Newbie 1779 | Spring | Endgame

[mhsmith0]

[PenguinPower]

Vote Count 1.07

mastina

(3): mhsmith0, oldwino, DogWatch

oldwino

(2): aa-dono, mastina

-Grey-

(1): RadiantCowbells

aa-dono

(1): -Grey-

Not Voting

: JustDanceWorld, Ulti
With 9 alive, it's 5 to lynch.

Deadline

: (expired on 2017-03-15 06:05:00)

[mhsmith0]

modkilling mhsmith0

mhsmith0 was a jester

[-Grey-]

Actively working to defuse the argument is towny behavior (provided it's town-town).

Not entirely true.

Scum also play mediator for towncred.

[-Grey-]

PS In case it's not obvious, that was a big wall post that I broke up into more manageable pieces

My phone loves you for it.

[mhsmith0]

Not entirely true.
Scum also play mediator for towncred.

Sure, but basically any towny behavior can be imitated by scum for towncred. In general, in a town-town fight, scum don't want that fight to go away since it can smother the thread and distract the town. So breaking up a fight, if it turns out to be town-town, is worth some towncred even if it MIGHT be a scum just doing it for towncred.

[-Grey-]

Slightly towny response. I can see why he might be voting AA instead of OW here as a reaction, though in a world where OW is scum and AA isn't, I might be a bit suspicious of his making the wrong choice when OW was ALSO a valid reaction vote (generally speaking, I'd think that AA's interference here would only look off if OW flipped scum).

OW is already responding openly to questions without additional pressure.

AA is just being... difficult.

[oldwino]

If I'm leaning scum on you, it's because I think you're misrepresenting RC's posts, trying to make her look scummy when overall, I think she's leaning town.

You're not one to call me out for misrepresenting someone when you yourself are misrepping his gender.

@ RC, sorry about misrepresenting your gender. Thanks to grey for calling me on that.

[oldwino]

After some thought, I think you are either trying to stimulate some discussion, which you are doing with me, or as aa noted, or maybe to deflect suspicion of yourself because you are not under any pressure right now. Or, maybe, you're trying to redirect the discussion to stop the (now pointless, I think) debate between you and RC.

Which is it?

Or do you plan on building a house on that fence you're sitting on?

I might not build a house, but I may camp out on the fence for a while. Why not when I'm not sure? I'm not going to commit to a POV or opinion that is still evolving.

In this case however, I think I was clear, I mostly think you were just trying to generate some discussion, but MAYBE you had other reasons. Just maybe. But mostly think you were just stimulating some discussion.

[-Grey-]

After some thought, I think you are either trying to stimulate some discussion, which you are doing with me, or as aa noted, or maybe to deflect suspicion of yourself because you are not under any pressure right now. Or, maybe, you're trying to redirect the discussion to stop the (now pointless, I think) debate between you and RC.

Which is it?

Or do you plan on building a house on that fence you're sitting on?

I might not build a house, but I may camp out on the fence for a while. Why not when I'm not sure? I'm not going to commit to a POV or opinion that is still evolving.

In this case however, I think I was clear, I mostly think you were just trying to generate some discussion, but MAYBE you had other reasons. Just maybe. But mostly think you were just stimulating some discussion.

If I'm not under pressure, what suspicion am I deflecting off of myself?

[oldwino]

I felt suspicious about the back and forth between you and RC - you thinking he was lying when I didn't see it - I thought you were misinterpreting his posts just to disagree and attack him. I think you may have started the self-vote stream to change topics, to deflect any suspicions that interaction with RC raised. But that's NOT my primary belief about why you started the self-vote stream. I really think you're just trying to get some new and different discussion going. To breed some conflict with and among others. The most towncred actions I've seen from you.

[-Grey-]

RC and I pretty much always go back and forth with each other until we sort each other out.

[oldwino]

Have you sorted him out? Town or scum leanings? Town I think, since you changed your vote to AA?

[-Grey-]

Have you sorted him out? Town or scum leanings? Town I think, since you changed your vote to AA?

I'm not so naive as to think I can read RC on d1.

