Open 842: Diffusion of Power [Postgame]

[implosion]

Scum motivation would be to be townread for their apathy.

And look how well that's working with 75% of the player list.

what is the distinction between redtea's particular brand of apathy and 2020 Scumteam Apathy

at this point in site meta, "not trying = town" feels like a surface-of-the-sun take

I'm not familiar with 2020 Scumteam Apathy. I know someone mentioned it at some point but I'm really not familiar with this piece of site meta.

[implosion]

This:

Not a single one of redtea's posts looks like it's crafted to get people to townread them

is

never

a good reason to townread someone if it's by itself. Combined with other points, sure. But assuming that every scum player is going to try to get townread and going to play the way that

you

think scum should be played is a complete fool's errand, and gong to wreck you every time you meet the meme/apathetic scum players who just don't give a damn about tryharding (often as either alignment, but especially as scum)]

I understand what you're saying; and yet, I feel like this type of read, in practice, isn't really less accurate for me than a a more wholistic wait-and-see approach. Though it's possible that I just haven't played any or enough games where I lived as town to late game recently.

so while you're here, how are you feeling about this game and the people in it?

*wheezing and gurgling noises* *collapses on the sidewalk*

I also strongly disagree with implosion's assertion that redtea is not trying to look town. redtea is not trying to look 'solvey' sure. but redtea IS trying to use charisma/humor to pass a vibe check. I would say a post like this is definitely designed to be townread, I would even say it serves no other real purpose. And I can say the same exact thing about redtea's first post about fua making them laugh, that was kinda my main point when I first cased them

I mean part of my point is that this is Clearly Not Working For Them and yet they keep doing it. If redtea had late d1 suddenly started giving opinions and voting and stuff, no one would have called them scummier for that. It's almost the objectively correct play as scum in a meta sense, because clearly, the people in this game aren't willing to townread someone solely on Vibes. Yet they didn't do it, and they're still doing exactly the same thing.

[implosion]

I feel very shrug. I can't really deny that it's good for the game even if I think it'll flip town. I'll just either have more egg on my face than when i said i had egg on my face or i'll be slightly more smug than i said i'd be (although I guess some people are saying my reasons aren't valid even if redtea flips town, so I'm legally not allowed to be smug if they do flip town )

[implosion]

My read on Shirou hasn't changed: still think he's town, wouldn't be surprised if wrong but not interested in limming any time soon.

My thoughts on that thing you called out and your alignment depending on redtea's are that I did the same thing as Shirou, just more explicitly, so I can't exactly fault him for it. At this point I will suspect you more on a townflip than a scumflip though tbf part of that is just because there'll be 3 scum alive instead of 2. One of the big reasons I incorrectly townread you in white flag was off of "this couldn't be a bus" so I'm reluctant to give any material credit to your alignment in the event of a scumflip (yes, that conflict was very different from this one, but etc).

[implosion]

i really just want to imagine a world where me, shirou, and gl are all town. bonus points if redtea is also town. it's just such a truly beautiful dumpster fire to imagine.

Idk maybe it's already discussed or something.

i said this and got called scummy or bad for it by shirou who is now suggesting we do it : )

i'm still reading up and processing what's happening

[implosion]

i really just want to imagine a world where me, shirou, and gl are all town. bonus points if redtea is also town. it's just such a truly beautiful dumpster fire to imagine.

the issue is I don't see any scum in that world

which is why it's so bonkers to me that you and Shirou are so deadset on town!redtea. not in your words, but in your actions

i know i don't think it's likely. I just think it would be so, so juicy.

[implosion]

it's also become a harder stance by virtue of a bunch of people (Shirou, implo) just insisting on not voting redtea.

shirou was on the wagon until like an hour ago and i've said it's in practice not really a bad elim even if i think it'll flip town?

[implosion]

redtea is a lingering of me thinking their approach to the game is more sensible as detached town than detached scum. Like look at this page, I just don't think detached scum would typically have this little care about how they're perceived.

on the whole, how much do you really believe this? Like would you bet the game on redtea being town? Would you say you're more confident in me being scum than redtea?

I can vibe/understand your gamestate points about me feeling like I could be the active scum, but I think it's really dangerous/bad to be making gamestate views as the foundation for your sort on a hard-to-sort player (me) when you're simultaneously making base assumptions like town!redtea for

really

spurious reasoning. I don't see anything at all that makes me think redtea's play isn't just lazy scum faking apathy for townpoints.

