Newbie 917 - Game over.

[Mustilicor]

I say we lynch the fellow trying to use poor newbies as a scapegoat for this whole mess, when clearly he's orchestrated this whole thing in a bid to take over this subforum.

Vote: Zorblag

(I get the

strangest feeling

that won't actually work..)

[Mustilicor]

It's true. Of course, there's very little to actually have a debate about. Except..

Vote: thatguy00

I'd add Antifinity in there too, if I could. While others have been quite silly with the reasoning for their votes so far (which I gather is normal in this stage of the game), you two are the only ones who've posted entirely contentless votes. So what's up with that, guys?

[Mustilicor]

Oh, and it'd be really useful if at least one of you would get an icon. I know I can't be the only one that has a tendency to recognize posters that way.

[Mustilicor]

Whoa, wait, I didn't think I was part of a dogpile. *rereads topic*

That's.. that's not right. SAMP! is voting for Exilon at the moment. Right? Or am I reading the breakdown wrong?

Good catch there. I'll fix the vote count. Sorry for any confusion.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Mustilicor]

When do you believe the RVS (Random Voting Stage) ends?

This is my first real game, so I'm not sure how much water my feelings hold on the matter, but I'm not sure there's a set point at all. Entirely random voting after other people have begun to post reasons for their votes appears at least a little suspicious, but eh. It's a game. I'm not sure I have anything at all against playful voting even after things are moving along (so long as said playful votes are careful not to cause a lynch).

I can see where a newbie ... might notice something like that. But it's not really a scum tell.

To be honest, yeah, I know. I just also know that getting a person defensive is occasionally a good way to wake them up.

unvote

for now, but c'mon guys, I'm sure you have more to offer than that.

[Mustilicor]

As for real lurking, if it becomes an issue, are you folks part of the lynch all lurkers crowd? I mean no, it's not always a tell, but at the same time I don't know if it's a good idea to allow lurking to be a safe strategy. You know?

For town or scum, for that matter. This is a game at the heart of the matter, and a game is more fun when people are participating.

[Mustilicor]

More often than not I’ve seen the town play a “lynch all lurkers” rule and end up mislynching more than catching scum. So in my experience at least, Scum are the ones who push for lurker lynches because it’s easier to cast suspicion on a target who won’t fight back.

Erk, really? Uh. Hm. I guess that sort of makes sense. I've even seen it suggested that newbies find mafia roles more interesting and are thus less likely to lurk in them. ...Which is usually vehemently fought by the insistence that if lurking is allowed to be safe, scum will be encouraged to lurk and thus given a free pass... but I don't think I've ever double checked to see if the people saying that were scum. (I guess it's not the sort of game that's easy to learn by just watching other people play, is it? Not when you can't know who's genuinely scumhunting and who isn't.)

Okay, so.. what do you personally think is a good basis for choosing the first day's vote? (Echoing this question to other people who've played before, too, since I can't even know if any advice given is genuine.) Is it really doomed to be random unless someone slips up entirely?


(Tell me if I get a little too spammy, guys. I think I'm spoiled by forums that move a lot faster.)

[Mustilicor]

I like your stance on the lurker issue, SAMP!. Exactly the balance I was looking for in my head and couldn't seem to find.

You should already have your logic and intentions mapped out as to why you moved from Exilon to Mysti. This seems more like fishing for Mysti to give you your case instead of actually having your own logic to it. Which is both ironic and weak in its usage.

This bothers me a little. I don't know if the intent is to be obstructive, but I feel like the effect might be regardless. When you pick apart the reasoning behind a question

before the target of said question responds to it

, you're offering a nice easy out to let them offer a non-answer, as well as cautioning them to think twice before responding.

Civil Scum did it to me, too, but I don't think my clumsy 'hai guise y rnt u posting' had as much potential to fish out tells.

(...err, thanks for trying to help me with the WIFOM issue I was having, though.)

[Mustilicor]

Quintastic:

I'm not disagreeing that the likelihood of something useful out of that question is quite low. As such, I think it's perfectly valid to challenge the purpose behind a question

after it has been answered by its target

. After. If MMM were to have built SAMP!'s case for him, as you say was SAMP!'s intention, there is a minute possibility he have mentioned things none had considered as possibly suspicious before. Liars (especially on a medium like this) are very often more aware of when they've slipped up than the people they're lying to, and as such they have a tendency to think their mistakes look very obvious when they are not.

By making the question a non-issue, you eliminate that small possibility.

....

That said, I'm going to echo your concerns with the question because of SAMP!'s failure to claim a pressuring tactic once challenged. Half-heartedly, though. Admitting to pressuring seems like it would sort of kill his ability to empty-pressure from then on out.


On unvoting:

I didn't read it as a mass unvote at all, and in fact only removed my vote because I'd admitted to its purpose.

Vote: Super Awesome Mega Pimp!

so I'm not the only one at L3 and I'll stop feeling lonely up here.

An OMGUS? Really? It wouldn't even be effective defensive play, as DL lynches aren't prevented by a tie.




I'm really uncertain about where to place my own vote at the moment. I'm going to reread a few times before settling.

[Mustilicor]

1: What's L3?

Lynch minus three. A state where three more votes on you means a lynch.

[Mustilicor]

Got it. (I wouldn't have had a problem with a defensive play that actually made sense, by the way. It's not in even a townie's best interested to get lynched.)

I'm in the process of developing a mathematical system to settle my internal WIFOMs. There.. there is clearly something wrong with me.

[Mustilicor]

You've seen what I did with the jumping theory. xD Go ahead, you're not alone.

Haha, yes. I feel better seeing someone else scramble for an objective, number based criteria to settle a hopelessly subjective issue. It's doomed to fail sometimes, as humans are horribly unpredictable.. but hopefully by figuring out a nice, logical one, it will succeed slightly more often than simple 'intuition' (more or less random decisions on the significance of each possible tell).

Unfortunately, laying it out too plainly would render my eventual vote meaningless; math is way too easy to manipulate if you know the variables involved. I don't want to add an additional WIFOM scenario of 'are they just using this phrasing because they saw it in the system???' I'll just offer the basic idea for now: everyone starts at the same 1/9 probability of being scum, for obvious reasons. Tells are rated for their level of WIFOM - that is, how many mental reversals you have to go through to make a post make sense as scum. Since I don't have much game data to work with, unfortunately a lot of these numbers are going to be logic based rather than properly derived. This should improve in later games.

I will still be participating by addressing possible tells as I see them, I'm just not going to be entirely transparent with the numbers they're linked to. I hope that makes sense.


Still holding my vote back at the moment, because even math requires data to manipulate to come to an end result. Until thatguy00 and Antifinity participate, I'm blind to anything but their starting probability of ~11%. You're creeping up on your auto-prods, guys. Check in or you'll risk being replaced.

[Mustilicor]

Oh, but it's relevant to note that for now, MMM is rating highest. I'm just not comfortable putting him in a position where a speed lynch could occur, however unlikely, until I'm confident he's the best choice.

Quintastic, for what it's worth I don't think you were doing anything but scum hunting. I mostly wanted to get my feelings on that sort of action out early, to try and make everyone consider the benefits of waiting the next time they see a question they take issue with.

[Mustilicor]

Excuse my over-organization. This post would have been unwieldy without it.

<"Mysterious Mysterious Man vs Super Awesome Mega Pimp!" thought process>

Analysis of Mysterious Mysterious Man:

MMM did warn at the beginning that he tended to joke around. As such, I can sort of see either of these votes as coming from a simple playful townie. However, taken together, yes; it's a defensive pattern. Meta-gaming would be required to determine if this is simply a an aspect of MMM's personality or something born of the uncomfortable feeling of being forced to misrepresent his true intentions.

Breakdown:

Our three options to explain the pattern, therefore, are simple coincidence (OMGUSing twice in ways unrelated to each other), personality (to be further investigated), and defensiveness caused by playing scum.

Judgement:

The tell is null vs null vs scum. Sum of +1 scum.

Analysis of Super Awesome Mega Pimp!:

SAMP!'s voting follows a pattern of impulsiveness, quickly followed by pressuring for reaction from the votee. Even his RVS was a blatant accusation requesting an immediate response. His following votes were nearly as baseless as his RVS vote, which could indicate either an attempt at villifying others to draw attention away from himself, or an attempt to use his votes to judge others. The way he explained his removal of his vote from Exilon suggests the latter. He appears on the surface to be using a.. well, a Wiggum technique, if I may coin a term. Clumsy, and possibly ineffective, but a deliberate, consistent method of rooting out scum. Or hey - maybe he's just a spaz.

Breakdown:

Our three options are personality (which we cannot meta-game to check up on), intentional misdirection, or an attempt at pro-town play.

Judgement:

The tell is null vs scum vs town. Scum+town negates to null.

</"Mysterious Mysterious Man vs Super Awesome Mega Pimp!" thought process>

This, in long, is why I do not believe that SAMP! is the best vote at the moment when up against MMM. I can write out similar thought processes comparing MMM to others if necessary (preferably just MMM vs others for now - only the scummiest read truly matters at the moment).

----

Questions:

Andrius, Exilon, and Antifinity

: Do you actually believe your votes are currently on the individuals most likely to be scum, or are you simply retaining your RVS votes? If the answer is the second, why do you think this is preferable to your RVS vote? (If you're lurking and reading out there, thatguy00, this question is for you too, but for now I'm just assuming your vote is where it started because that's the only time you were here.)

Andrius

: What is it about SAMP that makes you say he probably isn't mafia?

Antifinity

: But.. you haven't stated your piece yet. You've acknowledge the game of mafia in general, but not this specific one. Yeah, I know, not exactly a question, but it's good to jump on in and post your thought processes rather than use your first game to hang back and analyze. It's helpful for us all. (Hell, look at me - this is my first game and I can't seem to shut up.)

[Mustilicor]

Oop, a little edit:

Andrius, Exilon, and Antifinity: ... If the answer is the second, why do you think this is preferable to your RVS vote?

should have been

Andrius, Exilon, and Antifinity: ... If the answer is the second, why do you think this is preferable to removing your RVS vote?

Fortunately that random verb dropping didn't seem to throw off Andrius, but I thought I'd clarify it for you other two.

I'm afraid to admit I don't even understand what you're saying here. :Embarassed: Could you explain it please?

Sorry about that - my wording is a little.. strange.. sometimes. What I was saying is this: I'm slightly concerned about the fact that you failed to satisfactorily explain why you were asking such a vague question. Had you claimed that you did it entirely to judge his reaction to pressure, you would have neatly confirmed my hypothesis regarding your actions and wiped away nearly any suspicion I had of you. But you did not do this. Instead, you completely dodged her request for an explanation by just saying that MMM should be able to answer it.

The fact is, though, if you are using an erratic, unpredictable pressuring tactic on purpose, admitting that you are doing so will all but ensure it doesn't work from here on out. That's why my concern is half-hearted. Immediate transparency isn't

always

the most pro-town move, in my (admittedly neophyte) opinion.

[Mustilicor]

Finally, just one note, Mustilicolor- I like your theory alot, but correct me on this - I get the feeling that your 'Judgement' ends up being a sum; however I believe it shouldn't be seen as that. After all, you're enumerating three different possibilities. Yes, you can say : "since these are the only options, we can exclude this or that". But you can't say "Since there's one possibility of town play and one of scum play, the read is null.". In the end, he played as ONE of those possibilities. He is either Town or Scum. He cannot be Null. (I believe this is not what you were going for, though - just give me your thoughts on this, I like the way you rationalized it Smile )

Right. Everyone is either town or scum, but sometimes the evidence does not strongly indicate either. I am not declaring

SAMP!

null; I am declaring the information gatherable from his voting style (the current 'read') null. I am not going to vote on who I believe IS or IS NOT scum, because such certainty is impossible. I am going to vote on the individual who has the highest probability of being scum according to the best system I can manage; this will be a percentage, not a binary measure.

(Note that the explanation is highly simplified for the sake of comprehensibility as well as the need to avoiding manipulation as stated earlier. For instance, assigning each possibility an equal value is assuming each possibility is equally probable, and I have no reason to assume this is the case. I don't; it's one of those iffy, painful things I have to base on logic rather than data. The explanation also lacks the inclusion of variables other than voting style. It was just a good, simple way to illustrate the results of a stupidly complex calculation.)

...and it's Mustilicor, by the way.


Regarding Exilon's and Adrius's explanations of keeping RVS:

Interesting. If I'd noticed the significance of vote order before unvoting myself, it's a move I might have been tempted to go for as well. It's one of those things where there's only a very, very small chance of it confering an advantage.... but why give up that small possibility before you have to?

But there does seem to be the difficulty that develops there when you try to assign "values" to different types of behaviors. 'Is the value of such and such a townie behavior equal to the scummy value of this type of behavior?' for example.

Yeeah. As I admitted above to Exilon, this is a major weakness in the demonstration given. Because I have to determine these values with little-to-no data to go on, my use of a system during this game will not be a huge improvement over less organized analysis. Only as I gain experience and tweak it over time will it become something I can really trust. For now, though, I hope the way it helps me keep everything in order will be at least a minor benefit.




...ick. Despite my attempt to remove emotion from my decision, I think I might be guilty of tunnelling a little on the top two vote holders. In retrospect, I see why that's the case. It's insanely difficult to sensibly compare individuals with dissimilar amounts of input. I'm going to revise, and if I come up with anything contradicting my current FoS on MMM, I'll let you guys know.

This whole lynch based on psychology thing just makes me feel like I'm killing people for not liking the way they act. Is there some more concrete way of figuring out who the scum is?

Well no, there's not. It wouldn't be much of a game otherwise. But if you feel like you'd be picking based on who you dislike, then yes, you're thinking about it the wrong way. Think about how you would behave if you were scum versus how you would behave if you were town, think about how others might vary in this, and apply your predictions to what you see written on this board. Why would it be 'not liking' something about a way someone is acting have anything to do with determining whether their actions seemed more likely as town or mafia?

I'd tend to hammer vote if the possibility came up, just so we can progress the game faster, would that get me portrayed as scummy?

Yes. Yes it absolutely would. It seems to be standard around here to give people a chance to roleclaim when they're at L-1, since sometimes the risk of being exposed to the mafia is less than the risk of being lynched by your own teammates. Robbing them of this chance would come across as a horribly scummy thing to do.

Lastly, can I assume everyone is at least claiming to be a vanilla townie? No one is claiming/pretending to be doctor or anything like that right off, right?

Whoa whoa whoa! Stop that! Bad Antifinity! No biscuit!