[oldwino]

@ AA - in 172 you asked me a couple of questions. I re-read them and thought they were pretty much moot by now, but I'd be glad to answer tomorrow if there's anything you are still curious about.

@ everyone - I'm off for the night. It's wine, dinner, and TV time. Will check back tomorrow.

[mastina]

If you're town you don't want to gift possible firepower to potential scum who haven't contributed yet. You want to gauge their reads and playstyle first.

Astute! But also only half the answer. Rather, about a third of it. I read players off of situations--but I don't want to bias them

regardless

of their alignment (scum OR town), and furthermore, I don't want to bias OTHER PLAYERS, even those who have already weighed in.

I do not like playing my hand early. I like to feel out the strength of other players' hands, and give them a nudge towards working with my own. This isn't so much a game of poker (where the best hand is predetermined as a winner) as it is a game of...well, uh. Well, I don't actually know of an apt card game metaphor, but it'd be a card game where every individual players' cards influence every other players' cards. I'm sure you can think of some. (Closest I can think of is Hearts, which I suppose is crude enough to work: you want to feel out who can shoot the moon and stop it, you want to feel out if you can shoot the moon and be unstoppable, you want to feel out where the queen of spades is if you don't know it, and similar factors, and you do this by biding time and carefully observing the moves your fellow players make, as what they do reveals an insight into their strategy, a common one being getting rid of a suit so they're free to dump point cards at will.*)

*I, uh. Have three siblings, so...needless to say, I'm not exactly making this up. (I consistently get second-place. The winner always changes; the second place is always me. Which I suppose is a skill in of itself.)

As for why you're scumreading me, you think my interactions with oldwino indicate some kind of "busy work" or have a LAMIST flavor. I can't think of anything else that could be the case.

The former isn't exactly accurate but is closer to what I saw.

Would you care to guess what my current read on you is, and why? You're not in the same position you were in earlier.

Was this necessary? "I would normally be mean to you, but I'll have pity on you this time" is how this comes across.

Perhaps not necessary--but a little bit of a common courtesy I'd say. I have a motherly attitude towards players I see potential in. I absolutely do not want to drive them away from the site. (Which you'd know if you read my opening post.)

A potential way to drive someone from the site is if they feel like they are being shown needless hostility. My first instinct in a reply to you would have been a heavily snarky response: not something someone new to the site would normally take kindly to, as that level of snark can be read as dejection, willingly ignoring input for no reason other than it being "beneath them". So instead, I gave you a warning; I refrained from giving the snark, but that attitude is incredibly common on-site so you'll need to get used to it eventually. mafiascum players are blunt, impolite, crude, narcissistic, arrogant, stubborn wisecrackers who have an incredible fondness for sarcasm. These common tendencies are why we have that infamy for being elitist.

Actually, I DID read your answer post (I even visited your blog), but I will admit I had skimmed the first post and missed the part where you actually wanted us to answer them ourselves.

You've shown a higher aptitude for having read the two posts--but I still have a feeling like you're not actually answering my call, so I'm going to be a bit more direct with my hint:

I'm telling you to read my opening two posts with a critical eye. While they were typed before I had received an alignment, they are not null. That might seem like an impossibility to you--how can a post typed before I received an alignment possibly be an indicator of my alignment? But that's why I'm asking you to view my posts and really, really

think

about them. There's not a contradiction between my statements of it being alignment-indicative and being typed before I got an alignment. Both halves are relevant to the game, containing an answer you're seeking in my posting.

6. Expecting from this game: Really just wanted a casual game to practice in and be able to ask questions and be honest about my mistakes without necessarily being lynched right away for them.

Fair warning: mafiascum's not a casual site, not even in newbies. We do have casual games in the form of marathons (quick games with 5-15 minute deadlines), but due to them being a load on bandwidth + being a bit of a site tradition like an on-site holiday of sorts, we only host them a couple times a year on average.

However, obviously this is the best queue for the rest.

7. Expecting from the site: I'd like to find games that are more along the lines of what I'm used to.

We currently don't have fast-paced games outside of marathons (the Blitz queue was run as an experiment and people decided not to continue it), but power role focus/quirky gimmicks are the hallmarks of theme games--the place where you're most likely to find short-day mechanics and yet also the inverse of long-day mechanics, and posting rates tend to be insanely high. However, drawback: while mafiascum is notorious for daytime squabbling (you won't find a queue where that's so much as limited), theme games have it worst of all.