It might be partially unfair to accuse you of lacking nuance on redtea but posts like this make me feel like it. Who the heck "fakes apathy for townpoints"??? Like I could see redtea being scum who is apathetic about the game, but what kind of scum who is genuinely engaged in the game will then fake apathy because they think apathy will look townier than them engaging with people. That just sounds absurd to me, apathy is usually not viewed as townish.

also I was rereading and this post is misreppier than I initially identified

because in the exact post implosion is quoting, I say "

LAZY

scum faking apathy for townpoints"

but implosion says
"what kind of scum

who is genuinely engaged in the game

will then fake apathy because they think apathy will look townier than them engaging with people"

and I never said redtea was genuinely engaged in the game, like I literally said in my post, they'd be playing lazy

Also to respond to this, the phrase "faking apathy", as I was reading it, still implies that they were not actually apathetic... ergo "genuinely engaged", the opposite of apathetic. Even lazy scum who is not apathetic can lazily give reads based on their engagement.

[implosion]

Also to respond to this, the phrase "faking apathy", as I was reading it, still implies that they were not actually apathetic... ergo "genuinely engaged", the opposite of apathetic. Even lazy scum who is not apathetic can lazily give reads based on their engagement.

I already addressed this

this also feels like a semantic nitpick or misunderstanding, maybe "fake apathy for townpoints" isn't the best phrasing but it should be obvious I'm not saying redtea is actually secretly engaged and just faking apathy, I mean more like they're staying in their projected apathetic lane because no one is forcing them to do anything outside of that. Maybe I should have said "faking [being apathetic town] for townpoints", "fake" is meant to be operative on "town" not "apathy", but I can see how that's not well-written.

the context of my saying "lazy scum" should have tipped you off that I wasn't implying redtea was actually engaged

you did already address it, and you addressed it by admitting that you phrased it poorly, yet now you're saying I was misrepping you in a scummy way. I

did

think you were saying redtea was secretly engaged and just faking apathy, and now you're basically misrepping

me

by saying that I was saying that I still think that after you clarified when I was clarifying my original stance.

[implosion]

I think if GL is town then his read on Enchant is probably pretty reliable. I feel like them having been scumbuddies in white flag is probably very relevant meta experience both because enchant replaced into that game and GL would have seen it firsthand and because I think enchant's play in white flag was probably pretty readable in retrospect (i.e. probably had a lot of tells that GL here would likely be able to pick up on)

[implosion]

I think no elim tomorrow is a reasonable plan because (1) of the reasons I've already stated why no-elimming is a good idea, (2) we have a claimed n2 doc and it's possible there's more of them so it's possible that there's no nightkill tonight (in which case, we would still gain the mislim and would eschew the plan) and (3) I am interested to see what Shirou claims on the cop check for obvious reasons.

[implosion]

Regarding this series of posts by Shirou vis a vis Shirou, I can see the angle where Shirou is scum who feels the need to inject something of change into the game, especially if redtea is scum. But I mean if redtea does flip scum I don't think this is exactly a winning play from Shirou-scum. I don't think it's something Shriou-town can't do either. It doesn't really change my stance on Shirou as a whole.

[implosion]

Implosion - this might have been answered, so if so just tell me you addressed it and I’ll get to it as I’m catching up on the day.

part of your argument is that gl is scum due to the awkward turn around on imaginality, but you also argue later that red tea was town. In the world where they’re both town, what would be his purpose? I might be misremembering but I don’t think anybody else was viable outside those two.

Not sure what you mean - in the world where GL and redtea are both town? Or where redtea and imaginality are both town but GL is scum?

Assuming the latter, he could have various reasons for going onto imaginality, e.g. it lets him continue on redtea and save that mislim which he might have seen as more inevitable for later, or he thought he could get away with it/he thought he might make the switch as town and was trying to emulate, or he was trying to ingratiate himself with people on the imag wagon, or he was trying to continue the show of good faith to wagon when possible, etc etc.

[implosion]

at this point it will viscerally infuriate me if shirou is scum even if i think it's still entirely possible >__>

[implosion]

shirou i really don't understand where that sentiment is coming from in a world with tejate raichu and megazumarill.

