Open 127 (Lovers Nightless -- GAME OVER) before 761

[ortolan]

I am against the random lynching, no matter how good someone thinks it is strategically. I think it hurts the town in the long run.

By long run do you mean in multiple games i.e. for meta reasons or in this game alone? I'm pretty sure if we random lynch we we have like a 60% chance of winning (1/3 + 2/3*2/5) which seems like decent odds to me. That said I'm not sure which way in actuality this percentage will change to- whether the logic of the 4 townies can overcome the manipulation of the 2 scum, or if the manipulation of the 2 scum is stronger, thereby manipulating the likelihood of a town/scum win back towards 1/2 (thereby making random lynching a superior strategy).

[ortolan]

Here comes my l33t readthrough:

Also, as I'm pretty sure it will help the town. If Mith is put on L-1, I will hammer.

Where did this come from?

I have no idea why Empking went down this path, but mith's reply seems almost like mafia theory for dummies:

From a more objective point of view, though: If Empking is town, the only reason he would be "pretty sure" it will help the town is if he is "pretty sure" I am scum - and we know that's not the case, or he would be voting for me already. Stating upfront that he will hammer someone (anyone) at L-1 isn't useful if that player is town; in fact, it is counterproductive. If we are unable to lynch scum today, our secondary goal is to get as much information as possible, and we do that by forcing the scum to use their influence to push the bandwagon. Saying "I will hammer" now looks like an attempt to divest himself of the responsibility for the hammer.

It's plainly evident from reading Empking's post that it made no sense but I'm interested in you giving such elaborate justification for voting him in response to it.

I know we're not scum buddies. If I say that then everyone else should also know that. Which when we go to day 2 presuming we're both alive it should reduce the possible scum pairs from 8 (from town PoV) to seven.

Randomly stating your willingness to hammer mith should the situation arise i.e. when you're under no actual compulsion to hammer gives us zero useful information unfortunately. And why mith anyway?

I chose Mith as I thought it was better to do one person rather than everyone. I picked Mith at random.

but that doesn't prove anything. You could still just be saying that in order to prevent us putting mith at L-1, and are really lovers with him. It's too wifomy.

Do you want me to stop it?

What does "do you want me to stop it" even mean?

I do like mith's 34. Apart from "but it's worth a vote for now." I don't like going out of your way to defend your vote like that, including explaining the potential for error.

I have a hard time believing that a pro-town Empking initiated a CUNNING PLAN without considering whether it actually worked or what the negatives are. I find it more likely that a scum Empking wanted to distance himself from a possible pairing to make himself look better, and to look like he was doing something that had been tried in a previous game by a pro-town player (which I haven't found in a quick search; link?).

Have you played with Empking before? Just out of curiosity. If it's useful for anyone here is a previous (and short ) game where Empking and I were scum together: http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10023

Empking has declared that he will hammer mith if mith's put at L-1. This does seem to make the possibility of the two of them being buddies seem less likely, at least on the face of it.

Why?

That said, that's no reason to

put

mith at L-1, in and of itself.

Who said it was?

Is Empking trying to do what town-Sensfan tried to do? Maybe, but this doesn't look quite as useful. Sens went in with the mentailty of willingness to hammer anyone who got close on Day 1, and unless I remember incorrectly held multiple players there Day 1 - two or three, maybe. Is declaring intentions to hammer a certain player if certain player is hammerable alone useful? Not as much. I'm not sure that half-measures are going to be very useful here.

Actually what Empking is trying to do looks completely useless to me. Why are you so hesitant to take a stand on it?

As mith put it, we have to milk info out of other things, too. I will think of ways to get info out there. You guys come up with some ideas too. Next step is blind collaboration via implementation. We must all move our ideas, without speaking of them, in tandem. Cleverly, we will avoid banging into each other and throwing the whole dance into a mess.

Nice motivational speech. It has little value to me in the context of a mafia game however.

Now, presume for a moment that in the one game of the three runs of this setup the scum have won the scum didn't draw much attention to themselves - I believe that this was at least somewhat the case, and perhaps the correlation was in this case a partial causation. This presumption would spur the question 'who has been quietest', at which point we wonder what Ortolan is doing. He doesn't seem to be lurking, but he has been quietest overall. Which wouldn't be a scumtell as much as a jumping-off point.

I wasn't lurking so much as not reading/posting due to laziness/business/obligation to keep up with other games. But I will make sure I prioritise this game due to it's unique nature from now.

In 41 Plum takes solace in null-tells and WIFOM.

I find nothing to go off in mith's 43. Again it's Mafia Discussion material.

Mith: I've seen people suggest that we're not scum, at least on the face of it. And nobody has come out and said thaty they think we're scum buddies.

They would be loathe to do so at this point.

Has Ortolan been posting elsewhere on the site?

Probably once or twice since you posted this. However I am currently redressing my inactiveness in a number of games.

The question is whether we lynch the founder of MS or the useless VI.

This is a brilliant quote, zwet. You show wisdom beyond your years.

I will play with Sekinj and Ortolan for now until I get bored of that or something shinier catches my eye

How were you playing with me? You just mentioned me because I was inactive.

Vote: Plum

[ortolan]

ortolan, I don't have time to read through other games at the moment, so I'll ask for the executive summary: What did you think of Empking's play in that game, and how does it compare to his play here?

