Newbie 1768: Party Mafia - Game over!

[JaeReed]

Hey everyone, I'm your IC this game. I'm not gonna do a huge wall because that's lame and hardly anyone reads them.

We generally start games here with random voting or questioning. Most people prefer random voting (known as RVS).

Code: Select all

[v]Name[/v]

will come out in thread as VOTE: Name

When placing the vote that puts someone at only one more vote to lynch (within range of hammer) it's usually announced so that people don't accidentally hammer, and instead of voting on the person from then others usually express intent to hammer, which is considered to be asking the person on L-1 (1 more vote to lynch) to claim their role.
It's very important to get a claim from the person before hammering the lynch. This ensures that we're less likely to lynch a power role early in the game.

It's usually a bad idea to claim your role without a good reason to.

[JaeReed]

I think that's the basics for now, so...

VOTE: GuiltyLion

Time to deathtunnel this guy and his partner again ;p

[JaeReed]

If you don't have an avatar I highly suggest getting one. It makes it a lot easier for people to remember who made which post if we have a visual that's constant between your posts.

[JaeReed]

Time to deathtunnel this guy and his partner again ;p

not gonna lie I was absolutely dreading the possibility of playing scum against you again when I saw the playerlist

Is your scum game as good as your town game?

Flattery will get you everywhere.

And I've only been scum twice as far as completed games. Once in a bastard marathon which I'm told doesn't count (although copper said I was often trying to ask questions of general opinion to sheep or something?) and the second time was a mini theme that just finished where I was in a hydra with Impoetic (you'll remember her as the cute af person that was pushed by Dewy in the Dewy/Thor game). Basically, I think my scum game lacks the emotional depth and gut reading that my town game does.

[JaeReed]

I think Tojam and sparkles are town.

[JaeReed]

Anyone want to tell me why I might think that?

[JaeReed]

My first post was a decoy. Played right into my hands.

VOTE: Vote: JaeReed

Why me instead of tojam, who also told you how to vote correctly?

[JaeReed]

@Sparkles have you played elsewhere?

[JaeReed]

VOTE: EccentricLemon

Lemons are inanimate as you well know.

This is an easygoing RVS post. It means less since tojam is experienced but I always like getting initial reads like this. I find the "easygoing, natural posting" RVS tell is more applicable to raw newbies, though. It means that the person isn't thinking so much about how to appear townie by forcing jokes and just...posting.

Nulltown vibes.

Spoiler: Sparkles

Let's get this show on the road

VOTE: VOTE: GuiltyLion

The name says it all, he's guilty and he's lion. Also keep an eye out for TriangleShark, because the triangle part implies he's working with the illuminati.

@kentofan @Bulbazoor

If I'm not mistaken, you'll be replaced if you don't confirm within the 72 hours.

Didn't know that encompassing in VOTE: [./v] that would automatically add a VOTE: into it.

VOTE: GuiltyLion

That's better.

I still got it wrong, RIP me

So there's a reason I asked Sparkles about experience.

Imagine this is your first game and you drew scum. Do you spam the thread like this, or do you carefully craft your first post while being shit scared of saying the wrong thing?

Also @newbies you can hit the preview button to see how your post would look in thread, which is sometimes useful.

[JaeReed]

Jae, I honestly can't work that out myself. Unless that's your way of stirring up conversation and starting the hunt, which I'm going to read you as Towny for.

It's my way of getting the newbies to think about what could be alignment indicative in the thread so far and seeing how they tend to scumhunt (whether they lean more towards logic or gut) along with giving the perspective that yes, some people are scumhunting during RVS. It's an indirect way of putting on pressure while doing so, as well.

Do you have reads besides that one?

[JaeReed]

Ugh. I'm sorry Jae I used the wrong pronoun.

All good.

Imagine this is your first game and you drew scum. Do you spam the thread like this, or do you carefully craft your first post while being shit scared of saying the wrong thing?

Also @newbies you can hit the preview button to see how your post would look in thread, which is sometimes useful.

Didn't mean for that to turn into spam, but yeah, I'd probably be hyper-cautious as scum. And I've already taken note of previewing.

Quick question, how do you unvote?

Code: Select all

[unvote][/unvote] or [uv][/uv]

Will come out as:
UNVOTE:

[JaeReed]

@Jae I assume you're referring to me with "forced jokes". I was attempting to start the thread off in a light-hearted manner, unaware that the atmosphere on scum was so severe. I don't agree with your nulltown reading of toejam. Your read only applies if everyone on mafia has the same personality or playstyle.

@toejam I don't see that as a TR. Saying you've read him a Town for starting discussion seems to me like the start of buddying up, which I would read as scum (I was already gutreading you as scum), and which also makes me think that he is Town. Unless you counted on someone making that analysis, in which case he could just as well be your partner, which takes him back to a null read.

This feels overdefensive and I dislike the attempt to break down townreads here.

That said, I like the thought about buddying because that did cross my mind too.

To clarify: Was making a general statement about forced jokes, not really commenting on anyone in this game.

Why were you gutreading tojam as scum? Gut reads tend to come from somewhere, so it's best if you explore why you had that feeling and try to articulate that so that others might be able to see it too. What did you dislike about his posting prior to that post?

What's your experience with mafia?

[JaeReed]

Which part reads overdefensively? I'm operating under the assumption that we should try to break down any read, whether town, scum, or null, and that if a read is good it'll stand up to scrutiny by others. Given those two assumptions, am not sure I understand why you'd dislike an attempt to dissect reads and provide discussion material, unless you thought my attempt was ill-reasoned, in which case I'd be interested to hear about which parts were ill-reasoned.

I have no idea why I'm gutreading toejam as scum, but it came with his first two posts, #7 & #9.

Now I've realized there may be a terminology issue here. Are you using "dislike" as equivalent to "read as scum"?

My experience with forum mafia - I've modded 1 mafia and participated in 1 mafia on another non-mafia forum (this activity is ongoing). I've also read Vi's Jailbreak Mini and a small percentage of the material on mafiascum wiki, but neither of those would really count as "experience". Non-forum mafia - I played the party game as a child, and I joined up on EM 2-3 months ago. (I recognize kentofan from there, heh.)

The assumption that I was talking about you when mentioning forced jokes and rush to explain it came across as overdefensive.

Generally questioning about reads is good, but specifically aiming to break them down unless you believe the read is wrong tends to be viewed as scummy, as scum need mislynches on town in order to win the game, so the less town are townreading each other the better for them. I believe both Titus and GL explained this decently, though. What you're aiming to do by questioning someone's reads is to examine their thought process to see if you believe that person is trying to genuinely gamesolve, or trying to mislead town with their read.

You should take a look at those posts again and try to find what you dislike about them. It's hard to tell whether your read is genuine or not without having something backing it up, even if it's just "this post feels forced to me" or such.

Yeah, I use the terms interchangeably at times. That doesn't mean that all people do, though. I use "dislike" as a general "this pings me but I'm not sure it's something yet".

[JaeReed]

nancy, if you have been gut scumreading tojam since his early posts why is your vote parked on me instead?

[JaeReed]

- Jae, how concerned are you with Nancy's vote parked on you?

Somewhat. The issue is when someone gets a scumread they should be voting for said scumread, not parked on a null.

@Jae Thanks for clearing that word usage up. My vote was RNG. Votes are meaningless at this point, no?

@Jae & bowdown, I've got nothing on that gutread right now, sorry to disappoint.

Votes in RVS are meant for starting discussion in order to start the game.

That said, if you already have reads out of RVS posting you should follow up on those. So in the situation where you have a scumread of someone's first post that should be where you're voting, as well as trying to convince the rest of town why they should also be voting there with you (which is where looking in to why you have that gut read can be important).

[JaeReed]

- GuiltyLion, I'd love to hear more thoughts about this game specifically other than "sparkles why are you acting like a mod?"

I have been mulling over whether I think Jae's 24 is sincere, as it's a bit of a curveball question to answer if you're scum. I know as scum I've bragged about my scumgame before (start here and read the subsequent discussion), because it projected a certain town-esque indignant attitude of "how dare I be [correctly] scumread, if I were scum you would think I was town", so the fact that they pointed out a shallow feature of their scumplay may indicate they're working with a town frame of mind. Regardless of their alignment in this particular game, it's probably a true self-assessment, so I'd keep it in mind later in the game (after a few game-Days) if you're town and you get the sense that they're faking emotions or forcing reads, and bring it up again.

I asked nancy that question about reads because I wanted to dig into why she was pressing Jae on his townreads, but felt a little rebuffed by 53 However, I do think her 'gut scumread' on toejam looks genuine, I don't think newbie scum would have the bravado to post something like 67 and refuse to try to explain the read. Light townlean there.

As scum I try to not lie. It's a personality trait more than anything. So regardless of alignment I would have tried to give an honest answer. I don't know if I would have quite pointed out that particular point, because it'd be shooting myself in the foot since it's harder to change up that kind of flaw rather than something like "I like to think about manipulating VCA", but I certainly would not have played up my scum play. I do not believe my play is exceptional regardless of alignment.

What do you think of nancy having a gut scumread on tojam yet voting elsewhere?

[JaeReed]

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.

Interesting choice of wording. Generally when we talk about throwing someone under the bus here it's referring to when mafia get their partners lynched ("bussing" their partner) in order to gain credit with town.

As far as everyone being out for themselves, they shouldn't be, regardless of alignment. As town your goal is to find scum and get them lynched, and to that end it doesn't matter if you end up making a wrong push, because there are a lot of other townies who should be trying to solve the game just as much as you are, who will hopefully talk to you if your read is wrong and explain why, or evaluate your actions to conclude that you were pushing with a town agenda in mind when you pushed the mislynch. As scum your goal is to mislead town into thinking that other town players are scummier than you and your partner, while trying to make false associations along the way in case you do end up getting lynched, in order to give your partner the best chance to survive.

Generally, you should not worry about how you look, and worry more about what motivations others have for their posts. Does GuiltyLion's townread on nancy seem genuine to you? Does bowdown's reaction to you in 84 seem genuine? What motivations can you draw for them to make those movements as either alignment? Which one do you believe to be more likely? If unsure, it's good to question them on it.

[JaeReed]

@bowdown RE: Titus naked voting. Why do you believe Titus voted EccentricLemon at this stage in the game? What do you think Titus may have seen that would prompt a vote?

Those questions extend to others as well, btw, if you want to take a stab.

[JaeReed]

Somewhat. The issue is when someone gets a scumread they should be voting for said scumread, not parked on a null.

Even when they have no sound backing for their gutread and know it? I would've thought this was more a tell of personality than anything - how heavily do I follow my gut / how heavily do I rely on reason/logic? I've also seen town players who have scumreads but don't vote on them. The strategy of voting seems to be more complex than simply voting with your strongest (or only) scumread, especially at the early stages of the Day. Would you mind commenting on this?