[implosion]

enchant locktown

[implosion]

GL-implo-redtea would be a deeply amazing scumteam.

Also you forgot Meg.

[implosion]

How long have you been thinking this for?

I'm interested in why you're willing to go into such detail here when your posts have generally been very terse.

[implosion]

Hello.

fua's play was fine in terms of actual good mafia play because it was so blatantly fake that there was no way we were going to quick-elim before they checked back in, and that's the only actual harm to the town that could really come of it. So no harm no foul. Let's move forward.

The flip side is that, while morph's reaction is in principle townish, they also should easily be able to see it was fake as scum.

[implosion]

AL is sort of a strange kill; of all the AL-fua-ceph conf-ish-town morass, they're the one slot with a definitely useless role. I feel like that's a very strange kill for scum who is seemingly in a quite bad position to make and wonder if it means something significant.

[implosion]

I didn't really think it was "blatantly" fake? what makes you say that, I thought it was plausible

For the same reason you asked about: the fact they gave a whole post on why morph was scum before shyly outing the guilty. As I was reading along I was like 75% sure it was fake.

[implosion]

I want to look more at meg/tejate associatives with redtea; the possible Shirou associatives are obvious ofc. tejate saying that he's like, looking for reasons why it wouldn't be me/shirou is also quite interesting.

[implosion]

AL is sort of a strange kill; of all the AL-fua-ceph conf-ish-town morass, they're the one slot with a definitely useless role. I feel like that's a very strange kill for scum who is seemingly in a quite bad position to make and wonder if it means something significant.

They are locktown and Enchant was healing me. Why they would not kill the claimed N3 cop is also beyond me.

Yeah, so they should have killed Ceph in principle.

[implosion]

Not saying they should have shot Shirou. Saying they should have shot Ceph. Tbh I think there's a chance the right move for scum was simply to gambit that Enchant would WIFOM and shoot fua, too, if the game is truly as doomed for them as we think it is.

[implosion]

I also do want to hear Shirou's takes/if he still is fully anti-GL/etc.

I think I might not really be anti-GL anymore. but I need to dwell some more.

[implosion]

Not meant to shade Ceph, sorry. Just meant to come up with reasons why it was Amazons. I won't spend too long thinking about it. It could theoretically make sense if morph is scum because they knew they'd get turned on eventually, or if morph is town because scum would have known amazons would locktown morph later. or something.

[implosion]

I also agree... those are the same reasons Ceph would be a better shot, particularly from scum who are losing and would need to take risks.

I'll just drop it, this point is probably just me projecting the way I think about things in a kind of not useful way.

[implosion]

I don't really understand what the point of massclaiming is/was supposed to be. Early in the day I'd thought about suggesting it but couldn't come up with any good reason to. Inevitably there will be a 6/6 spread of cops/doctors among all non-redtea players living and dead and we'll learn nothing on that front, and players like cephrir and fua claiming their specific roles/nights could help guide scum on what conf-esque player to shoot. Although I guess part of the cat is out of the bag, so shrug either way.

Shirou's posts seem to me to be the equivalent of "aha, it was just a jolly jape"? And, yeah, it seems like precisely how he would have at this point forced himself to play as scum. :shrug:. idk what I think in this game concretely atm.

[implosion]

This is why I think massclaiming is the right play for today. Mafia’s going to kill cops like Shirou and I anyway. Unless you want to massclaim on Day 5 when there’s 5 people left in the worst case scenario I think today is the time to do it. Doctors should claim what night they’re on so that they have to follow through with agreed upon targets. Cops don’t have to claim their night if they don’t want to.

The "like shirou and I" here is a bit of a heavy lifter. E.g. if Ceph were to claimi cop, then ceph would be a *drastically* better shot for scum than Shirou tonight.

[implosion]

Shirou's posts seem to me to be the equivalent of "aha, it was just a jolly jape"? And, yeah, it seems like precisely how he would have at this point forced himself to play as scum

you guys have really low expectations of my scum play huh...

.-.

you're heavily suspected. it's good scum play to make wild gambits in a situation like that.

