Newbie 1817 - Bolo (Game Over)

[Gorny]

I was up late last night and about the time that GreyIce came online, was working on my own reads list, so i might as well post it also:

My reads and thoughts so far (early stage)

MotherGothel28:

Seems kind of new town.
At the moment she's only responding to questions and slightly
following discussion, agreeing with some points. She's not (yet)
offering up any thoughts of her own on an independent basis.

She seemed to agree with my 19 which was a light hearted joke
about who is scum teams based on the first letters of people's
name. Though she may have agreed with it because it leaves her
off the scum team, seems convenient is she's scum?

Random vote of Aster in 33 - this doesn't really mean much.
Her 27 is NAI in my opinion.
Her 69 seems to think adlim is town. Hmmm...

The rest of her posts up to 83 don't add much game related.
Though in her 77 she seems to have taken a liking to me. Not
sure how to take this.


***Im null here. Not sure if she's town, or scum. based off her agreeing with my 19 but who knows. ***

Xa ligha:

Null read. Not enough to go on this early.
^The above was typed before the chill out comment this
afternoon/ But I'm still staying with null.


FancyPants:

Leaning town. with the few posts I looked at in his ISO, I'm
getting a town vibe from him. Noting 25 and 42.
Null leaning town read.


adlim29h:

Not sure if he's honestly new or faking it, but since this is
his first game here, I have to give him the benefit of a doubt.
If he's scum.....well played...well played.

Going with a null read, slightly town but more null.


Aster:
The Paranoid Townie.
Noting the Aster vs. Fancypants interaction, the OMGUS comment
in 11 how he "would love" to OMGUS (I think?) FancyPants, then
he flip votes to FrozenMagpie. Also noting his 17 where he has
it out for FancyPants before the Aster vs. FancyPants line. Then

there's his 22 where he scum leans me. His 30 is his push on
FancyPants. Then his 61 diretcted at adlim.
Seems this guy really is paraniod and is all over the place. I
can't yet get a read on him really.

He "seems" town but Eh...is he?

Aster is null, possible scum. Maybe not screaming scum but
possible scum. Though, I have no experience with Aster, while I
have a slight scum ping for the Aster v. Fancypants thing, not
sue if Aster is scum so I'm going with null with a side of town
lean.

Frozen Magpie:

Initially (up to post 49) null. With 53 he pokes a bit at
FancyPants 50.

Another null but slight town read.

Draynth:

Null read, only 4 posts so far. Nothing stands out.

So far my reads from top (more town) to bottom (more scum) are:


GreyIce:
Null so far, he just showed up and hasn't gotten any content
yet. (This was as of last last night and does not count his posts today aside of the IC content)


FancyPants (Leaning Town)
Aster (Null/town)
Xa ligha (Null)
adlim (Null)
Draynth (Null - like dead center null even)
GreyIce (Null)
FrozenMagpie (Null/possible scum lean)
MotherGothel28 (Null/possible scum lean)

[GreyICE]

Now this is an interesting use of motivational thinking. What motive would scum-me have to overlook her opening post? Surely it changes very little about what I would need to right. On the other hand, let us consider her reaction. She said "Alright, now we are getting into the meat of the game!" And this confirms to me 100% that she's scum.

Consider what I said about motivations. Scum want to avoid the lynch. The game doesn't begin for them until someone threatens to lynch them (or their buddy). Everything up until that point is not the important to them. The game doesn't start until votes move to them. And this matches a very common scum pattern. Scum often react to early votes and cases as if they are personal attacks, and begin debating. It's called "Oh my god! You suck!" (OMGUS) after a scum poster who literally posted those five words followed by a vote for the person who had just voted them. While the term can be misused - a vote might prompt a re-evaluation of a poster, and two feuding posters might both decide to vote each other at similar times - in this case she's played it to the letter.

[MotherGothel28]

Except I had nothing to go off of with you GreyICE until you posted your reads list and one other game related posts. Please actually tell me why you seemed to have no idea who I was voting even though you were playing so much attention to my play.

And this is what I feared, the self proclaimed experienced player is now trying to use teaching newbies about the game to influence their decision making. You're using unrelated general facts to try to twist my words and that is absolutely a scum tactic.

I am now more comfortable with my vote than ever.

Also, "getting into the meat of the game" meant that people were finally posting game related thoughts, not just general fluff that I didn't have much to say about.

[MotherGothel28]

Now this is an interesting use of motivational thinking. What motive would scum-me have to overlook her opening post? Surely it changes very little about what I would need to right. On the other hand, let us consider her reaction. She said "Alright, now we are getting into the meat of the game!" And this confirms to me 100% that she's scum.