It's a personality tell if you're withholding your vote while you still gain confidence on voting your scumread, or if you're sheeping another player because you townread them and think they might have better reads than you (I wouldn't recommend doing this too often, though, because you usually don't know for sure the alignment of the person you're following if you're town, so you could well be following mafia's votes - it's always best to think for yourself).

The issue with the vote on me is that you stated a scumread on one person for posts prior to your vote on (presumably) a null read, which isn't ideal when you should be wanting to scumhunt.

Would you like to take a punt on why you think Titus is voting for EccentricLemon?

[JaeReed]

The issue with the vote on me is that you stated a scumread on one person for posts prior to your vote on (presumably) a null read, which isn't ideal when you should be wanting to scumhunt.

To elaborate, in a normal game I would have voted you for this, because it has two flags I like to look for:
A) Seemingly too much knowledge on someone's alignment when there's little to go off.
B) Stated scumread on one person while voting for someone else.

Those combined can sometimes be partner tells. That said, pre-flip associations can be bad if you get too caught up in them. It's good at times to note them, poke at them a bit, then make a decision as to whether you believe those people are genuinely trying to gamesolve or just going through the motions, and whether they're evaluating each other in a genuine manner or not.

All that said, it's harder to tell sometimes with newbs because they can make genuine mistakes like misunderstanding when RVS has stopped and such, given there's such a wide range of newbies with different experiences in mafia (some pure newb, others with an extensive background on other sites).

[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?

[JaeReed]

Jae - so those questions are completely not-IC Jae, they're Jae playing the game. Got it. A couple of yours haven't seemed very pro-town motivated (102 in particular, there was another one but I can't remember or find it).

@bowdown RE: Titus naked voting. Why do you believe Titus voted EccentricLemon at this stage in the game? What do you think Titus may have seen that would prompt a vote?

Those questions extend to others as well, btw, if you want to take a stab.

How does asking this question help the town?

Also, on you/nancy/tojam:

1 - If we lynch tojam and he flips scum, you have spent a lot of this game attacking nancy for gut-scumreading tojam but not voting there.

2 - What is your read on nancy? She is probably my best town read at this point in the game. If you've got a scumread on her, are there any reasons besides those in 109? If you're scumreading her, why are you not voting her?

3 - How are you reading tojam? What do you think of 131?

I was trying to lead people to take a look at EccentricLemon's postings and take a guess as to what could have triggered Titus voting there without giving up what Titus was trying to teach people too easily. I think everyone has posted since then, though, so she shouldn't be too mad about me saying this.

What I tend to do with naked votes is look at them in context with the game and see if I can figure out what triggered it. There are a lot of people who won't give reasons with their votes. Some are just lazy, others do it to actively test to see if people are going to look at things and try to understand their viewpoint (which tends more towards them genuinely trying to solve the game). I was using what Titus was doing as a kicking off point to guide without specifically leading to any answers.

My take: The freudian slip shows she thinks EL and GL could be partners due to the "slip" (or perhaps just Lemon knows Lion will flip town and so Lemon is scum). The naked vote was done more in the active test method.

So my question there was to help the newbies on the right track while also wanting to not ruin the test, not least of all because the results can benefit everyone trying to read.

1. Evaluating nancy. I spent a lot of the game trying to get a better read on her, and lately more trying to understand her reads to see if they have merit.
As for 2 & 3 I'll give my reads soon.

[JaeReed]

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

- Always aim to win. If you think someone is town and you're town then it's not in your best interest to lynch them. I don't believe it's a bad reason but can you show me some examples of where you believe she's showing newbtown over newbscum?
- I know many absolutely love flashwagons to L-1 in RVS. Anti-town does not necessarily mean scum (although it quite often can!) so it's better to look at the motivation for such an action. For instance, are they openly encouraging a hammer so as to place pressure on the person who got wagoned? Are they being passive about it and making a show of telling people not to hammer and to wait for reactions? Both instances can be personality tells, but I've found the ones more likely to encourage a hammer (which you'd see as anti-town because the person could just claim and they might be a PR, or someone might actually use that as an excuse to hammer without a claim) tend to be town wanting to force the game out of RVS by having the person being wagoned start scumhunting off their wagon as soon as possible, where the ones making a big show about being pro-town are negating some of the pressure the person being wagoned would feel, and might actually be scum.
- Some players will hard bus often, others (Thor comes to mind) will never bus. I think the majority like to switch it up to be unpredictable. As far as whether scum or town are more or less likely to hammer depending on the person's alignment...I don't *think* there's any hard and fast rule to it? Granted, VCA isn't exactly my specialty and there *is* someone here for whom it is... I have performance anxiety mentioning any of it around Titus for that reason =P She might have more solid opinions on that than me.

I can say... Generally in a newbie as scum you don't want to bus, and especially so early on. It's 7 town vs 2 scum, and town are guaranteed in any setup to have at least one PR. Not to mention it draws the win out until later in the game, so you have to spend more time dodging people re-evaluating you and PRs potentially clearing other townies or checking you.

[JaeReed]

Page 4 is read!

A lot of what JaeReed is posting seems very simple and easily producible, sub-par with what I would expect out of an IC.

Titus is obviously scum. Insincere questioning, and posts seem to be coming from someone that has the motivation to distract town.

VOTE: Titus

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 6#p8581336
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 5#p8619185

What about her questions so far seems insincere to you? Which posts do you believe are aiming to distract the town rather than provide a different playstyle for people to get accustomed to before reaching games outside the newbie queue?

[JaeReed]

I know Jae doesn't think I'm sheeping or at LEAST is pretty confident I'm town. (In #88, Jae responds to my comment with advice rather than critique, leading me to believe they think I'm a noob town). Therefore, I don't think there's any need to the frustration Jae is expressing because there's plenty of information available.

Actually, I'm not so frustrated yet, I'm just making sure it doesn't happen so much at the start, as D1 is generally what we want to look back on in the later days when we have more information from the flips. There was a time where I was Innocent Child (mod confirmed town from the start of the game) and I found it a lot harder to judge people's alignments because of it.

As far as my read on you, I honestly don't have a solid one. If I weren't IC at the time in 88 I probably would have voted you, but as it is I'm trying to play a bit more cautiously because I'm not sure how much sway I have inherently due to the title. I'm trying to assume newbness over scummyness in a lot more cases than I normally would in order to give advice in case you are town (some would argue that the advice is valid even if you're scum because you want to appear to be town, but there are more ways to play scum than just "as if you were town" and I'll touch on that a bit in post-game).

[JaeReed]

I get the feeling that Titus is hiding behind Jae.

I don't think this is the case.

Titus is usually the IC, so I think she's holding back a bit to not interfere with me since this is my first time playing as an IC. It's a weird shift from being an SE that I'm still getting a feel for, despite a lot of the time as an SE chiming in with theory when I've seen newbies struggling. I feel that Titus is trying to support me in that role, actually, which is probably why you get that feeling.

If not, could you point out where you think Titus has been hiding behind me in a game sense?

[JaeReed]

{nancy, Agent Sparkles}
{Titus}
{EccentricLemon}
{bowdown, GuiltyLion, revan}
{tojam}

VOTE: tojam

L-2

[JaeReed]

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.

@GL this post was where I started feeling good town pings from her.

I liked the way she called out bowdown here and pointed out content that he could have been commenting on. It felt very much like town that wasn't going to let bs laziness slide. I wouldn't expect newbscum to attack him like this because there's a chance it could blow up in her face, considering she's not trying to paint it as scummy, but rather get him to do something. The observation about myself and Titus not voting was a good one to make, and proves she's paying attention to the gamestate and trying to think about what that means about our alignments, and I often find that newbtown tend to find skimming to be scummy, which is something she brought up as well.

Her content from then on has been pretty solidly town to me.

[JaeReed]

Not fully here yet but:

1) I don't want EL to be the leading wagon, vote elsewhere please. After reading nancy's post I think there's a decent chance EL really is just newbtown.
2) I am decently confident that scum is in {bowdown, revan, GuiltyLion, Titus}
3) This means I am townreading {nancy, Agent Sparkles, EccentricLemon}

UNVOTE:

I'll be responding to stuff first then rereading to see where my reads are at with tojam claiming bp.
Also, tojam's claim is more likely to be legitimate here because of the timing of it and the way he did so. The line about not wasting time, specifically.

@tojam In future it's best to fight your lynch without claiming, especially as we still had a lot of time left in the day. BP is generally a role that you want to try to be obnoxious as hell towards scum with, but you should also never just claim bp if you're claiming it. It's best to claim bp or doc, as both can exist with and without the roleblocker, so scum are left with a good deal with wifom. The same goes for if you're a doctor, it's best to claim bp or doc. Don't outright lie about it and just claim the opposite, either, because you'll likely cause the remaining PR in those situations to out themselves thinking they're counterclaiming scum.

[JaeReed]

What does bug me about Jae is actually his tojam vote that came out of the blue - in a scum-Jae/town-tojam world it's an opportunistic, PR-hunting vote.

Except there was still a week left and I only took him to L-2. Claims come at L-1 with intent to hammer, so this reasoning doesn't really hold up.

[JaeReed]

What does bug me about Jae is actually his tojam vote that came out of the blue - in a scum-Jae/town-tojam world it's an opportunistic, PR-hunting vote.

Except there was still a week left and I only took him to L-2. Claims come at L-1 with intent to hammer, so this reasoning doesn't really hold up.

Hmmmmm. Is that always/almost always true? Where I used to play, claims would come sometime when a person felt like they were close to being lynched, which varied a lot. Then again the voting was different - all that mattered was where your vote was at deadline, you didn't get lynched with a majority halfway through the day.

On this site, generally yes. Sometimes people jump the gun and nervous-claim (like tojam did) but the usual thing is not to claim until you are at L-1 and someone has given intent to hammer.

[JaeReed]

It does actually, well, most if it. You never scumread tojam before, then you opportunistically jump on the wagon.

Half of it doesn't. It means that the vote could be opportunistic, but is unlikely to be for the purposes of PR hunting.

[JaeReed]

The issue with my read is that it's so subjective. Depending on how I choose to interpret it, I'm sure I could take nearly any of her posts to be either newbscum or newbtown. Reading her as Town feels like giving her the benefit of the doubt and at times second-guessing myself. Reading her as scum feels like I'm being overly critical. Either way I read her, I often feel like I'm justifying my read by assuming that it's true, which sucks super much.

In this situation it's perfectly fine to have them at a null/can't figure out yet type read. If you can ascribe both kinds of motivations to their posts then their alignment is less readily seen. If you can't see them making a post as x alignment no matter how hard you try to assume they're of that alignment then the chances are they're not of that alignment. It's perfectly find to read someone that way.

