Newbie 1768: Party Mafia - Game over!

[GuiltyLion]

I was talking about nancy and GuiltyLion

I'm so sorry, I misread that GL as an EL. My bad. Sorry I called you out on it.

I don't think this mistake is fake, so given that EL misread a tojam post, it is more likely that she also missed the Agent Sparkles question I pointed out, rather than strategically ignoring it. Combined with her other posting, I feel she is genuine. I agree with nancy's description of her as "town unable to give off towntells".

UNVOTE:

VOTE: bowdown
The Triangle vote reads to me like it was for show, given that:
a) bowdown gave himself a reason to go back to Lemons ("if your hunting sucks this vote is coming back")
b) Triangle hasn't posted since his vote, but bowdown already moved to tojam.

Further, I think he may have slipped knowledge of town!Lemons here:

Seeing who jumps and doesn't jump on the lemon wagon and their reasons for doing so could be illuminating. Extreme case is that two others quickly jump on Lemon with poor reasons - d2 we look strongly at them.

and I have some thoughts on his tojam case but I would like to let tojam respond to it first before jumping in

[GuiltyLion]

Jae's reaction seemed towny enough to me. As scum, he would've been consciously pointing out the flaws in his own playstyle, which could be risky in the long run. Also, could you elaborate on what LAMIST is?

LAMIST = "look at me, I'm so town!". It's used to describe an impression that someone is posting primarily so that others will townread them, usually implying that it is scum doing it.

[Titus]

Hey GL,

Do you think Eccentric Lemon is town?

What do you think of me?

Why you ignore my hello?

What did you think of my freudian slip?

[GuiltyLion]

Hey GL,

Do you think Eccentric Lemon is town?

What do you think of me?

Why you ignore my hello?

What did you think of my freudian slip?

1. yah
2. well you're not really being town, but I just mislynched you last time we played together and I feel like I scumread you every game so I'm not exactly ready to start barking up that tree yet
3. I wasn't there when you asked so I figured it was a stale question today. Didn't mean for you to feel like I was ignoring you, hello!
4. I don't really have any thoughts on it one way or the other, I could see it coming from either alignment. All it shows is you didn't proofread your post.

[nancy]

I'm also waiting on a reply from tojam on any of the questions I've raised since page 2 about his behavior.

[nancy]

What did you think of my freudian slip?

I'm probably butting in since you directed this at GL, but I totally missed this - where was the Freudian slip!?! I re-read your posts and can't find it!

[tojam2]

First of all, tojam, I'm not buying you not changing your vote because you're on your phone. Most of my posts have been from my phone too, it's not very hard to put [s in or just click the vote button on top of the reply box.

Now, you tell me where I'm drawing the wrong conclusion in this.

19: Nancy votes Jae for telling her how to vote, while getting a gut scumread from you.

27: Jae asks her why she voted for them and not you for the same thing.

39: You post that you agree with Jae and read them towny for it.

47: Nancy reveals she has a gut-scum read on you for 7 and 9 that she can't explain.

81: You say that having opinions prior to the game (7 and 9) is noobscummy of nancy

85: Jae says they are somewhat concerned with Nancy not voting her biggest scumread (you)

111: You quote Jae expressing concern over Nancy not voting a scumread and vote her.

I have two primary issues with what went down.

First, yes I am accusing you of buddying/sheeping the IC. Almost all of your content that is specific to this game is repeating stuff that Jae already has expressed.

My bigger concern is that your post where you vote Nancy quotes Jae expressing concern that Nancy left her vote parked in a null and didn't move it to a scumread. I'm assuming that is the actual reason you are voting Nancy because you quoted that in your post. The problem is that you did the exact same thing - 39 and 81 both are displaying a scumread of Nancy and yet your vote was left on Lemon, who you voted in your very first post.

If 81 is your actual reason for voting Nancy (noobscummy to have opinions prior to the game): the game had certainly already started, Jae had pointed out that it's common for people to start hunting from the getgo (in 41), and you still never moved your vote to Nancy!

So yeah, I feel pretty good with a VOTE: tojam.

39 - was reading Jae towny for drumming up conversation, which scum may not want to do because it produces readable content with more time in the day, I did not agree with jae's statement about what you said

81 - noobscum would pick someone to apply pressure to before the game, like a plan of action as if mafia has a strict order.

Also, I doubt I'm the first person to delay moving their vote. It was Jae's comment that reminded me to move it, 81 was my reasoning. So if you want to have it your way, Jae's comment about not moving RVS votes contributed to me moving my vote.