[implosion]

I think the primary benefit to mass claiming is to ensure living day-of cops survive on the night of their check because either town can coordinate to doc them or scum fake claiming doc are subjugated to a leash that will out them if they break it

This is a little bit optimistic; it's assuming that the rest of the nights will line up somewhat between cops and docs, which we've no guarantee of. There could even be one or more additional n2 docs, who would have no reason to have claimed yet but whose existence would mean that we have even fewer protects going forward.

so I think forcing scum to claim now is somewhat useful, and they won't be able to retcon a claim later that doesn't narrow their win condition in any way - claiming now forces them into a fake report or a leashed 'protect'

This is partially true but also people should just breadcrumb~~~

It is a decent reason though.

[implosion]

I'm not like, staunchly anti-massclaim I suppose.

I also want to suggest no-lim again but I'm afraid I'll get yelled at

[implosion]

Not claiming as a N2 doc sounds weird when there was already a basically confirmed town in Cephrir who hadn’t used his shot who would have needed to be protected. Even more so since people knew Enchant was on me. You’re basically VT after you use your shot so why not just state it? I won’t believe any N2 doc claims on principle.

I mean... they could have protected ceph without claiming, and still wouldn't have any reason to claim? You wouldn't state it for the same reason VTs don't randomly claim in normal games... it narrows the pool.

[implosion]

Like, what would an N2 doc have gained by claiming before we started massclaiming.

[implosion]

Alright. I'm annoyed that I think this is the best thing to do but it probably is since we're nominally ahead and this is the lowest-risk option.

I, too, am a night 3 cop. I'm claiming to avoid worst-case scenarios like me checking the same person as fua, or Shirou deciding to wifom off of GL for whatever weird reason or something, mostly the former. Also to avoid the risk of my claim looking really bad if I do hit the same person as fua or if i hit the nightkill. A very important thing to note is that for scum, if a n3 cop is chaining themself to a townie, then it's just as valuable for them to kill that townie as it is for them to kill the cop; both options leave the town with one less confirmed player. And Shirou is correct that fua lock-chaining themself to Shirou is a really bad idea because it makes Shirou a really good kill for scum if he's town; it'd deny the town

two

confirmed townies in Shirou and GL (or a confirmed townie and a confirmed scum). fua is wrong that this would help the town, because it'd mean we'd be wasting fua's cop shot. We the town are nominally doing pretty well right now (and we have now 3 n3 cop claims which means we have a glut of info we're about to gain) so we should be making low-risk plays.

With that in mind, I propose a plan. We partition the player list into 3 groups: a group that I am allowed to investigate, a group that fua is allowed to investigate, and a group that Shirou is allowed to investigate (though if he is helliishly dead-set on investigating GL then we can just split the rest of the group). The list of valid investigation targets to split between us is everyone alive except for Cephrir (because numberQ is a strictly better target) and perhaps fua (though for the sake of this process, they might as well go in one of the pools). It also might be a slightly bad idea to investigate me or Shirou simply because of the risk of us being shot and investigated, but this is a much smaller risk with us not being chained-to, so we should still be in the pools. This is basically the best of both worlds: we don't chain ourselves to specific targets so scum don't get a much bigger NK-pool, but we can guaranteedly avoid two cops accidentally investigating the same person.

In case that doesn't make sense, an example set of pools (generating these by listing players alphabetically; these are not groups that I'm proposing)

Shirou: Enchant/fua/GuiltyLion
fua: implosion/Meg/morph
implosion: numberQ/Shirou/Tejate

Each person would be obligated to investigate one of the people listed in front of them, to guarantee we don't overlap investigations.

This breakdown is also assuming we no-lim; obviously if we lim then there'd be one less person in the groups. I'm sort of indifferent between a lim and a no-lim. And if Shirou wants to chain himself to GL then his group would be just GL. I think either fua or Cephrir could propose specific groups if they want to, or we could come up with them via consensus, but I pretty strongly feel this is the mechanically best thing for us to do because it minimizes risk and guarantees that we'll get two useful cop investigations worth of info at worst (and if scum want to kill ceph, then we'd be getting *three* useful cop investigations). Unless someone has a better idea. If people feel strongly about e.g. chaining me to someone then we can do that instead.

[implosion]

For my breadcrumb: look at all of the capitalized letters in my first 4 posts, before my fifth post starts with "Anyway." to mark the end of the breadcrumb, and you'll get CNOSONC.