Spoiler:

I see you have missed me, but I guess that fact that no one else voted for me is a good sign.

I still stand by my vote since I have not received any new information about GuiltyLion and no other posts have convinced me about the scumminess of any other player.

Newbscum, because it doesn't seem towny to be ready/able to be convinced of someone's guilt without even being out of RV. The first line could also be hinting at this - the fear that people could somehow inherently know that she was scum and bw her to death. Newbtown, because she is expressing concern about scumhunting (even if she isn't actively doing anything about it yet) and isn't losing her cool about getting votes.

I believe expressing concern over scumhunting means little if you aren't trying to follow it up with something such as an actual push for content, which didn't happen here.

Most of the people in this game are newbies, and I think some of you are reading too far into everything. Then again, I tend to be the kind that likes to wait a while before making any decisions and am a newbie myself.

I don't think nancy is consciously attempting to prove her innocence and at this point, I lean toward the fact that she's just more outspoken and trying to incite conversation. Personally, I don't think what she's said is enough to incriminate her.
However, at this stage of the game, everyone is suspicious and outspoken people tend to draw more suspicion. Which is to say while I don't believe nancy is attempting to divert attention, I'm not completely certain of her innocence as well.

I voted for GuiltyLion hoping to receive some information from him or other players discussing him but I'm a little disappointed that there isn't a lot of debate going on about him. Also as soon as people started voting for him, he hasn't posted much. Which seems a little shifty to me, like he's lying low and letting it blow over. I mean, I don't know his personal life or playing style so I might be wrong.

The fact that Jae and AgentSparkles haven't voted against nancy and are trying to get information instead of straight up voting for her kind of tips me toward assuming they are probably town. However, Jae is a seasoned player and that makes me trust them less.

Again, this is only my speculation from what I've seen.

Newbscum, because she looks like she's trying to subtly dissuade people from reading her as scum (see how I'm assuming scum here in order to make the read?), because of the wording "prove her innocence" (is that a slip or an example of reading scum because assuming scum?), because of her readiness to make townreads on little evidence, and because her automatic stance is distrust (towards Jae). Newbtown, because she looks like she's trying to direct people's arguments away from over-analysis and towards more useful things and is at least making an attempt at scumhunting.

I don't believe the dismissal over over-analysis is scummy in this context or trying to dissuade people from reading them. I assume this is what you mean by "subtly dissuade people from reading her as scum"? The wording about proving your innocence is just the way it's phrased, rather than a slip of knowledge. Very rarely will you come across an actual scum slip. Soft townreads off little are fine to have so long as you're ready to reconsider as new evidence and viewpoints come up. The automatic stance being distrust towards me is fine in this context, as EL isn't throwing any shade or cautioning players against listening to me because of it, but more stating their own wariness to townread me too easily.
The dismissal of reading too far into everything is more playstyle indicative than Alignment Indicative I find. Usually I actually find that kind of comment coming from experienced scumhunters, though, so I'm a little surprised to see it from a newb.
I agree that the scumhunting attempt here looks like awkward town, actually.

If a person gets voted up, it's more likely people are going to discuss them. My vote wasn't a hammer or anything. That was my logic on what would happen. But since that didn't happen and doesn't seem like it's going to happen, UNVOTE: GuiltyLion. I was just stating my purpose and my suspicions so that people can use them to draw conclusions, I'm not actually accusing anyone.

Newbscum, because wishy-washy, defensive, seemingly inconsistent (see 73), and trying to stay on people's good sides and not attract attention. Newbtown, because according to her stated logic her behavior does make sense, and her behavior is at least consistent in terms of being afraid of doing anything wrong.

I don't see this as wishy-washy, and generally don't find that behaviour to be necessarily scum indicative moreso than personality indicative, which the behaviour being consistent points to.

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.

I meant to add in #68 that I've been pressed for time, so I may not have read each post as carefully as I hoped to.

I said I'm not trying to accuse anyone. I unvoted because there wasn't any reason to keep my vote there. I personally don't see any point to random voting unless it generates discussion, which I understand is why it's encouraged. 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.

Newbscum, because inconsistent in her reads, bad scumhunting, and trying to deflect attention. Newbtown, because her scumminess is explainable by a fear to do anything wrong and general clumsiness, which is consistent. (And yet again, giving her the benefit of the doubt.)

Why do you see this as being inconsistent in their reads? Do you believe bad scumhunting is scummy? How do you believe this is trying to deflect attention? If it's trying to deflect then who is it deflecting on to?

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.

Newbscum, because the comment on bussing GL has no context that I can see, because it potentially displays a knowledge of GL's alignment (worried about being on a bw against a townie or worried about bussing a partner?), has an exaggerated sense of how suspicious she is. Newbtown because again, her behavior is consistent with being afraid of doing something wrong, of being in the spotlight when she's not sure what to do, because her scumminess is still explainable as her just being very clumsy.

The comment on bussing GL was talking about how EL believed the vote could have eventually led to a lynch on GL (I think this is regardless of GL's alignment). Potentially displaying knowledge of GL's alignment is a valid tell, and both of the theories there are possible, I think. Exaggerated sense of how suspicious she is can also be a potential tell.
The behaviour being consistent means a lot here, I think. It could just be consistent with thinking she's scummy but I think there is a decent chance that it's just awkwardness and clumsy town like you said.

Or that AgentSparkles and EccentricLemon still have no avatars.

I haven't been able to find a good image, before anyone starts interrogating me. I tend to be very picky with stuff like avatars. If I were trying to blend in, I just wouldn't post and hope people forgot about me.

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.
However, she has some experience with forum mafia, even if it is only a bit, and I wouldn't precisely consider her a newbie. She seems like she knows what she's doing.

My experience with forum mafia - I've modded 1 mafia and participated in 1 mafia on another non-mafia forum (this activity is ongoing). I've also read Vi's Jailbreak Mini and a small percentage of the material on mafiascum wiki, but neither of those would really count as "experience". Non-forum mafia - I played the party game as a child, and I joined up on EM 2-3 months ago. (I recognize kentofan from there, heh.)

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.

I'd also like to point out that tojam did accuse me pretty harshly about baseless gut accusing and having opinions prior to the game, both of which I don't think I am guilty of. Could be a sign of skimming or just me being an idiot again.

Newbscum, because wishy-washy, because she reacted fearfully to my baseless avatar comment, again suggesting that she may be oversensitive to her own suspiciousness, because she appears concerned about how she should be blending in and has potentially lied in saying that she would blend in by lurking, and because she is again primarily trying to deflect attention away from herself (comments about me and it being D1). Newbtown, because her behavior is consistent in terms of being motivated by fear, and is still explainable as just clumsiness/newbishness.

I already mentioned about the wishy washy thing so I won't bring it up again. By this stage I think you're just correct in the assessment of her being newbtown. I don't believe she was trying to deflect attention off herself onto you because that's usually done with a push and it seems like she's subtly townreading you here for being the same as she is, but also somewhat wary as you have more experience? The comment about tojam could be a deflective push but I think it's just her genuinely misunderstanding who tojam's post was geared towards.

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.

EccentricLemon has been awfully quiet

I just got home from school plus a 5 hour meet. Just to clarify.

My take on Titus' vote is that if she is scum, she is trying to jump on the bandwagon to further people's distrust of me, since I'm already suspicious. If Titus is town, she might perceive me as a real threat.
However, I am concerned about the lack of explanation past:

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

and

VOTE: EccentricLion
Gut

We're already into some good discussions and there's quite a lot to base a reason off of. I've said quite a bit and so have other people. Just saying "Gut" seems a bit weird if you ask me.

Newbscum, because oversensitivity to her own suspiciousness and minimal effort at scumhunting. Newbtown, because surely she wouldn't be saying things like "perceive me as a real threat" if she actually were scum.

I actually don't believe this shows oversensitivity to her being suspicious, and this is a good effort at scumhunting. The way she was viewing Titus naked voting here with a reason as vague as "Gut" is a good reaction, and the fact that Titus did it after EL made a bunch of awkward posts that people had noticed was noted as well, despite not instantly jumping to "Titus is probably scum because that vote was bad". It shows she's paying attention to the way people are reading the game and acknowledging that there's more than one reason someone would want to do that kind of thing, and plays in to how cautious she's been up to this point. The reason you stated for newbtown is more wifom than anything, but I do think this post was actually a decent indicator for town!EL.

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

Newbscum, because she is jumping to conclusions, maybe just in order to seem to be scumhunting. Newbtown, because I believe her reaction to Titus is genuine, and she's at least trying to contribute to the scumhunt.

Do you believe scum are more likely to jump to conclusions than town? Her analysis of Titus here was pretty good, and I believe it was genuine scumhunting by this point.

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.

Newbscum, because the lean of her comments about Mafia communication, because she is suddenly behaving differently, and because her final sentence seems disjointed. Newbtown, because her change in behavior away from being motivated by fear and aversion to attention is explainable by the game having progressed, and her feeling more comfortable as it has. (I've certainly become more comfortable since page 1.)

I think behaving differently is just due to getting in the swing of things, as you mentioned. This post is kind of off if GL flips scum but other than that it's fine. Her last sentence I think is just sheeping bowdown's sentiments, which I'm not a huge fan of but that reminds me I should respond to it.

It seems to me that Jae is frustrated with how their status as IC makes people want to follow their decisions instead of making their own. It's difficult for Jae to tell who is sheeping them because they're a newb and who's sheeping them because they're scum trying to blend in.
A scum wouldn't get frustrated with lack of information because a scum would already have all the information regarding who is scum and who is town.

This wouldn't bother me if more people were sheeping the IC, however. I think tojam and Titus are sheeping, but not bowdown, nancy, Agent Sparkles, or GuiltyLion--who make up the majority of active players. All of them have responded in some way to what Jae has offered, often critically. I know Jae doesn't think I'm sheeping or at LEAST is pretty confident I'm town. (In #88, Jae responds to my comment with advice rather than critique, leading me to believe they think I'm a noob town). Therefore, I don't think there's any need to the frustration Jae is expressing because there's plenty of information available.

Newbscum, because of the potential hints of knowledge about Jae's alignment, and because of the consistent attention to what information scum have and how they'd use it.

Do you believe EL is implying I am town in this post? I don't believe they're showing hints of my alignment here. They seem to be analyzing my reasons for holding back a bit and coming to a conclusion based on the evidence in the thread. If anything, I believe EL is hinting they don't believe I'm genuine in wanting to hold back so I don't end up being blindly sheeped, as evidenced by the second paragraph. I also believe that them assuming I could correctly read them that early in the game is probably more of a newbtown sign.

I get the feeling that Titus is hiding behind Jae. I need to go look through posts for some more solid evidence. I'll get back to you on that.

Titus and tojam's interactions are very limited. It's hard to tell what they think of each other but the lack of communication between them I think reveals quite a lot.
I think this interaction in particular is really scummy, especially on tojam's part:

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.

