Mini Normal #1838 - Game Over

[implosion]

Hello.

[implosion]

Ah man I already have so much to say about this game but it will wait until after work.

[implosion]

Alright, let's see.

Oh man my first game in like a year.
Now I have to remember how to play.

Awkward first post, the sort of typical scum who feels like they should say something but can't think of anything to say.

Might as well tell you guys now I have the Ascetic modifier so don't waste actions on me.

This feels reeeeeeally like a scummy claim to me. Pings me really very hard. Feels like a mafia ascetic trying to act like a town ascetic. It also doesn't necessarily reduce the negative effect of ascetic to claim it, as, if town, eagerSnake is now a free nightkill if scum want to kill him.

Gamma's reaction to the claim is town. Zoronos' is not; calling it interesting without giving any comment on what it makes them think of eager's alignment is scummy, and it follows the trend set by their RVS in that it's very empty commentary that feels like scum saying things for the sake of saying things.

Zoronos' subsequent question to me is potentially indicative that he's saying these things because he's bored but I feel like if he was bored town he would at least try to analyze the ascetic claim a bit beyond calling it "interesting."

That's it for up until my last post, gonna split this here to avoid wallposting too early.

[implosion]

Grendel's opening post is also potentially scummy.

Anybody up for some questions?

I've been finishing up a new set I want to use.

Why not just ask the questions? This seems unnecessarily roundabout.

If its cool I'd like you all to leave me to analyze them,

If this is non-sarcastic then I'm holding you to this - I'd like to hear what actual alignment-indicative or otherwise useful content you're getting out of these questions.

Also of all games to feel like you need to force an RQS or RVS, this is a very silly one. We have a claim. On page one. An unusual one at that. We have a goldmine of material to analyze already - why do you feel the need to instigate an RQS? RQS and RVS as they're usually conceived are both kind of outdated anyway. There's usually enough substance in the first few posts to get reads that are legitimate enough to argue about, even if they're very unstable.

Zoronos, you're implying a scumread on Grendel; why not follow it up with a vote?

Why aren't you voting me then? If you're going to try and push popular opinion in this light then vote me you scared child

A number of reasons.

VOTE: Zoronos

[implosion]

Yes, I like to review the question results to see if I can divine some alignments. Why not contribute to the game with your answers?

I don't really see it as a contribution until I'm convinced that they're useful but I don't have a problem with humoring you (I sort of find it weird that Zoronos explicitly does? not scummy weird but etc and at least they did explain why to some extent)
1) I historically have preferred town but was actually somewhat hoping to draw scum this game because I believe I haven't played a game on mafiascum as bona fide mafia in 2.5 years. Which is ridiculous. 1 game as a traitor in that timespan. And I can say this more openly now since this is the only game I'm in :p.
2) I've been mislynched *mostly* in games that I shouldn't have signed up for in the first place because of not having the time for them, although there was another recent game I played which was the first game I can recall in a long time where I was mislynched and really felt like I shouldn't have been.
3) I don't have a playstyle beyond doing what I feel like doing at the time.
4) Not enough information (although it's ironic that they're both on my scumread list right now).
5) I've learned not to really be excited for games per se because how much I enjoy games is largely a product of factors that can't be predicted at the start of a game.

I'm interested why you find my entrance poitenally scummy when you feel Zoronos is legitimately scummy. If you thought that Zorones was implying I'm scum then why was your initial reaction to my post, "well that's kinda scummy"? Sorry, but its weird that you'd have me as a tertiary scum read while your top scum is, in your opinion, also scum reading me. If you think he is scum, why do you think I am scum too?

It's really quite simple. I essentially pay 0 heed on d1 to interactions without flips. Why can't I find you both individually scummy? And further why couldn't I suspect you both of being scum together with Zoronos bussing you? I really don't see what you're getting at or why it's strange to be scumreading both of you.

Agreed with eager that nn is probably town. Although I wouldn't go so far as to say that nn can only be scum if they're an alt; that's a bit premature, there can be good players who haven't played on MS before.

This is a decently analytical thought though for this point in the game. ++towniness.

I actually find this interesting because after my last game that just ended before I signed up for this one, I sort of had a realization that I (and maybe everyone?) put too much stock in logic or analysis, or the quality of an analysis, as determinative of alignment. Individual players who are logical in their town games will almost certainly be logical and show a level of rigor in their analysis in their scum games. Do you really think simply the presence of analytical thought is indicative of town? Or do you think that the thought process Grendel displayed was more likely to come from town?

[implosion]

It's a little odd that people keep thinking eager is just townreading nn for townreading him. I thought it was pretty obvious why eager townread nn (although I also like nn's reaction to eager townreading them).

Unvote
VOTE: LUV

[implosion]

Took longer than I thought to get to this game today so forgive what is about to be a multipost because I think they're more readable than walls. Alas.

Serious vote. He doesn't talk about LUV at all but then votes him. Trying to flashwagon are we?

Why yes, how kind of you to notice.
Early flashwagons are great.
And shadow so politely asked for people to join him. Frankly it's rude of you not to join him .

PP actually raises a pretty good point in 149 - you criticize me for trying to flashwagon with my vote on LUV (which was the second vote on him) and then vote me, also as the second vote, in a way that implies that you think it's still okay (or at least possible) for people to be making completely nonserious votes (which, ding ding, mine on LUV was). What gives? If being the second vote on someone amounts to flashwagoning, then why do you get a special designation allowing you to flashwagon? Or did you not really think that non-serious votes were still possible?

[implosion]

I also seriously question Gamma calling LUV town at the point of 161, implicitly for his posts on page 7. How is anything LUV said on that page a towntell? I don't care if he did this last game and he was town, that's a terrible reason to call this play town; it's not like it's difficult to emulate that as scum. It also makes me a bit more suspicious of Gamma. It feels like he's just jumping to that conclusion because it helps lend credence to his vote on me if LUV is town.

It seems like he's holding contradictory opinions and trying to justify them after the fact

I just disagree at a fundamental level that those opinions are, or should be viewed as, contradictory, for the reasons that (1) they can easily both be true and (2) we're not at a stage of the game where we should think about reads based on interactions.

I actually like Zoronos' recent posting more on a gut level that I'll try to justify more later, but I'm not particularly suspicious of him anymore; he's at least following pretty clear lines of thought. I actually also like his insistence that we shouldn't care about the ascetic claim; it seems somewhat more likely than not to be genuine.

[implosion]

@boring's 202, not quite true, it's not like his claim guarantees that he's going to die tonight. He could be an ascetic power role or an ascetic townie if he's town, and this really should be something we err on the side of not speculating about for obvious reasons.

I like PP's reaction to Grendel a lot, he gets town points. I very much dislike Gamma switching off of me and onto Zoronos when (1) I had given nothing responding to his "serious vote", (2) he criticized me for "trying to flashwagon" which makes it sound like at least at some level he disapproves of early wagons, and his vote on Zoronos casually makes it the largest wagon yet at 4.

Also, in 61 he gives a reason for snake being scummy. In 62 snake calls him out on it (why don't you vote me then?) and in 64 he goes on to ask Zoronos why he didn't follow up his scumread with a vote. He ends 64 by voting Zoronos.

Here's what the problem I have with that exchange - he doesn't vote anyone in 61 himself (which contradicts his line of questioning to Zoronos in 64). After snake calls him out in 62, he claims to have a "number of reasons" to not vote for snake (wut?) and then goes on to vote Zoronos.

You seem to be misunderstanding how I made those posts. Those were essentially two halves of one post; I essentially only read the thread up to a certain point, posted 61, continued reading, then posted 64. Note the last sentence of 61 explaining this. No reason to make a vote in 61 when I might make another in literally the next post. I mean, Gamma even explained this for me in 63. I also gave reasons for Zoronos to be scummy in 61, not just eagersnake. It's not like I voted zoro out of nowhere. I also don't really have much interest in lynching eager today unless he acts exceptionally scummy (and I think his play since claiming is somewhat town). The claim has a chance of sorting itself out for free if he's town and scum consider the free potentially-pr shot worth taking.

Also, implosion went dark after leaving his vote on luv. It's been ~18 hours since he last posted

For reference, on weekdays I mostly post right after getting back from work and right before bed. But I don't always get to the game after getting back from work. And I'll often peruse the game during work so I have some idea what I find interesting when I actually get to it later.

[implosion]

Not really gonna read Grendel or LUV's thick posts for now. Loosely, townpile right now consists of {shadow, nn, pp, eager, zoronos, grendel}. Why yes, for the observant eye, that does include all three people I called scum on page 3. They all started acting townier. I think Gamma is a great vote right now:
-his switch to Zoronos makes very little sense when he's gotten nothing out of his vote on me, and it seems to contradict his apprehensiveness towards flashwagoning (even if his problem with my vote was that I didn't explain it, that still doesn't jive with either the fact that he implied that we were still in RVS as PP pointed out, or him using the word flashwagoning when describing it which implies that he thinks early wagons are bad).
-the reason I had for weakly townreading him early isn't actually any good (it was 22, which is no reason to townread him if eagerSnake is town).
-he's managed to say a lot without really saying a lot. It took him 30 posts to get to his first "serious vote" on me, almost all of which is non-content and really none of which gives any indication on what he's thinking about anything (he mentions "a few townreads" without naming any). He's clearly engaged in the game. He does a lot of clarifying things (linking the wiki, mentioning that I have half a wall to go). But he gives no content. Just a bunch of stuff which gives the illusion thereof, until he latches on to literally the easiest reason to vote someone. I really find it hard to believe that the first thing he found seriously scum-motivated was seeing me, an experienced player, dropping a vote on someone without giving any reasoning. Would I really do something like that as scum but not as town? I'd hope he'd realize that there's no way I would do something like that as scum unless it's the kind of thing I'd do as town as well.
And I mean, come on:

And it's not that I specifically townread LUV,

LUV is town

If it was a bad reason to vote him based on meta, you would have said such; you did not say that. You called him town. In quite the most explicit way possible. You don't just get to say X, and then go back and say no, when I said X I meant Y.
VOTE: Gamma

[implosion]

I'm sorry, did I say I townread you when I voted Zoronos? No I didn't.

This is a nice distortion of what I said; I said that you unvoted without having gotten anything out of the vote on me, and listed other problems with it as well.

This feels like an extended explanation of a OMGUS vote.

This is a self-defeating sentence; the definition of OMGUS is when player A votes player B for the reason that player B voted player A. OMGUS is not a meaningful phrase when describing votes that have other reasoning listed.

Am I not allowed to vote you without it being OMGUS just because you voted me? Does the fact that you voted me somehow give you immunity from being scumread by me, without it being scummy for me to scumread you because it's OMGUS?

Calling my vote OMGUS is just childish.

[implosion]

I forgot about that.
Also, you're not reading LUV's major contribution? Any reason other than being a lazy reader?

it's 1 am and I have work tomorrow.

[implosion]

(and on that note, good night.)

[implosion]

Phone post.

Gamma, I'll read luv later. I have limited time and for now thought addressing other things would be more worth that time. And if you think I'd accuse you of omgus then I question whether you actually read what I said... it isn't omgus if you give material reasons.

Nn, i really have no idea what you want from me. I respond to events in the order I read them (i.e. The order they were posted) and I did respond to what you said. Would you rather I respond to what you say first, before reading the rest of the game in order? Would you like me to mold my real life schedule around this game? I really have no idea why you're calling my posting pattern scummy.

[implosion]

Also that from 247 - 261 he addresses a significant number of issues, but ignores the ones I've raised with him.

False? I address them directly in 254.

@Grendel, and @anyone else who wants to know why PP is town: PP's reaction in 219 and 221 makes me think town for a few reasons. 1, I think he shows genuine contempt, and that contempt indicates that he genuinely doesn't think your points have merit, meaning he's either town, or he's scum who thinks your line of reasoning is completely wrong which I find less likely because 2, it's antithetical to what I saw of PP's play in my other game with him. I pressured him a lot in that game; I was town, he was scum and he was, I think, a bit more hesitant to engage on such a direct level with calling the arguments I was making bad. He answered the queries I had about him and didn't really comment as much on the quality of my reasoning, iirc. Or at least it doesn't stick in my mind. I think the reaction of calling you bad town or scum is relatively unlikely to come from the scumgame that I saw in that game. 3, those posts in addition to contempt show a certain level of him feeling like he's in-the-right (since he's talking about how he was just being honest with his answers) that I think is consistent with town who feels like they've been accused for bs reasons.