Try and think about what fishing for roles like this could possibly help. I could see how it could help the two to know the identity of a cop to know they need to trust his/her investigations, but unless there is also a doctor (a cop and a doctor is only one out of four possible set ups!) who dedicated themselves entirely to protecting this cop, the cop would be immediately nightkilled by the mafia. A doctor can't protect themselves, so if they were revealed, they, too, would suffer immediate NK.
In person, sure, it might be helpful to watch people's faces as they claim their supposed role. But it does NOT help town in this setting.


Wooo. That.. I can see how that could have just been confusion, Antifinity, but overall that was an insanely scummy post. Cripes.

[Mustilicor]

EBWOP:

"I could see how it could help the two to know the identity of a cop to know they need to trust his/her investigations"

should not have a 'the two' in there. No, I don't know what the hell.

Oh wait, yes I do! That should be 'the town'.

[Mustilicor]

The curious point for me though, is why Mustilicor didn't vote that way. Is there an advantage to not voting that I'm not seeing?

I hadn't seen anything from you or thatguy00, and didn't want to place my vote before I had. A good thing too, I guess, if you'd have been willing to bring down the hammer. You've disoriented me terribly. I don't know what to think about you at all. It's like, you come off as SO scummy, that surely if you actually were scum you wouldn't behave that way. Surely it is just a matter of not having read other games before hopping into your first one. Surely?!

I don't know at all. Serious WIFOM attack. I.. I'll try to analyze it more properly once I gather my bearings.

[Mustilicor]

It's impossible to determine who's the most likely scum mathematically. Now, if the gap between SAMP and myself was far wider, say a 10% to 90% difference, then you might have something. But a difference of 10% just isn't enough to prove much of anything.

Of course it's not enough to prove anything. I admitted the flaws myself, but it's what I've got at the moment. If I could find a 10% to 90% difference, I'd go for that, but what would you suggest I do if tiny differences are all there is to analyze? Throw my hands up and declare that I just don't know?

You have attacked three different arguments in this exact manner now. OMGUS vs Random is pointless to analyze. Whether scum lurks is WIFOM. And now attempting to break down patterns by possible cause is pointless, too.

What exactly is it that you think is a valid way to place your vote, MMM?


I was waffling over whether to give your spot over to Antifinity, but I'm not anymore. It should go without saying that everyone is aware that they have only weak data to analyze so far. So why would you consistently attempt to stifle discussion by pointing this out?

Vote: Mysterious Mystery Man

, because at this point a lot would have to happen for someone to overtake him in my eyes.

[Mustilicor]

@ Mustilicor: Are you willing to kill me for that 10% today? Because that's the way things are going.

I feel as if you're being deliberately myopic here - I just pointed out a second pattern I noticed in your posts.

That great big long analysis? It was on voting patterns. That's all. And yeah, I'd be incredibly uncomfortable placing my vote for a difference so obviously within the margin of error.

That's why I didn't

. I also withheld a vote when noticing that you'd twice discouraged discussion. It is only once you did it a

third

time that I became comfortable with the possibility of seeing you lynched. Twice can be a coincidence; thrice is much less likely to be. Hell, your waving off of all of Antifinity's baffling exactly-wrong-things-to-say could even be considered a fourth time. I can go into my logic a little more for you if you want, but at the moment you seem to be ignoring it.



...that said.

I beg of the rest of you guys not to hammer until thatguy00 posts or is replaced.

If you want to roleclaim just in case, MMM, it could be a good idea I guess, but I think it would be best to put it off just in case it doesn't actually become necessity. You're safeish until you do it -- if someone hammers you before you get a chance to, they'll basically be hanging a giant scum sign above their own head.



Andrius: We are at no risk for a no-lynch. Why go with the guy with the most votes?

Antifinity: ...

...

...bwargh. That is all I have to say to you. You broke my brain.

[Mustilicor]

Nngh. You really are right, Exilon. I'm just being stubborn because I want to stand behind the action of taking him to L-2. But.. fine, fine, I'll tell my ego to shut up for now. Because L-2 isn't the issue anymore - L-1 is. If I don't want to risk him being hammered yet, I should logically take action to prevent that.

Even if I would rather someone else did it. >_>

Un--

wait! Andrius is still here! Maybe I can get him to suck it up instead of me. <_< >_> But agh, that's pointless. Influencing someone to remove their vote comes down to the same thing as doing this.

Unvote

(Guys, my pride is bucking

so hard

against this, you don't even know. FoS is still pointing at MMM! And it is a very stern, waggling FoS.

Just so you know

.)

How is it possible to no-lynch? Everyone's voted for someone, and there's no possible way to tie, with the alpha-vote. Explain please.

Exactly what Exilon just said.
And.. try not to be too preoccupied with seeming 'scummy'. It's good to avoid being lynched, yeah, but your primary objective should be town-based, not self-based. If a townie is lynched and flips townie, everyone gets a chance to look at their arguments again and see them from another perspective, so it's not a huge hit to the town to lose a person through suspicion garnered by playing as pro-townly as possible. Only avoid drawing suspicion when that's ALL you would do with a particular post or action; putting a target on your head is distracting and something to be avoided if it's one of the only factors to consider. (I am looking at you with this bit of advice, Antifinity, if you happen to be townie.)

[Mustilicor]

Musti just took unvoting to a whole new dramatical level. I have never seen such a hearfelt unvote in my life; for that, I commend you. You're like a hero to me right now. xD

Ahahahaha. Thank you for giving me that little nudge to set me straight. It's way too easy to let emotion overtake logic sometimes.

The only thing I have figured out so far is that Exilon wants to prevent a lynching of a particular player other than himself. Now I know the lynching wasn't for a good reason, but telling other people to unvote someone is the one thing that a perfect scum player would be able to do, that no one else would be able to know for sure.

What is this I don't even

If you are scum, Antifinity, you are doing a very good job of being too baffling to seriously suspect.



McGriddle! Hurray! Hello! I am so happy you are here. Maybe soon we'll actually be able to get this show on the road.

[Mustilicor]

Erkk, I meant to move that to tinypic so I wouldn't be hotlinking. Oh well I guess. This site isn't active enough to kill that guy's bandwidth, I should hope.

[Mustilicor]

And btw, Mustilicor is definitely an early candidate for MVP of this game. Town or scum, he's been playing great.

I'd like to second this.

R-really? Eee. Your flattery has found its mark. Its female mark, I suppose I should clarify. I feel all fuzzy now, and slightly guilty for making my last post while so distracted. Apparently I have set a standard for myself to live up to..!
(Honestly I'm just excited about getting a chance to actually THINK in a game like this. The only variation of it I've played before was some aim based Wolf vs Sheep game that tended to go like this:

...
A: Fine, fine, I was wrong, I get it.
B: told u
C: You're a wolf aren't you??
D: LOLOLOLOLOL(racial epithet)LOLOL
B: oh god not again
D: LOLOLOL(incoherent comment about someone's mother)LOL
C: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP
A: You're not helping
A: Whatever, let's just kill this idiot so we don't have to listen to him /vote D
B: im down /vote D
C: Agreed. /vote D
##WOLVES WIN!##

...I am sure you can see why I find this place refreshing.)

I have no idea what to do now... 78% we lynch a vanilla townie.

Where does this number come from? Of course I'm pretty certain I'm guilty of writing the entirely wrong number in one of my posts before, but I'm still curious if that's not what happened.

I actually think Antifinity has a point here. Not a strong point, kind of a distracting point, but a point none the less. An experienced scum player could easily be subtlety discouraging against town lynches under the guise of "we don't want to mislynch", but in reality that's actually a strong tactic that can be used to derail the town with fear of mislynching. Because if we're afraid to vote for anyone due to the possibility of a mislynch, then the game drags on, players lose interest, and scumhunting comes to a grinding halt.

Ahh, I see. Thank you for translating that for me. Something about the wording just refused to make its way through my brain. Eh. I don't know - I think it's fairly clear that it's not fear of mislynching that his argument tries to engender. Maybe I projected my own thoughts onto that posts?

..on a second read, I might have. Wow; it's interesting how thoroughly your own thoughts can color people's words. See, the reason I was already debating whether to withdraw my vote was the fact that moving on to Day 2 with absolutely no input with one of our players seemed like a bad idea. This.. actually isn't mentioned in Exilon's 'guys guys we need to rethink this' post. He even mentions the risk of moving on with "only 4 pages of information avai[l]able," which honestly doesn't seem like a risk worth considering to me. Hm. I'm not inclined to think of Exilon as scummy at the moment, given the other choices available, but it's something to think about.

Yeah, I really screwed myself over with that one line. Oh well, I'm still a n00b. XD

Hm. Well, what was your logic on that one line? Just an emotional need to get the game moving? I understand being frustrated with the stall, I suppose.

I think my opinion on whether this was a 'n00b'y scum sclip or a 'n00b'y impatience will have to wait until we see how MMM flips. If he is in fact scum, I couldn't see you wanting to off him on Day 1 as his teammate, so you'll be cleared in my eyes.

TQO, Andrius, anyone else who suspects Anti:

I think he's town. To me it looks like he's being overly honest, and saying things that a more experienced player would know better than to say. Scum are very rarely that honest, therefore I doubt he's scum.

Could you explain why you believe I'm wrong in this regard?

I suppose if I were to go with my gut, I'd agree with you. At the same time though, it's a LOT to completely disregard. That's what keeps edging him upwards in the system I've devised: the sheer number of things he says that could be read as scummy. And really, can I safely disregard that?

After all, if he were hasty scum who only belatedly realized his first post or so was unfortunate, how could he attempt to patch this over? Would he 180? Such a thing might actually call more attention to his errors. As such, it would make more sense for him to actually mimic his initial playstyle to remain consistent, to constantly throw out tiny tells until we're conditioned into dismissing anything suspicious from him.

Do I suspect this is what happening? Well... no. Not really. But I'm not going to let my guard against the possibility slip.


I am going to cautiously

vote: Mysterious Mystery Man

for now. I'd prefer not to see him lynched until some sort of read on McGriddle is possible just because I don't really want to go onto Day 2 with nearly a blank slate for one of our players, but at this point that is my only hesitation. Debate will probably lull fairly soon as Quintastic (and possibly Antifinity?) pointed out, so once we have at least a pittance of information on McGriddle, I think it should be time to know for sure what's going on with MMM.... and everyone who ever commented on his posts. (Dun dun dunn.)



McGriddle:

I know catching up all at once has to suck, but what are your thoughts at the moment, besides thinking that post was fluffy? If you were planning on giving a general summary and just haven't finished it yet, feel free to brand me silly and impatient.

...and oh my god, I love you. I had just been rereading the entire thread every time I wanted to review.

[Mustilicor]

There’s a reason I said that (what was underlined). I can trust all other players (to some degree) to not vote, but I have no way of trusting anyone who hasn’t opened his mouth except to vote on Mustilicor. If that wasn’t the case, either that sentence would replace ‘thatguy00’ by ‘someone’ or be totally inexistent in the first place. (I can’t believe I misspelled available. Mad ) Moving forward ‘with only 4 pages of information available’ is for me a risk worth considering. It’s not about the number, I guess, it’s about what we have right now, and that, (and I know you agree with me on this) is not enough. (Even if only for the fact that thatguy00 (now Mcgriddle) hadn’t posted anything.)

Don't worry too much. I'm still inclined to believe that your motivations mostly mesh with mine. I was just surprised by how much projection I'd really done without realizing it. And since nobody can be completely clean at this point, I need to keep my mind open to the possibilities.

...but really, trying to stall your first game to that extent doesn't seem like a move scum would make unless trying to protect their fellow scum. And you didn't really defend MMM despite very much knowing we're still eying him. So yeah, you're still looking as clean as you can.

78% comes from 7/9. If we hang randomly, we're 78% likely to hang a vanilla townie.

As a group yeah, alright. I think your 6/8 was more relevant though because everyone knows their own alignment, and everyone is voting based on what they know. (I never considered 78% might mean 7/9 because I mentally see it as 77.7777777% xp)

if we don't vote out of fear that we'll be seen as scummy then we'll never vote.

I think you're misunderstanding what the hesitance to vote was actually about. We were short one of our players! Once McGriddle posts his analysis and everyone gets a chance to see it/pick it apart as need be, that won't be a problem anymore.

... You're saying that MMM has to be scum in order for me to be cleared... great...

Well.. yes. Sorry! It's a game where you have to be suspicious of everyone. ^^; Don't take it as I'll definitely see you as scum if he does flip town though. I just won't be able to completely disregard the dogpiling.

[Mustilicor]

Guyssssss. Guysssss. Hoooow did we let the hammer fall before McGriddle had a chance to post his analysis? And now he is dead. Give me one moment.

*headdesk, headdesk, headdesk*

Ahem. Now then, I guess that was as much McGriddle's fault as Andrius's, but it's still a little painful that we won't get to see that. And I can't help but consider the possibility it was intentional.

So. Day 2, and we're two down. Pretty normal, but still frustrating. Logically I knew I wasn't close to 100% certainty regarding MMM, but ech. Still find myself sort of surprised. I'm not sure how much credence to give to his closing suspicions. Has anyone here played with him before? Do you know how accurately he tends to predict these things?

..since Mustilicor said that my fate hangs in the balance of this lynching.

Did I? That's a pretty big jump from stating I wouldn't be able to entirely overlook your bandwagoning. ...This and the rest of your hammering post reek of martyrdom. And really, SAMP! has a bit of a point regarding your dwelling on the possibility of town!MMM. I can see all of this as coming from scum trying to instill guilt in those who might suspect him later.


The rest of SAMP!'s reasoning is worth noting, I suppose. I don't think the fake claiming a power role means much but faulty reasoning. It does give us a clue of what might happen if he reaches L-1 I guess, which might be useful. Overall, the most rational vote you've made so far, SAMP!. Bravo.

Now, if we take Stoofer's crazy-ass law and apply it here, two of us four are mafia. Naturally, we'll all claim that we're town.

Stoofer's crazy-ass law? *pokes about to see what that might be* Ah. Hm. That does make a bit of sense. Was anyone else planning to vote for him but just not get a chance to? I notice Exilon's vote never moved. The quickness of the hammer might have.. well, no. No, cautiousness leading to not being part of the final vote wouldn't fit the scum behavior postulated by Stoofer there. Hm. I'd agree we can probably guess at least one scum was voting for MMM. Both might be a bit too much of an assumption.

That's the correct thing to do, if you were a town-aligned person. It makes obvious sense. Simple as that.

I disagree. If you're counter-claimed, or even if you're not, you open up the possibility for a great deal of confusion. Your survival is not as important as the town getting reliable information. I'm sure you feel they'll get it once you're night killed, but what about until then? And what if you're not NK'd at all?

If my posting of my reasons why I thought McGriddle was a scum would somehow help my case, I will.