Consider what I said about motivations. Scum want to avoid the lynch. The game doesn't begin for them until someone threatens to lynch them (or their buddy). Everything up until that point is not the important to them. The game doesn't start until votes move to them. And this matches a very common scum pattern. Scum often react to early votes and cases as if they are personal attacks, and begin debating. It's called "Oh my god! You suck!" (OMGUS) after a scum poster who literally posted those five words followed by a vote for the person who had just voted them. While the term can be misused - a vote might prompt a re-evaluation of a poster, and two feuding posters might both decide to vote each other at similar times - in this case she's played it to the letter.

Also, thinking on this more, I disagree with your gameplay analysis here. It's stated in a way that makes it easy to accept, but I'm finding it hard to swallow. The game doesn't begin for mafia when someone votes them, in fact they thrive in a game where no heat is on them, so they can point fingers where they wish. The point of the game is for mafia to avoid attention whenever possible, not for them to react strongly to early votes, thus their gameplay would really start long before anyone placed a vote on them, setting the stage for their innocence. This is why I dislike people who come in as teachers, you say things like they are 100% fact and people could start to believe you.

[Xa ligha]

She said "Alright, now we are getting into the meat of the game!" And this confirms to me 100% that she's scum.

This really bugs me that they choose this sentence to be ICE's proof that she is 100% scum, MotherGothel had been joking around about McGuyver before this post so it feels like a legitimate now the game is getting serious. Yes we've had some serious posts but the overall feel of the game still seemed light hearted. How do other people feel about this?

[Aster]

First, a big thanks to MotherGothel28 for giving us some leads. I don't like the leads, but I at least appreciate you're attempting to give us some.

As for the leads you gave us, several of them are so obviously pointless that I don't even need to reply (bad humour correlates with being mafia? seriously?), but let me point out some of the biggest/most hilarious misses.

---

Even more so, it is suspicious when something as obvious as a vote is missed, as my vote is already on Aster. Would you have wanted me to re-vote for them? That doesn't make any sense, and is a very weak situation with a huge hole in it to base a vote on. That reads to me as someone who isn't paying attention to the game, which is unlikely for town trying to make a full reads list as you just managed to. Scum however are much more likely to skim the thread looking for anything they can make a false case against.

With this point, you're just twisting words. Your vote on me was made during the RVS stage; it seems very likely that one would perceive it as meaningless and forget about it; in fact, even I had already forgotten myself that you were voting me until you reminded me with this post.

More essentially, GreyICE's core point still stands: you did not make any attempt to use your newfound "scumtell" to try to lynch me. Nothing in your post gave any kind of feeling that you were now more convinced that I'm scum / that you were encouraging others to vote me / that your previous joke vote became serious. That is what GreyICE is accusing you of.

---

You sure are jumping around a lot. Its beginning to feel like you're throwing accusations at everything you can find and seeing if they stick,

Aside from the purported being true, did you actually manage to write this without even hearing the sheer irony?

(Hint: your comments about my bad sense of humour implying that I'm scum, do just about out-jump anything I've ever said in this thread.)

Adilm didn't say "I vote FancyPants because it clearly says Goon under his name!" He did make a vote without a reason, which is sus on it's own, but instead you use his newbie question to form a case? Feels slimy to me.

Please let me remind you that adilm29h himself already admitted that his vote was (in part) motivated by Gorny having the title "Goon".

(What did you mention again about those who "skim the thread"?)

I get the feeling you're over-defensive of adilm, who I still suspect of being scum. Let me say a bit more about why adilm is still suspicious:

• It's curious how he voted FancyPants "partially" because he was titled "Goon" (indicating that he saw those titles as reliable) while knowing Gorny was "Goon" as well, yet he completely ignored Gorny.
• His other reason for voting FancyPants was because FancyPants was trying to lynch the most-speaking players, amongst which Gorny, who he also knew to be a Goon.

The above gives the impression that his reason for voting FP along with what he claimed to have known when he did so, were all made up after the fact when he tried to patch together his past actions.

Adilm definitely is not off my radar yet. Call it "slimy" if you want. This isn't court where evidence being slimy means it has to be ignored.

---

Tl;dr:

MotherGothel28 is using bad arguments. I suspect a MotherGothel28 / adilm29h mafia combo.

[GreyICE]

I missed your RVS vote because I discounted the value of it. I didn't find it particularly alignment indicative, and it didn't register as important information.