It feels very forced. There's no reason to answer to Titus' post in this situation, since the original comment is clearly geared toward GuiltyLion. It seems to me like tojam is trying to cover up the lack of interaction between him and Titus.
The other thing wrong with tojam's reaction is "Can't say I've cared much about your posts." Once again, seems like forced interaction because that statement contributes absolutely nothing.

I think #56 also feels forced, especially since it was never brought up again by either of them.
These are the only two interactions between the two of them that I could find, which is also quite disconcerting. Not having anything to say about someone is fine, but saying stuff for the sake of saying it rather than furthering discussion is not.

I can say I'm still a bit on the fence about Titus. She provides much less information in her posts than tojam, so I can't tell if she's just less involved with the game or if she's trying to cover up the fact that she already knows what we're trying to figure out. #132 really sealed the deal for me on tojam, however.

Now that I think about it more, it is a bit strange that both mafias would act the same way. Especially since both of them aren't noobs. I'm pretty sure at least one of them is scum, though. Just judging by the aloofness I'm perceiving from them. And I think it's more likely that tojam would be scum if that were the case.

Noobscum, because she's quick to conclude that someone is scum on little basis, and because her behavior isn't consistent. Noobtown, because she's attempting to scumhunt.

VOTE: EccentricLemon

How do you feel their behaviour here isn't consistent? Because they should realistically be voting Titus over tojam in that case? What did you think of their reasoning for voting tojam over Titus?

[JaeReed]

^ That response was slowing me down =P But I did want to respond to it.

Also, when making big quote walls please spoiler it because it makes it a lot easier for those who need to reread.

Code: Select all

[spoiler]This will come out like....[/spoiler]

This will come out like....

This spoiler is usually for shorter stuff and a lot of people don't like it being used as some only play on their phones and it's harder to highlight to see what was written.

Code: Select all

[spoiler=]This will come out like....[/spoiler]
or
[spoiler=A title!]This will come out like....[/spoiler]

Spoiler:

This will come out like....

or

Spoiler: A title!

This will come out like....

This is really handy for quote walls because when you're rereading the game you might not necessarily want to have to scroll through a massive post when you're skimming to remember stuff that happened. Especially so on a phone.

[JaeReed]

Partially, but I am also naked voting to see if I can trigger more of the funny speech patterns from Lemon.

If you want more funny speech patterns then why aren't you trying to actively engage with them?

[JaeReed]

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?

oops I forgot to respond to 88 actually.

response to 88: wasn't bothered by it
thoughts on 88: I could see it either way, if town!Jae is scumreading nancy then it makes sense to poke at me about it like that, but if scum!Jae were fishing for mislynch votes then it could serve that purpose as well. It's something to revisit on a nancy flip, and also slightly more informative now that Jae also has nancy as their top townread.

I think GL followed to the wrong question there. I think this was his answer to me for 87. I'd like him to look at 88 again and answer again in that case.

as for 102, I've asked questions like that before when I thought newbies were scumreading people for bad reasons and I wanted to get a better grip on their reasoning. I'd say it's a pro-town question.

Wanted to help along scumhunting off that naked vote a bit and hint to newbies they should go back and check to see if they can see what Titus was voting for so they could draw their own conclusions as to whether Titus was genuinely scumhunting or not.

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.

so the thing is your entire case is built off of tojam being hypocritical in scumreading nancy for vote parking on a null, while doing the same thing himself.
Why do you think hypocrisy is indicative of scum alignment, especially in this particular case? Your 124 reads to me like "here are facts about things that happened, so tojam is a good vote", but I feel I'm missing the causality reasoning as to why voting nancy for doing something that he is guilty of himself makes tojam scum.

FTR Lion, this is more what I've been waiting for from you. Enjoy your towncred, and don't spend it all in one place!

[JaeReed]

I'm at L-2, I'm not going to let you waste more of your time.
I'm the 1 shot BP.

As an aside, I've felt this frustration before as a PR getting run up. I do understand the feeling that leads into an early claim like this, so I'm not trying to say it's easy to fight it without claiming, because it's not. It's annoying and frustrating beyond all belief, but it's worth it, and you might gain more information on those pushing your wagon if you do.

[JaeReed]

I say we lynch Titus.

Jae why are you scumreading tojam? Putting him at the bottom of your list doesn't mean that it's justified at all.

Titus is being pretty uncooperative, and hard to read.

Why don't you defend yourself?

Bow down why are are you so inclined to vote Lemon, if Titus didn't even present a case that could?

That doesn't make any sense. If you wanted to see what would happen, you would've voted Lemon before Titus asked you to.

Titus what makes Lemons's speech patterns funny? Are these patterns indicative of scum?

VOTE: JaeReed

Let me explain.

In their 143, they claim that they asked their questions in 87 and 88 to scumhunt. However, they don't follow up. I feel as though if they were trying to scumhunt, they would share with the town what they garnered from those responses. This leads me to believe that they're scum just going through the motions, and not genuinely trying to solve the game.

I'm also convinced that their 24 is a slip.

Revan, can you explain this lack of progression?

[JaeReed]

Within the span of 22 posts you went from a decentish case on Titus to questioning bowdown on listening to Titus (your stated scumread), to voting me without getting my answer on why I was scumreading tojam, for reasons that aren't even related to my tojam vote. It looks like you just wanted a reason to vote me. Especially given the justification of "slip".

What I see here is:
To me: Explain your vote. (decent demand of "back it up")
To bowdown: Explain why you followed Titus. (implies you think he could be partnered with Titus or scum sheeping Titus since she told him to do it)
To Titus: Explain why EL's speech patterns are worth a vote.
*votes Jae*

There's a disconnect there.

[JaeReed]

So what's next here? Does PR cc now? Wait until tomorrow? Something else?

I'll actually answer this with some quotes from the first game I ever read on the site. Partially because I'm lazy. Note that since this was during a game the situation is slightly different to our own. How someone claims matters somewhat, too. Every game is different.

Spoiler: PR ramblings from Nachomamma8

As far as prioritizing scumreads go, you should always always always prioritize your strongest scumread over any others. The only time when you should be prioritizing someone based on threat level is if you have personal experience with someone (meaning that they could shoot you and drift through the rest of the game much easier); in most other cases, threat level is high on a player because you can't read them very well, which should make you less willing to lynch someone, not more.

(PR rambling starts here.)

Basic PR theory tends to change based on the situation you're in. In this setup specifically, if you're a cop and there are two scum alive, you're looking to target someone who is likely living to endgame. The idea behind that is forcing scum to kill people that they didn't plan on killing OR giving a town a useful confirmed innocent somewhere down the road. If you take this route and scum doesn't kill you or your innocent, it's probably a good idea to claim Day 2; it will confirm you as town and it will confirm your innocent as town meaning if you have two solid town reads then you outright win the game (a townblock of 4 players allows you to lynch the remaining 3 in 7p).

If you're a cop/tracker and there's one scum alive, investigate who the town is planning on lynching. Either you end the game outright, or you give people as much time to reevaluate as possible. If the scum that was lynched was a roleblocker, then you out your role and your result immediately, take the game to no lynch and continue doing so until the doctor is dead; this results in a win in a majority of scenarios.

If you're a tracker/jailkeeper and there's two scum alive, follow your heart. In a two man scum team, there is generally scum in a weak position and scum in a strong position. Scum in the strong position are less likely to be tracked but are a greater loss to the scumteam when they are tracked. Scum in the weak position are more likely to be tracked but are a smaller loss to the scumteam when they are tracked. If you don't see anyone go anywhere, it is not an innocent; their scumpartner could have been the player who submitted the kill.

That being said, don't ignore your results; if you track a really, really scummy player and they didn't go anywhere, then they might be town; usually when scum are dealing with terrible partners they make them submit the kill.

If you are a Jailkeeper, you also have the option to protect your strongest townread: it's usually easier to block a kill this way although the results are not as juicy as if you block a scummy player. However, just because there's no kill after you protected your strongest townread it doesn't mean innocent; your strongest townread could have been scum submitting the kill. Just because there's no kill after you blocked your strongest scumread doesn't mean guilty; sometimes scum makes strange kill choices.

If you are a Jailkeeper and there is one scum left, claim immediately; if there is a one-shot bulletproof in the setup, they should claim as well. If a one-shot bulletproof claims, block them overnight; if they are scum they will be unable to kill, which means that if you are shot that night they are confirmed town the next day and if you aren't they will be unable to win (sometimes scum will no kill in this situation, which means use your best judgment). If no one claims bulletproof, block whoever you want to overnight but claim your target before you do so; that way, if scum kill you, that person will become confirmed town.

Spoiler: Counterclaiming from Nachomamma8

And remember the handy dandy when to counterclaim!

If someone claims cop, everyone should wait for a one-shot bulletproof (if it exists) to counterclaim. If no one-shot bulletproof counterclaims, then cop/tracker/jailkeeper should counterclaim.

If someone claims tracker, cop/jailkeeper/tracker should counterclaim.

If someone claims jailkeeper, doctor gets the opportunity to counterclaim first, then cop/jailkeeper/tracker should counterclaim.

If someone claims doctor, wait for a doctor or one-shot bulletproof to claim first, then counterclaim if you are a jailkeeper.

If someone claims one-shot bulletproof, wait for a doctor or one-shot bulletproof to claim first, then counterclaim if you are a cop.

People claiming doctor/bulletproof and not getting counterclaimed doesn't make them town, so sometimes it's better to lynch them even though they are claiming PR.

In this specific situation, if Fragger claimed doctor/bulletproof, I'd probably be for lynching him anyways.
If Fragger claims tracker/cop/jailkeeper I wouldn't believe him for a moment, but I'd happily lynch Occ in his place; we wouldn't have enough time for a counterclaim anyways and it would allow the tracker/cop/jailkeeper to possibly snag an extra innocent/block a kill and he wouldn't be able to win if Occ was his scumpartners anyways (although tracker counterclaiming here would be fine).

[JaeReed]

I say we lynch Titus.

Jae why are you scumreading tojam? Putting him at the bottom of your list doesn't mean that it's justified at all.

@Jae I assume you're referring to me with "forced jokes". I was attempting to start the thread off in a light-hearted manner, unaware that the atmosphere on scum was so severe. I don't agree with your nulltown reading of toejam. Your read only applies if everyone on mafia has the same personality or playstyle.

@toejam I don't see that as a TR. Saying you've read him a Town for starting discussion seems to me like the start of buddying up, which I would read as scum (I was already gutreading you as scum), and which also makes me think that he is Town. Unless you counted on someone making that analysis, in which case he could just as well be your partner, which takes him back to a null read.

This feels overdefensive and I dislike the attempt to break down townreads here.

That said, I like the thought about buddying because that did cross my mind too.