Please do. I'm curious. (Plus I want to make sure you actually have these reasons and aren't just using that as an easy way to pretend you're scumhunting without actually working at it. Shhh.)



Tomorrow I'll iso the individuals who voted MMM and see if I come up with anything I hadn't noticed.

At least my map is looking cleaner now. Heh.

[Mustilicor]

I doubt it. If scum is getting attacked for something, it's usually to their benefit to quit doing that thing, even at the risk of appearing inconsistent, rather than to keep doing it and give their attackers more ammo.

Maybe. The reason the possibility occurs to me is that his consistency is what's making each successive oddity less noticeable to me.

[Mustilicor]

(A lot of stuff about McGriddle)

Alright, good. Considering the speed of that response (and the fact that it apparently had Word artifacts messing up the bbcode, which even I'm not paranoid enough to venture as possibly intentional), I'm comfortable believing you did in fact already have it prepared. That's good and useful, despite SAMP!'s disregard of it. It trims away one possibility that would work against you: that you'd simply thrown out that comment in the hopes nobody would care to see a case against a dead townie.

You're not without hope yet. Don't be discouraged. I admit my vote might end up on you, but it might not, and even if it does you don't need to take it as some personal failure on your part. All the doom and gloom does is cloud your play... and keep you from what enjoying something you're doing entirely to have fun. It's a game! Games can be as much fun to mess up as to do right. Just go ask the Dwarf Fortress forums.

Therefore, when you consider the vote on Triple M, but not just the vote but the tunneling of the vote, the attack on Andrius for the same newbie scum reasons that he defends Antifinity from, and Andrius' case against McGriddle proving that he did not know that McGriddle was going to be targeted, I feel a SAMP/Anti scumteam is far more likely at this point, and SAMP being a far more dangerous threat to the town.

I do think he was guilty of a bit of tunneling... but I also think tunneling is more often a null tell than a scum tell. And like Civil Scum says, I really don't think Antifinity's play is comparable to Andrius's. I will admit SAMP's complete disinterest in Andrius's case against McGriddle is slightly suspect (he could have solidified his case right then and there if he'd caught Andrius in a lie, and he had no reason to think that wasn't a possibility), but I don't think I understand why it's worthy of a vote at this point.

It, ah, might be noteworthy for me to admit though that I might be going easier on SAMP than I should on some things. The thing is, his name/icon/signature combination annoys the hell out of me. So in an attempt to keep that from influencing my reasoning, I might be overcorrecting.

Call it WIFOM all you want, but

I don't believe our scum is so smart in this game

that they believe a double-feint on McGriddle would be an effective way to go about things.

Why? Because it's a newbie game? Sure, it probably decreases the probability of complex maneuvers. But I'd be careful. Assuming you can deduce the playing ability of an unknown opponent is quite an assumption indeed. Other than you, we've got Civil Scum who we know has played before. Coaching is very possible.

Antifinty is very obviously a newb-scum or a newb-town

Ha, is this in response to my twitchy paranoia regarding him? I just don't think it's a good idea to disregard feasible possibilities, that's all. Even if they're only

barely

feasible.

... but he's dead and the only reason to bring it up is to clear himself now ...

I asked him to, unless you're referring to where he mentioned its existence in the first place.

I'm going to have to go back and look at his again. Mustilicor did suggest a MMM=town then Andrius=scum, or more likely scum, causality in her reasoning. I'll have to go back and take a specific look at this. I'm pretty wary of setups in general, or links like that D-1, ESPECIALLY after the other person flips town. The flip in and of itself is going to reflect on some people one way or another, but I want to look at her reasoning about this and see if it's suspicious. If mustilicor is right that andrius has exaggerated it greatly, its yet another thing that looks bad for him. And of course if he's right, it's suspicious for mustilicor to have said that if she doesn't explain why.

Here you are:

I think my opinion on whether this was a 'n00b'y scum sclip or a 'n00b'y impatience will have to wait until we see how MMM flips. If he is in fact scum, I couldn't see you wanting to off him on Day 1 as his teammate, so you'll be cleared in my eyes.

... You're saying that MMM has to be scum in order for me to be cleared... great...

Well.. yes. Sorry! It's a game where you have to be suspicious of everyone. ^^; Don't take it as I'll definitely see you as scum if he does flip town though. I just won't be able to completely disregard the dogpiling.

And if you'd still like reasoning, I was trying to reassure Andrius because of how worried he seemed over being thought of as possible scum. Sort of like how I was reassuring him earlier in this post. I just don't like to see people getting distressed while playing games, so I try to alleviate it when it seems it might be simple to do so.

She has this sort of impassioned/emotional or 'cheeky' style ("my pride is bucking against this") which some players like, though I don't really care for and pricks me a little

Hahaha, oh dear. It's only going to get worse as I become more comfortable with this game and this place, I'm afraid. I'm an arrogant, pushy little nerd by nature, and I often use humor to defuse my own fits of ego.

And yes, if MMM flipped town, I was coming after you first. I already felt pretty good about Samp, so did MMM incidentally although we didn't get to hear too much about why, just his personal read.

Uhh, might want to double check that. He backed off of SAMP for a bit, but his final post still lists him as suspected scum.



Exilon! Get in here! These people are throwing their votes around already and they are making me nervous.

[Mustilicor]

Ahahaha what a nice ninja considering my last line.

[Mustilicor]

Agh, I want to go crazy with my theories regarding the McGriddle NK, but I don't have time at the moment. For now, just consider that you (Exilon), The Quintastic One, and I have all clearly indicated that we were expecting further analysis from McGriddle. Others might have expected this as well, but in any case that's a solid reason to suspect any of those three. They might have wanted to prevent whatever it was they thought was coming.

...no, I don't actually suspect myself. xp But I'm in on that indicated expectation, so it should be included in everyone else's considerations.

[Mustilicor]

That possibility actually frightens me quite a bit, to be honest. :s I can't disregard it, though. If Andrius is town then killing McGridle to avoid his attack on day 2 makes no sense whatsoever; so there will have to be another motive... which would be "the biggest threat". And if, supposedly, you're the biggest threat, the fact you weren't killed could potentially translate to you being the culprit...

I have half a mind to be insulted I'm still around. Makes me wonder if I've been on entirely the wrong track. Besides, you know, the obvious MMM thing. I'll get to the various doubts instilled in a minute.

My brain is a little too tired right now to write up the full possibility tree I had planned (damned real life interfering with games). I'll just give a sloppy summary. It might be more understandable than the way I prefer to do things anyway.



The NK of McGriddle is a little difficult to analyze. There are two main classes of possibilities leading to him being chosen. The first is that the scum honestly saw him as the worst threat, and the second is intentional misdirection.

This first class of possibilities is a little difficult to satisfactorily wrap my head around for any pair of players that might be our scum team, unless they were trying to interrupt some specific train of thought (which would be hard for them to predict considering how little McGriddle got a chance to post). When I think about all of the people passed over, I see some pretty strong players for the newbie forum - enough that not all of them can be our scum. Why was each considered less of a threat than McGriddle?

We've got Civil Scum, the IC.

Fairly low activity, maybe? Until that GIANT post that came after McGriddle's death, it sort of looked like he was only popping his head in every once and a while, and not commenting on every exchange because of this. McGriddle might have been seen as more or less another IC who was hovering around more threateningly.

We have another SE in Quintastic.

Perhaps they thought this individual might be easily led? He's directly asked for the opinions of others to sort out his thoughts before.

We have Exilon

. Cautious enough not to consider worth the worry, maybe? Sure, his cautioning against too speedy of a lynch might have worked against them a bit, but it also kept him from placing a vote somewhere he actually thought it belonged.

Aaand we have me.

Analyzing one's own weaknesses is difficult. I can only imagine that I could have been seen as a very loud distraction, considering I was barking up the wrong tree.


None of these four have (had) come under strong suspicion at this point. Are these weaknesses enough? Can McGriddle really be seen as a straightforward threat greater than at least two of them? I'm not sure.


More convincing in this class of possibilities is the suspicion Exilon has raised. If they were after McGriddle for something specific... then what could it have been, other than his odd exchange with Andrius? He hadn't had a chance to do much else, after all. The looming analysis? But what about it might instill such caution? Is there some glaring scumtell we're all overlooking that he might have seen? ...if so, I'm missing it in my re-reads. I don't know what could have been brought up that would catch enough attention to turn the tide of voting.



...geez, it looks like I'm pretty much typing everything I'd planned to in the first place.

Ahem.

Misdirection also has some sub-possibilities (mostly random to cause confusion vs intentional framing), but I'm not sure they're worth going into. Trying to decide why this choice might have been seen as a good way to stir up town suspicions would probably end in hopeless WIFOM -- all that really matters is the possibility that he was chosen because he was

safe

. Doctor protection, if it's around somewhere, was unlikely to extend to him.


All in all,

if

the NK can direct us to anyone, it's probably either Andrius for the reasons outlined by Exilon above, or someone who has played with McGriddle before and knows him to be a threat or fears being meta'd. I'll check up on that last possibility when I am less exhausted.


...I'm going to go pass out now, but before I do... eh, no, I'm not going to vote yet. But here, if it'll soothe a few concerns about me, I'll flash a glimpse of that system I've been talking about.



This is the bottom bit of a VUE file. If I zoomed out any further for the screenie, it'd be all blurry and crap and you'd see whether or not I connected to a PR, so this is the best I can offer. What you see are possibility trees branching from each player - with VUE, I can add notations to each line or branching point that are only visible when I have said line or point selected. Pretty useful for keeping track of suspicious statements. Bold lines are certainties. I've got the skeleton file saved if anyone as absurdly visual as me would like it. I'm just dropping this image here to try to offer at least a little evidence that I really am analyzing this nonsense. I could fake it as scum, yeah, but I guess I just figure It'd be a damned bizarre thing to fake.

Gonna go sleep now. Ciao.

[Mustilicor]

Blaghh how did I miss Andrius's post? Posts. In any case, I'm not ignoring you. I'll read all that later.

[Mustilicor]

Mmm, that was a little bit of a trainwreck. I am going to try to avoid posting while half-asleep from now on.

-Can someone explain what "tunneling" is?

Just think tunnel vision. It's when you focus your suspicions on one player, ignoring objectionable play from others.

Actually I did have one: Even the most clueless scum in the world wouldn't say something like that if he couldn't back it up. It's impossible to get away with. It'd be like if I told you the sky is green, hoping you wouldn't bother to actually check.

You people and your assumptions. Assuming the scum has a clue is just as silly as assuming they're too dumb to pull something complex, like Quintastic did. When you're presented with a situation like that, if it was a lie, it's easily caught. If it isn't, it affects nothing. So it makes the most sense to try to catch it.

...and oh, come on, you can't possibly be doing all that :awesome: posturing anything but ironically, meaning you know very well just how silly it is. ....right? Right? ..Listen, don't answer this, I'm just going to assume I'm right for the sake of my sanity.




Alright, I mentioned earlier peeking around for people who might have played with McGriddle. It looks like that's a no-go unless my googling skills have failed me. So on the note of individuals finding him a risk sheerly for his playing skills, we only have those who've read his games, which is a list we can only put Exilon at the moment.

But eh. For the reasons I mentioned last post, I still don't feel like he'd be seen as the biggest overall threat. I-- what the fuck, it is snowing. It was so hot earlier today! What the hell?! ...anyway. I am still looking at the Andrius possibility at the moment, and through this, at Quintastic. Because, well. It might make sense for him to explain to us all why Andrius's pre-prepared attack of McGriddle totally cleared him in his eyes if that was entirely why he coached him to do it.

...however. Andrius's pouting has sort of worked on me? It feels super-early to go to L-3, and if he ended up getting lynched and turning up townie at this point, I would feel more than a little guilty. As this is, obviously, a pretty silly way to make a decision, I don't really want to bump it down to the next on my list, Quintastic. I'd rather hold off until I had the time to actually update my math; until I do, I feel like I'm stumbling around a bit blindly.

[Mustilicor]

This baffles me a little. Did you think he would have written it up in the forum when it was locked? Obviously it was prepared. And it only takes losing one or two big posts before many peple start writing them up in a processor first.

I just really don't think that him having this case, whenever he wrote it, proves anything.

Er.. no. But it's not long enough for it to have been entirely impractical for him to have written it because I asked for it. The word quotation mark thing lessens this possibility for me. (And really? If I'm worried I might lose something, I just ctrl+A ctrl+C before I press submit. Forum borked? Well good thing I can just paste it all!)

But you're right -- when he wrote it doesn't prove anything except for... well, when he wrote it. All I was noting was that I was crossing off one of several scummy possibilities.

And, Mustilicor, unless none of the scum were on the wagon (which would be a great strategy for scum in a newbie game now that I think about it), then there is probably atleast 1 scum between you, me, Samp, and Andrius.

Yep. What is this in response to? I wasn't aware I was contradicting that.

In a nutshell, both Andrius and Antifinity are scummy due to newbie mistakes, you guys are playing favorites deciding what tells you want to ignore from Antifinity and what tells you want to jump on from Andrius. So I'm going to call you out on the contradiction. It's as simple as that.

Do you really think 'newbie mistakes' can all be lumped into one category though? SAMP's major argument was how much Andrius appeared to be expecting MMM to flip town. That's really not the same level of 'oh well he's just new' as Antifinity's craziness -- it could possibly imply knowledge that town shouldn't have. Even newbie town.

[Mustilicor]

Enter key, that is not what I meant for you to do. Bad, bad enter key.


On the topic of Antifinity: Antifinity.. I am not sure you know what bandwagon means? If you do, I'm not certain how you can feel there was an Andrius/Quintastic bandwagon at the point you posted that, or why you feel it would be a good thing to say you were getting on it. You do baffle me so.



Finally going to

vote: Andrius

, by the way. Sorry man.

[Mustilicor]

I do not believe you are at L-4 at the moment. If for some reason you voted for yourself right now (which would count, but would be horrible sportsmanship as you'd be dealing a blow to whatever team you're on), it wouldn't hammer you.

I don't know if there's any way to differentiate a townie peeved at being falsely accused or scum peeved at being found out, so your most recent post doesn't really do anything but cement your tendency towards defeatism. Pretty useless for analysis, I suppose, but either way,

stop that

! >:/ Play to your win condition. That's an order, soldier.


Does anyone else have a favored way to interpret this? I can't really decide if Andrius's recent behavior tilts more toward frustrated townie or frustrated scum (or even, I suppose, scum deliberately trying to mix things up by throwing emotion into the mix). And unfortunately, the more of it I see the more my judgment of the Andrius situation is clouded.