Keep the shovel: makes it easier to tunnel.

Another case of Gamma misrepresenting things; PP isn't tunneling Gamma by any stretch, he had just given his first significant post explaining why he thought Gamma was scum and his vote wasn't even on Gamma.

Gamma strikes me as the kind of person that likes to be 'technically correct'.

Ironic since I can think of at least three counts in this game where he has used terminology (omgus, tunneling, and even literally calling LUV town) to mean things that they don't mean at all.

This kind of play annoys me, however, I feel that it is less likely to come from scum because it's an inherently antagonistic stance. He didn't call me scum for thinking about Ascetic in terms of being like Miller since they were both negative utility; he just called me wrong and insinuated that I was bad.

If anything this is scummier than if he had called you scum for his analysis; by taking the antagonistic stance towards you without actually giving any meaningful commentary on your alignment to go with it, he provides the illusion of content. And I don't think contentiousness is an aspect of personality that scum are likely to consciously mute to a large degree; maybe somewhat but *shrug*.a

[implosion]

Gamma is acting exactly like he did in our last game.

Can you quantify exactly what you find similar?

A note on Zoronos: I actually think I might have trouble reading him accurately. He feels very town but I think there's a pretty decent chance that I'm just reading him based on playstyle. I like the way that he's analyzing the game.

[implosion]

And I think the most damning thing about Gamma (which I've mentioned but no one seems to have noticed) is still this flat-out contradiction. It's indicative that he doesn't actually have a consistent internal state of reads in his head; if he actually didn't hold the opinion that LUV was probably town, he straight-up would never have explicitly called LUV town. The fact that he called LUV town and then said that he doesn't actually believe LUV is town (just that a particular argument was bad) is very strong evidence that he's just pretending to have reads on people.

[implosion]

I on the other hand will potentially though not necessarily be inactive until Saturday afternoon as I'm on a trip.

[implosion]

I'm feeling pretty lazy right now (just got back from trip) so i'm mostly gonna skim the last (many) pages.
Game with PP for whoever asked.

In your last game with him, how much ‘ethos’ did you carry? E.i. would it have been scary for Scum!Pengiun to 1v1 you in that situation?

It was a newbie and I was the IC but there was a decent amount of vaguely-directed pressure on me throughout the game. I was never really considered strongly town except by like one person.
I don't really make much of him not answering the questions then answering them later. I mean it could be scum trying to fit in but -shrug- scum feeling the need to fit in aren't usually going to say explicitly "well everyone else is doing it." I can see it as that but also as just him being disinterested in RQS and then seeing people answering the questions and being like oh well why not i guess.

PP 431-433 PP's entire page 18 also reads town... textbook annoyed town. Doesn't read at all to me as scum giving up. Continuing to give opinions and reads but clearly disgruntled.

Does anybody have some hypothetical scum teams cooked up?

I can't I.D. third scum for my scum team and want to hear some interactions people may have caught between people.

This is such a deeply counterproductive way to look at the game on d1. Seriously. Even assuming 3:10 you have about a half a percent chance to correctly guess a 3-player scumteam. There's absolutely no reason to think about entire scumteams on day one. It just clouds judgment on individual players.

[implosion]

PenguinPower - Bad votes, reactions lack a feeling of authenticity, posts lacking substance, and dismissive in a way that I only see with scum.

I think I felt a visceral lack of genuineness in PP's reactions in the other game I played with him. I feel none of that here.

485 is possibly a sign of gamma-town (the first sentence); i'll need to think over it more. Not enough atm to outweigh other things.

I think the PP and Gamma wagons are probably both pretty telling. Or they will be on future days, more accurately.

I'm tempted to throw boring into my scumpile for reasons that I'm not sure have merit. 3rd vote on what I suspect is a wagon on pp-town where i suspect the first two votes are also from town, and her reads list. It feels somewhat forced or like she's posting it for the sake of having posted it. It also feels like the reads themselves make a lot of sense from scum; the top several players are all my more confident townreads, so it's consistent with my view of the game that she'd have sprinkled her scumbuddies near the middle. Although again I don't want to put too much stock in that since it's dependent on reads of other players. Calling PP "dismissive in a way I only see with scum" is just weird. I see that kind of dismissiveness so much with experienced town players who feel like they're dealing with newbies and PP's dismissiveness looks pretty much identical to that to me; the way she qualifies it as "only in scum" sounds like it might not be accurate because of that.

I want to call Maria town but that's entirely gut that I'll probably try to substantiate later.

That mostly just leaves LUV, dierfire and prism to sort.

[implosion]

And boring I guess. I'm interested in other opinions on her, particularly her reads list. It just feels off for some reason that I don't feel like I've fully qualified. Maybe that it's too finely sorted for this stage in the game. Idk.

[implosion]

Lots of reasons for townreading shadow. In no particular order, 399 looks genuine, I like his early commentary on eagersnake's claim (he comes off looking like unsure town), 267 sarcasm is i think a slight towntell, his votes on LUV and Penguin feel like they're aggressive and pushing the game forward and taking stances in a way that has obvious town motivation and puts him in the limelight if he's scum, his re-vote and "flail scum flail" around the pp fakehammer look townish. The votes are probably the strongest reason among those. It feels like he's actually trying to accomplish things and get the game moving with his votes rather than voting to blend in.

Gamma still in my scumpile. 485 is essentially an inkling of looking like he has an actual internal set of opinions on how scummy everyone in the game is (the lack thereof being one of my problems with him, which I've mentioned) but like I said it isn't enough to outweigh the things I find scummy from him.

Zoronos read hasn't changed much I think (still I'd say weak town)

[implosion]

I am reading through these past ~10 pages and holy hell is this cringey.

Mods putting in things that will get cced is nothing new. Very seriously nothing new. It isn't bastard. I put two town bodyguards in a large normal 5 years ago. Approved. The last large normal I was in had two macho townies which is pretty much the closest fucking thing i can think of to two town ascetics (or ascetic roles) SS and eager both read extremely town to me in the exchange.

I'm actually having trouble reading this shadow seriously you're wrong. eager isn't guaranteed scum from his claim *AT ALL*. Please stop acting like this is a 100% thing and basing all of your reads off of that assumption.

[implosion]

I also really really hate this:

@Mod Do scum have day chat?

So you're trying for a derp-clear now?

I've seen so many town ask this question before even when it was clearly on the first page and ugh. This reaction to maria saying that just feels so contrived like you're trying to preempt anyone from calling her town for saying it but you don't really want to commit to calling maria scum for it.

[implosion]

Game with two macho townies if you're interested
(Amusingly our mod was one of them)

[implosion]

Maria I think also is coming away from this a lot townier than before.
Unvote
VOTE: boring

[implosion]

Reads like now look something like this:
Would astonish me if scum: Shadow
Town: nn, eagerSnake, Maria, PP, Zoronos, Grendel (vaguely strongest to weakest but not strongly)
Still to sort: LUV, Prism, Dier
Scum: boring, Gamma

[implosion]

shadow you're only saying that because you're stuck assuming eager is scum, right?

IT. IS. NOT. BASTARD. TO HAVE TWO TOWN ASCETICS.
As someone who has been on this site well more than 10 times longer than you please just fucking accept this.

[implosion]

Look at how you're viewing his play through rose-tinted glasses because you're still assuming he's scum based on his play.

[implosion]

Snake IS scum, he didn't claim ascetic, he claimed having ascetic modifier because that doesn't give him protection from being watched doing the kill etc.

He claimed an ascetic modifier rather than ascetic because he doesn't want scum to know that he isn't a power role... or because he's an ascetic power role and wants to claim honestly.

His play makes complete sense if he's town.

[implosion]

@Prism: I somewhat meant to respond to those but got sidetracked and somewhat didn't really feel like they merited response? I mean you didn't really explain why you thought I was scummy for the most part, you just kind of listed things you thought were scummy.

On the other hand his read on Shadow is complete yuck and considering the thought that goes into most things I'm finding it hard to believe that this is the read getting the stamp of approval.

No idea what you mean by this.

I really don't like the noncommittal read on Maria in #562

You don't like it because... townies are never unsure about things (hint: not the case)?

or the halfhearted opinion fishing on boring in #563.

You don't like it because... townies never seek advice when they're unsure about something (hint: not the case)?

#565's opinion on Gamma looks to me like either distancing from the wagon before it flips or fishing for a future derailment more than a real reconsideration.

I mean this I can kind of see? it's just wrong. I think almost everything he's done is pretty scummy but that was a reason to think he was town. I townhunt as much or more than I scumhunt, typically, so I'm looking a lot for things that I think are unlikely to come from scum or that indicate a consistent internal thought process that's motivated by trying to find scum.

I guess I didn't really read 599 after 592 but.

In general I think noncommittal reads are more likely to come from scum. They're a good multitool-they're reads so nobody can complain about you not giving content, they're easy to justify ("I like X and it makes me lean town on them") or shrug off entirely, they're easy to go back on ("After thinking about X I guess it's not that big of a deal, on the other hand Y really makes me lean scum") in future days, and they serve as additional justification for narrowing your choice of votes.

Sure. But I've also committed to tons of reads. Including reads that are quite divisive (townreading penguin). Do you want me to commit to a read on every single player in the game? I feel that's unreasonable. But I still feel like I should try to sort everyone in the game. I think it's silly to imply that I should be confident in every read I have and I feel like that's what you're implying here.

On Implosion, I really should have linked Implosion's #562 over his #563 as better illustrating my point. It's entirely possible he has a read with weak reasoning as he states and wants other opinions. On the other hand, that isn't necessarily true, and his other posts make me think it isn't. I'm not buying what he's selling on Shadow and I'm not buying the paragraph of "tempted to scumread boring but I just don't know" while making sure to keep pushing Gamma.

Here you go not explaining what you're referring to WRT my shadow read at all again.
And just saying you're not buying it, again, does not merit a response from me; i can't respond to you with anything more than "you're wrong" if you don't explain yourself. So. You're wrong.

Presumably, boring's reads make a lot of sense as town considering they're implosion's reads too. Yet, that isn't the implication here.

Yes, hence me not really being sure! Funny how the fact that parts of it made sense as coming from both town and scum, yet there being things that made me somewhat suspicious, led to me having an unconfident read!

[implosion]

Snake IS scum, he didn't claim ascetic, he claimed having ascetic modifier because that doesn't give him protection from being watched doing the kill etc.

He claimed an ascetic modifier rather than ascetic because he doesn't want scum to know that he isn't a power role... or because he's an ascetic power role and wants to claim honestly.

His play makes complete sense if he's town.

?????
Doesn't want scum to know he is a PR? What kind of town lies wtf
Ascetic PR is useless. If they want him to be unable to be protected by doc they would give him the machp modifier. What is the point of an ascetic PR and a town ascetic?

oh my god dude

IT'S EXPLICITLY NOT A LIE. it's just not claiming his entire role. An ascetic PR makes sense if we have a doctor and an investigative role, or a watcher, or a tracker, or a neighborizer or FUCKING ANY OTHER POWER ROLE that targets him. Or maybe the scum have a rolecop and being ascetic means they can't figure out what he is. Or maybe since you're a town ascetic they chose to make him ascetic rather than macho to increase the symmetry of the setup.

Literally i can come up with reasons for like another ten minutes if you want to

[implosion]

Or scum have a roleblocker. Or town has a roleblocker and him being ascetic means that roleblocker doesn't interfere with his role.
Couple more likely ones.

[implosion]

The point isn't the game size, it's that it happens in normals. He's claiming that it's bastard; it's very simply not bastard to have a setup like that in a normal with this site's current meta.

In fact it's almost a point in favor of them both being town that podoboq, the mod, was one of the macho townies in that game; it seems likely that he saw that component of the setup design, liked it, and reinterpreted it for whatever setup we have here to get two town ascetics.

But the fact that the examples I can think of off the top of my head happen to be larges isn't important; what's important is that they're games that were judged normal on mafiascum.

[implosion]

shadow please fucking actually engage with the points I'm making.

I know this site's meta way, way better than you do. It's objective. It's not up for debate. It is a very simple truth that two town ascetics is completely possible. I don't care if you scumread him for other reasons. But please stop this line of argument. You're wrong about that point. He might be scum (i still don't think he is) but you are 100% wrong about that point.