[tojam2]

Hey GL,

Do you think Eccentric Lemon is town?

What do you think of me?

Why you ignore my hello?

What did you think of my freudian slip?

I know its not for me but I'd like to not solely focus on Nancy and bowdown.

1. I've not noticed anything as standout town or scum, nulltown.

2. Can't say I've cared much about your posts.

[EccentricLemon]

Good morning everyone! First game of mafia ever, though I used to play werewolf on a different forum like 5 years ago. Getting caught up now but let's start with a

vote toejam

because gross.

Mafia and werewolf are the same game, different flavor.

Hey, GuiltyLion, you there?

Hey GL,

Do you think Eccentric Lemon is town?

What do you think of me?

Why you ignore my hello?

What did you think of my freudian slip?

I don't know how this is for everyone else, but to me, the lack of substance in Titus' posts weirds me out. To me, it feels like what someone would post if they are only going through the motions of playing the game. I don't know if this is how she plays all the time, since she seems like a pretty experienced player. I think Jae or someone did mention that they played against them before and killed her only to find out she was town, which leads me to believe this is just how she plays. (is this metagaming?)
What's especially weird, though, is that the first question in post 127 is asking GL what his opinion is on something that he had just answered two posts before and the third question just seems irrelevant.

Same thing with tojam:

I know its not for me but I'd like to not solely focus on Nancy and bowdown.

1. I've not noticed anything as standout town or scum, nulltown.

2. Can't say I've cared much about your posts.

Says he wants to focus on someone other than nancy and bowdown while also saying that he has no opinion on the two other players he says he is discussing. This entire post doesn't provide any new information and gives off the same vibe as Titus' posts--that he's just going through the motions.

Taking into account that last post and bowdown's commentary,my vote is for tojam.
VOTE: tojam2

[bowdown]

39 - was reading Jae towny for drumming up conversation, which scum may not want to do because it produces readable content with more time in the day, I did not agree with jae's statement about what you said

So just Jae gets a towny read for drumming up conversation? What about the last five pages of conversation that have been drummed up (by lots of people)? Also, Jae's statement in 39 had nothing to do with me - I hadn't even joined the game at that point.

81 - noobscum would pick someone to apply pressure to before the game, like a plan of action as if mafia has a strict order.

And that read on nancy hasn't changed at all from her other posts? I'm assuming it hasn't, otherwise you wouldn't vote for her, but her posts have been anything but "picking someone to apply pressure before the game".

[Agent Sparkles]

Sorry, that's my mistake that I didn't reply to that comment.
I meant that no one was scummy so far. I was interested in where that vote might take the discussion. It didn't reveal that much new info to me, so keeping my vote there wouldn't do much and

might have even hurt me down the road

.

What do you mean by this? Why did you say it?

I can vote and unvote at any time, so unvoting wasn't an issue if I was trying to prove I'm not trying to be accusatory.

Why not be accusatory?

Well keeping my vote for GuiltyLion if I was trying not to be belligerent would have been a bad move because it would seem like I'm trying to throw him under the bus. Which is not what I'm going for. I'm not sure if I'm articulating what I'm trying to say correctly. I'll try to elaborate if my explanations don't make any sense.
We all know that at this point, everyone's basically out for themselves so there's no harm I think in pointing out that I did it in self-preservation.

I don't want to be accusatory because a mistake will likely make me seem scummier. If my aggressive actions get him hanged and he turns out to be town, people are going to come after me because I'm already suspicious. I mean, it seems like everything I say is making me more and more suspicious anyway.
Also I'm a newbie and I'm still learning how the game works and I don't want to try anything too (emphasis on the too) risky until I've had some experience. I'm seeing that posting what I said that early was a bad idea (?).

@GL, I've never been a fan of p.1, baseless gut, having opinions prior to the game is noobscummy to me.

I never said anything that would allude to me having opinions prior to the game. At least I don't believe so. Attack me all you want for that, but I think I made it pretty clear that all of my observations are pretty nebulous but have at least some sort of basis in what people have said.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, I don't agree with JaeReed that townies shouldn't worry about how they look. The good of the town should be put first, but you can play for the team and still have a bit of caution with your posts. Taking risks is good, but you don't want the result of your boldness to be a mislynch on you.

That being said, it seems unnatural that even a careful townie would be this paranoid. Also, you claimed it would make you look bad if Guilty was lynched because of your actions, but why would you even need to worry about that? He wasn't going to be killed because of an RVS vote.