[Mustilicor]

I both wrote the wrong thing and jotted down Exilon's vote wrong at some point. Geez, I'm losing it already. It was nice while it lasted, however brief it was~

[Mustilicor]

Perhaps it is a sign. A sign that I should maybe proofread my posts instead of just hitting submit when I am done.

[Mustilicor]

Haaa. You know what? Fuck it.

Vote: The Quintastic One

because I suspect him nearly as much and will feel less bad if I am wrong.

Just know I will come after you with a blunt object if you really are scum, because intentional guilttripping would just be dirty and underhanded.

[Mustilicor]

Mmgh, it was a very silly move on my part. I-I just! He caught me in a stupid error in a moment of weakness and triggered a WHAT IF I AM WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING moment. Combined with my ridiculously strong urge to buckle because of my 'it is just a game so surely it matters most that people are having fun?!' inclinations.. yeah.

Guys I am not very good at this

emotion

thing.


Reviewing my thoughts again, I really can't justify voting for Quintastic over Andrius right now. At all. There's just no way, not when his defense of Andrius is part of my reasoning.

So... egh.

Unvote

I guess. I half feel like I should probably go the extra step and put it back on Andrius, but I'm still seriously lacking on sleep and have plenty of reason to doubt my own mental acuity at the moment. And since a day is three weeks long, there's no reason for me to rush to a decision while I'm zombified just because everyone else seems to be voting.

[Mustilicor]

Also, Mustilicor, you just seem to have flipped around a bit - what the heck was all that? It goes against all my beliefs that you're a "calm, rational" player xD What am I supposed to think now? You're still one of the players I agree with the most D:

To be honest? Sleep deprivation. xD Try going a good week or so without a full night's sleep and see how calm and rational you are, especially while multitasking. It's why I've unvoted for now - my head's just not in it.

Gimme a couple days, and hopefully I'll be back up to snuff.

[Mustilicor]

But if you turn the chessboard around [Umineko no naku koro ni allude] maybe the mafia are hoping that the rest of the town would see Mustilicor as a mafia, since he, a big townie asset, was not killed. Then then the mafia would hope that we would lynch Mustilicor, out of thinking that Mustilicor would have been the first to go.

Believe it or not, this is actually one of the things that drew me toward a possible The Quintastic One/Andrius team. Compliments are all well and good and innocent until they leas to suspicious eyes the next day, and that MVP thing was cited by at least Exilon. It couldn't have been all that thoroughly pre-planned, I suppose... unless you were under orders to just follow Quintastic's lead when it came to a possible set up.

If this is actually what you guys did, it's pretty brilliant, so bravo on that. For now I'm just tucking it away as a possible connection between you two and trying to be sure of what I think before handing out punishments for what might have been genuine compliments.


My major issue causing indecision here is that I sort of

feel

like Andrius is townie because of his discouraged/martyry behavior (Sort of because of what SAMP said, but mostly this is a purely emotional reaction). This contradicts my logical view of the matter. I really do not like going by intuition, but it's

strong

intuition, and that's why it's tripping me up. I don't know why. I mean, I've had my intuition proven even worse than that of most individuals quite a few times. I guess logical side is sleepy and letting impulsive/ooey-gooey-emotional side have a bit more fun than it usually would. It's enough, is all, to throw me the hell off balance when I'm as exam-weary as I am.


...Antifinity does seem to be developing a habit of popping in just long enough to clear suspicion from his name. I'd say this could be busy townie as much as lurking scum, but he posted

right

after Civil Scum mentioned him earlier in this page, pointing to active lurking. Something to consider.

[Mustilicor]

To Mustilicor: I'm about to post some WIFOM, so bear with me. But it's for clarification purposes. If I were scum, and I actively said you were playing great as town, that would mean that I considered you a great threat to my team and thus would of targeted you for a Night Kill last night.


But I knew by saying that going into it that you would possibly be painted as a nightkill target by the Mafia, call it manipulative, but it's apart of my plan. (wink)

....pardon? Are you suggesting scum tends to say what it means? Because that seems a little silly.

A-and what on earth are you implying with that last part? O_o I knew it seemed a slightly out of place comment, but I mean - what, were you actively trying to off me? What on earth? This has not clarified anything at all.

You like Star Trek? That's the point of it: you can't be all logic [Spock] or all emotion [Bones/Kirk]. You have to embrace- or accept, at the least- both sides. Perhaps Death Note is more appropriate. Neither Near nor Mello could alone surpass L. But, as Near famously said, "Together we can surpass L!"

D'awww. *pats your ickle head* I'm not a fan of either, but it doesn't matter - that was the cutest way of making that argument you could have possibly chosen.

I wouldn't actually buy it regardless of the way you chose to sell it, of course. Emotion is an evolutionarily outdated decision-making mechanism. I'll not deny it has its uses. Bonding, for instance, encourages that we persist in cooperative behavior. An irrational attachment to fairness to encourages us to punish cheaters even at our own detriment (thus strengthening the group as a whole). Even fear helps us to more perfectly encode our most crucial, traumatic memories. Of course it shouldn't be discarded. But suggesting it should be TRUSTED... now that is simply naive. I become maudlin when I lack sleep -- this almost certainly had more to do with my jumping ship than any weird psychic vibes I caught from you. Is such momentary irrationality really something that should influence my final decision? Or are you suggesting I should go with my 'it's just a game, after all' side and just try to avoid stomping anyone's fun?

The latter, while not scummy or even very reprehensible, is not exactly sound play. Play to meet your win condition...all other considerations secondary, as you said.

This was a bit ago, but I'll just go ahead and reinforce that yes, of course I agree. In most situations. I occasionally disagree that other considerations should be secondary because of the fact that it is, of course, a game, and if things seem like they might be about to blow up, sometimes it might be better to let things slide. ...but that's not how I feel about the course of things at the moment. (I've just seen some ridiculously bitchy games before - I might slip into being more interested in defusing the ridiculousness than winning for a bit if I were to be a part of one. But this is all a bit off-topic.)



Hmmm, there was something I wanted to question. Where was it...? Ah, here we are.

I was being sarcastic, yet I thought that my death would most benefit the town, so I congratulated him on getting me to L1. Sarcasm, yes. I thought, at the time, that my death would benefit the town, so I said it.

Why? Why do you think a townie death would benefit the town? Please explain this.

[Mustilicor]

TQO: I see. This little part

Okay, call me over-pragmatic, but the most realistic/likely plan/outcome this would be a part of would be getting Mustilicor NK'd? Um, right?

overwhelmed looking into that little wink for the moment. Well. Hm. Damn. I suppose that is something to consider for later - being tricky as a townie risks other townies picking up on the oddness and asking why you are acting so very tricksy.

Given that your explanation for your motives sounds very plausible, for today I'm going to back off of you. It'd be a clever clever cover up for scum whose initial intentions were as I'd suspected, I suppose, but I don't think the possibility of such a brilliant play is at all worth risking lynching our doctor.

Well. Unless we have counter-claims. Anyone?

@ Mustilicor: You're suggesting that logic is superior to emotion.

Fooor the purpose of analyzing situations. But you're right, this isn't the place to discuss this, as horribly tempting as it is.

Sorry for only posting infrequently lately. I'm in the final week of a big project, so I can only post about once a day. I'll get back to normal schedule by sometime mid-next week.

If this is true, I do feel you. I feel you so hard you'd be justified in filing assault charges. If I wasn't a pathological multitasker, I wouldn't be able to post nearly as much as I've been lately.

However.

It's the way it seems possible to

cause

you to post that bothers me. You are considerably more active when people are looking your way than when they are not. This would imply you are reading the thread at least fairly often. You got a post in just barely over an

hour

after Civil Scum mentioned you. That's improbably quick if you're only getting a chance to check this thread occasionally.

I won't hammer because I want all of you to ask whatever questions you want. I'll be reasonable about this. XD /fail

That's all, though? You're just waiting on us? You're willing to lynch a possible, plausible doctor if there's no counter claim?

[Mustilicor]

Ah, rereading my last post, it seems a bit unclear what I mean with 'this little part'. I meant that I had that exact 'buh-whaaaaa?' reaction and thus felt the need to press the question before trusting that the wink was anything but an attempt to lead me into distracting hypotheticals.

[Mustilicor]

I see.

So why would someone want to counter-claim, at this point?

Well. As scum it wouldn't make a lot of sense to counter a valid claim unless you were already coming under heavy suspicion. In such a case, you could influence the town to go ahead and take out the power role so you could be free to NK someone else. You'd by lynched the next day of course, but if you're coming under heavy fire already this might not be a loss for you.

On the other hand, if a real doctor encounters a false claim, obviously he's going to want to lynch this dude. Staunch disbelief of the claim is going to catch mafia attention

either way

, so his choice is to let this slide to protect himself and have someone confirmed to him as scum go unsuspected for awhile.. or sacrifice himself to NK to get the false claimer lynched.

[Mustilicor]

Um... by the way.

Mustilicor, I figured that by my death, I'd be removing a suspect from a small list of suspects. Then, hopefully, another would be NK'd. Then the TQO/Andrius pair would be eliminated, so you'd have less suspects. That was my reasoning: that my death would mean having one less town suspect.

You might want to.. rethink this. If the only reason we know who the mafia is is that just about everyone else is dead... um. That is

bad

, and it means town is well on its way to

losing

. xD

[Mustilicor]

I'd be intensely wary of any article that lists tells, Antifinity. Read it, certainly, but make sure you don't take it as gospel. Rather, analyze why each tell given might or might not be a useful thing to consider.


A question to all of you:
I know TQO doesn't support player by player analysis, but what do the rest of you think? Civil Scum in particular. I personally would appreciate a round of them at the moment - I'd be more comfortable deciding on my vote if I had a chance to look at what several individuals had to say. Not just who they think is townie and who they think is scum, but why.

If you, like me, feel that sort of transparency would be useful to the town at this point, please just say so for now rather than tossing out your own pbp analysis. The most useful thing about it is how it gives us the ability to analyze the scum hunting tactics of others, and as such, for the benefits to outweigh the risks, we need to be sure everyone is going to post them rather than letting the scum peek at ours and refrain from posting their own under the guise of thinking it too risky.



OT to Exilon: Is.. is it possible to laugh gracefully? XD I just got the most ridiculous image of... well. Trust me, it was very silly.

[Mustilicor]

A

hem

. >:I *looks pointedly at post 247*

[Mustilicor]

Oop, I missed TQO's post. Doesn't change my >:I in last post as he's the only one I wasn't actually questioning, buuut...

Because we would of confirmed trust in a townie, refusing to even try to lynch them

Okay, because I am still keeping the Quintastic/Andrius possibility in mind, I'm going to try to help you understand. I mean, obviously if it's

correct

I don't need to, but if you'd be genuinely offended if it's not, here we go:

The main problem you seem to be having trouble with is this: what you did

does not

confirm trust in someone. Peek around at the reactions to the McGriddle lynch. If it influenced anything, your 'confirmed trust' just made people go 'hey, uh.. why isn't Mustilicor dead..?' I'm not trying to discredit their thinking as a bad thing to consider (it'd be a bad thing to vote on today, but it's very much NOT a bad thing to consider), but just trying to emphasize that it IS being considered, and the MVP comment HAS been cited as part of the thought process at least once.

With me?

Furthermore, the McGriddle lynch served to throw us all the hell around. If you're our doc as you say you are, you experienced this. You claim it caught you off guard; I, and I think Civil Scum, are saying that it's entirely possible that that's what this lynch was meant to do.

Now, knowing that you were getting rid of McGriddle, you could use this as an opportunity to try to clean up your partner, who was coming under a lot of suspicion at this point. This would be a decent play PRECISELY for the reason you're saying it wouldn't be. It's hard to wrap one's head around why scum would do that.

Finally, preparing a false roleclaim

just in case

seems like an inherently sensible thing for scum to do. It's also possible that this was a back up plan just in case the pre-painted target (the one getting the occasional 'TOO townie!' reads) was not falling under enough suspicion.


So, yeah. It wouldn't be an insult to your play. It would be a compliment. It's complex, it's clever, and if it's actually what's happening, it's saving you from a Day 2 lynch.


I didn't comment on Exilon's long post about your logic earlier because I sort of feel like I know where he was coming from. He and I seem to think similarly, and I suspect the fallacies he listed were actually grating on him despite his even-handed addressing of them. It might have been more appropriate to make such a post in the post-game, but it's possible he was just hoping he could influence you to scumhunt more effectively. I am urging you to reconsider his points. Your assumptions regarding the mindset of scum could be very dangerous if you don't.

[Mustilicor]

*flails a little* O-okay, I guess maybe that post was buried. Along with the, um, post entirely to direct attention back to it. Assuming this is the case, I shall not throw up my hands, tug a sock onto one, and begin asking my puppet for input instead of you folks.

For now.

Ahem. To reiterate, I asked you guys what you thought about requesting player by player analyses from everyone. For most of you, they'll be redundant. There are some very quiet individuals, however, that I'd love any sort of input from just to allow me a read. So I'll stop pussyfooting around to see if I can get everyone to do one - I was only proposing that to try and be fair to all parties. Instead I'll just go right for what I'm actually looking for.

Antifinity: please make one of those player by player suspicion lists you just saw Quintastic make, but include your reasoning.

Until I get a little more content to draw a read from, I'm not comfortable placing my vote on you. If I

don't

get it, I'm not comfortable placing my vote on Andrius.

I will vote for you if you do not do this.

It doesn't have to be fast, but it has to happen. I might vote for you if you

do

write it, too, but don't worry about that. Even if you're scum, you have a better chance of losing my vote by trying to bluff me than by avoiding doing it at all. So please get to it.

[Mustilicor]

Aww, don't feel like that! It wasn't quite buried... Quintastic and Civil did a kind-of PbP analysis, and I did too!

Ah ah ah. I made it quite clear I was asking if you thought they were good ideas, and to not just answer the question with a pbp -- as you can see, this was because my aim was to get Antifinity to do one. Don't pretend you weren't being unobservant! xD


Now for something completely different:


Civil Scum: Reading around the site, you seem unusually lacking in aggression in this game compared to most of your others. If you happen to have a link to a game that suggests this is because of the fact that this is a newbie game, I would really appreciate it. Or any other explanation, if that is not actually the reasoning. Or hell, if you think I'm entirely off base with this suggestion and know how to quickly correct me, that'd be useful too.
(I want to clarify that this isn't an attack just yet, because I'm not done snooping. It's just that this is taking ages, and you'll save me time if I'm barking up the wrong tree.)

[Mustilicor]

Sorted. Scratch that line of inquiry.

[Mustilicor]

Ah, sorry. I didn't realize that would be unclear.