[implosion]

Show me a game with 2 town ascetic and I *might* reconsider.
Macho is not a neg utility like ascetic so this doesn't apply.

Three things.

One, please take a step back for a moment. The fact that you're saying you *might* reconsider if I show you very direct proof that you are wrong means you are being way too goddamn stubborn right now.
Two, there's a first time for everything. I'm not going to look through a thousand mini normals to find a game that has precisely two ascetics; it quite possibly hasn't happened, I have no idea if it has. That, again, does not make it bastard.
Three, ...what? Macho is straight-up a negative utility role. It's probably the single closest modifier to ascetic.

And @zoronos, site meta is very important when shadow's primary line of thought is "X would be bastard on this site, and this is a normal game, therefore X cannot be happening in this game." The first premise is flawed because he doesn't understand site meta.

[implosion]

It's not a super common occurrence to put two "counterclaiming" roles in a setup together and I'm not claiming it is. But (1) it happens and (2) podoboq having been in a game with an incredibly similar setup quirk and having had macho townie as his role in that game is about as good of circumstantial evidence as you can get that it could be happening here.

[implosion]

@eager - I'm not sure you understand what buddying means. Most of what you posted was criticism. Also, why do you keep repeating that I'm happy about the conflict? I've been around for very little of this little scum theater.

@town? - eager has been coasting, and the only thing in the way of my gut scumlean was the fact that he had an uncc'd claim. A cc from an obvious town player was more than enough reason to vote him. Either way, how can so many of you accept eager's piss-poor "town" performance without resistance? I mean, eager has bragged twice now about how shitty town is playing by not calling him out for his lazy vote. You're all just taking the insult with pride, it would appear. The only positive thing I can say about this development is my wagon. It decreases the likelihood that eagerSnake, MariaR and implosion are ALL scum. I'll have to try to knock at least one out of the running.

If scum want to chainsaw me up to L-1, that's fine, but don't let them hammer without warning. I'll try to be back again tomorrow to check on things.

p-edit - S_s's play and tone were very aggressive early on.

I find the first bolded so, so hard to believe. You had a scumlean on him and the thing holding you back from that was an uncced ascetic claim. When (1) tons of people have been explaining why it makes sense for him to claim it as a mafia ascetic (so the claim itself isn't a strong reason to townread him). And more importantly (2), being an uncced ascetic isn't a particularly townish thing... like, I can understand this if he were an uncced cop or doctor or tracker or generally an uncced power role, because making a power role claim puts you in the limelight and makes you suspicious if you don't die the next night. But I find it hard to believe that this was the only thing holding you back from scumreading him or more specifically that it would hold you back from scumreading him.

Second bolded part feels super contrived. Calling an L-2 wagon on herself positive as if to shout "hey, i don't really care if i'm lynched bc i'm not scum" from the rooftops with no regard to how harmful it would be if we lynch her and not eagerSnake in the event that she's town and he's scum (which, to be clear, I do not believe but she does). Giving the positive that you've eliminated one out of 200+ possible scumteams further evidences that she doesn't actually feel like the wagon on her is a good thing, she's just BSing to try to look like town-who-doesn't-care-if-they're-wagoned. If she were town she would be concerned about the wagon on her competing with the wagon on eagerSnake, or if she was genuinely glad about it would have more to say about it than "these three people aren't all scum" which is so likely to be true a priori as to have evidence in favor of it be utterly meaningless (reducing an 0.5% chance to an 0.1% chance is not meaningful, and that would require insanely strong evidence to do). We'll see what she has to say when she gives more analysis on it.

Posting from work because I really needed to get this off my mind while it's fresh. Will have more to say on the es-ss fiasco later. But it's gonna be more of what you've already heard.

[implosion]

I need further input.
I mentioned that Grendel's summary made me rethink some things. What I'm having issues dealing with is determining the motivation behind a certain play. This play is the "both are town" idea that Eager and Maria have suggested. Thing is, I've used this defense before...
...As scum. It's a great way to avoid getting trapped in a CC if it works. What I need to know is if this is something you agree is something scum would do. I'm feeling incredibly confused right now and this feedback will help.

@implosion and nn30
I want input on this.

I mean, I'm also getting tired of repeating myself. I can be a bit more specific. eager's insistence that they're both town, the way he's doing it, and his irritation resulting from shadow's play are pretty damn close to how I'd respond as town. They are also somewhat close to how I'd respond as scum. So I don't really read him solely off of the fact that he's calling himself and shadow both town. I think he is making an effort to get shadow to reconsider and has realized that it's futile, and that's not really useful for determining his alignment.

I think the emotional content of his reaction looks consistent; I think he was looking like town before shadow claimed; I think the way he talks about shadow (i.e. 1060) sounds more reminiscent of town who has given up because they realize they're up against someone who will never change their mind rather than scum, who I feel would spend more energy directly trying to prove that they are town to players other than shadow. I think two town ascetics is honestly more likely than a town ascetic and a mafia ascetic, or than a town ascetic and a mafia goon or whatever fakeclaiming ascetic, because of the context of the large normal I linked where podoboq was one of two macho townies.

So yes, what eager is doing is something scum would potentially do but it's also certainly something town would do and it looks that way to me. I agree with his 1119.

[implosion]

I think Zoronos has said pretty much everything I want to on this page (and/or I agree with him). 1131, pretty much 1132 (not guaranteed bc he might claim it to preempt something like an investigative no-result on him but seems less likely the more i think about it), the first half of 1142 (i.e. the maria question being unenlightening - i also wonder why gamma specifically asked about those two when I've been pushing the same angle), and 1144.

[implosion]

What makes you confident of that?

Because I don't see how an combination of roles including two of those modifiers would be approved for normalcy and balance. I can't be 100% confident, but I'm confident enough at this moment.

Like I've said many times already. As someone who has been on this site ~6 years and who has seen tons of normal setups (and is very familiar with what normalcy means on this site, and who has read a number of normal game normalcy/balance review threads): it's perfectly possible to create a setup with two town ascetics that both counts as normal and would be approved for balance. Yes, it will probably take some finagling (either we have a lot of power or a lot of our PRs are passive, most likely, or the mafia also have roles that the ascetics screw with) but it is by no means out of the question or, imo, even that strange. Uncommon, sure.

[implosion]

(and i'll respond to boring's post later)

[implosion]

Why approach someone else's townread the same way I did if he thought such an approach "didn't merit a response".

Not sure what you mean by this; when I said your earlier post didn't merit a response, I mean in the way that it wouldn't merit a response from you if I said "Prism is so scummy, vote: prism". It doesn't merit a response if there are no specific points to respond to.

The first part is consistent with what boring's said throughout the game, with implosion specifically citing consistency as a towntell repeatedly throughout the game.

Consistency is a towntell in an extremely specific way and although I'm not going to ISO myself you should see that if you look at how I use it; consistency is a towntell insofar as it indicates that a person has an internally consistent set of reads. Consistency on its own isn't always a tell. Experienced players will be consistent almost always, and many players will have some inconsistencies in what they say as their reads change or they forget about minor things they noticed earlier. The main time I remember citing consistency earlier was in criticizing gamma for being inconsistent about a major read (or at least what seemed like a major read) over the span of <24 hours, which indicated a lack of a consistent internal thought process. Consistency in general is not indicative of town.

The second part is just downright awful and a major stretch, and again I find it hard to believe that with the level of thought implosion tries to appear to put into the game, this is one of the ones getting his mental stamp of approval.

Golly, you sure do know a lot about the way that I think about the game of mafia for having met me like two days ago
Also there's more of that non-specificity you seem so fond of... you're essentially saying "this is bad" and leaving it at that.

[implosion]

I actually phrased that a little poorly. When I say an "internally consistent set of reads," essentially, what I mean is that they're a set of reads that, in a sense, actually exist. A set of reads that are actual opinions that the actual person has about things that have happened and what alignments people are based on those things, rather than opinions that were manufactured and that they're simply trying to keep straight "externally" in the sense that they're not things that they actually really believe.

Acting like I don't know consistency isn't necessarily a towntell has to be a joke. It really does.

You're misunderstanding me... it sounded based on what you said that you believed that *I* thought that consistency is necessarily a towntell. I'm trying to clear that misunderstanding.

His description of how he views consistent internal thought process is exactly how boring's read on Eager was consistent.

This is subjective, not objective. The degree to which a consistent sequence of stated thoughts indicates that someone is actually genuinely thinking about alignments is, like almost all good indicators of alignment, almost entirely subjective. So I simply disagree.

He explained in #802 that this was a reason for why he was unsure on his read on her, but this isn't true. Go look for yourself at the context he used it:

That post was pretty much train of thought; I didn't say literally everything that I thought about it. I didn't mention that her reads being similar to mine was a particular reason for me to be uncertain because I was basically spending my thought in 562 trying to figure out what about her post it was that I found scummy.

[implosion]

Anyway, to finally get around to boring...

If you bothered to open an ISO, you'd see that I've been pretty clear about my feelings regarding eager's claim. That being, he was an uncc'd town claim, which left unchallenged, left him as a prime night kill target (because of the probably confirmed town status). As I also stated several times, if he lived to tomorrow, I'd re-evaluate. So for Day 1, uncc'd regardless of how untown he seemed, I didn't feel like I had much choice but to accept him as confirmed town.

This isn't the point I was making. This is actually just a non-sequitur to the point I was making. I just straight-up don't believe that the ascetic claim from snake would have as big of an impact on your read of him as you're implying that it did. You continuing to just call him "uncced" as if that means anything real when his claim is just an ascetic continues to further this.

I very much care if I'm wagoned. You may have missed it, but I said "the only good thing"... as a rule, when someone says "only", they mean just the one.

You said "The only positive thing I can say about this development is my wagon." So, what are you even saying? You're literally calling your wagon a good thing. And "this development" is vague. Saying that you meant that as the "only" good thing about "this development" (which I took very vaguely to be the you-and-eagersnake competing wagons thing) does not change my point in the slightest that you called the wagon on you a good thing... I really have no idea how this is supposed to be a response to the point I made. It's like you're misreading your own sentence as far as I can tell, which makes me think I'm just misunderstanding what you're trying to say here. You didn't say "the only good thing about my wagon was X," you said your wagon was the only good thing about something else...

[implosion]

This day is starting to really bore me. It's the same song and dance of the same people saying eager is town and the same people saying he's scum and no one budging. And I still have yet to see any reason that I agree with for me myself to budge.

I like boring more for scum than gamma at this point. She's my top scumread. I want to gut townread prism but I don't feel like I have any actually good reason to yet. Same with LUV, my gut says town and has for a while but I'm not sure where it's coming from. I could conceivably see dier as scum but still have no strong feelings on him; I'm also growing potentially suspicious of grendel, or at least he's not giving the townvibes he was.

[implosion]

As for why boring has gone up over gamma she just keeps posting things that feel scum-motivated, I think the way she's pushed eager makes a ton of sense as scum and she hasn't posted anything that has pinged me as town. Gamma has also started posting more things that give me a gut town feel. I'm probably going to have to just evaluate him better later.

The fact that multiple people have any inkling of suspicion towards shadow is still deeply confusing and distressing.

[implosion]

Now, on Implosion. He's been thin all game; that is, my general impression is that he doesn't do a lot to try and steer the conversation. He comments on this, but doesn't push. I am suspicious of anyone willing to just float along.

I think this is fair, but is typical of me on d1. It's relatively rare for me to get a scumread on d1 that I'm confident enough on to want to try to steer the conversation. Much more common is for me to get a townread that I'm confident enough to try to steer the conversation on, which you can probably see is the case with eager and to some extent shadow.

I have a similar opinion wrt eager's mention of nolynching as a possibility as those who have weighed in, it really just doesn't make any sense at all. It could be a scum ploy but why the hell would he do it as scum, but also why the hell would he say it as town, etc. Not ultimately super meaningful I think.

On the other hand, I hate to beat a dead horse of almost-everything-boring-says-sounds-scummy but I really dislike boring's reaction... again.

So, rather than lynching scum (or at the very least learning from a town flip), you're suggesting we give them a free night kill, and start this mess up again tomorrow? We're better off lynching today. Even if it turns out to be me (though I'd hardly call that "plan A").