Mostly I'd had the thought about potential buddying in mind and didn't exactly love his postings for the reasons people were already pushing on. I will need to reread now since I think that claim was genuine given the frustrations of being run up when you're a PR and thinking town is wasting their time, but I want to respond to everything up to this point that I'd been kinda skipping on first.

[JaeReed]

Page 4 is read!

A lot of what JaeReed is posting seems very simple and easily producible, sub-par with what I would expect out of an IC.

Titus is obviously scum. Insincere questioning, and posts seem to be coming from someone that has the motivation to distract town.

VOTE: Titus

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 6#p8581336
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 5#p8619185

What about her questions so far seems insincere to you? Which posts do you believe are aiming to distract the town rather than provide a different playstyle for people to get accustomed to before reaching games outside the newbie queue?

Also I want this answered.

[JaeReed]

I had convinced myself pretty well that tojam was scum and was looking for his partner (

which I still think if there's a counter and tojam flips scum, there's a decent chance it's Jae

).

Why? Given what you yourself even mentioned as a reason to scumread me later:

Eh, pretty sure there are questions that I've asked and have forgotten about too. It might be a thing, I just don't think so.

What does bug me about Jae is actually his tojam vote that came out of the blue - in a scum-Jae/town-tojam world it's an opportunistic, PR-hunting vote.

My reads, roughly. Each group is relatively close.

Town

*tojam - only b/c of claim
nancy
GuiltyLion
AgentSparkles

Titus

JaeReed
Revan
EccentricLemon

Scum

Do you think they slipped?

Nope, I read it as an honest self-assessment of their scum game.

Revan, I am not seeing what you outlined in 210 as a scumtell for Jae. I really don't like that you didn't even notice that neither GL or EL responded to Jae's questions.

A lot of what JaeReed is posting seems very simple and easily producible, sub-par with what I would expect out of an IC.

One more for you Revan, would you describe your own posts as simple and easily producible?

I would say that they are short, but sweet and concise. They are

physically

easily producible, but Jae's are different.

A lot of their thinking is pretty simple, a lot of "Why do you scumread/townread x?" If you're scum, you can say this and get town points just for someone else's laziness.

I think some of Jae's stuff is simole thinking. I think that some of them demonstrate deeper thinking. I don't think that necessarily indicates towniness but I do think it's more likely to be coming from town.

However, I don't think that there's one post of yours that has depth to its reasoning - you have a bunch of surface level analyses. There's no oomph there.

VOTE: Revan. I like this better than Lemon.

Why are you defending me given that I'm a scumread of yours? Wouldn't it have been better for you to sort me through watching two of your scumreads duke it out? If you think my posting demonstrates deeper thinking more likely to come from town, then why am I scumread?

[JaeReed]

^ lol after my post about spoilering shit I go and do that. My b.

[JaeReed]

@Jae - why is GL a scumread?

lol at the alert popping up with Titus questioning my townread on GL. Next post.

He actually analyzed my argument on tojam unlike everyone else and is reading closely

looking for potential scumslips

(125).

This had me thinking he could be scum in a large way. Combined with personal experience playing with GL and how I feel like he's been avoiding me for the most part.

That tier wasn't actually scumreads anyways; they're all the people I'm still unsure where to sort given what was in the thread to that point.

[JaeReed]

Ohh I didn't know we were allowed to talk about other games. So your comment about skimming and newbs was interesting, because that's something I actually picked up from a game I read full of experienced players - it seemed given to them that skimming was scummy.

Thank you for the awesome quotes and several helpful posts in the last page or two.

We can talk about completed games only.

Talking about ongoings is forbidden. Treat ongoing games as though they do not exist.

[JaeReed]

^ You skimmed that post for your name, didn't you broski? Read it in context.

[JaeReed]

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.

I remembered that I still need to respond to this.

So ICs used to use a different colored text when they were trying to teach theory, in order to differentiate between their IC stuff and gameplay, but as that was abused and essentially was a trust tell, it has been banned.

To put it simply: I don't think I'm allowed to make any hard and fast "this is me being an IC and you can 100% trust this" and "this is me being a player" declarations, but I can declare that to the best of my knowledge all theory talk that I provide you with is correct. That's not to say it's the only theory, though! You'll learn more theory as you play more games and actively seek out discussion on it (there are some great links in the first post of the newbie queue for that, as well). Many people have conflicting viewpoints as well, and there's not really any hard rules on which are more/less correct.

As far as my questions that have been prods to get you guys thinking and looking at certain things, those are more me playing the game and being aware that there's potentially a power imbalance with newbies being more inclined to sheep me rather than think through the reasonings for themselves. What I ideally wanted to do was get everyone thinking for themselves and then interject with my own opinions and reads once newbies had an idea of what they were supposed to be doing independently.

[JaeReed]

Titus:

Did you learn anything either from your initial naked vote, or from me joining you on Lemon a couple pages ago?

Has your read if GL changed? I'm still townreading him.

Yes. It has taught me that my scumreads are likely correct given wagon reactions.

My largest wtf though is GL's most recent posting on that.

Refresh me since I'm reading at the start more than recent posts. You think it's EL and who?

[JaeReed]

^ Nevermind I just remembered the EccentricLion slip.

I think Lion is town here. This is more in-depth and subtle analysis than I saw from him in his scumgame.

[JaeReed]

@Jae According to what I understand about this game, I find your comments re Lemon wagon to be scummy. You don't seem very confident in your TR on her, I'm certainly not, and you've previously stated that L-2/1 is a great way to force people to prove themselves. Please explain to me why I'm wrong.

I somehow find myself agreeing with bowdown's earlier assessment that pressure on Lemon won't do much good. Regardless of alignment I think votes piling on her will just cause her to flail more, which isn't helpful if she's town.

[JaeReed]

@Titus 236 can I get your opinion on that please?

[JaeReed]

^ specifically on my thoughts about how those posts more point to town!Lemon than scum!Lemon

[JaeReed]

@Jae 247

On you and tojam being scum together: there is you immediately calling tojam a town read along with sparkles, tojam sheeping you, tojam's awkward 39 tiwnread of you for stirring up conversation. Plus the post that really put the idea in my mind:

I learn a lot more without people sheeping me.

This reads a lot like "hey scumbuddy, knock it off"

Now this is all a moot point with town-tojam, but I definitely thought Jae-tojam scumteam was decently likely.

Breaking up my response to you into a couple posts since I'm on my phone.

Soft answer to this: I was more concerned about the newbies sheeping me than having the SE's sheep me. I know that the SE's generally have some prior experience scumhunting, where newbies can tend to be a bit of a coinflip. Added bonus: town ICs tend to die N1. So it's best to make sure those more likely to survive are thinking things through on their own, since the team could also be two SE's.

[JaeReed]

In that context (voting for pressure) it's not helpful. Voting to lynch is a different ballgame.

[JaeReed]

Yup, which is why I want them off. I think Lemon is awkward town. My response to nancy was in the context of her saying pressuring Lemon by putting her at L1/2 gives a chance to better read her.

[JaeReed]

Hmm... I'll try to rephrase that last bit then.

I believe Lemon is probably best read through her scumhunting attempts rather than her reactions under pressure, because I get the feeling from all her posts so far that she'll flail under heavy pressure (which tends to be read as scummy) rather than necessarily reveal her true alignment.

[JaeReed]

Partially, but I am also naked voting to see if I can trigger more of the funny speech patterns from Lemon.

If you want more funny speech patterns then why aren't you trying to actively engage with them?

@Titus I don't believe you answered me on this.

[JaeReed]

To bowdown: Explain why you followed Titus. (implies you think he could be partnered with Titus or scum sheeping Titus since she told him to do it)

Think I said this before, but to see what happened. I wanted to try najed voting (kind of) - learned a little but honestly not a big fan of the strategy. I do want to point out Revans soft defense of Lemon in case either flips scum (202, 204).

Quick thing: I find naked voting is best done without stating anything prior about your scumread on the person. What you're doing when you're naked voting is ideally looking for who will prod you on it, and who will go back and try to understand what you saw that prompted you into a vote. It's good for seeing if others are looking at the game in the same mindset as you are (some will say the more in sync you are the more likely you are to have the same alignment, though that's not necessarily always true, it can be a good sign).

So the way it was done there isn't quite how it's usually done. Though people will still call it out as a naked vote and call it scummy in most games (which amounts to lazy scumhunting, really). When you see a naked vote it's usually best to look back and see why. Has the person being voted said something recently that could have triggered that response? Did someone put forth a case that could have convinced the naked voter? Did they say something previously in their own posts that indicated they were likely to eventually place their vote there? Once you've done that is when you ask questions "Did you vote because of x thing? What's scummy about that?" "So you agree with y's case?" "I've looked and can't see any reason why you would be voting for z at this time, can you elaborate?" then judge if that person is full of shit/pushing an agenda or genuinely attempting to gamesolve based off their answers and your understanding of the gamestate to that point.

[JaeReed]

Jae, why is looking for scumslips a scumtell? 250 and GL

I'm just gonna answer you with a quote from a previous game because I'm lazy like that.

Dewy pointing out your "scum-slip" pings me majorly. Generally scum like to justify their votes with scum-slips that aren't really slips, so that when someone flips town they can fall back on that. Zyf's reaction to it was better (especially since it was following Dewy pointing it out, so he's already influenced by that). Your list having you in the scum pile in context was meant to be an obvious chuck off at your reads not matching LQ's (since you went with the "my reads are the antithesis of yours" comment).

Basically, by focusing on wording and potential slips scum feel like they can fall back on "but they scumslipped!" since scum

generally

like to have a solid case to push that won't backfire on them. Scum like to be justified in their pushes. That's not to say all scum act that way, or that town don't also end up pushing on scumslips. For example, here scum!GL tries to deflect me off his buddy by offering me a townie thinking about whether something was a scum slip, and here as scum I push on someone pushing my buddy as having slipped.

It depends on the type of slip being pushed, and the type of player the person is, though. Along with how it's being pushed.

[JaeReed]

Did he really just lie to Titus?

What do you mean?

[JaeReed]

tojam hasn't provided me with any new evidence and even made a claim to a role, which was quite uncalled for. I personally can't say that that's convinced me of his innocence.

Town.

My question to Jae:
Why are you being so harsh with Revan when he seems to be exhibiting the same patterns of behavior as I am?
Your commentary was also really helpful, by the way. It helps me a lot to see how someone other than I interprets my posts.

Not quite. Revan is seeming at times to be trying to work from a stance rather than genuinely hunting. A good example of this is his push on me, for instance. It seems more like he went through my posts hoping for something he could jump on as evidenced by bowdown pointing out that my questions hadn't even been responded to, yet after being shown the flaws in his reasoning he doubled down on it being nonetheless scummy. He's coming in with a decidedly aggressive attitude and I get the feeling that he was anxious to stop scumreading Titus (the flip from Titus to bowdown to me).
After nancy's case on you and looking at your posts more, you're pushing less of an agenda, unlike Revan. Which makes it more likely that you're town.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[JaeReed]

So what's next here? Does PR cc now? Wait until tomorrow? Something else?