But in your rush to score a point you've missed a very important facet of appearing town - appearing to have town motives. In this case, scum hunting. You seem to have latched on to the fact that I am wrong about something, and you are correct - but how does that reflect on my alignment? What is my supposed scum motivation for not realizing your RVS vote was on Aster? How did the fact that I overlooked that allow you to determine my alignment?

Spoiler: IC stuff

Mafia is often seen as a "debate" game, but it's very much not anything of the sort. Role PMs are determined randomly, and the strength or weakness of someone's debating skills does not determine their role PM. In general "debating" is a tactic that can serve to alienate the rest of the town from the debate and establish the debater's reputation as a "tough target" but it is generally weak at determining any flavor of truth. It can be used as a rhetorical tactic to gather votes for lynches, or to defend yourself as scum, but as a truth-divining measure it's pretty weak. In general, debate rarely accomplishes anything. Try to avoid getting sucked into one.

As for my explanations, I admit that I am in a Catch-22. I explain how I play mafia, and I am also playing mafia, so my play matches my explanations. I do encourage others to think for themselves here - but I am also encouraging others to vote with me. It's a weird line I've seen other ICs walk, and now I get to try for the first time. So MotherGothel is 100% right - I am trying to use my experience to influence you to vote for her, but I am doing so because my experience leads me to believe she is scum.

[Aster]

She said "Alright, now we are getting into the meat of the game!" And this confirms to me 100% that she's scum.

This really bugs me that they choose this sentence to be ICE's proof that she is 100% scum, MotherGothel had been joking around about McGuyver before this post so it feels like a legitimate now the game is getting serious. Yes we've had some serious posts but the overall feel of the game still seemed light hearted. How do other people feel about this?

While I am definitely suspicious of MotherGothel28, I do think that GreyICE is over-hasty with the arguments he used. There is a clear reason why MG28 would say "Alright, now we are getting into the meat of the game!" and it's not because she's mafia. Moreover, while MG28 is pulling a clear OMGUS, I am not so sure that that's something only scum would do.

I am, however, still suspicious of her.

[GreyICE]

Aster - I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the rest of what I wrote. I admit that here on page 5 I am hardly guaranteed of perfection. Adilm did a pretty derpy thing, but I'm not 100% it comes from scum (although it's certainly scummy). What do you think of Gorny? I really want to slot him as town, and keep finding myself utterly unable to.

[Xa ligha]

Aster - I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the rest of what I wrote. I admit that here on page 5 I am hardly guaranteed of perfection. Adilm did a pretty derpy thing, but I'm not 100% it comes from scum (although it's certainly scummy). What do you think of Gorny? I really want to slot him as town, and keep finding myself utterly unable to.

Does this mean you consider him null for now or is there something that makes you think he is scummy?

[Aster]

Looking more into Gorny, I noticed something. At first, I was a bit suspicious of Gorny because of his buddying with MotherGothel along with him being self-conscious about it ("if MG gets lynched I'll be suspected next"), so I considered MG/Gorny to be an alternative mafia combination pair should MG/adilm be incorrect.

However, it seems like MotherGothel is buddying with just about everyone. So far she's buddied with adilm, Gorny and FancyPants. Not in a "were mafia buddies" way, but in a "hey, I, MotherGothel, am friendly. Let's fight together against those bullies like Aster and GreyICE" way. It also correlates with her trying to take the "moral high ground."

Sure, it may just be one of her personality traits, but it seems like she's spending a significant part of this game to make friends rather than to hunt scum. For example, you may wonder why she had to be so lofty about FancyPants in this post, but it makes perfect sense: speaking well about FancyPants makes him like you more, which makes him an excellent ally in the fight against that mean Aster, whom FancyPants doesn't like.

I get the impression that MotherGothel is trying to recruit her own little army of friends to squash a minority of not-friends.

If that scenario is true, then it may actually be that, if MotherGothel is indeed scum, then FancyPants and Gorny are actually town: if they were mafia, MotherGothel wouldn't have to try to buddy with them open in the thread.

[Aster]

As for some of my remaining opinions on what GreyICE said:

What is my supposed scum motivation for not realizing your RVS vote was on Aster? How did the fact that I overlooked that allow you to determine my alignment?

I need to remind you that MotherGothel already explained this question—a stupid explanation, but alas, an explanation. She's saying that mafiae are more likely to accidentally miss things than townies.

Even more so, it is suspicious when something as obvious as a vote is missed, as my vote is already on Aster. Would you have wanted me to re-vote for them? That doesn't make any sense, and is a very weak situation with a

huge

hole in it to base a vote on. That reads to me as someone who isn't paying attention to the game,

which is unlikely for town trying to make a full reads list as you just managed to. Scum however are much more likely to skim the thread looking for anything they can make a false case against.