This is such an incredibly tepid response for someone who has been pushing eager so consistently since shadow claimed. Compare penguin's reaction, and Zoronos's reaction, and even nn who remarks that it's worth looking at his old games based on this. boring's reaction just reeks of scum who doesn't know how people are going to react and wants to test the waters before committing to saying something like "oh my god, only scum would possibly suggest a no lynch, can we please lynch him already." Which I would expect from town-boring here (obviously not in those words but etc).

That paragraph from boring does not read like town talking to their top scumread. It does not read like town with a strong investment in lynching the person they are talking to. I could buy it as town talking to someone that they're trying to make up their mind on. But I can't buy it as town talking to their top scumread. It just sounds like detached, rehearsed advice.

[implosion]

Not gonna respond to everything boring said but:

I made it pretty clear I found his idea scummy

This is a lie; nothing in your post implies that his idea was scummy, only that it was a bad idea. Either this is a lie or boring is heavily overestimating how much sentiment she put into that post.

For reference:

So, rather than lynching scum (or at the very least learning from a town flip), you're suggesting we give them a free night kill, and start this mess up again tomorrow? We're better off lynching today. Even if it turns out to be me (though I'd hardly call that "plan A").

This is not calling his idea scummy, it's calling it bad and giving him advice, as I said.

[implosion]

That's a weird kill.
Definitely made to frame boring.

I'm so glad to see that you being wrong about something that you were literally 100% sure of has so caused you to even take one second to reconsider any of your thoughts on the game

Yes. But I haven't seen anything scummy from her to make me think she is scum. She believed my claim holy hell she must be mafia. No, it doesn't work like that.

This is not reason to townread her... nor is it reason to attribute the Maria kill to "definitely a frame on boring." It's a reason to have boring as null.

I caused the day 1 mislynch?
Only scum should be disappointed after the day 1 lynch. If that had happened today or tomorrow. It would have been horrible for us.
Don't you dare tell me that you would have believed Eager's claim in my position.

I absolutely fucking would have for all of the goddamn reasons I said yesterday... I was very confident you were town so it's not like you had access to any information that I wasn't at least pretty confident of that had any implication on eager's alignment. And we could have just not mislynched him at all... which would have been my preferred world.

I'm legitimately going to stop interacting with shadow unless he can tone down his ego because it just feels entirely unproductive like i'm beating my head against a brick wall. And it's also making me kind of angry.

[implosion]

Town doesn't react the way he did to my claim.

MariaR, Vanilla Townie, died night 1.

[implosion]

VOTE: boring

[implosion]

@Prism - You were after implosion yesterday. His tunnel timing me seems less than a coincidence,

I'm curious what you mean by this; it seems like it could mean pretty much anything. My best guess is that you mean to say that I brought up a wagon on you as a counterwagon to eagerSnake? And it sounds like you're trying to imply that that was a scummy thing to do? Which I find deeply confusing. So I'd like some clarification.

I'd also like some clarification on how you (seemingly, I may be misinterpreting things here) are simultaneously criticizing me for tunneling you on d1 and for not having strong reads on d1.

[implosion]

sorry, above quote is from boring.

[implosion]

Take this with a grain of salt because there's definitely a grain or two in there from my current mood: generally, shadow's reasoning for me being scum feels to me like it amounts to "I wasn't right yesterday, so no townie can POSSIBLY have been right yesterday."

which is, once again, projecting his feelings that eager was necessary to lynch at some point on to the whole game... I honestly would have loved to take both of them to endgame. I mentioned eager as one of my strongest townreads and fought his wagon for as long as it seemed like it would have any chance of actually doing anything for a reason. And it's honestly insulting for shadow to imply that there would be a point where we would "have to pl eager." I just on-principle disagree with that sentiment.

It's just absolutely infuriating to be called scum for having been correct about eagerSnake by the person who caused his lynch, won't admit that they caused his lynch, and is now continuing on to day two without even a tiny shred of humility or any indication that he's re-evaluating his view of the game in light of his by far strongest scumread flipping town. And yet he's still probably town.

Which is just infuriating.

[implosion]

In other news I'm very curious to hear a lot from Grendel on boring after this...

I was going to look more into boring since she is the leading wagon, but I feel like Snake is much scummier atm.

Well, I'll look into Boring too, but many of your posts have been down right manipulative.

If Snake does flip town I will advocate lynching boring tomorrow.

Yeah i'll look into boring. I was really hoping that Eager would be an open shut case, but I'm beginning to think its not.

For those not seeing what I am here: it looks really very waffly. I question grendel having this consistent attitude near the end of the day of "I'll get to boring later."

[implosion]

Okay so we are in day 4 lylo, with both Eager and I alive. Who do you lynch ?

eager and you and... me i assume and... who else? d4 lylo would (assuming 1 kill per night) have 5 people. The answer to this entirely depends on what happens between now and then and who those other people are, although it seems like it would be moot since you were never even willing to consider the hint of a possibility that eager would be town, so if you were both town here my vote wouldn't matter

If you're making the argument that bringing you both as town to LYLO loses us the game because you'll auto-vote eager, then
1) you're missing the fucking point of YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE HAD EAGER 100% AS SCUM.
2) that rests on shaky logic to begin with because we would have had one extra lynch opportunity that wasn't on eager before then, and so we'd be less likely to be in a bad situation in the first place.

[implosion]

oh wait it would be 7 people. duh. Same thing though.

[implosion]

Scum believe claims more readily than town because they know that town generally don't have any motivation to lie.

They also believe them less readily because lynching a townie who is claiming their role is a perfectly valid way to get a mislynch... scum don't actually believe or disbelieve claims, they simply choose which to portray, and there are good reasons for scum to portray either belief or disbelief of a true claim, which are basically the same as their reasons to portray belief or disbelief of any player in the game.

Your reason to believe that we both were town ascetics was some what far fetched.

It really wasn't. As far as I can tell, you're still viewing the game through rose-tinted glasses. You still think eager was obvious scum, and you aren't looking at my reasons for thinking he was town through an objective lens, you're looking at them through the bias that eager was obvious scum, so it's unlikely that a townie could have been right on him.

What about maria's reasons? Were they far-fetched? What about eager's reasons? If yes then your argument loses a leg because we suddenly have multiple examples where town can have reasons for thinking eager was town that you view as far-fetched; if no then it loses an arm because there were good reasons to think that eager was town (although you can still view my reasons as far-fetched, though at that point I'd simply disagree).

[implosion]

I agree that PP's end of the day yesterday is bad but I don't think it's all that scummy, maybe a bit. He mostly just looks disengaged to me, and that's null. I still think his early game was very townish.

@Grendel, I can somewhat see boring's read change as being not cautious enough for scum. I don't think that's nearly enough of a point in her favor to balance out all of the things that I've found scummy from her, a couple of which you paraphrased quite nicely.

However, he doesn't spend a lot of time actually prosecuting his scum read on Boring (that's where his vote was),

I question this characterization of my play yesterday. I felt like I was beating a dead horse essentially writing essays on how every post she made scummy.

[implosion]

@dierfire: last think I see you say about boring is that you've read up on her but don't find anything really alignment indicative. What do you think of her after the eager+maria townflips, and/or why don't you agree with my points on her?

@LUV: can you elaborate on why you disagree with the case on boring? Can you elaborate on your null-scum read on prism, and on your scumread of penguin (is it just lingering things from long ago, or is it more strongly based on his recent posting)?

[implosion]

I think if I were to put my dissatisfaction with Implosion into words it'd be that so far today he has more energy into shaming shadow, and treating Eagar, and MariaR like martyrs then progressing the game state.

This is completely fair, and is why I'm now trying to engage with the people that I have the weakest reads on.

My reads right now look something like {shadow, penguin, nn} town, {zoronos, prism} leaning town (someone mentioned that the way prism pushed me isn't likely scum-motivated and I somewhat agree but not super strongly), {grendel, LUV, dier} needing the most work to sort, and boring scum.

This list does not include gamma who I, despite still having heavy reasons to townread from earlier, has continuing to ping my gut as town lately. It's not that I need to evaluate him more, it's that I have evaluated him a lot and am conflicted. So I'm not going to put a ton of effort into him unless he becomes a major wagon or something.

[implosion]

Your definition of bad and my definition of scummy seem to overlap. Was my case wrong? Where was he scum hunting? Where was he making effort to solve the game rather than just parking his vote? Where did he explore Eager's alignment?

I agree these things are bad (they don't exemplify good play). I think he did explore eager's alignment in a few ways, not with as much depth as I'd have liked. But lack of effort isn't necessarily a scumtell. And his end of day to me just read as him being disengaged with the game. I could see it as scum just not wanting to commit to reads or do things, but I can also see it as town who thought there wasn't really much point in doing things until seeing eager's likely-scum flip.

If he had a towny early game, point those out.

I spent a decent bit yesterday elaborating on PP being town; I first explain it here, here I elaborate a bit, and there are some other sprinkles here and there. tl;dr his attitude in the early part of this game felt antithetical to how he felt in the newbie game I just completed with him where I was town and he was scum. He feels more aggressive, more willing to throw himself out there, and less concerned about himself than he did in that game, and I think all of those are telling.

The first post was largely projection, NAI, and tone.
The second and third posts were largely defensive, in my estimation. You were justifying your own play, not trying to either explore Boring, or convince other people to vote boring. Your third post is also more tone / playstyle stuff.

I just straight disagree with this. The second post and second half of the third post were not defensive at all, they were both directly talking about boring's play and why it was scummy to me. I have no idea what you're getting that from.

Personally, my rule is 'talk to people like they're town, talk about them like they're [alignment]', so attacking Boring on the basis of "Your tone doesn't match your read" when she's interacting with the person she has a read on is classic NAI, and is either bad play or outright scummy. Frankly, I think almost all 'tone' argument are scummy, so your reliance on them is disturbing.

Well my personal rule, like I answered Grendel's rqs with, is that I basically just do what I feel like doing. I often will talk to people as if they're town but I'll often do other things. And empirically I do make tone arguments as town so... yeah. Feel free to meta me. Nothing specific comes to mind but.

[implosion]

I already explained what the first link (219) is explicitly a scumtell. He's not attacking Grendel's method, he's attacking Grendel. It is an attack on credibility "First year pysch student" is how you set up the rest of the thread to ignore Grendel regardless of what Grendel says. That's very scummy.

It is very much not a tact that I would expect Penguin-scum to take based on my other game with him. I also just don't think it's as likely of a scum tact in general as you think it is; my focus as scum isn't generally on making ad hominem attacks. It's on looking town. Ad hominem attacks don't generally look town. And making one, like Penguin did, puts him out there in a way that (1) is, again, not consistent with the scum I saw in the other game and (2) just bad play as scum. It isn't good play as scum to discredit your attacker in a way that puts you in the limelight, like with an ad hominem.

Your second reference (221) is strictly NAI. He's pointing out that his own meta has changed which... says nothing since it's an empty statement. Scum say it to avoid getting meta'ed (and because it's usually true) and town say it because it's true.

You use the word "strictly" and I don't think it means what you think it means... you aren't going to like this, but I really think the tone in that post is town-indicative. It seems like, beyond the similarities in our styles that I think I've seen in this game, you simply approach scumhunting differently. I don't think that the content of what people say is the only thing important about it; certainly it is important, but emotional inflection, tone, and so on can also very much inform whether something is genuine. As an example, my main tact as scum is to, in the majority of cases, try to emulate what I would do as town by observing the game state and mimicking the opinions that I would hold if I were town. I'm sure other people use a similar tact, and to the extent that they are successful, it is important to use things other than simply content to discern alignment. Sure, there are actions, which are, again, also useful. But in cases like the one I'm describing tone is important.

And I really think PP's tone is townish.

At the time those interactions happened, PP was not under pressure. Grendel's vote was the first one on him. Discrediting an accuser who had just voted him would be pretty relevant to a scum game plan. The rest of your clear distills to 'meta', which I put no stock in. Show me why he's town in this game.

Your entire reading of these posts is just one-dimensional. Discrediting an accuser is something that makes total sense as either town or scum. For scum it makes sense, yes, because it's a part of their game plan; for town, it makes sense because a townie who is accused knows for a fact that the accuser is in the wrong, and that they are in the right, and being mislynched is bad. In the latter case, where PP is town, we would expect him discrediting a bad attack on him (or at least, an attack that he perceives as bad) to be charged with the kind of condescension that we see; I frankly just don't think he would have gone through the effort of faking that condescension as scum, and I don't think he would have been able to do it convincingly enough to match what I'm seeing from him.