[mastina]

she claims her scum read of you had nothing to do with your interaction with the Grey vs Radiant thing.

I don't recall saying that. I have stated that assumptions made were incorrect; I do believe I have refrained from stating what my reasons

weren't

just as much as I have from stating what my reasons are.

My best guess is that she's reading something out of post #21. She thinks you're trying too hard to make the vote look random, thereby disguising any OMGUS'ing.

Oh, this is actually rather good! Not

quite

accurate, but really, really close.

[mastina]

I'm usually reprimanded when I FOS or vote based on my hunches. If I don't give an original, groundbreaking, graduate-level thesis on my suspicions, it seems the players on this site immediately view me as sheepy or scummy or whatever else.

Okay I wasn't going to do this but I suppose I need to.
Trust your gut.
No seriously.
Trust it.

And make it honest you are doing so--don't lie, and also, don't hide it.
I've talked about this subject in detail before, and I think my past words would say it better than my current words can. But until I pull those notes up, I'll do my best.

When you have a hunch, feel it out. Try to figure out the basis of your hunch--is your hunch based off of emotions? Probably not the best of hunches if so. Is your hunch based off of a predefined notion of something which

must

be in place? That is, you have made up your mind about something and the hunch happens to back it up? Probably need to second-guess the validity of the hunch. Is your hunch based off of paranoia? Is your hunch based off of desire? That is,

wanting

something to be true? Well both paranoia and desire are forms of emotions so tread carefully.

If your hunch falls into none of the above categories...then it is probably right. It is probably accurate. The subconscious mind has a MUCH higher aptitude for figuring out when something is "wrong", when something is "not right", or on occasions, when something just

fits

as being right. This, because the subconscious is thinking on a conceptual level and the conceptual level is "pure". But it is possible for the conscious mind to confuse something as being from the subconscious which isn't actually from the subconscious, namely, emotions.

Basically, your gut can be more accurate than any logic in the world, as long as you are able to tell a feeling from an emotion. A feeling is probably true; an emotion is probably not true. Now as to how to convince people to follow your gut? Surprisingly easy, you just have to work with them and say, "this is how I feel, and this is why I feel that way, I saw these things here which made me feel this way", and while that might not be a hard 'case', it works well enough for most to get by.

When the attack is questioned and I don't have a satisfying answer, it kills my credibility.

The greatest enemy of a player is fear.
I mean, the greatest ally of a player is also fear (fearing they're wrong instills a consistent need to reanalyze), but fear loses games consistently as either alignment. Fear of being wrong when you weren't (you need to analyze if you're right, yes, but you shouldn't be afraid to stick to your guns and go, "I actually think I AM right!"), fear of others not believing you, and as scum, fear of things going wrong with the nightkill you want to make. Fear hurts you a lot in games, so I generally recommend discarding it as early as possible. Be confident, in all aspects of your play: in yourself to be right, in yourself to lead, in yourself to be a player.

Yet you seem to be championing the whole concept here and that's interesting.

Gut players have always been welcome on mafiascum. They used to be in the vast minority, and the evolution of gut play is something very notable (I've tried to pioneer new levels of it, in fact), but it's never been frowned upon to have a hunch, and is often encouraged. (Now, acting on a hunch in a way which is absolutely stupid because it contradicts all logic, not so much; there's a limit to this past a certain point. But this limit is pretty intuitive to find, once you have a few games of experience.)

[mastina]

Followthrough tangent: My play here is an example of having hunches, of using my gut and my instinct. Now, I've reached a point in my career where I've hybridized logic and gut: I can actually explain to a player, "this post makes me feel this way, and I think this is why". I have hinted at, and in some cases, flat-out given, the tools for other players to already interpret these, though at this time, I have failed to provide actual backing behind them, other than indicating that they exist. But when I feel like explaining outright, you'll get a much better idea of what I mean, where hunch meets reason.

[-Grey-]

Our own resident MSocrates, ladies and gentlemen!