This stands for Compulsive Novice One-Shot Odd-Night Cop, a set of modifiers that effectively work out to a (compulsive) night 3 cop.

[implosion]

We should definitely not end the day until fua chimes in and we settle on what the actual groups we're using are.

[implosion]

<ultimasnip>
Shirou: Enchant/fua/GuiltyLion
fua: implosion/Meg/morph
implosion: numberQ/Shirou/Tejate
<gigasnip>

Regarding this, can I also add that I don't think a Shirou check is that valuable at this point, but if we're going to include him in the pool could we maybe let fua have it? I'm still entertaining redtea/Shirou/implo, so I'd rather not have my second biggest scumread check my biggest scumread thanks.

To be clear regarding this and other comments, these groups were literally I listed the player list in alphabetical order and then picked people to put in front of each trio such that Shirou got GL and I didn't get myself <_> was not intended to be a final list or even an actual suggestion.

Here's a real suggestion:

Shirou: GL/Meg
fua: implosion/Shirou/Tejate
implosion: morph/numberQ/Enchant

This is based on a few things: trying to accommodate requests that i saw/remember, removing fua, giving tejate to fua specifically because Tejate is supposed to be protecting fua (so if tejate is scum and chooses to shoot fua, we won't have a wasted investigation on confscum-tejate), and generally I think giving everyone multiple targets that are reasonable (Shirou is probably picking GL but meg is also a reasonable target, fua has the other two cop claims which are riskier and tejate as a "safer" option, i have morph as the "obvious" option but also nQ is a reasonable choice to create a chain of inno results and Enchant I probably won't target but am leaving in the list out of principal)

This is also assuming no-lim. If we were limming morph I'd say to use the above lists but removing morph, and swapping Enchant/Shirou or Enchant/Tejate (both of which violate one of these minor maxims).

[implosion]

Might be better to swap Meg/nQ from those lists too, actually. I have no strong opinions though as long as everyone's on the same page about what version we use.

[implosion]

Sure. I also think it's best to swap nQ/Meg. So how does this look:

Shirou: GL/numberQ
fua: implosion/Shirou/Tejate
implosion: morph/Meg

[implosion]

i don't really have much to say <_<

either the game is solved tomorrow or it's not, p much.

[implosion]

uh. don't no-lim yet. is fua's new list supposed to be canonical, or a joke? or is the old one still canonical???? this needs to be unambiguous

[implosion]

then unvote for now.

[implosion]

Shirou: GL/Meg
fua: implosion/Shirou/Tejate
implosion: morph/numberQ/Enchant

This one I think.

But perhaps I should just make them so we're not listening to a question mark.

You should either make them or formally enshrine these as truth; I for one am very much idling my engine until the end of the day, at least.

I don't really buy that people pushing for a lim right now is a super duper scummy thing to do. I think it's slightly ambiguous which is better though I do prefer no-lim.

[implosion]

ffs don't vote when there's any ambiguity.

If no-lim is hammered before we can resolve the ambiguity I'm going by the groups I just quoted in 3156 and others should as well.

[implosion]

it is, there was a vc at the top of the page and there were no other votes since then.

please unvote for now, shirou.

[implosion]

you putting no-elim at e-1 and then bolding new groups when people have said they're suspicious of you proposing groups is like, the single easiest way to lose the game if you're town and the single easiest way for you to create an out for yourself if you're scum.

[implosion]

it's something fua suggested and then other people said they didn't like it and would rather ceph suggest groups. I'm also tired of this dayphase. So let's have Ceph confirm what groups he's okay with in his next post, then you/me/fua all agree in our next posts, then we no-lim so that no one can claim that there was any funny business..

[implosion]

fua also made that post immediately after this post by Enchant:

If you tried to make most sucking list, you win

so I had no idea if they were actually suggesting groups or trying to make intentionally bad groups because they weren't clear about it.

[implosion]

Shirou: GL/Meg
fua: implosion/Shirou/Tejate
implosion: morph/numberQ/Enchant

can we just do this.

i don't feel like there are actually good reasons for the changes and complications.

Acknowledging.

[implosion]

I guess this explains why the midgame was such a slog.

[implosion]

Ceph and nq being scum, with people calling nq's claim town at the time, meant that redtea was the only scum who was really meaningfully in the lim pool for a long time.