My plan tonight was to go back and reread the thread, but you just rushed yourself to the top of my scum list.

---

I've stated my opion on several players already, here are some more:

• FrozenMagpie: she looks completely neutral. Can't tell whether she's town or mafia, but she does a good job of just blending in.
• Draynth: he seems like a lurker, which is kinda worse than a null-tell. I am not familar enough with the mafiascum meta to know how bad lurkers are.
• Xa ligha: asks a lot, says little. Short of his criticism of GreyICE condemning MotherGothel based on that one sentence, everything Xa Ligha has done could be seen as active lurking.

---

As a general reminder to everyone on GreyICE: remember that many facts are true, and many of those are "in general" statements. GreyICE does not lie about facts in his position of IC (that's one of the IC rules), but he does have the power to choose what facts he will summon. For example, take his following post

Consider what I said about motivations. Scum want to avoid the lynch. The game doesn't begin for them until someone threatens to lynch them (or their buddy). Everything up until that point is not the important to them. The game doesn't start until votes move to them.

And this matches a very common scum pattern.

Scum often react to early votes and cases as if they are personal attacks, and begin debating. It's called "Oh my god! You suck!" (OMGUS) after a scum poster who literally posted those five words followed by a vote for the person who had just voted them. While the term can be misused - a vote might prompt a re-evaluation of a poster, and two feuding posters might both decide to vote each other at similar times - in this case she's played it to the letter.

The pattern he mentions is "very common". That may be true, but that doesn't mean that the pattern is happening right now: GreyICE may be scum himself and know that a townie just committed a very common scum pattern, and therefore summon the fact. If his buddy had just committed the very common scum pattern, then he would have just shut up about it.

The power to choose which facts you summon is a very powerful one; one can use it to "lie" with statements that are true. Please keep this in mind.

[FancyPants]

Back at work - time to get paid to play mafia.

[FancyPants]

I'm inclined to think adlim's "role under our name" comment as town, it could be a nefarious scum post but it's pretty ballsy if that's the case.

Aster I still have the same opinion of, they strike me as the kind of eager town who uses point by point analysis and confirmation bias to confirm suspicions. Paranoid town behaviour is exactly how I would describe it, I'm a little concerned about how much GreyIce gushed about their play, makes me think it might be a buddying attempt but niceness isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I kinda like Mothergothel's OMGUS of GreyIce, I'd generally consider OMGUS to be more town behaviour coming from Newbs based on "The people attacking me must be scum since I know I'm town" kind of logic. Rather than a "Whelp there are people attacking me and I'm scum, they must be on to me." kind of response which I don't feel we got.

Aster:
The Paranoid Townie.
Noting the Aster vs. Fancypants interaction, the OMGUS comment
in 11 how he "would love" to OMGUS (I think?) FancyPants, then
he flip votes to FrozenMagpie. Also noting his 17 where he has
it out for FancyPants before the Aster vs. FancyPants line. Then

there's his 22 where he scum leans me. His 30 is his push on
FancyPants. Then his 61 diretcted at adlim.
Seems this guy really is paraniod and is all over the place. I
can't yet get a read on him really.

He "seems" town but Eh...is he?

Aster is null, possible scum. Maybe not screaming scum but
possible scum. Though, I have no experience with Aster, while I
have a slight scum ping for the Aster v. Fancypants thing, not
sue if Aster is scum so I'm going with null with a side of town
lean.

@Gorny, in the below post you headline Aster with the "paranoid town" tag, but then come to the conclusion of null to possible scum, how do you reconcile this?

Early scum subset would be scum in {Gorny/GreyIce/lurkers and non-contributors}

[FancyPants]

Oh and Greyice, said I might be an alt, I'm not I'm just someone who's interest in mafia waxes and waynes over the years, but you can operate under whatever assumption you like. I've played a lot of mafia off site and with friends over facebook/other chat applications.

[FancyPants]

Can everyone who hasn't provided scum reads do so please?

[Gorny]

@FancyPants, you seem to have conveniently forgotten about Aster being paranoid, he said it himself, and it was in a post directed at you. Here, let me refresh your memory:

@FancyPants: I, Aster, the highly paranoid and absolutely insufferable townie, demand an explanation as to why you just voted Gorny.

[FancyPants]

@FancyPants, you seem to have conveniently forgotten about Aster being paranoid, he said it himself, and it was in a post directed at you. Here, let me refresh your memory:

@FancyPants: I, Aster, the highly paranoid and absolutely insufferable townie, demand an explanation as to why you just voted Gorny.