Also it feels super quiet. I know there's two weeks for each day but I wasn't expecting it to be this slow-paced.

Maybe you should try and instigate something then? There's plenty of material to go on. 9 for instance, where toejam seems to me to insinuate that town should be more inclined to out their roles than scum would - isn't it actually the opposite? Or the fact that Titus and Jae are apparently no voting. Or that AgentSparkles and EccentricLemon still have no avatars. Is that a blending tactic or are they just unable to find a satisfactory image for themselves? Or did they not see 19, and does that mean that they have been skimming - not a particularly townie thing to do? Does AgentSparkle's humorless response to my jokes mean that he didn't read it carefully? He displays a sense of humor in 10 and yet failed to detect it in my 21 and 22, does that further suggest that he skimmed? Maybe others can comment on whether or not the joke is obvious enough.

Off I go to read some theory about D1 RL.

This post is grasping at straws more than anything. But to address the things about me:

I still don't know what I want my avatar to be. There were two that I tried, but they were both way above the pixel limit. It would be pretty useless as a blending tactic, others would still remember the things I've said.
I said that I thought you were joking with your accusations, but I wanted to make sure. The problem with my sense of humor is that it goes over my head sometimes.

I think nancy is doing the same thing I am in trying to be cautious--it IS the first day--but still stirring up conversation. She hasn't changed her vote for a bit, so I take that she isn't actively accusing anyone but more passively pointing out things she finds suspicious.

And in the same post:

In all, someone did say that the more aggressive Town is, the more successful they're going to be (sorry, can't find it in the thread) and I think that's what she's going for.

You just contradicted yourself by saying that nancy is playing passively, and then saying that she's playing aggressively. Which one is it?

VOTE: EccentricLion

Gut

VOTE: EccentricLemon

My bad. I am showing off the naked voting strategy, so not yet.

This isn't very consistent either. If you want to hide your reasons, why bother saying that it's out of gut?

I don't really care that Titus and Jar aren't voting yet - I care that Titus's posts have been crappier than Jae's, while Jae has a strangely knowledgeable tone (scummy) but is also the IC and is supposed to play the knowledgeable role. So I'm struggling to balance the IC aspect of Jae with my read on him.

I'd like to know why anyone having a "knowledgeable tone" is a problem in the first place. Does looking ignorant make people towny?

[bowdown]

The Triangle vote reads to me like it was for show, given that:
a) bowdown gave himself a reason to go back to Lemons ("if your hunting sucks this vote is coming back")
b) Triangle hasn't posted since his vote, but bowdown already moved to tojam.

What do you mean by "for show"? I was on Lemon because that was my first decent-sized ping. I moved off Lemon to see what she was like without feeling like she has to be on the defensive. I'm unsure how I feel about lemon right now - I want to do some more in-depth reading of her latest post and I think there's some credence to nancy's idea that Lemon's just not putting out goodtown tells.

Triangle vote was absolutely legit, but I moved off it for three reasons:

1. Two days have gone since Triangle even posted, so the pressure there is wasted
2. It didn't generate much discussion or content, which IMO is the most important thing we can get out of D1
3. Most importantly, tojam put out some seriously scummy posts and I have a decently strong scumread there - much stronger than either of the initial Lemon/Triangle reads.

Further, I think he may have slipped knowledge of town!Lemons here:

Seeing who jumps and doesn't jump on the lemon wagon and their reasons for doing so could be illuminating. Extreme case is that two others quickly jump on Lemon with poor reasons - d2 we look strongly at them.

You're right, it's awkwardly worded because I'm concerned about which questions Jae is asking and which questions they are not asking - which really arose from thinking about Jae's question "why is Titus naked voting" - asking that question to get responses could easily blunt whatever Titus is trying to do. I wanted to answer his question but not lead into a big discussion about naked voting and futzed around with how to respond.

What do you think of the questions Jae has asked so far (e.g. 88, 102)? Do you feel like they're from a protown perspective?

and I have some thoughts on his tojam case but I would like to let tojam respond to it first before jumping in

Would love to hear them now that tojam has responded.

[bowdown]

I don't really care that Titus and Jar aren't voting yet - I care that Titus's posts have been crappier than Jae's, while Jae has a strangely knowledgeable tone (scummy) but is also the IC and is supposed to play the knowledgeable role. So I'm struggling to balance the IC aspect of Jae with my read on him.