I also just disagree with putting no stock in meta, but I don't want this post to be entirely a long theory argument.

Will respond to the rest of this later.

[implosion]

Didn't really find time today to keep up. Alas.

One thing I'll mention that I've been mulling over in my head for a while now... it seems like the eager voters can be vaguely split into two piles: those who voted him because of shadow's claim (which includes shadow and boring) and those who voted him for other reasons, presumably mostly for his reaction to the claim and subsequent play (which might be the majority of or all of the rest of the wagon, not sure). The first group presumably voted for eager because they found two town ascetics unlikely or impossible... so they should now be suspicious of shadow for his claim, right? Ultimately shadow shouldn't be suspicious of himself obviously, and boring has expressed a strong townread on shadow which was also part of the basis of the eager scumread. But if she was confident enough that shadow's claim was actually a counterclaim - that is, that there can't be two town ascetics - shouldn't she be questioning her shadow read? She was so confident in shadow's claim countering eager's that eager shot from 2nd townread to 1st scumread. And yes, she says that townread came entirely from his claim. But did she not even entertain the possibility that both claims were town? And if so why is she even entertaining it now? She quickly criticized eager for jumping to the possibility of two town ascetics instead of challenging shadow, even when she herself had a very strong townread on shadow... it seems reasonable that she should have seen it as possible or even likely, if eager was town, for him to think that.

This is sort of stream-of-consciousness. But ugh. I know I am tunneling right now but I actually just can't get past these things.

[implosion]

Of course you're disagree with it because I'm using it to call you scummy. The first half of 1463 was a justification of your playstyle before you wandered into a tone argument.

Yes... and then the second half of it was an attack on boring. I'm not sure what you're criticizing; should I have had more posts that are specifically dedicated to attacking boring? Like the first, second and fourth?

Reading 1295 again I think I was mistaken to call it defensive. It's just poor casing. You're quibbling about phrasing instead of exploring mindset, motivation, or intent.

This is somewhat true of the second half of 1295 (which I think is pretty clear from what I said is me thinking I misunderstood what she said and trying to clarify), but the first half is me continuing to elaborate on how I don't think her read on eagerSnake should have been as strong as it was based on the reasoning, which I think is an important thing to think about.

And that's my point - your personal rule and mine are different. However, you're hanging a case on it; you are using tone and manner-of-engagement as alignment indicating pillars. They're not, they vary depending on the style and mood of any given poster. That's why your case is bad. And bad cases built on NAI factors are scummy.
Also, I don't meta anyone - Meta is a waste of time and a one way trip to conf bias land.

So, if you want to help me lynch boring, cool, but I'd rather you do it with a case that isn't poop.

You say this as though it's objective fact. It really isn't. The degree to which intonation is an indicator of alignment is an extremely complicated question, and I think my example in my previous post shows that it's nonzero. I personally think it's a useful scumhunting tool. That isn't my "personal rule"; when I said that I was referring to my own playstyle, not the tools I use to scumhunt. Tone does vary based on style and mood; it also varies based on mindset, and it varies based on the actual thoughts going on in someone's head in a way that is often more difficult to convincingly fake than actual brute content. And I also just disagree on a very basic level that meta is a waste of time, from the perspective of scumhunting.

Calling my case scummy for being built on factors that you personally think area NAI and I do not (and if you want very simple proof that I do think that they're indicative of alignment, you can look at past town games of mine) is just nonsensical. You're the one projecting the way you play the game on others, not me.

[implosion]

You made the point (1068) that you don't see why boring would read eagerSnake as Town for the initial claim. I think that, from a probabilistic perspective, it makes more sense from a Town player claiming legitimately than from a Mafia player making a gamble (this is where I was after the initial claim). Whether that was a reason sufficient to justify the apparent strength of the read given by boring is a matter best answered by boring

I disagree that this is best answered by boring. Or at least, it's not a matter where we can simply take an answer from her at face value as being certainly true... because she can lie as scum. 73 is interesting, but it doesn't really strongly change my stance; it's just an earlier example where it seems strange for her to imply that eager is towny enough from the claim to be nked for being conftown.

So I have my POE on you, and my tilting on Shadow. Him being alive still, is questionable as well. Unless scum kept him alive as a potential mislynch. Of course, your post seems like exactly the thing scum would do if disappointed that their easy mislynch candidate is being ignored (i.e., trying to maneuver a tunnelee into a vote).

Okay. So you're subtly implying that I'm manipulating you to vote shadow. While I forever have and still am loudly calling him the strongest townread i have. And there is no momentum on him, and very few people have considered him today (which was the entire point I was making).

I very much question the narrative that if I'm scum here shadow is my easy mislynch candidate. If anything if you're town and I'm scum here you would be my easy mislynch candidate, since you were the counterwagon to the town wagon I was decrying all day yesterday and plenty of people have indicated interest in voting you. But instead, you imply that I'm trying to manipulate you, the person who i have been tunneling for half the game, into voting for the person who i have been yelling at everyone to stop considering as possible scum.

Ugh.

[implosion]

And hey, why not, theorypost/metarant.

Meta is a tool, just like any other tool in the kit of scumhunting. It's misapplied more often than others, but it is ultimately necessary in some cases. Some players tend to have specific patterns as specific alignments in such ways that directly contradict those patterns in other players. Some players are more aggressive as mafia, some as town; some are more active as each alignment; some are more logical or more logically consistent as each alignment; and so on.

To the degree that that is accurate, meta is an indispensable tool when used correctly. There are actions that can be taken that may be acutely indicative of alignment in different directions on different players. Take for example you (Zoronos) criticizing me for attacking based on tone, and calling it scummy. If you meta me, you will find very objective proof that I do, in fact, do such things as town. You can find games where I have made arguments as town based on tone. That very simple, undisputable meta fact means that calling a point I've made scummy based on tone is inaccurate, unless you can show a trend where I don't do it frequently in my towngames and do do it frequently in my scumgames. That's the simplest application of meta, and also probably the least disputable IMO - using meta to show a simple fact that a player does do something as some alignment, and that they do it frequently as that alignment, so that it can't be accurately used as a tell that the player isn't that alignment.

My use of meta on PP is, admittedly, much shakier. It's based on a single game, in a significantly different context. That context does matter; it might be more likely for PP to display this kind of behavior as scum in this game because it's not a newbie game, or because the person he's arguing with isn't a newbie game IC. But based on the scum play I saw in that game, the tactics he'd have had to be employing as scum when he talked to Grendel just don't seem like his style; the way he was condescending is not like the way he was argumentative towards me. I think that him being condescending towards Grendel in the way that he was would have required thought processes and a way of looking at this game that I just don't think PP would be capable of given what I saw of his scumgame. Or, at the very least, I am confident that the condescension was not faked, and I think that genuine condescension in that case is indicative that he was town disgruntled by someone saying something that he saw as really stupid.

Are you scum reading Boring / Dier here?

boring obviously yes. Dier I'm still digesting a bit; I think I might actually have an inkling of a scumread contingent on boring being scum, but I don't like putting stock in contingent reads on unflipped people, and I wasn't intending to communicate that in my response to him. His post towards me is overall just a dry response to what I said. Which is tough to read much off of.

The response I gave to Dier is just an argument, it's not an alignment-based criticism.

[implosion]

I also think I actually dislike the GE wagon which is :S given that I really didn't think anything he did in the first 20ish pages was even vaguely townish. He just keeps making posts now that ping me as town... hold me to justifying that tomorrow.

[implosion]

Things that make me think Gamma is town:

-The insistence that he is pseudo-confirmed town. Now, I suspect I'm going to get a lot of disagreement here. But there are two reasons I think this is a pretty significant towntell. One, I don't see the scum motivation for continuing to state it and re-state it. If he's scum, he sure as hell knows it's a bullshit argument and that it's going to be debunked; it's not the kind of thing that people are going to likely fall for, and so it's not the kind of thing that scum are likely to go for as a direct ploy to try to trick people into thinking that it's true. If anything, continuing to repeat that he should be confirmed town at this point and that the only way he could possibly be scum is if he's a traitor is suicidal as scum after it clearly isn't going to work. Two, and this is somewhat in contrast to point one... I am somewhat inclined to straightforwardly believe him. But this is less significant than point one.

-The read forgetting. I know I called this scummy earlier but it's extremely context-dependent... and it's a little worrying that people are pushing him so much for this when I feel like I just repeated it over and over again earlier (at least I think this is the point I was repeating earlier a bunch and was being ignored). In this context it's not as bad I think (although I haven't looked over it that closely. Frankly, things like 1833 are not reminiscent of scum trying to defend themselves from obviously very scummy things they've done.

-This goes hand in hand with both of those points but he's displaying a certain irreverence with regards to his own life. That also just doesn't read as concerned scum. He's not really flailing or struggling to get pressure off him. He's just going with things and continuing to play.

Note that all of this is from my memory of the game (i didn't actually re-read over much so details of my memory may be fuzzy esp. since i'm typing this at 2 am or so).

[implosion]

Yep. Scum.

Town would be attempting to work with me and get me on their side. Because. Ya know. We need to work together to find scum.

Scum would be attempting to work with you and get on your side. Because. Ya know. They need to not die to win the game.

PP being acerbic isn't scummy. It's arguably (which I'd agree with) bad play, but it's not like it has a scum motivation that makes particularly much sense.

I still really think PP is town. LUV hasn't ever done anything particularly towny to me; I still just have a hard time reading him but I'm fine with him as a lynch (and happier with him than PP). The only thing that really gives me pause is that boring is voting him but associatives are bad etc.

Unvote
VOTE: LUV

No real thoughts on gamma's claim; we'll see what tomorrow brings. I do still suspect he's town, pretty strongly at this point (I think the reasons for me to think he's town pretty significantly outweigh the reasons to think he's scum).

[implosion]

You guys are doing that thing again where you're projecting based on personality. Some people manipulate through cooperation, others, through hissy fits (AtE). Unless you guys know how Penguin plays, you have no way of knowing whether these weird tantrums are AI/NAI. Better to look at motivation.

Which brings us to why meta is important.

This is exactly my point. I do know how Penguin plays to some extent as I just finished another game with him where I was town and he was scum who played nothing like what he's done here.

But, can you talk to me about why you think PP is town? What are you seeing that I'm missing? Help me understand this one, because I can't get my head around a town PP here.

I feel like we've been through this song and dance already. I put stock in meta and you don't. I put stock in tonality and you don't. I don't think I can convince you since you don't believe the underlying tenets of my reasons to be valid.

[implosion]

Also.

Also even if Gamma is telling the truth, implo isn't clear.
Town cop would imply at least one mafia role which is immune to cop. We already have 2 ascetics. Nexus is not normal. GF is blacklisted. Leaves a traitor.

It's really incredibly frustrating how you refuse to even lend an ear to me when I try to tell you how site meta works and then make claims that can be disproven by the most trivial amount of searching.

(granted it took a bit to find that game but that's just because cops are so rare these days, it's the first one I found).

[implosion]

Doc+cop+jk is by no means impossible. The "slots" thing Zoronos mentioned is sort of a half-truth in today's meta I'd say (it tends to be true most of the time but isn't entirely followed). Doc+jk is probably something that's occurred in minis but i cbf to look atm.

That said luv's claim is pretty suspicious in its own right (claiming doc when we already have a cop and having both a full cop and a full doc has died out pretty significantly over time on site meta). Looks generally more likely to be scum trying to draw a counterclaim as they go down than town. I see two options that I'd consider:

-lynch LUV,
-lynch an unclaimed. In this case we'd see who dies, massclaim tomorrow, and wing it from there. If we wind up getting no other power role claims it'd be reasonably likely that all three are telling the truth (at least, if scum have any power at all).

[implosion]

I think both of those are viable enough. Obviously if not LUV I'd want to lynch boring. I'd probably prefer that by a margin just because it's quite possible that LUV will die tomorrow? And even if he's scum, leaving him alive isn't necessarily bad because he'd have to explain why other PRs died if they die.

Unvote

Also, come to think of it, we have three claims from pretty straightforward strong PRs. Did any of the three of you breadcrumb? If not, did you think to?

[implosion]

Lynching me is basically throwing the game, we have it practically solved if we're still believing Gamma's claim and follow his plan he laid out.