[mastina]

3. Usually I would try to find contradictions, but I recently realized that the ones who made more mistakes are usually town while a good scum would tell 90% the truth (said someone else) so I'm hoping to try some other ways.

Good insight!

Unfortunately, I can't give you an answer here, because there's none to give. This is beyond the capacity of me as a teacher to give you--because this is something each and every individual player needs to learn on their own. Their own unique style and method is their own development. What works for one person won't work for another. For instance, while I work heavily with my gut, that might not prove to be a reliable tool for you.

There's no strategy which will always work. But what I encourage is a "higher level" of thinking: not so much, what was said...but WHY it was said. What was the motivation driving the player to say what they said? What were they thinking when they said it? What is it that a player is hoping to accomplish? Look at the intentions behind what they are doing. These become easier to spot over time--for instance, by D3 you will have before you scummy actions from each player and townie actions from each player. (Heck you could have them even on D1!) Your job is to develop a method to sort through them, sift through them, and figure out which patterns are most likely to be scum, and which patterns are most likely to be town.

These patterns tend to change from game to game. A pattern which in one game indicates town may indicate scum in the next game you play in, so I tend to ask, "what pattern makes the most sense for scum IN THIS GAME?". Experiment a little bit and try to figure out stuff. One thing which might help your style is asking a lot of questions--as scum, questions are a great way to make it look like you're doing more than you are. As town, what you need to do is to actually try and make something productive with the questions. Follow through with your questions, to see what the logical extension of them is, and form conclusions off of them.

These questions might be to yourself, or might be asked to other players. (Or in themes, even to the mod!) But I

think

(it's hard to take a more precise guess) that asking questions would be a good start to figuring out what style works best for you. Contradiction-type players have a tendency to be good at adapting via questions. (Homework if you're interested: read games with the hydra account Reasonably Rational in them. The players in that account tend to be QUITE good at this asking-questions thing.)

That's about the best advice I can give you at this time; we'll have to see how the game plays out before I can give you any further pointers.

[mastina]

VOTE: oldwino
lel I feel like this name is mocking me.

Scum?

How did those sentences sound scummy to you?

What aa-dono said wasn't exactly condemning.

Wasn't exactly condemning = town stuff?

While I won't answer for the others, for you--when it came to your opener, more or less, yes. Your vote was a pretty standard RVS. What made me ping on it?

The 'lel' before the rest of the sentence. (No, seriously!) Without that, yours would've been by far the strongest townread in the RVS, but with it, your RVS vote went from "a random vote which would almost assuredly be town" to "something which

could

be scum" (because the entire tone of the post was shifted by that one word), thus, "Scum?": not exactly condemning, now, is it? Thus your much higher position on my readslist.

[mastina]

So, it's my second game, anywhere, ever, and in my first game a newbie asked about self-voting and was told that that's very scummy, almost 100% scummy, because it can't do town any good at all.

Disclaimer: I heavily discourage self-voting for any reason whatsoever. As in, HEAVILY discourage it. Very heavily discourage it, outside of extreme circumstances.

...However, it is not without its uses, in special circumstances. Even outside of those special circumstances, if you are not the player MAKING the self-vote, you must read the player who has made the self-vote. It is scummy, sure--but is it actually scum? That's the critical million-dollar question to ask, vital to any game. Often, the answer is no.

How is self-voting supposed to stimulate discussion and especially scum hunting?

You'd be surprised. It can do quite a bit of good if you have a clear idea of what, exactly, you are aiming to accomplish. For instance: your reaction to this is a pretty good reason to justify having made the move.

[mastina]

I still think Mastina is the most scummy right now because of her weak reasons for reading me as scum.

They can't be weak if they currently don't exist!

By which, I mean, I am fairly positive I have refrained from giving my reasons--of course I have hinted at them, but rather explicitly I have held back from posting them.

[mastina]

However, I think Mastina's scum read on me, only because I commented on the back and forth, maybe some bad blood between rc and grey, is weak.

It's funny that you think that's the basis of my scumread on you--it's not.

I mean, you could always just explain it in a clearer manner than you've chosen to do.

I could, yes--I have chosen not to.