I'll actually answer this with some quotes from the first game I ever read on the site. Partially because I'm lazy. Note that since this was during a game the situation is slightly different to our own. How someone claims matters somewhat, too. Every game is different.

Spoiler: PR ramblings from Nachomamma8

As far as prioritizing scumreads go, you should always always always prioritize your strongest scumread over any others. The only time when you should be prioritizing someone based on threat level is if you have personal experience with someone (meaning that they could shoot you and drift through the rest of the game much easier); in most other cases, threat level is high on a player because you can't read them very well, which should make you less willing to lynch someone, not more.

(PR rambling starts here.)

Basic PR theory tends to change based on the situation you're in. In this setup specifically, if you're a cop and there are two scum alive, you're looking to target someone who is likely living to endgame. The idea behind that is forcing scum to kill people that they didn't plan on killing OR giving a town a useful confirmed innocent somewhere down the road. If you take this route and scum doesn't kill you or your innocent, it's probably a good idea to claim Day 2; it will confirm you as town and it will confirm your innocent as town meaning if you have two solid town reads then you outright win the game (a townblock of 4 players allows you to lynch the remaining 3 in 7p).

If you're a cop/tracker and there's one scum alive, investigate who the town is planning on lynching. Either you end the game outright, or you give people as much time to reevaluate as possible. If the scum that was lynched was a roleblocker, then you out your role and your result immediately, take the game to no lynch and continue doing so until the doctor is dead; this results in a win in a majority of scenarios.

If you're a tracker/jailkeeper and there's two scum alive, follow your heart. In a two man scum team, there is generally scum in a weak position and scum in a strong position. Scum in the strong position are less likely to be tracked but are a greater loss to the scumteam when they are tracked. Scum in the weak position are more likely to be tracked but are a smaller loss to the scumteam when they are tracked. If you don't see anyone go anywhere, it is not an innocent; their scumpartner could have been the player who submitted the kill.

That being said, don't ignore your results; if you track a really, really scummy player and they didn't go anywhere, then they might be town; usually when scum are dealing with terrible partners they make them submit the kill.

If you are a Jailkeeper, you also have the option to protect your strongest townread: it's usually easier to block a kill this way although the results are not as juicy as if you block a scummy player. However, just because there's no kill after you protected your strongest townread it doesn't mean innocent; your strongest townread could have been scum submitting the kill. Just because there's no kill after you blocked your strongest scumread doesn't mean guilty; sometimes scum makes strange kill choices.

If you are a Jailkeeper and there is one scum left, claim immediately; if there is a one-shot bulletproof in the setup, they should claim as well. If a one-shot bulletproof claims, block them overnight; if they are scum they will be unable to kill, which means that if you are shot that night they are confirmed town the next day and if you aren't they will be unable to win (sometimes scum will no kill in this situation, which means use your best judgment). If no one claims bulletproof, block whoever you want to overnight but claim your target before you do so; that way, if scum kill you, that person will become confirmed town.

Spoiler: Counterclaiming from Nachomamma8

And remember the handy dandy when to counterclaim!

If someone claims cop, everyone should wait for a one-shot bulletproof (if it exists) to counterclaim. If no one-shot bulletproof counterclaims, then cop/tracker/jailkeeper should counterclaim.

If someone claims tracker, cop/jailkeeper/tracker should counterclaim.

If someone claims jailkeeper, doctor gets the opportunity to counterclaim first, then cop/jailkeeper/tracker should counterclaim.

If someone claims doctor, wait for a doctor or one-shot bulletproof to claim first, then counterclaim if you are a jailkeeper.

If someone claims one-shot bulletproof, wait for a doctor or one-shot bulletproof to claim first, then counterclaim if you are a cop.

People claiming doctor/bulletproof and not getting counterclaimed doesn't make them town, so sometimes

it's better to lynch them even though they are claiming PR.

In this specific situation, if Fragger claimed doctor/bulletproof, I'd probably be for lynching him anyways.
If Fragger claims tracker/cop/jailkeeper I wouldn't believe him for a moment, but I'd happily lynch Occ in his place; we wouldn't have enough time for a counterclaim anyways and it would allow the tracker/cop/jailkeeper to possibly snag an extra innocent/block a kill and he wouldn't be able to win if Occ was his scumpartners anyways (although tracker counterclaiming here would be fine).

Thanks Jae, real easy way for scum to lynch me.

I'd like to see them try, honestly, considering I don't think GL is stupid enough to go for it regardless of alignment, and I'm certainly not going to vote you after that claim. Your behaviour matches up too well.

Take for example your entry into the game. As 1-shot bp (or doc) you know there's a tracker or jk (or cop) out there in a newbie game, and jumped to warn the other PR to not claim. Didn't make much sense at the time, but does now after the claim.

It's all relative to the content in the game.

[JaeReed]

Let's imagine a hypothetical scenario for a moment. Assume EccentricLemon is scum. JaeReed asks me to question my TR of EL and afterwards begins to post very actively. In the midst of this they put their first vote of the game on tojam2 with little to no justification (his worst crime at that point was basically not posting enough content), and post their reads list/tier. After intimating that their preference was for wagoning to pressure players (demonstrated in practice by their vote on tojam2), they claim, in rather uncertain terms, that in light of a newbie's post they believe EL may be Town (am I really meant to believe that I pointed things out to them that they hadn't already seen?), unvotes, expresses the opinion that we should not focus on Lemon, and suggests to me that a conflicted read is fine as a null read (sounds like great advice, but it also greatly serves their rescue of Lemon). Their previous hesitance to scumhunt is gone, they begin dispensing advice and towncred freely, and are quickly directing Town in directions away from Lemon.

So yes, right now I believe that JaeReed and EccentricLemon are scum partners. Take a look at 168 again, too, or previous examples of Jae ignoring people's questions when they're part of a scumhunting effort directed against them.

Hypothetical being me and EL as scum partners.
Why would I question your townread on EL rather than just agree in much the same manner that GL did? By asking about your townread I opened up my hypothetical partner in that case to you re-evaluating on them, with me knowing full well they're too newb to defend themselves effectively. It would be a lot better for me in that situation to allow the townreads to amass on my partner and push a hypothetical town Titus to a lynch since she was voting my partner.

Sometimes it takes a different perspective, and it's important to consider others perspectives because they might have picked up on something that you missed. That's not to say you should follow them over your own judgement, but yes, I looked at your post about EL, thought about your reasonings, pointed out the things I agreed/disagreed with in it, and ended up agreeing with your original assessment.

Also yes, I became more involved with the game after a week of soft directing on the basics of scumhunting and doing my own poking at certain things. I really don't believe there was a hesitance to scumhunt though. A hesitance to push and give reads too early, certainly, but not to scumhunt altogether.

If I've ignored questions it's more likely I just didn't remember they were asked or hadn't gotten around to catching up to that point yet. Feel free to quote at me if you think I missed something.

[JaeReed]

Titus are your RL issues slowing you down still a thing?

[JaeReed]

Ehhh the problem I'm running into when thinking about a scum!Revan world is how he actually does seem to have conviction in his read.

If Revan's town that means I'm likely townreading scum.

[JaeReed]

Titus are your RL issues slowing you down still a thing?

Yes but not as severely as they used to. When business picks up, I post less.

Hm... :/ You're worrying me, tbh. The game has been slower than usual ones and you haven't made a noticeable push to advance it. I can't tell if that's you being scum or just busy.

I mean, yes, you're voting Lemon and started it with a naked vote, but you're not actively prodding the gamestate forward like I expect from you.

What does it mean for your reads if EL flips town?

[JaeReed]

Her ISO isn't focused on determining alignment of anyone. There's a litter of ADD scattershot pushes.

Isn't this kind of contradictory? I feel like Lemon's ADD scattershot pushes show that she was trying to determine people's alignments?

[JaeReed]

Her "push" if you can call it that, fades when "the cool kids" unvote.

This is also kind of incorrect. The only person who was on and moved off GL was me? My unvote didn't necessarily have a big fanfare around it either.

[JaeReed]

At this stage I'm not exactly happy with any of the people who've gotten votes so far.

If I have to choose I guess it's a Revan lynch, but I don't actually think it will flip scum.

GL, 307 thoughts on this? There's too strong of a conviction there I think for newbscum. It's possible he's powerscumming but I don't know how likely that actually is.

[JaeReed]

VOTE: Revan

Fair enough. I thought he probably had offsite experience with his entrance too, but then disregarded it for how sloppy the pushes on Titus/bowdown/myself were.

At the very least I'm better with this than anything else we have on the table so far.

bowdown is a paranoia read for me because of the way he's been sorta guiding opinions, but lynching off paranoia alone is dumb and more often than not just hits town. Besides which the only teams I can reasonably see with bowdown are either GL or Titus. I don't really think bowdown vs revan was TvT either but it's harder to explain that one. Just want to leave a trail in case I get fearkilled.

[JaeReed]

I'm here, just haven't found the time to make a post. I'm gonna start rereading now

Post coming soon

Also in D2 make sure this slot posts good content. If he doesn't, lynch him, because it's possible he's just coasting off the early towncred he got from his posts.

Usually mods would have replaced a slot like this by now. I've seen it happen before that mods are hesitant to replace someone doing this kind of thing because the person is mafia and strategically lurking (an example is Newbie 1705 where Equinox didn't want to replace someone blatantly prod dodging because it's a strategic move as mafia, and more recently in Newbie 1760 thenameipicked wasn't force replaced as mafia either, though he was just straight up absent).

That said, as far as the mod meta, don't put as much stock in to that. I don't know what Cakey is like as far as his replacement policies and there's no rule in his ruleset forbidding prod dodges from what I can see, so it's also just possibly a moot point.

[JaeReed]

Question: Do scum get to directly communicate with each other?

Usually during pre-game and night phases in the newbie queue. Not during the Day phase.

[JaeReed]

Question: Do scum get to directly communicate with each other?

Usually during pre-game and night phases in the newbie queue. Not during the Day phase.

Well that completely messes up my scumread of Lemon.

Why?

[JaeReed]

It's more cause for concern if Revan didn't vote his counter.

If Revan didn't vote his counter there it would have probably had me whiteknight him for lack of opportunism, because I hardly ever see that flip red.

[JaeReed]

It's more cause for concern if Revan didn't vote his counter.

If Revan didn't vote his counter there it would have probably had me whiteknight him for lack of opportunism, because I hardly ever see that flip red.

Then you have been in some wierd as fuck games.