I'd like to know why anyone having a "knowledgeable tone" is a problem in the first place. Does looking ignorant make people towny?

Knowledgeable in the sense of knowing who is town and who is scum - of course the mafia knows who is who and the town doesn't. There's a little more detail on my concerns there in my response to Lion, but I'd like to wait until Jae responds before going more in-depth into it.

I'm thinking through the meat of Lemon's and your posts - what is your read on tojam?

[nancy]

Also, I doubt I'm the first person to delay moving their vote. It was Jae's comment that reminded me to move it, 81 was my reasoning.

I read you as scum for a different reason which you haven't cared to address (not even briefly, to point out the flaw in it as a more experienced player), the gutread was parenthetical and is a tiny fraction of my overall content so far. So I dislike that justification. If you're voting for me simply for a parenthetical gutread, why haven't you voted bowdown? There's even less justification in "feels forced" than in "seems like he may have misrepresented something". Because the read was against you? (See 65 below.)

- Finally, I'm pinged by TriangleShark's entrance - the add on "Because everyone deserves some love" feels forced.

81 - noobscum would pick someone to apply pressure to before the game, like a plan of action as if mafia has a strict order.

I'm a noob, I've recently been scum, and I didn't do this. I'm pointing this out because your arguments don't seem to have depth, or you haven't fully elaborated them yet. E.g., you still haven't explained why a Mafia wouldn't want to drum up conversation in order to seem towny.

Why don't you care about Titus' posts? I don't feel like there's been much explanation about anything from you. Maybe it should be obvious and I'm just not seeing it because I'm a noob? Either way, I'd love to hear about your reasons from you, rather than just assuming what they are. I'm not sure how to get reads otherwise!

Further, I think he may have slipped knowledge of town!Lemons here:

Seeing who jumps and doesn't jump on the lemon wagon and their reasons for doing so could be illuminating. Extreme case is that two others quickly jump on Lemon with poor reasons - d2 we look strongly at them.

I've also been assuming that EL is Town based on my read of him, so I feel like this could just be newbishness as easily as it could be a slip. It could even be a slip by you for pointing out that it could be a slip by him, couldn't it?


My reads:
Tojam - I dislike the consistent lack of explanations, so:

slightly scummy, a weak read

Titus - some weird behavior, I don't know how to read it, but intuition suggests she'd not behave this way as maf, so:

townie, a weak read

EL - inconsistent and defensive, but seems newbish more than anything, so:

townie, a weak read

Jae - seemed to hijack Titus' naked vote thing, if the purpose of the vote was to test newbscum (?) then this could be Jae defusing it, so, if true:

scummy, a weak read

*
bowdown - hasn't addressed 125, so:

slightly scummy, a weak read

GL - hasn't hestitated to point out people's mistakes, which is probably:

nulltown

Sparkles - I don't have a read
Triangle - I don't have a read

*This read on Jae is further complicated by the fact that it's really hard to tell whether or not they were in teacher mode or player mode with the responses to Titus. I'd hate to read it as scummy when all they were doing was trying to help us newbs.

[nancy]

- bowdown posted twice while I was writing..

[EccentricLemon]

You just contradicted yourself by saying that nancy is playing passively, and then saying that she's playing aggressively. Which one is it?

It's poor wording.
I meant in that situation she wasn't aggressively trying to get someone lynched. She wasn't lobbying for someone to get hanged, she was pointing out a detail that bothered her. If you notice, she's one of the most active users in terms of posting and calling people out. I think you can call that aggressive in terms of overall strategy. She's playing aggressively but she wasn't actively accusing anyone (hence that she hadn't changed her vote) at the time.

That being said, it seems unnatural that even a careful townie would be this paranoid. Also, you claimed it would make you look bad if Guilty was lynched because of your actions, but why would you even need to worry about that? He wasn't going to be killed because of an RVS vote.

I'd like to know why anyone having a "knowledgeable tone" is a problem in the first place. Does looking ignorant make people towny?

Baseless paranoia. Personal reasons. Not something I'm willing to discuss further. It'll go away as the game progresses. I don't even know why I included that.
Having a knowledgeable tone could point to scum because the scum is supposed to be the informed minority (because they know who is town and who isn't, and they are able to communicate outside of the group) and the town the uninformed majority (because they aren't certain who the other town are and who is the scum). Implying the you have more knowledge than what can be reasonably deduced from what has been previously said, especially on the first day, is therefore usually a scumtell.