The thing is that as far as meta goes, I don't really trust my ability to garner anything useful from attempts to explain it. All that matters for the level of analysis I was undertaking is whether or not there is a pattern and whether or not it is being broken. I was requesting from you a few links to speed my search.
I ended up being more bored than I expected, however, and managed to find a handful of your games in the newbie forum in which you were just as nonabrasive as you are now. Some of those were scum, but about as many were townie.

The pattern I thought I might have seen is, upon further investigation, demonstrably inconsistent upon further investigation, and so I do not require comment on it.

[Mustilicor]

EBWOP: pretend one of those 'upon further investigation's isn't in there.

[Mustilicor]

Antifinity, thank you for your response. I apologize if I came across as a bit bullying in my request; I just wanted to ensure I got your cooperation.

Most of your summaries boil down to 'eh'. That's not that great. (Your analyses of yourself and of me got a smirk out of me, so thank you for that.) I can't really accuse you of crowd-following, though, considering you seem to be the only one willing to vote for Quintastic on D-2.

One thing that I do want clarification on is this:

SAMP!: I haven't noticed any really striking behavior one way or the other. I'd suspect him if there weren't others I suspected more.

I'm seconding Exilon here. Who is the second person displacing your suspicion of SAMP? TQO is obviously your first choice for scum. But..? Nobody else seems hugely suspicious to you. Who is it making SAMP not worth looking at?

The fact that you've only got one person you're especially suspicious of might be noteworthy. Scummy behavior is easily written off if you know somebody to be town, after all. And it'd be nice and safe to suspect TQO right now, wouldn't it? (Hm. I can't say I especially suspect a TQO/Antifinity pair at the moment. They've done a good job of distancing if it's really the case. I'll look into it further.)

Could also easily be seen as rather OMGUS.

Oh, Antifinity. I think you've missed a question posed to you by Civil Scum, by the way.


TQO: I am sorry, but your logic is very bad. Annnd it's pretty clear you're being left alone for today, so there's no need to be defensive just yet.
If anyone else requests I enumerate which portions of his thought processes I take issue with, I will gladly. Otherwise I want to leave this to D-3 if you're still around then, because I don't think it would be useful now.


Civil Scum: I see. That does make a good deal of sense. I do want to say that overall, you DO seem a bit nicer as scum than as town. I just can't get much use out of this slight tendency when one, it's not entirely consistent, and two.. yeah. You're our IC.
I can't say I read Antifinity's analysis as knowing there was a roleblocker though. Seems a bit jumpy to look at it as anything but allowing the possibility.


Andrius, Exilon, and SAMP: Don't feel left out; I'm probably going to be interrogating the three of you pretty soon. ;] Because of the fact that D-3 is going to be horribly confusing if Quintastic is still around, I want all of my reads to be as firm as possible before I risk moving on.

[Mustilicor]

Exilon:

Your vote is currently on Andrius. If you don't mind, could you give a quick comparison of him versus your other top suspects, demonstrating why he comes out on top?
I don't see much suspicious in your iso except for early vote placement and never ever shifting it. There's fluff, there's buddying, but whatever. It's easy to end up with fluffy, buddying posts if you don't go back and chop it all out afterwards. Plus.. I personally have no problem with buddying so long as it's not coming across as deliberate and clumsy. The way people seem to hound after it seems like it would discourage friendly games. O_o

Andrius:

Where are you? Lying low while it looks like suspicion might turn towards Antifinity? Hmmmmmm? Did you read that big massive page of text yet? *prodprodprodprod*
You haven't posted much at all lately except to defend yourself. What's your take on the current situation? Antifinity's vote on Quintastic despite his claim, for instance?
You currently suspect SAMP. Why? The only recent reasoning I've seen from you is confirmation bias.
Definite AtE all over the place. Not much real content lately, little scumhunting.

SAMP:

It's not often you seem at all hesitant to vote someone. You appear, at the moment, to be looking in Antifinity's direction. You admit to thinking him town from D1; is this what leads you to withhold your vote for the moment? If so, what about his current behavior supports that supposition to you?
Someone that seems to have a good handle on the game, given some of the offhanded comments made, yet extremely erratic with accusations. Very little active hunting except on current target of suspicion.

Why are you ruling out the prospect of a scum lynch today?

Because I'm an idiot.

Whoaaa. I hadn't actually read that as your ruling out a scum lynch, but you really were? Ermm. ...I... am going to withhold my vote until I get my answers, but I think I may know where it's going.

[Mustilicor]

Thank you. For the most part you've demonstrated why I don't particularly suspect you at the moment. You're more than willing to explain your thought processes when questioned, and said thought processes usually make sense to me.

Possibly a little too much sense. Not in a way that makes me suspect you -- I just half wonder if we think similarly enough that we're vulnerable to being blindsided by the exact same things. For instance!

(I am afraid of mis-judging him because of subjectivism).

It strikes me as quite dangerous that we're both a little wary of what our more emotional sides might say about SAMP. The possibility occurs to me that hypothetical-scum-SAMP could slide by us both while we're both going :/ :\ :/ and ending with a shrug of our shoulders. .....ehhh, that said, I don't know of any remedy for this danger.


Hm. One thing though.

And now there's also Antifinity. Of course, he is outright suspicious; in fact, he is so suspicious that it seems too obvious that he's scum.

I'm not really sure of the validity of this. I understand your reasoning regarding the quicktopic, but it rules out the possibility that he was otherwise occupied during the pregame. He certainly claims to be busy

now

. I'll admit that 'too scum to be scum' is an exceptionally tricky WIFOM to sort out when it only occurs for a few posts. But how many slips can be satisfactorily written away this way before probability starts leaning towards exceptionally careless scum? ...or hell, even scum deliberately blowing out minds, I guess. Mathematically, the more these behaviors occur, the more the probability begin to solidly lean towards the straightforward interpretation.

...especially when it comes to that last slip.

[Mustilicor]

Thank you. Unfortunately, this response renews dying suspicions for me.


You respond to pressure.. guiltily, for lack of a better word. Anxiously. Your absence wasn't actually especially concerning; I'm perfectly aware that not everyone is surgically attached to their laptops. Your flailing regarding said absence is more worthy of attention.

Instead of supplying reasoning for your vote, you withdraw it -- and without actually noting what it is about SAMP that has made you feel better.


This leaves me a bit torn. An Antifinity/Andrius team... eh. I'm not sure if I consider this feasible. Mm. I'll wait for SAMP's response before making my decision.

[Mustilicor]

Ha. If you'd like, Andrius, I could actually be mean to you for a bit. Give you a little perspective and all that. See, I'm not sure if you landed in here by accident or something, but you are playing a game in which you are

going

to be suspected and in which your posts are

going

to be picked apart.

I am not beating on you. Or I wasn't a moment ago, at least. Grow a skin.

That said, a lot of your ridiculousness seems like it might just be your personality. If you really don't want to be in the game anymore, request a replacement please. Self-voting is poor sportsmanship. If you ARE town, the way to be useful to your team is to root out scum, not to deliberately cause a townie death.


For today,

Vote: Antifinity

. But Andrius.. play the game or don't. Seriously.


Thank you, SAMP, for both your response to my inquiry and for fishing up those contradictions.

[Mustilicor]

Well, many of us seem to be getting a little frustrated.

Heheheh. Sometimes, people do not appear to appreciate my extreme level of restraint. When this happens, I feel the need to loosen the leash on my more aggressive side and let it nibble at their ankles the slightest bit. As if it would perhaps encourage them to realize how very kind I am actually being (this is not usually what happens). xp

If he wants to throw confusion around, this is a VERY weird way to do it.

I don't think anyone is claiming he's especially

thoughtful

scum. I rather think he was just groping to explain himself, and the excuse he thought of was really really really bad.

I mean, I know that's assuming he's not paying a lot of attention, but uhh... that would go for being town, too.

[Mustilicor]

How exactly do those two things contradict each other? That's a surprisingly desperate reach to implicate somebody already at L1.

[Mustilicor]

....they read to me as different wordings of the same damned thing.

First, he says he's only ever played mafia where there was one killer. Then this is attacked. He expands by saying that well yeah, he KNEW there were two, but forgot. Presumably due to - gasp - having only ever played mafia where there was only one killer.

My vote is already on him and isn't moving, but your current argument is a reach.

[Mustilicor]

Clarifying that I do not actually believe him -- I simply do not find his attempt to explain his earlier contradiction a contradiction in itself.

[Mustilicor]

What am I sweeping under the rug? Look at my vote. What is a reach is declaring this a LIE rather than floundering to explain an early contradiction and calling for a policy lynch.

[Mustilicor]

Excuse me - calling it an easily verifiable lie by simply looking at one post and then the next.

[Mustilicor]

Nggh. Andrius, you are hurting my head.

Come on. None of you are magically going to start trusting me as if I were a townie, so I'm not going to try to bend over backwards to gain your favor and good graces.

To gain our favor? Whether you are voted does not have to do with favor. It has to do with whether we suspect your role in the game is a member of the mafia. Furthermore, to be suspected is not an insult and should not be treated like one; roles are

randomly assigned

. Why should you be so aghast at someone thinking maybe you were randomly assigned one role instead of another? To dig at you to search for rational reasons to determine your role is just playing the game.

...if I sit on a vote for too long without Mustilicor-approved reasoning...

.....what? Did you interpret the question regarding your vote as declaring it invalid? I was genuinely asking. I wanted to gauge your response. It wasn't an accusation, it was investigation. Scum-hunting. This was what I was suggesting you do - find unanswered questions, request answers, judge what you get.

Go ahead. Make my day. =D

*sigh* Fine. Sure thing.

You are an idiot if you don't understand why a town death isn't a pro-town thing to encourage.

We only get so many mislynches. We can't just choose a list of maybes and lynch them one by one without further investigation, or we'll run out of time. Every mislynch is the death of TWO town members. There are five town members left. Use your head.

If you are town that wants to help the town, help us figure out why we should suspect people more than you. The object of the game isn't to figure out who the scum is

eventually

by process of elimination. If we're wrong too many times in a row we

lose

. So we have to use rational inquiry (or even gut!) to try to decide who the very best target is each given time, not just throw out lynches randomly until the game is over.

You keep attacking logic as not the best way to go about playing, but you don't seem to be offering any alternative besides just following what everyone else is doing and hoping for the best.

..And honestly? By questioning whether you wanted to play or not, I was opting for the kinder of possibilities to explain your self-vote. Most everyone occasionally starts something and later realizes they're not interested in finishing. Not everyone is so impossibly slow as to just not understand what they're supposed to be doing, or to think pretending to be so is an effective way to avoid suspicion. (First is about hypothetical town you, second is about hypothetical scum you. Just so you're not insulted by the idea that I might assume you're playing a scum role, you understand. Wouldn't want you to miss the actual insult here.)


Ahem. I am done with my venting now and will not follow up with my personal attacks nor respond to any levied my way. I hope you can consider what I'm saying instead of dismiss it all as being mean without reason or purpose. Please place your vote on somebody you suspect instead of pursuing this idea that any lynch is a good lynch.

[Mustilicor]

Hmm. I just got my first town inkling regarding Antifinity. It has mostly been a battle of null versus scum until just now. That last post though appears to realize that directly defending himself will amount to nothing at this point, and without theatrics he moves on to harassing his main suspect.

Of course, his main suspect is pushing hard for his lynch. And his reasoning would sorta implicate himself. Not realizing scum has a partner = being that scum's partner? Mm. Perhaps he figures it's just less excuseable in an SE.

Tch. Overall he still leans scum. But is he the scummiest scum?! ...well yes. But not by much anymore.

@Andrius -
The typical pace on this site is pretty slow, yeah - look around and you'll notice our game has moved a lot faster than some others around us. There's a reason for that, though. The more chance you give your mafia members to slip up, the better town's chance of winning, and as far as I can tell the average day length has slowly lengthened over time. Thus the reason for the deadline actually - they apparently got looong at one point.

Yeah, but a town death allows for the list of suspects to grow thin. Its not a laudable strategy, to be sure, but it could help. Idk. That's how I see it. /un-helpful

I reeally think that's more of a silver lining of a mislynch than something we should be aiming for. I mean, if we get it wrong this time, we HAVE to get it right on D-3 or we lose. And since it would be two scum out of five, only one town member would have to be misled into voting on the scum's wagon. So that's really not a position we want to put ourselves in if we can avoid it.

I guess I could be helpful and go back and read. From like, page 1, and build a case for everyone's being scum.

You... you haven't done this yet?! XD Ahahaha no wonder you are lost as to how to investigate. That's the entire reason nobody's allowed to edit posts here - so we can go back and rifle through them for slip ups.

Idk. I'm going to look into something tomorrow, possible Sheriff tells. Idk. Maybe it'd help.

If you do this, I don't suggest you post what you find. If there's a cop, let them hide until they deem necessary. Otherwise you're painting a target on their head.

[Mustilicor]

'He' is Antifinity, Andrius. All of that first part of the post was in reference to Antifinity.

If you think Anti is the scummiest then why are you discrediting everyone elses vote on Anti beyond your own? I am solidifying my beliefs, and instead of trying to find more evidence that you are confident in Anti being scum you'd rather accuse me of reaching trying to discredit my own reasons for voting Anti despite the fact that we are both fighting for the same cause.

That is painting with a rather broad brush. Since determining my vote, I criticized one of your reasons. Just yours, and just one. Fighting for the same cause? No. I have no desire to actively campaign for any lynch. This is because I am aware that my analysis can not be trusted as one hundred percent reliable, nor can anyone's. I would much prefer everyone voted for who they thought was the most likely candidate than trying to bully them into listening to me. This way, the collective intelligence of the town chooses a lynch rather than the most forceful personalities.

My preferred method of hunting is to bring key points to everyone's attention to allow them to make their own conclusions. My current analysis of all of the data available to me points to Antifinity as the most probable scum, and so I am comfortable lynching him. I do not possess a strong

belief

about what anyone is, and so suspect reasoning of yours still warrants pointing out and considering.


...If you are our doctor, it's even more anti-town to encourage your own lynch than it would be for Andrius. Even if you only get one extra night, that's one night to potentially foil the scum. Blatant refusal to aid in information gathering is also fairly anti-town. Insisting that we should clearly have enough information already is having a reckless amount of faith in your own analysis. At the moment, even with your unvote, Antifinity will be lynched at deadline if all else fails. There is no need for you to be perturbed that not everybody agrees with you. Enough do that what you wish will likely come to pass.

[Mustilicor]

Hm. I'd apologize for having wandered off over the weekend, but it looks like I didn't miss much.

Civil Scum: What was your reasoning for moving your vote? I can't say I have issues with the place you put it, but the way you did it seems peculiar. If you're down with either Andrius or Antifinity at the moment, what exactly was it that moved you away from the one effectively at L1?