This is preeeeeetty false. The game is not "solved" in the case where we just had most of our town power claim all at the same time and we have one mislynch and 0 scum lynches.

This all just reads as flaily.

Not gonna hammer right now (I might later if I feel like it) but I don't really have any problems with luv dying today at this point. I think he's very probably scum.

[implosion]

Gaaah. I meant to post today and then got distracted.

I'll iso LUV tomorrow and figure out what I think of his connections; I think nn's play today so far reads gut town and am not sure about Grendel but will have more tomorrow.

We also need to think about when we're going to massclaim. If anything, the death of the cop over the jailkeeper lends credence to scum not having a roleblocker; if they did they could kill the jk and block the cop indefinitely, which is safer than the alternative of leaving the jk alive and possibly getting roleblocked at 1 scum left.

[implosion]

Alright. Broken record time.

I do not buy at all that LUV's scumflip implies boring-town.

I think the biggest point I want to make here is that either boring or nn is really REALLY likely scum. On day one, during the time when boring and eager were competing as the two main wagons, LUV heavily (at least, relative to his volume of posting) pushed the shadow-scum narrative. He eventually could easily have gone to either wagon, but chose to vote for eager. If we assume nn is town (not a safe assumption obviously but bear with it) then this seems just a bit strange:

Official Vote Count 1.36

Lynching

With 13 votes in play, it takes 7 to lynch.

eagerSnake (6): Shadow_step, boring, PenguinPower, Dierfire, Prism, Gamma Emerald
boring (4): MariaR, implosion, nn30, eagerSnake
Shadow_step (1): Lil Uzi Vert

Not Voting (2): Zoronos, Grendel

V/LA: none

Deadline: (expired on 2016-10-18 15:22:00)

This is the last VC before LUV suddenly flips on eager and declares intent based on his no-lynch thing. The boring wagon has the nice property here of being all-town, with the possible exception of nn. So if nn is town I just don't see LUV going for this awkward turnaround hammer on eager unless he was trying to avoid bussing boring. In other words if nn is town, then the boring wagon was an all-town wagon that scum actively avoided by choosing to flip on eager rather than boring (again, he was pushing both of them as town up to this point).

On d2, I asked LUV for his thoughts on boring, to which he cited his rhetoric from d1 about not buying the case on her and saying he'd need more time to figure it out. Between 1836 (which vaguely implies he still has a townread on boring I think, and he doesn't say anything about scumreading her before it either) and 2089 (where he all but calls boring his strongest scumread!) he mentions her a couple times but none significantly. His play towards boring looks like freaking textbook scum who was afraid to bus or distance but decided that it would be good to distance before he went down when it seemed like there was a strong chance he was going to be the lynch.

As for boring hard-bussing LUV, it really was not in a way that I think lends her a lot of town credence; on d1 she consistently pushed eager and cited LUV as her fallback if we weren't voting in the CCs. Hardly an all-out bus on a partner like some people have described it, as far as I can tell... that's a perfectly typical scum d1 distance if she is scum. Vote a townie fos a buddy. It's pretty much the oldest trick in the book. By d2 LUV was already pretty set to have a lot of pressure on him. She gets some credit for pushing him but... well, she said it best herself:

I think LUV has been lurky, beetlegeuse-ish, and unoriginal throughout the game. It's really easy to float to day 1 or day 2 in order to give your teammates something to bus, and that matches his behavior.

Bussing LUV there is not some crazy thing scum wouldn't do. He was lurking. He was being actively scummy with refusing to commit to either major wagon and then showing up at the last second and awkwardly declaring intent and hammering. Bussing LUV is absolutely sensible play from scum, especially scum who was already distancing from him... and again, distancing from a partner on d1 is standard play.

I really think though that the biggest thing is that I just find it hard to believe that all six of these names are town:

boring (5): eagerSnake, MariaR, implosion, Gamma Emerald, nn30

and I think nn's play today is pretty towny. Which I can justify separately.
VOTE: boring

My main candidates right now for other-scum are dier and grendel but I still, throughout this entire game, have seen no reason to townread boring that I've agreed with... and continuing mounting reasons to scumread her. I haven't changed my reads much over the course of the game because there have been relatively few incidents that felt like they were worthy of causing change (gamma acting townier, zoronos's claim). I'm going to have this mental block until we lynch boring or I see any reason at all to townread her. I'd love if someone can justify why her distancing from LUV was strong enough to have been unlikely to come from scum.

[implosion]

@nn, she means trust tells.

[implosion]

Oh man, I didn't even see that boring described her own play as "hard bussing from day one." I'd love to hear a justification of how listing him as your fourth-strongest scumread, saying you'd be willing to settle for lynching him if you couldn't lynch eager, and then justifying that read further when asked about it amounts to "hard bussing" because I can't see anything else on d1 that you said about him.

[implosion]

Speculating about scum roles and who would have made the kill is mostly useless. Too much guesswork; in practice it's just a crapshoot.

The amount of scum power depends on the amount and kind of town power; even then guesswork is hard because if we don't have that much power they might not have any at all. it's useless to speculate on podoboq's post 0, it's something that's required to be put in all normals.

[implosion]

Implosion, as usual, you seem to be arguing semantics and personality in lieu of actual scum-hunting.

I fail to see how literally anything that I said in 2334 has anything to do with either semantics or personality. At all. Almost all of the points there weren't even about your play. You continue the trend of responding to my points by sidestepping them, in this case just completely mischaracterizing them. Unless you're referring to me criticizing you for describing your play as hard bussing, in which case your response here:

Oh man, I didn't even see that boring described her own play as "hard bussing from day one." I'd love to hear a justification of how listing him as your fourth-strongest scumread, saying you'd be willing to settle for lynching him if you couldn't lynch eager, and then justifying that read further when asked about it amounts to "hard bussing" because I can't see anything else on d1 that you said about him.

I started suspecting him middle/end of day 1, and posted as much especially toward the end of the day. I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the end of a day isn't called a different day. You may have also noticed that I was V/LA half of day 1, and a leading wagon, so there was a bit of distractiin flying around.

is yet again an utter sidestep to the point I'm making. You started suspecting him. You never pushed him on d1. You only cited him as a backup if you couldn't get your preferred lynch on eager. And yet now you're trying to call yourself obvtown because you would have had to have "hard-bussed d1" which you wouldn't do. Which is a load of bs. You didn't hard bus. You didn't even bus. You plainly distanced from him and then bussed him when he became the obvious direction to bus in on d2 after his terrible end-of-day that would leave almost anyone suspicious of him.

That's not just a semantic difference. That is you saying you did things that you just very blatantly did not do and claiming that you are town for doing those things that you did not do. That's ridiculously scummy.

[implosion]

The thing is though that I have witnessed enough games to recognizing risky D1 scum gambits.

The problem with this is that I just very simply don't think scum-shadow would think to randomly counterclaim the immediate ascetic claim, and he immediately breadcrumbed. You are right that his play is worthy of a bit more thought in light of the possibility that he's a scum ascetic but I do not think there's any chance that he's scum unless he counterclaimed because he thought it was what he'd do as a town ascetic. Which is possible. But I think the rest of his play is town-indicative still. It's worth some consideration at massclaim time.

[implosion]

shadow continues to be the least helpful town i've literally ever seen... and i've played with katsuki before

Idk man. I don't really have much more to say. I guess the next thing I should do is justify why I still think nn is town. I'll do that tonight or tomorrow. But in terms of who I want to kill I cannot really see myself being convinced into anything other than boring at this point.

[implosion]

shadow continues to be the least helpful town i've literally ever seen... and i've played with katsuki before

Idk man. I don't really have much more to say. I guess the next thing I should do is justify why I still think nn is town. I'll do that tonight or tomorrow. But in terms of who I want to kill I cannot really see myself being convinced into anything other than boring at this point.

Bs
What do you want me to do?

stop treating the game like it's your opinions in a vacuum that's all that matters?

try to convince other people of your opinions if you feel like you have such a confident basis to be claiming them?

listen to others' arguments honestly and earnestly and take them into account in your calculus of peoples' alignments?

not uselessly call yourself conftown when you aren't?

stop calling everything you disagree with bs?

not needlessly insult others' intelligence for having divergent opinions?

justify your claims when you call someone obvscum who is clearly not obvscum in the eyes of the town, who are voting disparately?

show even a shred of humility and understanding that other people might be right and you might be wrong, and therefore that it is worth the time to actually discuss things to come to a conclusion?

I guess that mostly covers it for this page... i'm just fed up with your general attitude of unhelpfulness, refusal to listen and unwillingness to cooperate or compromise. And this might be a bit ranty but -shrug-

[implosion]

Alright, nn's play today feeling town:

I think it's pretty much entirely encapsulated here. That post gives me two reasons to think nn is town:

-the indignance with which he describes his play as town. This is more of a gut thing, it isn't going to be rigorously justifiable. It does go beyond simply indignance; it feels to me like nn is genuinely trying to work with people to solve the game. His insistence that the people pushing him give cases, his rhetoric towards Zoronos, and so on.

-his throwing townreads out left and right. If he's scum then the way that he went into today is painting himself into a corner, immediately striking out both pp and boring as likely directions for him to push in going forward. Granted, he did flip on boring now, but in a reasonable way in response to new information which him as scum wouldn't have known would be guaranteed to happen. To generalize he is playing this day very off-the-cuff, throwing reads out and laying his opinions bare for everyone to investigate. Saying he doesn't want to vote Grendel because he's just a counterwagon, then giving real reasons to vote him 7 minutes later. And then saying he got more town pings from Grendel 40 minutes after that. He's responsive. He doesn't have a plan. His play just doesn't feel like scum who's trying to get a person in particular lynched, or avoid lynching anyone else in particular, or try to avoid being lynched himself; his play is just too much a combination of putting himself out there and not having a plan behind it to be scum, I think.

[implosion]

Also.

I think we massclaim today?

Why are we not thinking about this?

[implosion]

if we don't massclaim zoronos dies tonight, it seems foolish to waste a possibly more-informed use of the jailkeeper tonight, etc. Theoretic worst case scenario is scum have a blocker and block whatever other active power we have I guess? but if scum have a blocker we're going to have another significant PR and we'll want to know about that. And also most importantly we're at the point where these claims will REALLY help PoE.

[implosion]

First, people have asked me my impression of PP-he's a lot less town than he used to be because it seems to me that he was very intentionally overdoing the brash behavior.

This is also entirely possible. To some degree it's starting to look like it's different from how he played last game to the point of him putting on a farce. I still err on the side of him being town because I don't think that's a tact he'd have been likely to take unless he sort of naturally started doing it with the original comments on Grendel and then sort of just went with it as a persona for the game because it was working.

[implosion]

Hey Shadow, why don't you state your flip dippin case on me??!!

While you're at it, why don't you refute what Implosion and Prism have had to say, too?

cause of the way you pushed my lynch after my claim. It was beneficial to you as scum to get me lynched, after my flip you would have lynched eager because I cced him. 2 free mislynches.
DF's point about how you were the only unflipped town on the boring wagon.
POE

So one of [Diefire, Grendal, nn30]

I like you for scum out of these.

@the poe point, grendel & dier are my best picks for second scum like I've said so I've no problem with that list.

But as for the voting you point... that's just a really flat way of looking at the game. You're basically saying "a vote on me has an obvious scum motivation, therefore it was scum-motivated." And I'll agree with you on that antecedent; the scum motivation of wanting to chain mislynches on you and eager makes plenty of sense. But the existence of a scum motivation for doing something doesn't mean that scum will do it... and this goes doubly so when there was already another scum doing it and no town (nn and LUV were the only ones voting you for quite a while, and it would be somewhat unusual for two scum to maintain a wagon together on a townie for a long time).

More to the point,

Cause I thought eager was scum then.

I could use this by a slightly weaker form of your logic (pushing a mislynch rather than pushing a chain of mislynches) to justify a scumread on you. Pushing the eager lynch was beneficial to scum because it secured him as a mislynch.

More generally I could use your line of reasoning to justify basically anyone who ever voted town as scum. Gamma voted you late on d1 as well; ought we to have scumread him for it?

You cite the "way" he pushed on you, which is the start of an actual case, but you never elaborate on it. What about the way he pushed was more likely to be scum motivated than town motivated?