I haven't, I was referring to you calling him/her a paranoid townie, and then finishing your synopsis by saying he was null or scum-leaning.

[FancyPants]

Townie being the operative word.

[FancyPants]

Are you all American, or do you just have good work ethic?

[Gorny]

Are you all American, or do you just have good work ethic?

What is that supposed to mean?

BTW I am American, and at work on a beak.

I won't be contributing much until late tonight, around 12 hours from the timestamp of this post.

[FancyPants]

Are you all American, or do you just have good work ethic?

What is that supposed to mean?

BTW I am American, and at work on a beak.

I won't be contributing much until late tonight, around 12 hours from the timestamp of this post.

Meaning I'm GMT +2 and my activity hours tend to clash with Americans.

[Gorny]

Are you all American, or do you just have good work ethic?

What is that supposed to mean?

BTW I am American, and at work on a beak.

I won't be contributing much until late tonight, around 12 hours from the timestamp of this post.

Meaning I'm GMT +2 and my activity hours tend to clash with Americans.

I'm GMT -5.

[Draynth]

Hopefully people are just busy on the weekend, what are your thoughts since you're about?

Uh, I'm not really thinking much. You and Aster have a small thing going but I don't feel like it's really indicative of anything. You could both be town or you could both be scum or you could be 1town and 1scum.

If what you said earlier had been worded differently, there might not even have been a debate at all.

This is applicable to anything, but I also think you're missing the point.
The 'small thing' happened

because

of the way it was worded, which is important.

Spoiler: Aster's thoughts on the adilm question

I also have a question, on why it says peoples roles underneath their name?
Is this a bug?

I am highly sceptical of this post. There are two possible situations:

1. He genuinely didn't know those "roles" were meaningless;
2. He did know those roles were meaningless and pretended he didn't.

In the second case, I'd definitely call scum upon this post. Whenever a human is guilty of something, it is their instinct to ask questions about things they already know to make it appear as if they don't have a clue about the situation. I'd call this a very strong scumtell, significantly beyond just "trying too hard to appear town."

However, we also have the first case to consider. Could it be true he was genuinely unaware about the function of those "roles"? Let us assume that this case is true, then there are some odd things about his post:

(Note: keep in mind that, according to his post in the sign-up thread, he has card-game mafia experience but no experience on this forum.)

• There is a "coincidence" that he voted FancyPants who is titled "goon" because he thinks FancyPants is scared of Gorny who is called "goon" as well;
• He didn't point out that FancyPants was marked as goon—is it because he didn't notice it at that time, or because of some other reason?
• Given that he has card-game mafia experience, he must know that having everyone's roles public is an absolute no-go. His reaction of "Why are ... is it a bug?" seems a bit passive for such a massive screw-up.
• Arbitrary titles under people's names are a common feature on many forums. If he has been on other (non-mafia) forums before, there are good chances he could guess what those titles represented.

Alright, none of the above is conclusive enough to show that he really knew that the titles were meaningless, but I wouldn't just blindly assume his "I really didn't know what those titles meant!" to be true.

Moreover, even if he really didn't know what the titles meant, that does not in any way prevent him from being scum and asking. Note that he asked "why our roles are under our names" and he didn't ask "what those titles meant". His way of asking suggests me that he was intentionally trying to slip a "hey I'm town" into his question.

Tl;dr:

I suspect adilm29h posted the above-quoted post with the intention to tell us "Hey I'm Town!" more than that he really wanted an answer to his question.

UNVOTE: FrozenMagpie
VOTE: adilm29h

I was about to suggest that if adilm were scum then he could've asked this in the pregame mafia PT, but I realised I dunno if their PT was open during pregame.

@Mod

May I ask if the mafia pair's PT was open during pregame, ie. the period between role PM's going out and the game officially beginning?

I also have a question, on why it says peoples roles underneath their name?
Is this a bug?

Is this the most adorable town tell ever or fiendishly clever .

@Gorny, early thoughts?

Why did you specifically ask gorny for thoughts? Also why did you vote Gorny in 25?

[adilm29h]

My Read is that, I retract My vote from Fancy Pants for he seems very relaxed about being mafia, unless that is his technique.
I am not sure about Gorny, as he seems to try and find a blame onto someone.
Its hard to tell whether Grey Ice is scum or town, because they have a prominent voice which seems pretty convincing.
So far on My list are Aster and Mother.
I feel in the recent posts, motherGospel had very scum like readings, feeling way too defensive when being accused by GreyIce.
I feel Aster because he is quick to put the blame on someone else and divert their attention, on a simple question I asked.
As this being my first game, I barely know tactics to tackling this game.
i feel those are my two strong reads.