"Let's see what happens when I do this" suggests reaction fishing. Were you looking for Andrius's reaction or Quintastic's? What do you think of the lack of reaction?


On that note, Quintastic: Considering Civil Scum's vote change, what is your reasoning in keeping your vote off of Antifinity now?


Andrius: Why is it you think it's unlikely we have a cop at this point? What makes you lean toward one end or the other of a 50/50 split? And what exactly is your purpose in digging in such a thing at all? Just a need to try to set things straight in your head, or do you think it would be useful to the town to figure something like this out?


I'm probably going to continue to be relatively quiet as this day peters out. I am pretty infinitely patient when it comes to things like this, so I'm just leaving my vote where it is unless Andrius nudges his scum-probability above Antifinity's or for some reason it starts to look like we won't get a lynch of one of my top suspects. Maybe I'll do a few isos if I get bored, but honestly I've been keeping track of posts all along so most of what I could do feels a little redundant at this point. If anyone wants me to lay out a thorough analysis of a particular person, I'd be glad to. For now, I just want to encourage the town members to put their vote on the individual THEY are most confident as scum and to use their minds as much as possible when placing this vote so the collective-intelligence concept is actually something we can rely on.

[Mustilicor]

Since for the most part on this day both yourself, Mustlicor and Exilon have all been posting your thoughts and analysis but you're not really committing to a lynch or pushing for who you believe to be scummy. For the most part all of your activities this day have involved simply discrediting everyone elses suspicions instead of developing your own, which makes you look scummy.

[...]

And not to toot my own horn, but I've been the ONLY one with a consistent read on someone who's willing to stick to his opinion.

I do not think having absolute confidence in your analysis and lambasting those who disagree is quite as pro-town as you believe it is. And how long you hold a conviction has nothing to do with how right it is.

This goes for Andrius too: I present my concerns as they come up, for the most part. Before placing my vote, I deliberately ensured unchallenged oddities remaining were addressed. I used all of this to decide that Antifinity was more worthy of my vote than any of my other considerations.

My argument is out there in my previous posts. I have nothing to add to it at this time. This is why I am more quiet than I have been, and why I will continue to be.

As for 'discrediting' others, the fact that I am done wading through old concerns for now does not mean I will not address new concerns that present themselves. I

will

pick apart suspect reasoning. Just because I am voting for someone else at the moment does not make others safe. I am still looking around for number two, or even numbers one and two if it turns out I am incorrect about Antifinity (I acknowledge this possibility, and this acknowledgment should not be assumed to mean anything except that I know my own damned limitations).


I am not going to sit around and let somebody who I do not suspect at all be lynched. But I am perfectly okay with the majority of the town having a first suspect in my second suspect, and I am not going to fight it.

[Mustilicor]

Musti, you told me to not say anything about my findings regarding the Cop. And I still see it as a 50:50 shot anyway.

Ah. Well, you sort of did before I asked that. So I was asking what led you to your conclusion, because it seemed unusual for me. 50/50 translating to unlikely.

You know, something interesting to me is how you keep noting that this is all assuming we have a doctor. The thing is, though, whether we have a doctor doesn't change the probability of a cop...

unless you know the mafia set up.

Hm hm hm. You also addressed SAMP's playful threatening of you without addressing his actual question in the very same post.

Look at that. Just enough to put you in the lead in my analysis.

FoS Quintastic

if he turns up scum,

FoS Antifinity

if he turns up town.


If your count is correct, I do believe that makes me a hammer. Does anyone have any objections or last questions for him before I do this?

[Mustilicor]

I think I'm done here.
Ummm... thanks for playing with me, everyone. Very Happy

*salute* Feedback will have to wait from me. All depends on how you flip.

So basically, TL;DR, "I'm going to continue to discredit other peoples suspicions no matter how valid they are thereby preventing anyone from being confident in their suspicions to continue to grind this game to a screeching halt"

More like, if your reasoning is shit, I am going to tell you so. If your reasoning is at least marginally acceptable, I'm probably not going to comment. Look around at how many attacks I haven't commented on, Quintastic. Does it really look like I'm being indiscriminate? And maybe I ninja'd you and you missed it, but, uh,

I'm about to hammer

. Encouraging a screeching halt is not what I'd call that.


And in case this is something any of you guys have trouble inferring or don't feel comfortable assuming: the exact reasoning for my movement from Antifinity to Andrius is that what put Antifinity ahead in the first place was a comment of his easily readable as a slip caused by knowing more than a town member should. Andrius now also has something easily be construed as this. When taken together with other reasoning you can find easily in my iso, it adds up to more than what I've got on Antifinity.

[Mustilicor]

Sorry. Let me try again.

You and Antifinity were fairly even in scum-probability (with you ever so slightly ahead) until Antifinity's posts 17 and 18 (numbers given are iso numbers). SAMP! points out in his post 20 a contradiction that make these posts even more suspect. At that point, Antifinity pulled firmly ahead of you.

With your post 58, you said

I believe that TQO is the Doc. So, in my mind, we have a 50% chance at a Cop. I know, if you don't think he is, its a different scenario. But that's how I see it. Take it or leave it.

However, it is only a different scenario if you know the mafia set up. Thus, this is a possible scum slip just as Antifinity's posts 17 and 18 were.

Because you were slightly ahead before Antifinity's slip, your matching of his slip has put you slightly ahead again.

[Mustilicor]

Depends on when others who might have questions (or, heaven forbid, fatal flaws in my reasoning) get in here to say so.

[Mustilicor]

What? No. I'm not talking about the fact that you think there is a doctor.

The thing is, though, whether we have a doctor doesn't change the probability of a cop...

Only with an assumption of a goon/goon setup could a doctor claim make a cop unlikely.
Your declaring of 50/50 odds as unlikely makes no sense.

The overlap of these two factors suggests a slip.

If nothing else, it indicates the attempt to appear to investigate without actually paying attention to the odds you're supposedly rolling around in your head.

[Mustilicor]

Ahhhhhh noooo okay fine.

(Just because I opted to wait until you guys were ready doesn't mean I wasn't hoping you already were. xD)


Umm. To pop my head briefly into this back and forth...

Excuse me? Furthering my arguments? There hasn’t been a need to further any of my arguments as they are mostly uncountered… and whenever there was indeed a counter or a question on them I’d promptly state all of my thoughts and reasoning. I don’t feel the need to make other people vote or convince them to vote as I did – they will do if their own reasoning goes that way and if they agree with me.

I'm going to have to offer my support here, CS. The alternative is behaving like Quintastic and repeatedly pushing a case already laid out even in lieu of new evidence. Considering Andrius is going to end up the lynch rather than Antifinity, such a tactic hardly seems very effective. Laying out your argument and waiting for people to make their own decisions about it is all you can really do.


I also asked him back on day one why he was leaving his vote on thatguy00 back on D1, and his response in iso post number [] is just as applicable to McGriddle. I don't personally feel there is a strong reasoning to favor the possibility of laying low over cautiousness that caused him to run out of time.


The rest of your argument.. :S. I'm hesitant to actively defend anyone, but considering I've got a fairly town read on Exilon, it makes some of your weirder questions regarding him a little more suspect. We're not speaking Esperanto here; words vary in meaning according to context.

And you don't think looking at player's relationships with others is valid?


Eh. I've questioned a lot of things I didn't find truly suspicious just to feel people out, so I'll allow for the possibility that's what you're doing now.

[Mustilicor]

.................or there's that.

I forgot to go find the post number and replace the [] with it, but more importantly, apparently Quintastic decided to hammer despite a direct request to wait a moment. ._.;

[Mustilicor]

Ahh, maybe I misread and Exilon just wanted to get his rebuttal in. Got it.

In other news, it looks like the post I was looking for wasn't Exilon's at all, but Andrius's! I don't see where Exilon actually mentions the alpha-vote thing. Hn. Maybe he doesn't.

[Mustilicor]

Why would you hammer someone you believe to be town?! I cannot get over how silly that is. Was just waiting for a quick nod from everyone and the day would have been done unless something big was presented. What if SAMP! miraculously had something that would turn everything around forever?? Agh agh agh *fret*

[Mustilicor]

No, I'm fretting because I hate surprises and because I don't understand your motivation at all. The SAMP! thing isn't much of a possibility but I like allowing for possibilities, and now the thread is going to close and I can't and.. grch.

As for talking during night, some clarification would be nice.

Does the no talking rule apply immediately after the hammer or only once the thread is closed?

[Mustilicor]

Ah, thank you. When I was skimming over the rules again I was looking for the words hammer and night phase. Guess that hows me to keyword hunt.


So then: you talk about me distancing myself from the lynch, Quintastic, but apparently you hammered while thinking Andrius is town? What the hell? How can you seriously justify hammering someone you think to be town? Someone who was most likely going to be hammered in the next couple of days anyway? And while in a game in which a no-lynch isn't possible..!

I probably wouldn't have been moved by SAMP!'s defense if it was really just a repetition, but I still would have liked to have read and considered it. I would have liked an opportunity to examine my own thinking for flaws. Because I know not to trust my own mind..! I wanted to ensure there wasn't some outstanding issue I'd failed to consider! Because people overlook things sometimes even when they're trying to be thorough - the fact that I failed to find the appropriate rule when I looked for it proves as much.


Fortunately it turned out that SAMP! was just going to rehash an old argument rather than attack mine. But do you really not get why I'd be frustrated with your hammering a lynch that you don't even agree with? It's just declaring OKAY THINKING TIME IS OVER PEOPLE and finalizing a group decision before the actual members of that group are ready to do so.

[Mustilicor]

The group in question being the group of people who actually suspect Andrius.

[Mustilicor]

TQO: It's sort of funny that you saw me as totally until I began to criticize your arguments, you know.

Of course I don't trust my own mind. It's a human mind. They're demonstrably untrustworthy, you know. I'd recommend

Predictably Irrational

or a similar book if you need help with that concept. Our capabilities for situation analysis are imperfect, but there are ways to maximize our success. One is scrutinizing our own work mercilessly. This is not the same as not having good reasons for voting.

[Mustilicor]

totally town*

[Mustilicor]

Out of curiosity, is there any non-scum reason to want a player to stop talking? For example, could you be worried that someone will reveal a power role or something? I can't really think of a pro-town motive to end the day; even when the lynch victim is obvious, the only change in the discussion tomorrow is that two (or possibly one) voice(s) will be silenced; which doesn't seem to profit the town in any way.

Well. Non-scum, sure (as in someone could just be an ornery town-member), but certainly not pro-town I don't think. Not in a game in which no-lynches aren't possible. Which makes it noteworthy I suppose that Quintastic was under the impression twilight meant no discussion.

[Mustilicor]

I'm not sure that's going to be productive at all. Pay attention to the set ups; the scum knows at this point if there is a cop around to counter claim. This means two claims are unlikely, which is the only scenario that would be helpful for us. If there is a cop, they know that they're telling the truth and that they can trust their investigations. But for the rest of us? A single claim means jack unless they've a ridiculously bad contradiction in their explanation of their actions so far.

All a genuine claim would really mean that if we lynch correctly today, the remaining scum has a new target. :/


Andrius and Quintastic were my favored scum pair, so I'm going to have to take a step back and reevaluate a bit. Antifinity is still my top suspect, but I'm cautious as hell for obvious reasons. Full iso of remaining players is in progress.

Please remember guys - be careful with your votes. Place it when you're completely willing for the person to go down. Not before.

[Mustilicor]

That said, I'm going to entirely ignore any claim that occurs at L-1.

[Mustilicor]

Err, which I'm only clarifying to say it's not like going around claiming would rob the scum of a chance to only claim if they have to. It's not reasonable to trust a claim either way.

[Mustilicor]

Fair enough. It's not so much that protecting power roles particularly concerns me at this point; I just hadn't considered the possible reduction of chance of error to 50%. Reasonable. I rescind my objection.

No cop claim here.

[Mustilicor]

...Civil scum, you're taking my 'nooo' out of context. I objected to Quintastic hammering like that, but that wasn't what that particular post was about - it was playfully being exasperated there was something I needed to wait on. Quintastic posted at the same time as me and I hadn't seen his hammer at that point. Pay attention and please do not misquote me in the future.

Yeah I was annoyed with Quintastic for overriding a request to let the day continue a little longer for no valid sounding reason, and more than that, his action looked scummy enough to make me fret over whether I was right about Andrius. I was afraid of the possibility of scum-Quintastic ensuring the lynch went through by cutting off discussion regarding it.


Doing the isos I mentioned now. Got distracted by Dog Whisperer last night. >.>

[Mustilicor]

Alright. Current suspicion lies on Antifinity/SAMP!. Antifinity's reasons have been addressed: those initial posts readable as newbscum, claiming to busy enough not to post often yet responding to suspicions regarding himself rather quickly, and assuming a mislynch with an excuse that contradicts earlier posts. As for SAMP!..

SAMP!

Now I feel like I've been wrong three times in a row. Sad

Declaring himself wrong about The Quintastic One right after he claimed doc. In his next post however he suggests his unvote merely a precaution with

I trust this sort of "hard" evidence much more than my own psychological guessing abilities, so despite the latter pointing towards him being scum I'd rather keep him and get some of the former.

This doesn't read as someone who thinks himself wrong. Possibly an attempt to sweep what he realised was a slip under the rug?

I'm also finding the consistent defense of Antifinity pretty unwarranted. In his post iso 20 he points out a serious contradiction of Antifinity's, yet by the next post he's defending him again. He later goes on to vote Civil Scum on gut.

I just checked, I unvoted before Mustilicor.

This is possible misdirection. While it is true that I unvoted

Quintastic

after him, it seems clear Andrius was talking about the vote on himself in particular.


Finally, this cop thing is the first attempt to really organize the town into doing something productive, which is sketchy considering it would be a completely safe move if he knew there was no cop - like I said, entirely possible for scum at this point. Probable actually. If they had a roleblocker it would have been sensible to keep the doc alive, suspicious, and useless.



Secondary possibility is Civil Scum/Antifinity. To be honest this case is made up of gum, paperclips, and weird iffy feelings, but Civil's an IC. As such, his possible scum play might be cleaner than what the rest of us would manage.

He has misrepresented what others have said through what could or could not be inattention at least twice that I can see (MMM's personal read of SAMP!) His focus on Exilon disturbs me a little consider Exilon is the only strong town read I've had all game, and that his current stated suspicion is still on Antifinity. Other than that? Eh. v:?v Like I said, gum, paperclips, iffiness. He tends to post in really giant blocks which could possibly be a deliberate attempt to turn his input into white noise, I guess, but a lot of us are guilty of that.

Consider that two FoS's and an FomS.