And the boring wagon is, again, also a cornerstone of my case... I think it decently strongly paints nn or boring as scum. And I see supplementary reasons raining from the sky to townread nn and scumread boring.

[implosion]

if we don't massclaim zoronos dies tonight, it seems foolish to waste a possibly more-informed use of the jailkeeper tonight, etc. Theoretic worst case scenario is scum have a blocker and block whatever other active power we have I guess? but if scum have a blocker we're going to have another significant PR and we'll want to know about that. And also most importantly we're at the point where these claims will REALLY help PoE.

2nd time you've brought this up. I get the Zoronos bit; but, in a closed setup how is this going to benefit PoE? This is my first time playing one, so if you could explain that bit more.

Basically, there's a benchmark for how much town power will be in a mini normal and if we all claim we can speculate about how much power is left unaccounted for. There may be town power roles who have useful information which can be used to speculate further, or there may be confirmable roles or roles that can let us eliminate people as scum as well. Or people might claim contradictory roles or information. Mostly though it can just be used to speculate on which roles are likely in the setup together; I've caught scum just from massclaim analysis.

If someone contentious like boring or nn happens to be a major power role claimant and we have good reason to believe them as town from that claim, it massively simplifies the gamestate; if someone currently less contentious like me or prism does, then we at least won't really lose much because we have a high-priority kill target already claimed in Zoronos (and I for one believe him).

Additionally, these claims can inform who Zoronos targets tonight, especially if we lynch scum today. I know we went through this song and dance in our last game with shannon but if we lynch scum today, Zoronos should have stated his target beforehand so that if he dies, we get a pseudo-clear. We don't want Zoronos accidentally blocking a town power role like a tracker who could get an extremely useful result in that situation.

[implosion]

Order is variable but looks something like:
boring->dier->grendel->prism->penguin->nn->me
I'm fine with switching dier/grendel around and fine with shuffling nn/penguin/prism because they're still jostling for position among how strongly I townread them. This is probably how it looks based solely on my reads right now at this moment but I'm also fine with, for instance, nn going earlier if his alignment is still a point of contention.

[implosion]

Order for mass claim?

Sure. First at the top.

Boring/Grendel (can't decide who is the most scummy here)
PP
Diefire
Myself (since I'm still a point of contention for Shadow)
Zoronos
Prism
Implosion

What the heck??
How can you keep a cop cleared townie and someone else in the same bracket?

Is there a reason you're nitpicking this much?

There. I fixed it. Feel better now?

Ftr i did also find this questionable.

I'll make my next priorities discussing shadow and re-analyzing grendel; zoronos, could you point me to a summary of what you've said or a list of the most important posts on him or something?

[implosion]

very probably 2 given two nights with one kill each. But no.

[implosion]

I just remembered that Grendel is the only remaining reasonable candidate for scum-off-the-wagon for eager if nn is town. And I think i'm personally going to start putting stock into an nn townread; I think I've convinced myself of it. Notably I remembered this looking at grendel's 1847 where he lists scum teams that he thinks make sense going off of the wagon, and notably considers himself and nn as town and so based on the assumption that some scum is trying to "go deep" reasons that likely either i or zoronos is scum.

Prism's point that grendel isn't following up with the level of depth that he says he puts into the game is very interesting. The idea of how deep a player will think as town is something that I've been tossing around in my head since a recent hydra game where the subject came up in discussion with my other head. I'm quite curious to see grendel's response to it. I'm also curious to see what grendel thinks of the fact that his high-level analysis in 1847 has more or less fallen flat on its face given that 3/5 of the teams he listed have two people on them between me/zoronos/gamma... and one of the teams contained all three :s. I never read that post in depth until now but it's an almost fanatical level of attempted foresight... trying to call the scumteam based solely on vca and a little soft poe. He says he wants to start with lynching gamma because he's in 4 of them but ignores that i'm in 3 and luv is in 3 and zoronos is in 3 which is really only nominally less. Maybe doesn't ignore it. But it's an awfully convenient excuse, if grendel is scum, to lump me, zoronos, and luv into a "deal with after we get a flip from gamma" pile. His vote on luv at end of day 2 feels really awkward, like he's not really enthused about it. Like idk, after making that big deal out of those scumteams and asking his town pile to help comment on his high level speculation he ends the day after gamma is shown to be town on a note of "eh, i guess a luv lynch works for me" before adding some more words about the claim being fake. Can't 100% put my finger on this here. It sort of does feel like his thought processes are trailing off more than they should be. which sort of gets at what prism was talking about.

more to come probably.

[implosion]

@implosion: What do you think of his questions directed at LUV? The reason they're a big red flag for me is that they're a big chance for LUV to give content, presumably to show Grendel and others he's town or scum, but Grendel never follows up despite LUV's comprehensive answers to his rigorous questions.

I view it as highly likely they were asked for LUV's sake rather than Grendel's given their other interactions. I considered that the last line would be better for the scum PT but 1. It's just giving context to the questions and 2. We don't know how extensively scum is using their daychat.

My problem with that particular instance is that it seems like luv's responses might have been lost in a sea of posts that Grendel maybe never got around to reading? It is still notable that he didn't look for it later and it does fit in with a trend of sort of throwing out trains of thought and not seeing them through to the end.

I also don't particularly want unilateral control of the lynch. I'm wrong sometimes :X and I mean i don't think it would take an oracle to figure out who i would be killing with unilateral power but I think the discussion/democratic process is useful.

I am going to renege on putting any thought into shadow at the moment. It really doesn't seem worth it to do anything but write him off as town at least for now.

Still need to put some more thought into grendel (and am very curious as i've said about his next couple posts). And dier. But like. every game of mafia there's always that one person who you're like, oh god, they're in this game and i like haven't read a thing they've said and i feel like i haven't interacted with them and they voted on some wagons i guess but oh look gets distracted by all of the other players in the game

that's more or less how i feel about dier atm. Nothing he's said or done has strongly stuck with me as alignment indicative. I think I mentioned something really weakly scummy forever ago but yeah. Nothing concrete. Will need some sort of reread.

[implosion]

Semi-prodge. Was tired today. No problems with the mc order.

[implosion]

Phone posting to say that I cannot believe that only now after Grendel's post did I realize that prisms avatar is ephraim... shame. And also I'm a vt.

[implosion]

(Shame on me that is)

[implosion]

I explained why to mc . This is fine; essentially we have two chances to lynch scum before zoronos dies probably. More after work.

[implosion]

@PP - Also, holy hell I'm glad you didn't leave me digging for breadcrumbs for too long. I would never have found that.

I didn't want anyone to find it. I wanted to use that as "proof" later on so that my investigations would be believed. Now we mass claimed, so may as well point to it.

Yeah this is a little strange of a question given that this is the entire point of a breadcrumb but I think she's just commenting on you telling us we could look for it before you pointed it out. That is a good breadcrumb. I'm pretty much entirely inclined to believe pp is town at this point. Which means if I trust my shadow/nn townreads (which I do) and am right about them, then we can lynch the other 4? Of course we also have power roles to help us along the way which is nice~

[implosion]

I think I still prefer a boring lynch over a Grendel lynch; my initial gut impression of his responses were that they dissuaded a lot of the points against him in my mind but i need to look at them more closely. Other big reason is that boring + {grendel/dier} seems more likely to me than grendel+dier due to already-mentioned vca. And I don't suspect anyone else of being scum (I think prism has the highest chance of being the scum who's slipping under everyone's radar right now but do not think he is.)

@nn, penguin is town because:
1) i had a pre-existing townread on him which i've justified quite a bit,
2) his breadcrumb is not something i would expect from unexperienced scum,
3) no way in hell do we only have 2 power roles. Assuming 3 scum at least. I doubt a 2 PR 3 scum mini normal setup has ever passed normal review, even with pretty strong PRs (especially since cop+jk don't play nicely together).

1) Breadcrumbs are dumb. I don't understand why people do them, and I further don't understand why anyone believes them. As the NN30 / Penguin interaction showed, that crumb would never have been found without it being pointed out, which makes it intrinsically useless since anyone could leave any number of similarly un-findable crumbs, and then point back to any arbitrary claim.

You're right in the sense that this does make them theoretically useless. You're wrong in that in practice no one does this. No one is saying a breadcrumb should be a be-all end-all. But empirically I don't think I've ever seen a scum player breadcrumb multiple things.

[implosion]

I have seen scum do this.
Maybe nobody on *this* board does it (or nobody you've seen), but I absolutely guarantee it happens and is very easy to do.

So. Practice reasonable skepticism and play the game in front of us.

Again, the breadcrumb is just one of many reasons I think he's town. Frankly it's the weakest. The combination of setup spec and my pre-existing townread on him is enough for me to write him off completely even if I ignore the crumb. And again, I don't think pp is experienced enough as scum to fake a crumb and a reaction in the way he did immediately after seeing the cop claim. But again. Beside the point.

If you want me to even begin to agree with a Boring lynch, you should explain to me why in the presence of multiple 'easy' trains yesterday, she stayed locked on LUV.

She played anti-opportunistically. Why do that as scum and instead sit locked on for an unnecessary D2 bus?

Because she'll look scummy if LUV winds up flipping scum later. It's not complicated. With LUV very likely to die before endgame, it's smart play from boring-scum to keep pushing him because it gives her more towncred from his flip. It doesn't matter to her if she's scum whether LUV dies on d2 or later on, but, again, based on his play, he was very likely to die before endgame. And I'll quote boring again on this...

It's really easy to float to day 1 or day 2 in order to give your teammates something to bus, and that matches his behavior.

LUV was basically bus-bait at that point in the game. He wasn't valuable to scum alive because he was generally scummy and continuing to act scummy. Grendel talked about the idea of some scum being the one or ones who are planning to "go deep." In this case, if boring is scum, the plan was for her to get credit from that bus and go deep into the game from that credit.

The way that you're saying she didn't play opportunistically is a very straightforward claim. In a game theoretic sense the optimal scum play is a mixed strategy; sometimes you should defend teammates, sometimes you should stay ambivalent on them, sometimes you should distance, sometimes you should bus. The less often bussing occurs in the meta the more lucrative it becomes as a way of gaining towncred.

[implosion]

@Implosion - the breadcrumb only implies planning. Scum could have thought ahead - I'm agreeing on the town read but don't rule this out.

Why else is PP town for you?

This is why I keep thinking you are scum. You just do surface level analysis and jump to conclusions.
Let's imagine PP is scum here, how many days do you think he can get away with? He has to say his night result everyday. There are 4 people he cannot investigate. Himself, implosion, zoro and me. One will get lynched today. That leaves 4 people. He can't pretend to have been RBed. He can't fake a guilty cause we can test his result. How does he explain him not getting killed at night?
Basically there is no way PP is scum.

How the hell is saying "breadcrumbing isn't a tell" surface level analysis? The surface-level analysis thing to say would be "he crumbed, he must be town." He is literally explicitly avoiding jumping to a conclusion in the post you quote. I have no idea what the hell you're talking about shadow. He literally says the breadcrumb can't be used to jump to a conclusion and asks for more reasons.

And it's not like he's trying to set up pp for a mislynch if he's scum. He is solidly continuing to state a townread on pp, and is asking me for more reasons to townread him.

I have no clue what you see here.

[implosion]

literally you criticize him for "jumping to a conclusion" and then jump to a conclusion where he didn't. It's a conclusion that I agree with. Coincedentally it's a conclusion that nn also agrees with. but ugh.

[implosion]

Also.

Because again, why is this a thing worthy of " :/ "? If all the "lynch baits" can be established as conf. town, that's good news. That is, unless your "scum hunt" is just a hunt for easy mislynches.

This is really simple. The lynchbaits got the PRs (or at least, shadow thought that they might have), and so we wound up forcing them to claim earlier than would be optimal. Do you really not understand that?

[implosion]

My gut is at boring+dier. My gut really wants to townread grendel's most recent posting. Still trying to substantiate it.

[implosion]

He could have easily floated another day before she had to leverage the bus play for town cred. She wasn't on the menu D2; she didn't need the extra time that a bus would buy.

She easily could have wound up being on the menu; she was the counterwagon to a d1 townflip and I was continuing to push her. She certainly wasn't under no pressure. She wasn't under a ton.

I understand the value of mixed play; but pushing a team mate off the boat when there's no immediate threat just seems dumb. And so far Boring hasn't struck me as a dumb player.