That being said, I agree with the point that it's hard to tell when Jae is in teacher mode and when they are in player mode.
Jae, since you have a lot of experience with this game, it can seem at times that you're blurring these lines on purpose, so it wold be nice if you were clearer when you're switching between the two. I would hate if that were the case.

[Titus]

What did you think of my freudian slip?

I'm probably butting in since you directed this at GL, but I totally missed this - where was the Freudian slip!?! I re-read your posts and can't find it!

I voted ElectricLion, aka ElectricLemon plus GuiltyLion.

[nancy]

Lol.

[JaeReed]

Nancy, I'll get back to you later after thinking further through your response in 107.

Jae, I want to separate IC-Jae from player-Jae. Are the questions at the bottom of 87, 88, and 108 questions you'd typically ask if you weren't the IC?

My questions are for the purpose of scumhunting. An IC's job primarily is to teach about theory and answer questions regarding it. What I'm doing here is slightly different.

My questions are designed to get a feel for the kind of mindset people are approaching the game with, along with trying to get newbies to think about the gamestate and how to question it without guiding them to a specific answer too much at this point.

I learn a lot more without people sheeping me.

Basically, when I talk about theory it has to be to the best of my knowledge correct. Aside from theory talk it's likely just me playing the game.

[JaeReed]

Interesting, so it's a flag for you because you're reading it as a potential "objective mafia" being overly sensitive to scumtells? Tojam still hasn't addressed the question, though.

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't vote him because the gutread is very weak. Is that not viable behavior? I'm beginning to be bothered by his lurking, but even that wouldn't qualify for a vote in my mind. Care to comment tojam?

Jae, are you saying that when RVS ends we should NV? I'd also like to hear the answer to bowdown's question.

To respond to your question about Titus' naked vote, I take it as reaction testing. EccentricLemon has been awfully quiet, which doesn't seem like a good thing when you're at L-2. But it wouldn't only be testing the reaction of EccentricLemon. I have no idea how other SEs would've reacted in a non-newbie game, but no one seems to have grilled her about it, found it scummy, or turned up the heat further on Lemon. Now that Lemon is back to L-3 I'm comfortable saying that if someone else had voted Lemon to take him to L-1 I would've FOS'd that person immediately because a) Lemon is reading more like a Town unable to give off good towntells than scum, and b) at L-1 you're almost forcing Lemon to out, which benefis only the Mafia. Appropriate townie reaction at that point would presumably be to promptly unvote in order to remove that threat, even if a hammer is unlikely at that point (hammering would be very scummy).

Correct, newb mafia can tend to find their partners to be scummy before any tells that town would normally pick up on, because they already know their partner is scum. This goes for townreads too (such as tojam's early tr on me or my early trs on tojam and sparkles).

They're not perfect as far as tells because a lot of town do them as well. Which is where poking at them comes into it, and sometimes people like to check previous games the person played in to see if they have a history of doing it regardless of alignment.

Generally not voting if you're unsure is fine, but the combination of not voting a gut scum read while voting me for something said scum read did first is really off and why I wanted to explore that, considering it triggered the flags.

When RVS is over you generally stick with your RVS vote until something pings you as scummy. Some people unvote in the meantime, some don't.

How is lemon reading like town unable to towntell to you?
Do you find taking someone to L-1 to be inherently scummy?
Do you believe any person who hammers or threatens to hammer early in the game is likely to be scum for it?

[SirCakez]

TriangleShark did not pick up their prod and will be replaced.

[nancy]

How is lemon reading like town unable to towntell to you?
Do you find taking someone to L-1 to be inherently scummy?
Do you believe any person who hammers or threatens to hammer early in the game is likely to be scum for it?

- Because I think the apparent scumminess of her behavior is better explained by her being new. She looks like she's trying to be a good townie and doing a poor job of it, rather than like she's trying to masquerade as a townie and doing a poor job of it. Is that a bad reason for that read? Should we lynch someone who behaves scummy and if they're Town let that be a lesson to them?
- Not inherently, but when there isn't a strong scum read on the player (I think some of the votes were RV also?) then it's suspicious?
- Only in this situation, but it would depend on how she flipped. If Townie, scummy, if Mafia, not. How prevalent is bussing on mafiascum? I can't stand it personally but I don't exactly have a finger on the meta here

[SirCakez]

revan replaces TriangleShark! Please welcome them.

[nancy]

Welcome, revan!! Good luck trying to parse all my newb ass posts!

[EccentricLemon]

Hi revan