[Mustilicor]

Haha, random bolded SAMP! in the middle of nowhere. Ignore that.

[Mustilicor]

My wonder is if that crossed Samp's mind. Asking for a cop claim at this time, like Samp did, does not seem like a thing scum would do - mainly because scum knows if there is one or not, rendering that question unnecessary, unless there was some other purpose behind it.
Anyone else here thought of this?

Well, sure. Offering up a strategy that could, on its surface, appear to offer such a boost in probability of town success... well, it seems exceptionally pro-town! Only it's shallow; chances are there is no roleblocker for reasons above, which means that chances are there is no cop, and scum

knows

this. It makes it a very safe thing to do to seem to try to help the town as a whole out. And a very attractive thing, if you know there are weaknesses for hard numbers out there to prey on.

It wouldn't stand out to me if SAMP! had a history of cooperative play in this game, but he doesn't really. Not to say that he's been uncooperative exactly, just that his play has consisted of going after his current suspects and defending himself when necessary, not rallying any action.

Mmf. I'm slightly surprised the possibility doesn't occur to you given your 'turning the chessboard' around thing. I do hope I'm not making a mistake in my evaluation of you.

And when I pointed it out, he explained it. (post 308) It was a believable explanation that didn't seem like backtracking, there was no bitterness or OMGUS; basically there was nothing at all in that post that seemed like he was trying to dishonestly avoid suspicion. Hence I still think he's town.

The reason I point it out is because I have a hard time understanding going with an evidenceless gut vote in light of a slip-up that took being challenged twice to get an explanation satisfactory at face value.

When you first begin suspecting someone, would say the read generally begins with gut or logic? Do you only use logic to justify your gut feelings to others?

[Mustilicor]

While rereading, I realized I mistyped my secondary scumpair possibility in post 412. Civil Scum/SAMP, not Civil Scum/Antifinity. Not sure how much difference that makes, but wanted to clarify.



Interesting, Exilon. I'm not sure I entirely understand it though; could you expand on it a bit? Also, when was it you were saving it for? I did wait for SAMP to post before questioning it.

Something which this explanation does not cover. In fact, you're basically misrepresenting my mistake of not noticing the times of a SIMUL as a defense of what I am saying, when it doesn't entirely.

I still think it's a valid point with your "fretting" posts, though.

Not sure I follow. Look at my posts immediately after the hammer. First is the simul (which has no reason to be capslocked considering it is not an acronym, mister...!), la la la don't even notice the hammer at this point. Then I notice and basically say 'um that was pretty weird considering Exilon just asked me to wait.' Then I realize maybe I was wrong about Exilon's request to lengthen the day, and sort of take part of my objection back.

Then

I begin openly doubting myself because no matter how many times I roll it over in my mind, I just can't think of a good town reason for Quintastic to have done this. And since as far as scum reasoning goes, bussing a teammate while saying you don't suspect them would be stupidly ineffective, so it led to the possibility that he was scum reasoning trying to get a town kill over with to make sure it went through. So yeah, my evaluation of situation was very much thrown into doubt by that hammer.

I am going to second SAMP's request for clarification on the thing you said clears me.


Antifinity: what are you saying the difference between using you as a shield and trying to take you out? Would using you as a shield just be hoping someone else took you out instead of doing the dirty work themselves, or what?

Not sure how to defend myself from an accusation so heinous as 'best town player'. Go ahead with that reread though. Since we only have a few players left, it should be easy to iso everyone who isn't you.


Mmgh, there are a couple other things I wanted to address, but I need to go ahead and get to class.

[Mustilicor]

Uhh,.. wow. Quiet today. Erhem.

I didn't actually notice this my first go-round, somehow:

She seems bitter that CS has interpreted her post this way. Townies usually aren't bitter about being suspected.

Except that I've been questioned before and haven't reacted in a 'bitter' manner. I suppose you could argue that this is the first time I've been seriously suspected, but I was also quoted entirely out of context. Certainly it is understandable to narrow one's eyes at a post that makes actions look suspicious entirely through misrepresentation.


I can't for the life of me recall the things I was cut off before addressing earlier, unfortunately. It'll come back to me eventually, I imagine. Mm. I've been pretty sick today and seem to be getting worse, so here's a preemptive warning if I go a little quiet or nonsensical.

[Mustilicor]

Quick question to SAMP!: would you say your use of logic is clearly outlined in your posts?


I think I'm going to reread Exilon's iso. At the moment he still reads to me as town with a cautious way of doing things, but you bring up a couple of good points, Civil.

[Mustilicor]

I don't know. I still can't really see it. Or rather, I can't see it nearly as easily as I can see the possibilities of others as scum. Why bother yanking the reins on that MMM lynch like he did instead of just lying low while it happened and protest afterwards? He could have gotten away with that easily, I think. It was quite fast.

I mean that you sometimes state things that seem to mean I am doing “this” or “that” to make the town proceed in a certain way.

True. When I think someone's scum, I want the town to lynch them.

I don't know why I'm having to ask clarification on so many things right now; maybe I'm a little less all here than I realize. But what is it that you're saying here? How is this a response to what he just said? I can see that you're saying that you try to direct the town when you think you're right, but are you suggesting you might do so in a misleading way, or am I misreading?

[Mustilicor]

Well I don't understand it, or at least, I don't understand why a townie would do so. Misrepresentation isn't a big deal for a townie, since they have a legitimate explanation for the action being misrepped. Scum don't, so they have more reason to be upset about it.

You're entirely ignoring that there are more factors at play than scum versus townie when people react to things. Most of your reads suffer from this; you seem to have have a very concrete model in your mind of how scum behaves, meaning your evaluation of someone's role in the game is born entirely of how well they match this model.

May I ask how long you've played? Don't misunderstand the question as an insult; I'm merely wondering if this is a matter of experience that I lack rather than the broad assumption I can't help but view it as.

When searching for tells that could be influenced by personality, it is only sensible to check to see if these tells are displayed in other situations. You don't have a meta to work with, but you do have different situations in this thread. Consider some of my interactions with Andrius. Consider my behavior towards Quintastic's logic before he ever suspected me. I've even been somewhat terse with Antifinity if one wishes to include bullying someone into a specific action. With all of this in mind, how is it not more sensible from your perspective to conclude I am snippy by nature?

Particularly

when said snippiness does not even consistently apply to exchanges in which I am being suspected.

(I also submit that your reasoning is far more intuition-based than you realize, but after typing up why realized it was of very little relevance. I'll keep it in case hypothetical-town-you wants it in the end game.)

[Mustilicor]

This is true. BUT:

1) He got away with it either way. As in, he didn't get much attention after calling for the unvotes and asking for everyone to slow down, not to hammer, etc. Antifinity seems to have had the biggest problem with it.

[and etc]

It's understandable they'd go against their own interests occasionally, I suppose; I just feel that most players, in particular brand new players, would avoid risking a wagon derail when such an easy alternative path is right there available to them. And certainly it is nothing like more transparent trying-to-look-townie ploys which, upon further inspection, have little to no chance of aiding the town at all - like SAMP's cop thing.

He does end up on the fence at the end there, but at that point in the game it was a sensible place to be.


What is your take on Antifinity at the moment?

[Mustilicor]

But just because Person A had ways of playing that better served his scummy purposes, in any number of situiations, doesn't mean that he would have played that way if he were scum. It would get to the point where they were playign a bad game just becuase they were so obviously playing against the town's interest.

This is true. But without a meta, I don't know what to do with a fleeting maybe when there are possible overt slips to look at.

[Mustilicor]

Confused Looking through your iso, I honestly don't find you snippy. On the contrary, you come off as a genuinely nice person. Even when you threatened Anti with a vote if he didn't give a suspect list, you apologized afterward precisely because you didn't want to seem like a bully. So I don't understand why you say you are snippy by nature.

D'aww. <3 Alright then, perhaps my knowledge of myself outside of mafia is coloring my view of my actions within it. In that case I have no further defense, I suppose, except that having my actions falsely represented irks me on a personal level, and I responded thusly (coated with the same passive-aggressive politeness I have used elsewhere, at that).

I do quite believe emotion to be the outdated decision-making mechanism I called it, mind; I simply realize I am not invulnerable to it.

[Mustilicor]

Can anyone suggest something I could do? I feel kind of useless here.

Have you iso'd the two you have bad feelings about to search for possible evidence?

[Mustilicor]

Good lord, Exilon. XD Good stuff; thanks for requesting the expansion on that answer by CS. I kept forgetting to do that.


SAMP: What I mean is that because I know myself to be a little snippy, it is possible I thought incorrectly that this trait could be gathered from my posts here. As for why my 'outside of Mafia' self should be noticeably more reactive than what I display here, there's both the fact that forum posts give me the time to censor my immediate reactions, and the fact that I don't want to derail the game with shitstorming.

[Mustilicor]

Antifinity: McGriddle explained this earlier. At the bottom of each page, there's a series of dropdown menus with the tag 'Display posts from previous:'. Select the user you want from the appropriate menu, and click go.

What is it you think voting and unvoting would accomplish?



Civil Scum: Considering the normal length of my posts, such a blurb from me should be a fairly obvious clue as to the amount of attention I could spare at the time. If these errors you mention exist, I did not catch them in my first once over. I will, of course, be going over it more thoroughly in a moment, but I have a hard time imagining it's as egregious as you paint it. If it's not, it's yet another instance of your misrepresentation. I'll see, I suppose -- though I likely won't have the time to post again immediately after my more in depth perusal. Just be patient. I'm here, I'm just quite busy.

Feigns agreement? I agreed that it was worth going back over his posts. So I did that. My final conclusion after doing that was that he was town. Part of it was the point I cited, a much greater part of it is simply that I feel like I sort of 'get' the way he's thinking.

And.. this last bit is WIFOM, but honestly, it would be silly for me as scum to defend him like I've been. Or hell, even to be as friendly with him as I have. Just look over some of our earlier posts, realize how careless I'd have to be to allow such an appearance of a link to form, and try to ask yourself if I really come across as that careless of a person. I'm not.

[Mustilicor]

Nothing jaw-droppingly huge is jumping out at me at the moment. I see more of the sort of miscommunication that seems to plague the interactions of you two, but none of it looks like anything more than you guys being on different wavelengths, as it were. I see a stretchy example of breadcrumbing that doesn't really make for a case for or against him. I don't see the glaring things you're implying are there.

I admit that I'm studying for a Cog exam at the same time, though, so maybe I'm just overstretching my attention. I look forward to your deconstruction. Please do make sure it includes the answer to that question of mine from earlier.


To all: I apologize that most of my participation has been reactive lately as opposed to proactive; I should be able to remedy this this weekend.

[Mustilicor]

So much for being more proactive over the weekend, hmm? Sorry about that guys; my computer borked something awful. If you'd like evidence, I missed a round of voting in a game over in mish mash and probably had my bit disqualified. Oi. I should have it back by Friday, but until then this limits my contribution considerably. Most of the time I spend on here is while doing something else at the same time. I can't do much multitasking on a library computer, and thus unfortunately cannot spare much time for it.

Because there's a lot to address, I'll do my best to catch up now. A quick disclaimer: I accidentally took a quadrupel dose of my medication today instead of the double dose I intended. Mixed up bottles and all that. Please forgive any unusual wording.


As meaty as the CS/Exilon back and forth is, it has ballooned to the point that it is not providing much new information. Hm. Very vehement on Civil Scum's part on a couple things that don't seem to require such vehemence. Convinced Exilon is scum and leaping desperately for something to latch onto? Quintastic certainly showed town's capacity to do that. The other possibility of course being reaching to paint a case that he knows isn't there. One detail though - Exilon not knowing what misquoting is comes across as.. odd. And I'm not sure how the context would lead him to the definition he assumed. Or why he would feel the need to use context in the first place when there are things like google. Tch tch tch. Edging out of the safe zone. How disappointing.

Mustilicor gave one example of something you wouldn't have done as scum. I already argued this effectively imo, that that one thing should in no way clear you in Mustilicor's mind.

I was never intending to imply that he was cleared by that detail in itself. Exilon rates (rated? I don't have access to my math to update it) as my lowest probability scum based on a possibility tree analysis of each of his notable posts and patterns. I cited this as a simple 'for example' as an action that was more probably town than scum -- not something that could not possibly be scum.

At this point in the game, I have only four people to look at. I should have a decent probability of selecting correctly if I use the accumulated evidence to stick cautious little labels onto those I feel most confident about and use this opportunity to focus greater attention on figuring out the labels of those left.

I am still reading Exilon's posts for possible slips, but they just do not read to me the way they seem to to you. Most of your objections come down to what I see as playstyle. If I have missed/forgotten something (before that post) more concrete than 'he is slow and cautious and I think that is scummy', please correct me.

Because neither of you, now or in the past, have given any examples of me deliberately avoiding anything. In other words, THIS IS YOU FABRICATING EVIDENCE.

Who is the person other than Exilon referred to here? If it is me because I was referred to in his post, I do not recall commenting on you avoiding anything without citing a post (or at all, at the moment). If I have time to check if I have and it turns out I am incorrect, I will attempt to clarify my meaning for you.

You couldn't possibly have been the cop. Just saying.

What are you trying to get at here?

This post doesn't seem to match up with her "consider all possibilities" style. Particularly considering her MMM vs. me post, and the bolded portion of this post about Anti:

It certainly seems weird to say the least that she's letting Exilon off easily.

Except that I'm not. It's clear even in the post you quoted that I acknowledge the possibility that he is scum. "Or rather, I can't see it nearly as easily as I can see the possibilities of others as scum." I was communicating that despite the things Civil Scum brought up, Exilon still rated as the most probable town player to me, precisely because other people's play came across as MORE scummy than his.

Obviously I have objection to you voting for me simply because I am in a position to know that if you are town, it could trigger a quick hammer. I don't, however, have objection to you voting in general. I was even playing with the idea of placing my own vote earlier just for desperate want of the information it would bring, but unfortunately I could not sort out enough evidence to make it a reasonable gamble.
Part of me desperately wants more content to read from Antifinity before we come to the voting stage, but I've been wanting for that for a long time. His silence on the iso point after specifically asking how to do it is worth noting though.


...tch tch tch. Do I want to make this gamble? I would not normally, but if your vote is going on me, it means that by not voting on my most probable scum, I allow your vote to result in a possible quick lynch without ever getting to watch the response to my own vote - a vote that if nothing else, I do not know to be town, which is more than I can say for my knowledge of yours. Tch. Tch. Does taking less of a risk somehow lessen the risk coming - the risk that SAMP is town and that his vote will be latched onto by the scum? Antifinity could be town. I could be setting up a quick lynch that might not even be possible with SAMP's vote, if SAMP is scum.