Not really? It's quite simple.

Anyone can vote their counter in order to save themselves.
Town are more likely to vote away from their counter if they strongly believe scum is elsewhere, because their goal isn't to save themselves, it's to find scum.

Some people are just survivalistic no matter their alignment, so it's not like Revan voting his counter is inherently scummy, it's just not townie. Where it would have been more townie to try to push an actual scumread.

[JaeReed]

Revan:

Do you townread EL?
Do you scumread myself and/or GuiltyLion?

[JaeReed]

In a short deadline, eventually it becomes I know I am town, so a I will vote the other guy.

With less than 2 days, a large scumread player isn't getting a wagon going.

The bolded is where the lack of opportunism comes in. If you have a townread on the other player or a strong scumread elsewhere, and decide to push that instead of your counterwagon, that indicates you're more likely to be town because you know even if you're lynched it's not making it too much harder on your team. At least earlier on in the game, where town has the numbers to afford mislynches.

[JaeReed]

Jae, explain how at that point in the game, Revan and Lemon are each other's counters with only two votes on Revan and three on Lemon.

I'm not entirely sure what you want here?

At that point I'd just voted Revan, which had him at the same amount of votes as EL. You voted EL pushing her up to L-2, but the two main wagons that were being looked at there was EL/Revan. Therefore Revan and EL are counter to each other.

If you're thinking about the amount of votes try thinking the other way. EL needed 2 more votes to be lynched and Revan needed 3 more votes to be lynched with 4 players yet to vote on one of the two wagons. That said, he still could have gotten those 3 of those 4 (I don't think tojam would have voted me) and maybe convinced someone off EL on to me with a deadline no lynch threat.

[JaeReed]

Self saving votes aren't inherently scummy or townie imo. But that's more of a tell discussion.

It all depends on whether the thread consensus might have made it feel like a threat to him. In this case I'd argue it's perfectly viable that he was starting to worry he'd be lynched and preferred EL over himself as a self saving thing.

[JaeReed]

nancy, we don't have time at this stage to flashwagon. There's a reason I defaulted to one of Revan/EL. Please choose whichever of these you feel is more likely to flip scum at this stage.

tojam I have some spare time gimme a sec and I'll get an interim VC for you

[JaeReed]

Revan (3) - GuiltyLion, JaeReed, bowdown
EccentricLemon (3) - Titus, Revan, tojam2
GuiltyLion (1) - nancy

Not voting (2) - Agent Sparkles, EccentricLemon

With 9 alive, it takes 5 votes to lynch someone.

(expired on 2017-01-16 11:14:00) remain until day end

^ unofficial, by my count.

[JaeReed]

The thing with the Titus/GL thing nancy is that we don't have the time to explore that through wagoning, get a claim, evaluate the validity of the claim, and potentially move to someone else based on it.

That's something best explored in the next day phase.

[JaeReed]

Or tracker?

[JaeReed]

I don't want a hammer while I sleep

UNVOTE:

[JaeReed]

NO. Definitely not. Titus and GL might both be town and that means I am dying tonight.

I'm dying tonight anyway. The scum team is 2 newbs I think and I'll explain why when I wake I'm just really drunk atm.

It's very likely nancy/agent.

[JaeReed]

Or tracker?

Slip in Nancy's 429? Not running her up today but need to make sure we talk about this tomorrow.

Yup. Would vastly prefer to lynch her off that alone. It shows knowledge of there being a roleblocker in the setup. The only people who would know for sure the setup are scum and the jailkeeper, and scum would be more likely to be fixated on jailkeeper to the point where they forget main thread knowledge isn't in line with that. The jailkeeper would be doing everything in their power to not slip knowledge of the setup because scum could find them and nightkill them in that situation.

Had another look and I can't remember why I had early in my notes a nancy/Agent team but it might not be Agent as her partner. I wasn't looking at her pairings as closely all game because I was townreading her.

I mean, this is a case that's strongest if we get a jailkeeper flip and rendered completely moot with a tracker flip so idunno for sure yet, but I'm pretty sure I just witnessed an actual slip, which is usually really rare and things people push on as slips generally comes to semantics but I don't think that's what this was.

Important note - if you're a newb and the tracker/jk don't out today based on the above. If I die during the night then follow titus/gl as for theory on what to do from there. At the very least I don't think the team is Titus/GL, so you can be guaranteed one of them is town. If you really can't figure it out, just don't claim unless you have to or a mass claim happens. Be sure to go back to the post where I quoted Nachomamma on claiming if you're unsure on your results.

[JaeReed]

This is a scumcase. It's fake, illogical reasoning. They're all huge assumptions independently, and being used together in a way that no townie would push with genuine intentions. If we're flash wagoning anyone today, it's Titus.

Guilty... True or false:

Titus makes assumptions and tunnels based off said assumptions as either alignment.

[JaeReed]

This whole situation sucks, by the way. Knowing how Jae loves to defend their townreads, I was hoping they'd recognize the GL wagon as an indirect way to save her. It was a desperate measure but I'm pretty convinced that Lemon is PR so desperate measures are called for. Jae didn't recognize it and Titus has RL issues so now we're probably going to mislynch for no reason. Still, a part of me wants to believe Titus about Lemon/GL. I guess the flip will be telling.

I defend my hard townreads. The ones I get where I feel that there's no chance it flips scum at all. No one's pinged me that way in this game.

I also wouldn't do it indirectly if that

were

the case.

[JaeReed]

There are 5 newbie slots in the game.

VOTE: nancy

Bottom part of that is a crapton of shade. I only just figured out the game last night, so yes, it is a little late to move it, but I can certainly try. I also mentioned that I might be wrong on it being Agent as your partner, but you're clearly scum.

[JaeReed]

3 more votes on nancy, please.

@Titus, GuiltyLion, tojam2, EccentricLemon, bowdown

EL especially, you should vote nancy to put her at L-2 and make her into a proper counter to you if you're town.

[JaeReed]

JaeReed, why are you being wilfully blind?

A scumslip is a scumslip is a scumslip.

Who's your partner?

[JaeReed]

@GL vote nancy please when you get back.

[JaeReed]

^ Yup, then continually trying to soft it to me lol.

[JaeReed]

@GL, tojam, EL, Agent whichever of you come on first, vote nancy please.

[JaeReed]

Not voting Nancy.

Taking note of how easy it is to derail EL without a claim.

It's ok I don't think you like bussing

[JaeReed]

^ Yup, then continually trying to soft it to me lol.

Seeing as you didn't accept it, I'll just speak plainly.

First of all, you're assuming I'm bad at adapting to new information. When EccentricLemon didn't claim despite being under pressure I assumed that she was PR and didn't want to out herself until absolutely necessary because this would hurt town. Her recent posting or lack thereof speaks of a kind of resignation to being lynched. I believe that if she were mafia, she would not respond to this by barely posting anything.

I've been prodding and poking people for reactions all day, and the actions of the past several hours have been particularly telling. With 473, Jae's jump to pinning me as a mafia roleblocker told me that they must be the jailer. My "slip" after makes complete sense if I am Jailer, or even just as a newb post being ignorant of the matrix, but they jumped to the roleblocker. I proceeded to attempt a roleswap with Jae and tried to diminish his value to Town so as to try to divert a newbscum team from killing them. The end.

Now trying to wriggle out of it.

When did I have you as a roleblocker instead of just mafia? I didn't. I did say mafia know whether there's a roleblocker in the setup and would be thinking about the setup being jailkeeper/roleblocker/bulletproof if there is, after tojam's claim really early into the day. I did not once say you were the roleblocker. Thanks for claiming, though.

Don't be fooled by this. This is not town.

[JaeReed]

And I think you were awesome today. Ignore what I said about you being ineffective.

Thanks, first IC game. I still think you're mafia though, and I'm not claiming no matter how much it looks like you want to fish me <3

[JaeReed]

I just hope that you'll start paying a little more attention to Titus in the future because you seem to hand out townreads too readily to standard play and scumreads to non-standard play.

This would hold some weight if I were townreading Titus.

[JaeReed]

I'm saying Titus dropped one of her scumtells.

[JaeReed]

Her scumtell can also be her "busy in RL" tell.

I wouldn't support her D1 lynch when I know she has in fact been busy IRL the past while. Which is why I asked her that question specifically and I believe she understood why I was asking.

[JaeReed]

I'm kind of weirded out by how dramatically the votes have changed in so little time. I fully expected to come back to see myself lynched. Is this a common thing or is this particular to the game?

It's not common (or shouldn't be) and I would advise against flashwagoning close to the deadline as a general rule because that rarely hits scum. (Sometimes even hits PRs such as here to the flip here)

That said, I do believe nancy slipped knowledge of the setup more than she should know, and I don't believe she's our last PR (bowdown also pointed out supporting evidence to my initial evaluation of how a jailkeeper would handle that).

[JaeReed]

@GL Fair enough. My current thought is that Titus not pushing to advance the gamestate in any way means she's scum. Even with being busy irl I feel like she would have made a decent post to get content flowing rather than sit on her haunches with the EL scumread and push. She hasn't tried to real-time engage as much as I feel she normally would. I just really don't know how much of that is RL being busy to know if I did pick up her scumtell. It could be that it's a mixture of alignment and RL being busy, or it could just be that RL is busy fullstop and there wouldn't have been a real difference on that front regardless because of it.

[JaeReed]

yeah, given that nancy is not the jailkeeper, I think that's a slip

intent to hammer nancy

Your argument is just as flimsy as you claim Titus' to be. If I were mafia, I would have claimed Jailkeeper. No question. This whole bandwagon against me is an opportunisitic farce, and you're all selectively interpreting evidence to suit your blind push of me.

If you're town (which I very much doubt at this stage but we'll see with the flip either way) the best thing you can do right now is try to find who you believe is interacting with your wagon in a non-genuine way. Give a reads list based off that, with a summary of why the reads are that way for people to look back over the next day. Everyone on your wagon can't be scum. There's 2 scum in the game at most. Find the ones you believe are genuine in their push, and the ones you believe are being opportunistic.

The way I've seen it you've slipped then really messily tried to cover your tracks.
If you're town then that was a really unfortunate use of wording and I promise I'll look into your reads if I survive to tomorrow to see if I agree/disagree on any of those with the flip.

As it stands I just don't think you're town, though.

[JaeReed]

She has been passively scumhunting

Titus doesn't passively scumhunt unless she's scum or busy irl.

[JaeReed]

Once you're dead in this game you can rejoin the queue.

[JaeReed]

(sorry if I sound short I just realized I didn't do the work I had to do today so I'm rushing to do that <3 nothing against you)

[JaeReed]

I probably shouldn't leave out EL from the opportunist list, since her vote was essentially a self-save, even though I was never going to hammer her (she didn't know this, of course, so I can't blame her).