I mean, sometimes doing that is a tenet of mixed play. She may not have been first on the chopping block but she certainly wasn't last. Thinking back it's actually a little odd that I was the only one voting her for most of the day until dier eventually did after she had a 5 person wagon d1. Though I suppose maria and eager were on that wagon and were both dead on d2.

I feel like apart from my feeling like boring has been scummy all game, there is just so much circumstantial evidence for it. None of which is conclusive on its own but taken together it's really incriminating. The four-conftown-and-nn d1 wagon on her. LUV's reads list that lists her and prism as the only non-conftown null players. These really aren't necessarily arguments for her being scum but I think they are pretty decent arguments for (her or nn) and (her or prism) being scum and i'll be damned if the scumteam is nn and prism.

[implosion]

And in addition to that, if she is scum, her transitioning into a bus on LUV is very natural. He was her backup after eager; if she transitioned into the gamma wagon or something like that, it would look unnatural and suspicious if LUV were ever to flip scum.

[implosion]

Speaking of which,
VOTE: Shadow_step

Do you actually think there's any chance shadow will be lynched today, at this point?
If no, why vote him?
If yes, how?

[implosion]

At work but.

Do not hammer *anyone* until Zoronos has a chance to give a jailkeep target in the event that we get a scum flip.
If we get a townflip, Zoronos should not necessarily follow that target, but if we get a scumflip he should so that we can have an additional pseudoclear if he dies.

[implosion]

If we do get a scumflip Penguin should investigate someone other than Zoronos' target. I don't think it matters if they target the same person if we get a townflip (the only case where it could matter i think is if zoronos blocks the killing scum and in that case we basically win anyway).

[implosion]

Yep.

[implosion]

@2794, it isn't a particularly good tell.

I'm just so unconvinced of anything other than boring being scum. Like ugh. Her pushing shadow, her making an obvious vanity vote on him and then saying she's not sure if there's a chance to lynch him, is just her desperately trying to get enough mislynches on the table to flip the game. Someone made a similar comment on Grendel which is fair.

Idk. I think I probably prefer a grendel lynch to a dier lynch right now but am essentially wavering between them.

@setup spec it wouldn't surprise me if scum have something like a 1-shot strongman or rb. It would surprise me quite greatly if they have an ascetic... which essentially fully counters the jailkeeper so long as it's alive (meta is to almost always use jailkeeper as a roleblocker because of fear of blocking a town power role), and partially counters the cop/deputy.

[implosion]

and 2802 makes some solid points.

[implosion]

I think one of my biggest personal mistakes in a recent towngame was when an experienced player (CES) subbed in to what wound up being a scum slot, and then quickly argued very saliently that Equinox, who was a consensus townread, was scum. I wound up townreading him partially for that. I think the thing I missed there was that it's important to look at not just the reasoning, but also who the reasoning is directed towards. I find it somewhat hard to believe that town at this point would genuinely think that shadow is probably one of the remaining two mafia. And more than that they really do need to push him.

So i guess for that reason I don't think I want dier today.

[implosion]

i really do think it's silly to assume scum have a role though. It's silly to assume anything about night play. I've been burned way too many times in recent history by making bad assumptions about scum night play and chasing shadows...

anyway. Pretty tired from election-watching and stuff. Alas. I don't want a dier lynch. Zoronos doesn't want a dier lynch. PP's reads list implies he doesn't want a dier lynch. So can we like. Unvote from the dier lynch. As a general principle it's probably a good idea to have at least some of the conf/obvious townies want a lynch to happen for it to happen. And granted I just flip flopped. But meh. I think a dier townflip would be really bad because we'd be kind of gaining nothing while a grendel townflip, while bad, would be less bad. And i think at this moment that grendel's a less likely townflip.

[implosion]

PP's voting dier and i'm an idiot i ctrl+f'd "dierfier" in his iso... page one.

[implosion]

nn, yes, i probably missed those.

[implosion]

the only way zoronos can be scum is if there's 2 scum in which case we'll know that's the case at 3p.
my thoughts are similar to shadow's & prism's. At least I definitely want to lynch dier & boring. Zoro jailing nn was good. Gives me more confidence in that read.

Not much else to say atm.

[implosion]

Finally people speaking my language...

I justified nn-town in 2474.

VOTE: boring

[implosion]

I won't deny that blackvoid's entrance is possibly just a very overt appeasement directed to me. But,
1) I still think shadow was town, doubt that the scum have an ascetic, doubt that he'd have done the cc d1 if he were a scum ascetic, think his play is generally town (if frustrating),
2) I doubt he just made all of that up in the time between reading his role PM and saying it. I'd see it as more likely, if blackvoid is scum, that he genuinely misread the slot he replaced into as town. But I do still think it's a town slot.

@Prism's 2951, odd-night mason recruiter is actually extremely strong (and synergizes much better with jailkeeper than a cop does) and remember that our town power, if BlackVoid is town, is mitigated significantly by the existence of two ascetics.

I'm pretty much willing to say if there are 3 non-traitor scum and zoronos is scum, we lose. we should never, EVER lynch zoronos unless there is a traitor flip or the game goes to 3p lylo without any more scum flips and in the former of those situations I'm still skeptical.

[implosion]

I honestly have a mental block right now where it's really just hard to see anyone other than boring/dier as scum. I don't think I'll be able to effectively re-evaluate anyone unless one of them flips town. If that happens then I will. But I'm pretty confident zoronos will die tonight.

But, just to be clear again, Zoronos definitely needs to out a JK target before we hammer, in the event boring flips scum. I personally think he should follow that target no matter what scum role she flips if she does flip scum but I'll leave it up to him.

Unvote

[implosion]

I really have no new thoughts. Zoronos *is not* scum. Setup makes that evident. He's going to die tonight anyway so it's a moot point.

I'm gonna hammer once prism posts whatever prism is posting if i'm online.

[implosion]

@Zoronos, I answered it vaguely here:

I honestly have a mental block right now where it's really just hard to see anyone other than boring/dier as scum.

One of your townreads is certainly wrong by numbers... and I'm certainly a person who has a lot of experience with too-many-townreads syndrome. I'm going to have that problem if either boring or dier flips town. But I'm not sure at a high level whether one of your reads + your poe are wrong or two of your reads are wrong. It all comes down to the individuals. My overall thoughts on individuals right now are something like:

boring/dier: poe scum/boring is scummy in her own right.

Blackvoid: shadow's play makes little sense as scum. Blackvoid's play slightly increases that townread to me (though not nearly as much as it was pre-existing).
nn: I have a hard time seeing the method in which he's been aggressive as scum-motivated. He also feels like he's been just too actively transparent.
Prism: I honestly am not sure where my townread on prism has come from at this point but no one else really thinks prism is scum so I haven't really had motivation to question it. Some combination of the way they pushed me early, the way they asked to replace out, the way they generally feel like they're trying to make things more transparent.
You (Zoronos): Town because 2 power roles (really effectively one power role split across two players) is not enough in 3:10 especially w/ ascetics.

So yeah. If this flips town then -hitoshrug- and i'll cry myself to sleep and re-evaluate tomorrow.

VOTE: boring

[implosion]

How does priority work with jailkeeper and the NK? If Zoro chose the correct target, would he still die?

If zoro jailed scum-dier and scum-dier killed zoro, zoro would live, assuming dier isn't a power role.

I am actually pretty inclined to think dier is town now... I can't think of any role he could be that makes sense. But might as well ask.

@Mod: what's the priority resolution on simultaneous roleblocks? i.e., if there's a mafia roleblocker who kills and blocks someone, and that person is a roleblocker or jailkeeper who blocks the mafia back, what would happen?

[implosion]

He's not a full strongman. That's *WAY* too powerful. Makes the jailkeeper a negative-utility PR until he dies.
He's not a full roleblocker. Also way too powerful, and mutual roleblocks are often avoided as a design principle.
He's not an x-shot strongman because he'd likely have used his shots already and I still think it seems too much.
He's not an x-shot roleblocker for the same reason, he'd already have blocked on previous nights I think.

I've been burned way too recently by taking the paranoid approach of "well, this person would have to be a mafia strongman to be scum, but that's probably the case." Literally that exact line of thinking got me to mishammer at 3p lylo, and it got me thinking about pr pseudoresults in general. That game was somewhat different because it turned out that the jailkeeper claimant was scum but the principle is the same. I think we need to trust the jailkeep. My instinct is that {cop, deputy, jailkeeper, ascetic, ascetic} vs {neapolitan, goon, goon} is balanced enough. It's only three town power roles; that's basically the bare minimum that will be accepted in a 13p mini normal anyway.

I'm gonna need to re-evaluate everything here, I think. Which is a little awkward since I'm V/LA Sunday-Friday. But hopefully I'll be able to find time/energy during that. If not then I will afterwards.

[implosion]

Scum ascetic is stronger than scum strongman. Completely counters the jk while it's alive *AND* partially counters the cop/deputy.

[implosion]

It's not two cops. It's one cop at a time. The deputy does literally nothing if it dies before the cop does, which will happen ~1/2 the time. That's WAY weaker than two cops.

And the scum don't lack a counter. They have a flipped neapolitan who can potentially locate the hiding cop before they can get their results out, or either of the other PRs. The ascetics are sort-of there to counter the neapolitan but at the same time they really don't? If the neapolitan targets an ascetic they don't get a result of "not a vanilla townie", they get a result of "no result." If they were, say, millers, or macho townies, or some other negative-utility role then they'd do much more to counter the neapolitan. The neapolitan still gets, essentially, no false positives or false negatives - just two people for whom they get no result.

This:

and while I hope Zoro jailed DF but the way he said "If boring flips a blocking role" does not inspire me with confidence that he didn't jail me or BV instead

is somewhat true. But I am nowhere near as brimming with confidence in a dier-scumflip as I'd like to be.

Will try to get more detailed thoughts out there but I can tell you now they're going to amount to "if dier is town then i don't have any good clue." Prism is town for voting patterns and contributions and etc, nn is town for his play yesterday and the jailkeep on him last night and etc, bv is town because lol shadow d1 scum? no.

If dier is town then the last scum has my kudos for stumping me.

[implosion]

bloop bloop

still semi-vla but idk i honestly just have no clue if it isn't dier and i have a feeling he'll flip town so i guess you guys get to sort it out, get it wrong, and then i get to blame you.

If I had to take a guess if it's not dier it'd be prism. But i still feel terrible saying that. The reality is i'd have no idea.

[implosion]

nn i think i've made my thoughts clear... prism doesn't make sense as scum, neither do you, neither does bv. If I call prism scum out of the three it is by a sliver because I really do have no idea.

[implosion]

why must the good die young... and why must people FREAKING IMMEDIATELY jump to the conclusion of "lol it's wifom".

Alas.

Essentially if dier flips town, then here's why I'm convinced on everyone as concisely as possible.

BV: the biggest point is shadow's claim. The way he "crumbed" in 121 and 122 just looks too damn genuine. That was really well crafted if he's scum, it just doesn't look like a premeditated fakeclaim. I could believe that he was a mafia ascetic but I think if scum have an ascetic, then the setup is hilariously scumsided, so I'm discounting that possibility.

Prism: if they're scum they'd have had to do a HELL of a lot of bussing. Pushed LUV and boring. nn makes a good point with his opening. He has also just felt forthcoming and has the feel of genuinely trying to solve the game.

nn: 1, the jail; my (moderate-to-strong) inclination is that nn would have done the kill out of nn and boring. If this is the case, then blah blah blah see prior setup spec. But 2, nn also has felt forthcoming in a similar way and it feels like they have put way too much out there, actively challenging things as they arise, to be scum. He also has some amount of bus-cred particularly from his "opportunistic" vote on boring d1 that put her at l-2, which *could* have been a bus.

I guess I'd be inclined towards just not-blackvoid as scum primarily. I sort of waver back and forth between the other two. I think looking at these reasonings again the nn one sort of feels weakest, if we're willing to lynch dier who was supposedly jailkept... but I'm sort of mostly willing to lynch dier because of a combination of not being totally sure zoro jailkept him and just feeling lost without a scumflip from him.

[implosion]

La la la.

[implosion]

i simply do not believe that shadow would have thought to counterclaim ascetic in a backhanded, crumbed way as scum.

[implosion]

VOTE: Dierfire

[implosion]

gj. Not much to say that I haven't said already but i cbf to read the past x pages so if anyone said anything to me~