Mm. It does come down to a gamble, and even through inaction I would be making a considerable one. I apologize that I am single-handedly taking this risk rather than awaiting your input, guys, but there is a bigger one I want to head off. SAMP is more likely to be town than Antifinity is, meaning my vote is less likely to result in a quick lynch than his.

Vote: Antifinity

[Mustilicor]

Alrighty, popping in here one more time before heading home, where I will be - horror - without internet access.

Antifinity's first vote = town speculation struck me as unusual when I first saw it. Without experience to draw from (and haven't hading dredged a pool of newbie game data on the subject - brilliantly methodical, SAMP), it didn't really strike me as intuitive that it should necessarily be more likely for town to place the first vote than scum. Certainly scum might prefer to lie in wait to hammer on someone else's vote, but the reasoning he actually gives doesn't.. resonate? I notice Exilon seems to feel this way as well.

So when SAMP fished up the relevant data, I was slightly surprised. And combined with the contemplation of quick lynches and dedicated vote times, it leads me to wonder if Antifinity is not considerably more familiar with the game than he lets on. Sure, thinking up that a designated time would be useful should be easy! ...but Antifinity has seemed very very lost up until now, even moreso than others who have played the game before, and this sort of insight would be a sudden change in character. A break in character, I do believe. ...and he has failed to clarify what he was getting at with the cop thing.


Of course, as far as I'm concerned, the fact that both SAMP and Exilon have been around and no second vote has been cast speaks volumes. If Antifinity were not scum, at least one of you two would have to be. And Civil Scum's our CS! If he was scum, would he leave a vote for a townie sitting there all day while his partner flailed? I don't think so.

I am pleased. I feel like I have made the appropriate deduction. Go me. :3

I can see that, but it still comes off as a completely different attitude than before. Like with that quote about Anti, even though you said it wasn't likely the case, you were still wary. While in this case you don't seem nervous at all about writing off Exilon.

I admit, during this day I have experienced significant temptation to revamp my strategy completely. Being wrong twice in a row (perhaps three times, if you include Quintastic) will do that to you. Such numbers don't actually have statistical refutation that my system offers a better than random chance at selecting scum though, and so I'm trying to quiet the impulse to toss everything out and start again. It is quite possible, after all, that so far I have simply been unlucky. Regardless, the impulse is still very much there. I am craving certainty, even if this certainty is illusory. My numbers say Exilon is my most likely town. I want them to be correct. I am open to them being wrong, but it would displease me, and so I am driven to search for confirmation that they are correct.

It is a psychological phenomenon that poses an incredible risk of bias, and so I should take action to mitigate it. Thank you for pointing it out.



I do not have especially strong feelings on who the second scum is at the moment. I will look at this more thoroughly tomorrow, noting in particular interactions with Antifinity - as I am all but certain of his role now. About as certain as you can really be, in this game.

[Mustilicor]

...but Antifinity has seemed very very lost up until now, even moreso than others who have played the game before,

Others who

haven't

played the game before

[Mustilicor]

This doesn't follow, since he hasn't posted at all since you voted.

Actually, that's exactly what I was getting at. It's more important for scum than town to be constantly aware of where votes are placed, and a full day of not checking the game while scum seems more unlikely for a CS that would know to look for quicklynch opportunities. Not posting indicates either that he wasn't around, or that he was and didn't see fit to post. Both possibilities at least slightly lower the possibility of CS being paired with you or Exilon.

(Of course, it does occur to me that attentiveness is beneficial for the town to

avoid

quicklynching, but if your vote isn't the one being capitalized on, there's not much you can do if you see it happening. Thus, ensuring you keep an eye on immediate happenings is still more crucial for scum at this stage.)

Of course, we do have the information that he's taking pain medication. If it's not too out of line to ask, is that due to a recent injury/surgery/whatever, CS? If so, this could hamper any planned attempt to be on top of things.


It was sort of stupid of me to think I'd get the chance to sift through old posts involving Antifinity that soon - I still haven't gotten the chance. Sigh. Maybe this afternoon. If nothing else, I get my computer back on Friday. Can't wait.

So regardless of if you'd be 'willing to vote me', which is how I am going to read you being unsure of my case on Exilon (not sure I would call it a case, maybe a "hunt"), or if you think I look the scummier or the townier for our interactions, in either case you think I'm reaching for dust, or desperate to have him lynched.

I don't think that Exilon is innocent of not throwing stuff in there that was fluffy, didn't exist, over the top, or 'desperate' or weak in that sense.

Now, was that your overall impression of it? Or were there specific points of mine that you thought I was reaching on, sounded desperate, or that you disagreed with?

Willing to vote you..? Why would you read it like that? I wouldn't be at all comfortable voting for you right now. I can't find enough to edge you and SAMP far enough apart to pick one over the other.

Over all? Most of what I got from it was that there was an incredible amount of miscommunication going back and forth and very little actual meat. Most points seem based on misunderstanding -- both attacks based on fresh misunderstanding and those attacking old misunderstandings of the other party -- or the playstyle attack that I don't happen to agree with. Either that, or I'm just not following what on earth some of the things you guys were squabbling over were really about. I'll grab a few specific points in my next post (which will be within the hour). As for why I mention you as opposed to Exilon when he is half of the disconnect between you two is because you come across as more in the position of attack, and Exilon defense.

Everyone has now 'been around' and no one has cast a second vote. What you seem to be ignoring here, perhaps on accident, perhaps on purpose, is the possibility that the scum aren't going for the quicklynch because you are one of them, and thus they can't put on two votes in addition to yours.

What? Look at what you just quoted.

As far as I'm concerned.

I know my own role. I was simply noting the case I am able to make from MY position. The case possible to be made from outside it is above that.


As for certainty, I don't claim to be certain it's not going to happen. But as everyone has posted since my vote, I seriously doubt it will at this point. I was not certain before, and I did not claim to be. It was a gamble, and I called it that.

Are you suggesting that no townie should feel comfortable placing the first vote? Particularly when they are aware that a vote on them is coming, one that they are in a position to know is on a townie and thus could result in a quicklynch if the voter is also town?

[Mustilicor]

Here we go. These in particular are points I disagree with.

(And completely honestly? The actual issues at hand in some of it was just too hard to follow without grabbing an iso of Exilon in one window and an iso of you in the other, since there is no quote nesting going on. I haven't had time to do that. And so an unfortunate amount of it just comes across as bickering, which is one of the main reasons I said it wasn't that useful anymore.)

I'll stand by this quote until the day I die. You would never expect someone who had suspected someone for that long to not get impatient, and to have ANY sort of problem with them finally getting lynched.

This is so obvious to me, I'm really not understanding how no one else gets it.

This is regarding your dismay that Exilon called the Andrius lynch a speedy lynch. I was able to ascertain what he meant the first time he said it, considering I was also in the position of being perfectly alright with the lynch target but quite taken aback by the way it happened.

You can keep trying to paint me scummy, or keep debating, or trying to argue away my concerns, but I still see you as saying you were keen on Quintastic in a pairing when you weren't suspicious of him.

I don't think noting interactions between people you do find suspicious and those that, in isolation, you do not, is at all a strange thing to do.

You haven't been wandering around going, 'Oh gee, who do I vote for, I'm so confused, I'm so lost...etc' But your posts are wandering. Sure you stick with a suspect (the one person you vote for each day?), but you don't push your wagons at all or try to further the arguments very much, outside of throwing in shots at new targets.

This is one of those things that comes down to a disagreement in how a town player should play. When there are that many townies against two scum, I don't believe attempting to dominate the discussion by pushing one opinion is necessarily useful. I said as much to Quintastic.


Aaaaaand I really need to get out of here NOW, I'll be back tonight.

[Mustilicor]

Oooh, and I come back to second vote. Surprisingly nerve-wracking! Tch tch. I do believe I'll stand my ground though. Even if my read on Civil is incredibly shaky and I wouldn't be comfortable labelling him either town or scum, I am confident enough in regards to Antifinity to think that even if he is scum, this is bussing behavior. Otherwise the pair would have to be Civil/Exilon, and... well. That ranks as my least likely pairing of scum.

So! Let us check if the time has come where it's appropriate to actively persuade people to see as I see.

Exilon: I'm pretty sure you're noticing a lot of what I am, yes? His posts have almost exclusively been either wandering thoughts about the concept of the game rather than this particular game, or they've been to defend himself against direct accusations. It's difficult to get him to respond to questions. And, of course, he's suddenly indicated a lot more insight and analysis than he seemed able to manage earlier.


SAMP: Why exactly is that 'ugh' ? Is it because the waters have been muddied in your mind? I must admit, it actually almost comes across that you were searching for statistics in hope that they would support the case you were trying to push, and are disappointed that they do not. But it's hard to imagine scum would be so careless as to allow that to creep into their post. Hm.

You post especially to note you're not hammering. Why is that?

[Mustilicor]

Hahahaha. SAMP! xD That is not how you are supposed to approach statistical analysis! If you have a forgone conclusion before reaching for the statistics... goodness, so very unscientific.


I of course have no objections to the hammer, but I think I'm leaning more toward an Antifinity/SAMP pair at the moment.

I rather gathered, and now have had confirmed, that when SAMP mentioned he was going to go search for those statistics, he was assuming he was correct. He trapped himself into presenting them before he realized they wouldn't support his case. Sure he could have tried to twist the evidence in hopes that nobody would check up on him - but he mentioned earlier, regarding Andrius, that it would be suicide for scum to lie in a way that somebody can easily check up on. He knew that wasn't a viable option. He was frustrated with having to present something against his own case. As town, realizing the statistics actually were NOT on his side shouldn't have been an 'ugh' moment, but a 'hmm' one.

It's not that I'm saying someone should have absolute faith in statistics. There is a minority as well as a majority, after all. It's just that such frustration indicates he was planning to use something he doesn't hold much stock in to push a case (as if he did find it truly relevant, it might have influenced his thinking).

This is a very scum attitude to me.

There is of course the possibility that it did influence his thinking a little and that he's frustrated regardless of having reconsidered, but I prodded specifically for such an answer when I asked what the ugh was about. I don't think it is the case.

Either way, I think Antifinity is a solid lynch for today.

[Mustilicor]

Ahahaha, yes! *fistpump* That was surprisingly satisfying.

You had me pretty worried for a while there, SAMP. But I was hoping that if I went down, my flipping scum would implicate Exilon so we'd have a chance at winning anyway.

Were you intentionally trying to provoke SAMP into voting, Civil, or just looking like you were setting up for a D-4 case?


...oh, and my computer really did bork, by the way. Still had my phone on me to keep an eye on things, so I suppose a claim of lack of access wasn't COMPLETELY honest, but er.. it is frustrating to type long posts on that thing. I am sure you understand. >.>

[Mustilicor]

Oh, the VUE file was completely real. I make those things with a lot of concepts, since I have trouble keeping up with my thoughts otherwise (my mind is a terribly chaotic place). It's gone now, unfortunately, since I lost most of the information on that harddrive, but I really was using it. I figured, what's the best way to come across as sincerely townie? ....well, I guess I'll just pretend to myself that pm came to me saying VT, and play accordingly. So I did, and got in some decent townie practice in as well. Though obviously townie doomed to be wrong unless she found something incriminating on Civil Scum, but ah well. xD

It was only day three that my scum motivation started conflicting with my townie motivation. (I really would have been just as WTF at you as town, Quintastic.) And I really was genuinely encouraging people to think rationally. xD I don't know, it was a mixture of wanting to have more to hide from than random accusations and just half-deluding myself into thinking I might be talking to a teammate.

I'm sorry Exilon! XD I really do think we think alike, and unfortunately for the town, the fact that I was able to pick up on that meant I knew that my sort of logic would probably sound genuine to you. I didn't manage to lead you very well, but either way I was hoping to engender the feeling that we were together in this thing. Civil helped that quite a bit by pointing it out.


The bickering was.. vaguely planned? Sort of? I think there was a mention of going good cop bad cop on Exilon at least, but I didn't quite expect CS to come down as hard on me as he did. Who knows, maybe the frustration SAMP thought he saw in my response to CS was a subconscious 'hey why didn't you warn me about this!!!' aggravation. I dunno, it hadn't felt too curt to me when I typed it the first time, but after rereading it it certainly looked that way.

[Mustilicor]

Antifinity: If you ever come up against the claim that you're not answering questions again, just ctrl-f for your name throughout the thread. Ooor chances are that if you missed it the first time, you could use a reread anyway.

[Mustilicor]

Heheheh. Besides simply figuring that if I were a townie, I SHOULD be worried that getting a vote on me could result in a quicklynch, I was mostly trying to shake SAMP off of my tail. Enough of being on the defensive! Let's put Antifinity on the defensive!

If nothing else, I hoped it would be surprising enough to stall him, and I was really hoping for Antifinity to say something in his defense that I could capitalize on, thus shifting focus away from me as others hemmed and hawwed and argued over what some mistake/'slip-up' of his might mean. Which... sort of worked? Not exactly like I was hoping, but it worked out in any case.


Anyway! Feedback!

The main reason you were easy to frame, Antifinity, wasn't the suspicious mistake here and there. It's that almost all of your posts were to defend yourself! When you came out with those long posts at the end there, I can see the town being like... so why didn't you ever make a case like that? Since town's first objective should be finding the mafia, whereas it's the mafia's first objective to survive... yeah. It didn't come across well. You didn't have enough town points to balance out your mistakes.

Andrius, you were a little more a victim of circumstance I think? Besides that first hammer anyway. I'm not sure about suggestions to offer your way. During the game I pressed you to build a case through looking through things that had already happened rather than waiting around for something new to (which was honest advice rather than an attempt to mislead you), and you already adapted your play upon receiving that. I think it was just a touch too late. ....your being emotional might have helped you get lynched? But eventually that will just be a part of your meta, so I'm not sure if there's much to be said about that.

Quintastiiiiic, you can't be so danged sure of stuff! There's just no way to justify the certainty you seemed to display. But I suppose that was obvious enough when Antifinity flipped town.

SAMP, your gut reads are sort of amazing. xD I mean yeah, at first you threw your vote around to get those reads, but once you had them they were pretty impressive. It seemed slightly random and unjustified to me, but.. it was also right. So what do I know?

Exilon, your play is a lot like mine and thus perfect.
.....or at least, I wouldn't be the one to ask for ideas on where it should change.

MMM, you were gone too instantly to say anything about. xD And CS, my view of your posts was too confused by having two sides of it to decide what was really good and bad. You're more aggressive than I'd think necessary, but it certainly provokes response.

....um. *counts* I missed someone. Oh, right, thatguy00/McGriddle. Umm. Yeah, I don't think you were here long enough for me to get any idea of your play. xD