It's better to have a lynch on D1 than to reach a deadline no lynch.

The statistics for town wins on a no lynch D1 are horrendous iirc.

[JaeReed]

She has been passively scumhunting

Titus doesn't passively scumhunt unless she's scum or busy irl.

I'd also like to point out that you and GL have both admitted to wrongfully scumreading her in the recent past. I don't think you should put so much trust in your meta-reads of her.

When did I admit to that?

[JaeReed]

Did you miss the scumslip?

[JaeReed]

Did you miss the scumslip?

No. There was not one.

Did you miss EL's tonal indicators?

So knowing the setup we're in while being obviously not related to the setup isn't a slip?

You know it is. Why are you defending scum?

EL could swing either way, but I can't see someone knowing we have a roleblocker and jailkeeper in the setup while not being the jailkeeper as town. There's just no way nancy flips town given that.

[JaeReed]

Unofficial VC
nancy (4) - JaeReed, Revan, bowdown, EccentricLemon
Revan (2) - GuiltyLion, Agent Sparkles
EccentricLemon (2) - Titus, tojam2
GuiltyLion (1) - nancy

Not voting (0)

With 9 alive, it takes 5 votes to lynch someone.


(expired on 2017-01-16 11:14:00) remain until day end

[JaeReed]

It's better to have a lynch on D1 than to reach a deadline no lynch.

The statistics for town wins on a no lynch D1 are horrendous iirc.

Interesting. Time to research some numbers theory!

It's because you're giving scum control of the information, and also putting numbers on even. You lose a chance to mislynch without losing the game for it.

[JaeReed]

Yeah it'll last until Cakey gets on. He might be asleep.

[JaeReed]

I'm trying to figure out if you're twilight trolling or not.

Leaning towards not. Also trying to work out if Titus not seeing the setup thing as a slip is genuine or not. I think given the tunnel on EL it could be, since her focus is elsewhere.

Also @Titus technically the wagon that got derailed for this was Revan I think? Maybe both Revan and EL, but if the intention was solely to derail EL's wagon there was the opportunity to push GL that I passed up, and also Revan looked like a much easier lynch at that stage than nancy.

[JaeReed]

Not at all! I'd encourage it if you're town! As scum it's best not to troll twilight because you're putting stress on your partner to react genuinely to it, but as town you have nothing to lose by continuing to scumhunt.

[JaeReed]

You're not dead until SirCakez posts your flip, so do whatever you want until then You're not under any obligation to scumhunt, but it would certainly be helpful I think.

[JaeReed]

Honestly? Pretty guilty. I always feel that way after a mislynch regardless of alignment, though. It's especially bad this time given that I don't normally like "slip" logic because it's usually just semantics. I really thought I drunkenly picked up something and went against all the theory on why NOT to do what I did (pushing a flashwagon this close to deadline), and the surety that you couldn't be the other PR with the way you were acting prior cemented my view on that. Where you kept talking to me like you knew I was town and trying to convince me that I was wrong then flipping to calling me scum.

So that's why confirmation bias is bad. >.>

[JaeReed]

And no, the above isn't why I upgraded bowdown two spots on my likely scumpartner list. Though it didn't help.

I figured it was for the same reasons I thought I could keep seeing a bowdown/GuiltyLion team, actually, since you said you reread the ISO.

[JaeReed]

^ which is funnily enough where I was like "ohhhh oh I think nancy is ACTUALLY town here... oops."

[JaeReed]

I would advise against flashwagoning close to the deadline as a general rule because that rarely hits scum.

lol....

[JaeReed]

Anyway, a good thing about getting wagoned with intent for lynch is that it can make the game suddenly make a lot more sense. People's motivations tend to be clearer during that time, from my experience, because you know for sure they're pushing a mislynch throughout.

I did have doubts at times so I probably shouldn't have gone ahead with it :/ I was glad to have solved the game. Bleh. It was a stupid push, sorry again.

[JaeReed]

If you want you can ask Cakez to not spoil you on the scum team and follow along from the dead thread still scumhunting, but I suspect you might have already solved the game, honestly.

[JaeReed]

GL probably should have talked some sense into me like Titus tried to, and instead he jumped on board, which doesn't line up with his level of experience and the scumhunting levels I expect from him. It shows a distinct lack of paranoia in someone who knows how I feel about people pushing on slips, which indicates opportunism there. EL's vote on you looks awful as well. Actually, beyond awful with the positioning of thinking you'll flip town. No one should have been on that wagon without thinking it was a slip. bowdown's looks almost careful, but that's largely in line with the rest of his posting and why I get so paranoid about him, I think?

[JaeReed]

By the way I loved the drunk posting

It was kinda hilarious because I was like "holy shit I think I found an actual slip I need to not let this on until the next day phase when I have time to case and push this properly" and then suddenly I'd posted and in the morning it was like I'm dead tonight

[JaeReed]

In retrospect you were kind of obvtown. Means that scum definitely would have loved my push there since a townblock was probably starting? I'm so stupid

[JaeReed]

What's a townblock?

When people are all townreading each other and working with each other. It's dangerous for scum if it ends up all town, so they either want to dismantle it or be in it.

[JaeReed]

I kept feeling like bowdown was scum, ALL DAY, and yet I couldn't find any real foothold for the argument, it was driving me up the wall.

Yeah every time I look at his content it's like.. it's not BAD it's just....gut. :/ Which can be wrong or it can be right but if you can't pinpoint why you feel that way then it's almost impossible to push it in a way people will follow you. Then if you're wrong you get a lot of flak for it and people are less likely to follow you later in the game, or might even lynch you.

[JaeReed]

it was my dumb jailer assumption that got me lynched.

Nah I should have backed off when you explained about forgetting it could go horizontally as well. I had some doubt then but didn't want to be shown wavering too much because...well, ego. If you WERE scum that would have been the catch of the century >.>

[JaeReed]

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... start=1225

from about here Transcend ends up roleswapping with the vig. I'd imagine you know him from EM? Or at least know OF him.

[JaeReed]

I'm actually still not entirely sure whether that was when it happened. Roleswapping is really weird here because A) you first have to successfully identify the PR without outing them, and B) said PR has to recognize what you're trying to do and townread you enough or be confident enough in their skills to 1v1 you should it come to lylo to "conftown" you.
That instance was actually the first time I'd successfully seen it happen, though Titus attempted it once (I think? At least my understanding of the attempt) the other way around in this game: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 6#p7970596

[JaeReed]

That game is kind of a good example of what I expected Titus to be like here, btw, if you decide to check how things went down.

[JaeReed]

It would probably help if you actually had the PR lol

[JaeReed]

also yeah nancy you absolutely destroyed me in twilight, I was expecting to get lynched on D2

If you left me alive there's about a 65% probability you would have been, depending on how well I managed to work with Titus. This was so frustrating to watch

[JaeReed]

Also, I'm gonna take this time to mention you should never post in a game before the mod does the flip and makes the final call.

This is because sometimes something unexpected can happen with role interactions (not an issue in this game but still...) and also because players can sometimes believe a hammer happened when it didn't.

[JaeReed]

Not really, Agent. I just went through and at a guess it's the easyish interactions between you two and the way nancy joke fos'ed EL in RVS. Plus you at one point seemed to find nancy suspicious but didn't vote her. Small things like that. I put the stuff I found that I probably was making the connection with in a spoiler for ya.

It was wrong tho

GG scum! And GL you were worried about me I was right in that your partner would make the kill, wrong on who the partner was. Thought I'd be roleblocked tho lol.

Spoiler: quote wall of nancy/Agent

EccentricLemon seems pretty wishywashy to me. Switching votes for dubious reasons and suspicious of people called "Agent"? Clear scumtell. Serious.

@kentofan @Bulbazoor

If I'm not mistaken, you'll be replaced if you don't confirm within the 72 hours.

why are you acting like a moderator?

VOTE: Agent Sparkles

I'm guessing that question is just for RVS purposes, but if you actually want it answered, I'm just reminding the inactive players so that they don't get kicked from the game. And for obvious reasons, it's helpful to have as many active players as possible.

EccentricLemon seems pretty wishywashy to me. Switching votes for dubious reasons and suspicious of people called "Agent"? Clear scumtell. Serious.

Also, saying hello to people as first post? Obvious survival tactics.

I really hope you're messing with us.

Fixed quote tag

Jae, I honestly can't work that out myself. Unless that's your way of stirring up conversation and starting the hunt, which I'm going to read you as Towny for.

This doesn't really resonate with me. Stirring up discussion alone is something that anyone can easily do, and in my opinion, not a very good basis for reads. JaeReed also earned some townie points with me for that post, but it's because of the way he purposely didn't explain himself and left it up to everyone else to think about, which seems like a genuine town strategy. I do think it's possible that you were thinking along these lines and just weren't as specific about it.

Your read only applies if everyone on mafia has the same personality or playstyle.

You could use this logic against countless types of legitimate reads. Just because not everyone has the same playstyle doesn't mean you should ignore the subtle differences in the styles of people's messages. People aren't computers; there's almost always some kind of sign that people are genuine or pretending.

@toejam I don't see that as a TR. Saying you've read him a Town for starting discussion seems to me like the start of buddying up, which I would read as scum

Maybe. I'm a bit hesitant to scumread him for that because of reasons I mentioned above.

I'll finish replying to messages after I eat dinner.

Code: Select all

[unvote][/unvote] or [uv][/uv]

Will come out as:
UNVOTE:

Thanks.

I have no idea why I'm gutreading toejam as scum, but it came with his first two posts, #7 & #9.

This is scummier than anything toejam has said. If you seriously scumread someone, then there has to be a reason behind it, however small it might be. Why should your initial read have any credibility if you can't tell us why you have it?

Now I've realized there may be a terminology issue here. Are you using "dislike" as equivalent to "read as scum"?

Probably. That's the way most people seem to use it here.

I'm guessing that question is just for RVS purposes, but if you actually want it answered, I'm just reminding the inactive players so that they don't get kicked from the game. And for obvious reasons, it's helpful to have as many active players as possible.

But why do you think bulba/kento would need to see your post to remember that they have to confirm? If they're reading this thread, they would already know they need to confirm and participate, no?

I was hoping that this was like some other forums, where doing @player would alert them.

There is one issue that I have to side with nancy on, and this is mostly directed at JaeReed and GuiltyLion.

There's nothing wrong with trying to break apart townreads, especially weak ones. If you stay quiet when people are gaining unnecessary trust, then what if one of them is mafia? You're just making it easier for them to stay hidden. Even if the people in question are town, what about the people townreading them? If you point out the flaws in their arguments, whether they're scumreading or townreading, you can force them to explain themselves and draw attention to possible fake reads.

I'm not saying that putting scumreads under scrutiny is less important, but it's a two-way road. I'm surprised that this is even a subject for debate.

Welcome, Titus.