lynched the other would likely clean up. Even then, we were fairly secure in the lynch that day being on town, because we never committed to voting each other...

...which is awful convenient if you're voting me as scum with drone. Who was it that said this?

Because it takes only one mislynch right now, so who cares, right?

Oh yeah, that was you talking about my play. Well if you're scum with Drone, I'm the mislynch you need, so who cares what happens after that, right?

[implosion]

This game sucks.

I've caught up on the stuff that was posted since my last post and bah. Drone/AF both feel gut town in ways that I have trouble getting past and PP still has townish things and there are things that do make me seriously reconsider Cass as well (her insistence on the breadcrumb thing, even if it is just essentially taking her word for it and there are other possible reasons like I said).

I think I might just need to directly discuss things with Chrimi. Or well more specifically I want to hear from her (possibly again, idk if she's elaborated a ton on it) what is convincing her that Drone is town.

I feel pretty lost in my reads at this point. I still think Cass is most likely scum because I see material reasons to townread all four but only really material reasons to scumread Cass so far that I really agree with.

[implosion]

Weekend was weekend and today was a long day at work. Alas.

I think I won't be able to substantiate AF-town based on his last few posts beyond gut, which means it's not particularly strong. Re-reading the posts eh. It's not that big a deal and I can see some minor things in there that might be scum-motivated (describing his play the way he does, the way he talked about agreeing with cass) so

shrug

.

Chrimi, do you (still) think the Cass thing (the reason you unvoted her) was particularly strong?

Another note, Cass is taking on a tone of rhetoric which is very offputting:

We need to find a way out of this.

And of course, I really want you to be town. Because with you + me + Chrimi (+ the last townie) working together we'd have a good chance to eliminate the scum.

I'm also(if slowly) rereading and hoping to find anything that could help us fix this mess.

I'd love to say yes (because it is Drone, and because I'd love love love some certainty right now)

All of this came after I criticized Cass for coming off as too certain. It feels almost AtEish (and AtE isn't generally a scumtell but this is just kind of eugh). Idk if there's actually anything significant here alignment-wise.

[implosion]

You realize this is what you are doing with Cass? You keep citing reasons why you lean scum or read scum behavior, but you never vote. You never question, and you never push. Cass promised a long post on you, but never delivers. Instead, most of her posts are about townreading AF and why, even though the behavior she describes as towny for AF is similar to your behavior. Of course, Cass voted you so that's a little different...but it also looks like she's trying to pocket AF.

Leaving my vote where it is right now.

1, my point isn't necessarily that acting in that way is scummy; simply that her saying "Drone and I distanced, so we can't be scum together" is invalid.
2, it isn't what I'm doing with Cass - I haven't

questioned

her per se but I've gone one step farther because I've been heavily criticizing most of her posts in the past few pages... so I question your description of my play. I haven't voted her but I pretty much have done everything up to it; the only real exception was my saying I saw reason to townread her but I don't think it's strong enough to balance out the points in favor of her being scum.
3, Cass voting me isn't a little difference from my example, it's a major difference; the whole point was that neither of us in the game I mentioned ever committed to voting each other, only speculating on it.
4, well, I'm about to vote Cass so.

Ok, all I'm seeing is Imp subtly pushing Chrimi back towards my lynch and his win.

I fail to see how asking her if her reason to townread you is in any way pushing her towards your lynch; it's a simple clarification and her elucidating it isn't going to change her reads.

He says things like, 'Cass does this thing, it's not really a tell, but, hey, maybe you still want to lynch her, Chrimi?'

This is incredibly misleading; I have made plenty of posts where I explicitly call the things that you've said scummy. But, no, I guess you can really sum up my rhetoric on you by saying that the things you've done "aren't really tells."
This post is just such a horrible horrible misrepresentation of my play this game. If you are town then this goes beyond the point of passive bias or a filter and into the realm of you looking for ways to perceive what I've said as scummy.

So taking risks, provoking responses, forcing others to talk, is in towns interest.

Conflating these is very silly; provoking responses and forcing others to talk (both of which I have done today, notably towards you) in no way entail taking risks (which I have not done because there has not yet been a need to).

At this point there really isn't any reason for me not to be voting Cass. She keeps saying things that I disagree heavily with and that seem too underhanded (rhetorically and in terms of misrepresenting me) to be from town, and I don't think I'm going to be able to get past those.

VOTE: Cass

[implosion]

Are you seriously saying that the mere fact of PP changing his main suspect for my scum partner from Drone to you is "seriously scummy?" Are town not allowed to have reads that change over the course of the day? Or are they just not allowed to have reads that change over the course of the day to be more suspicious of you? Or should every townie automatically suspect people who become more suspicious of them, since each townie knows that they are town, and therefore can see intrinsic scum motivation in suspecting them?

Or is there something else to that post that makes you think it's scummy? Please elucidate.

[implosion]

Hear me out. If scum hit whoever JK protected last night, then I still have a bulletproof. In that case, we'll be in the same situation tomorrow but we'll have more time and we'll know for sure whether or not scum hit me or TNE N1.

If scum hit me N1, then I die tonight. What this means is, the surviving town can look at my Day One reads and find out why I was targeted for the NK, and we get some information

The advantage of lynching today also lies in the (unlikely) case where you still have your bp shot; it would mean scum can't safely kill you tonight (as that would give us a free mislynch) and would need to kill a different townie. The only real advantage of that is that you'd be alive in 4p though which isn't really mathematically an advantage.

I don't really think there's a very meaningful difference between NLing and lynching. I agree it may settle the difference between you and tne being shot n1 but then scum have a lot of options. And I don't think that knowing for sure which of you was shot n1 will help me personally scumhunt much better, at least. Both the upsides and downsides of lynching and of no-lynching are pretty incremental.

[implosion]

Good game, everyone.

I think most of the newbies played well overall. I don't really have any issues with PP's or drone's or AF's or any of the other new players' play. drone did a good job of obfuscating things near the end (and fooling Chrimi, which I think was one of the big keystones in the scum win on the last day). There were a lot of weird interactions between me and Cass and drone and I think those sort of made the game difficult to figure out. I just got bogged down in an incorrect scumread on Cass. It happens. In retrospect of course I wish I hadn't turned around on PP but alas, he did a good job convincing me to.

Really the only town newbie that I have salient advice for is 0x40 who I would just recommend not get bogged down in things if everyone else is recommending that you don't get bogged down in them, or in things that are very binary (like saying that you support a policy lynch). Those things are generally not good indicators of scum because in a meta where they actually become indicative of scum, it's very simple for scum to stop doing them.

Overall though I don't think the town played particularly badly. The game going to evens messed us up a lot because we never got any useful information from either the setup or from nightkills since no one ever died at night except the claimed jailkeeper. Shannon's claim was a mistake but ultimately I think the lesson there is just be cautious about claiming; things aren't always obvious when you think they are.

WP scum.