It's hard to glean much from it for me really. I find it hard to distinguish Empking-town from Empking-scum. That said perhaps he is a bit more aggressive as scum.

[ortolan]

I 100% promise a reply to the game tomorrow my time, again sorry for the belated reply.

[ortolan]

It's not an answer to "why hammer player X?".

Hammering me won't make it less likely that we are scum together - it would make it an absolute certainty

because I would be a dead townie

. It would eliminate absolutely nothing for tomorrow.

You claiming this means nothing to us though, we have no knowledge of your alignment.

Can I just get to the bottom of this- Empking are you drawing this from another game involving SensFan? What was the plan? To simply pair up people randomly and see if one would hammer the other (under the assumption scum wouldn't hammer their partner, which I guess works). Is this supposed to slightly increase our chances of winning to 2/3 or something?

@mith - you are being clear. The problem is emp. he always plays like this. no matter how much you explain yourself he always fails to understand and answer accordingly. I don't know why or if it is intentional or accidental. It seemed very intentional the first time I played with him, but since he always does it no matter what game he is in *shrug*. that is his MO. You can find many players who will not play a game with emp because of it.

Correctamundo.

Everyone else: I would find it informative at this point for everyone to post a list of pairings (most to least likely) and suspects (most to least scummy) - doesn't have to be exhaustive, and while more reasoning = better, just a list will do for now if that's all you have time for. I'll suggest sekinj start, since he has two votes, and then choose the next to post their list popcorn style.

Why is this useful in this setup (mainly genuine question)? It is usually considered anti-town to post lists such as these.

mith, I agree with your post 69 btw, but I'm interested in the theory behind the original system of pairings which Empking is attempting to apply to this game, albeit apparently in the wrong way.

Empking, as I have already said, it makes us being scum together less likely only because

it completely rules it out as a possibility when I come up innocent

.

I don't know why you keep saying this. It's 100% WIFOM and won't become anything else the more times you say it.

I find it highly unlikely I will be.

I don't see why. While you certainly don't come out of the argument with Empking looking bad, he's quite the easy target.

but your plan does not accomplish your goal.

Out of 100, how likely do you think that me and Mith are scumbuddies.

BTW Town, I'd like to point out that Sekinj has been defending Mith all game.

50%

or more liek I've been dis-agreeing with you. and no one else has been taking either side, so it doesn't matter.

I agree with mith's later expression that I dislike this misapplication of probability (not that it's scummy because it's clear you don't mean it in a purely probabilistic sense, I just think it's useless and confusing/misleading).

To restate my argument once again: Causing the lynch of someone you don't suspect makes it less likely the D1 lynch is successful, and does nothing for the town D2. That's a negative impact on our chances of winning.

This is true.

Your statistics ARE fabricated. You can't claim that there's a fifty fifty chance of someone being scum unless it's a four player game.

This is clearly an unreasonable attack as per above. It's clear what she means at least even if it is annoying.

sekinj, I don't care whether you're sure or not; I want you to make a list that is your best guess at this time. I'm trying to pin the scum to something to catch them in an incosistency later, or to get them to give something away about who they are scum with - such a limited response limits our read on you.

I believe the usual problems with these lists are

1) they are a way of faking activity (not really relevant this game)

2) people can spin what you say any way they like really anyway (can say you were busing or buddy up to your "scumbuddy" after they die. It's better simply to use the straightforward device of pressure, or so the argument goes.

The problem with Zwets is that I don't think it's humanly possible to get a read on him. Has anyone ever actually seen the guy flip scum? I haven't, but I have seen lots of townie sketchyness . . .

Heya, Ort!

What?

Emp/Ort: 7.5 or so. Ort literally doesn't take a stance, saying it's night impossible to distinguish town-Emp from scum-Emp. The only problem is that from my point-of-view, there's no known way of distinguishing town-Zwets from scum-Zwets . . . meh. Don't know if the guy even has a scum meta. It's possible Zwets is being more quiet than his wont, but that may be because this game is smaller and running at a somewhat slower pace than many of the games Zwets plays.
[/ramble]

Um yes, it's hard to read when either are scum.

@ Ort - dude, you seem to call me out on not taking a strong stance on Emp/mith earlier but don't really end up taking a strong one yourself (you say Emp's plan is 'useless' but don't commit to a read on his alignment).

Um...yes? That is correct and results from my strong awareness of how he behaves in every game.

None of the justifications Plum has given for placing me prominently in her standings make sense (I am greater than standard likelihood for being paired with Empking [by a huge amount], zwet and sekinj.

Mith, however, has an urge to try to reason and argue with him, which he ALREADY KNOWS is useless to do. I'm not sure if he's trying to prove that he's being objective with him, but if that's the case I find it an uncalled for attempt to look more townish.

I would agree with this but I don't believe mith has played with him previously and I haven't played with mith previously so it's a bit hard to be sure of this at this point.

Yes, I believe she fabricated the percentages.

This is getting scummy now.

I totally disagree that arguing with him has been useless. (I also like it when people suggest that I "already know" something which I in fact disagree with.) I've been attempting to determine whether he actually thought his "plan" was a good idea for a pro-town player (somewhat successful: I do now think he believes that, whatever his alignment)

This is a huge about-face. What is your explanation?

[ortolan]

"You claiming this means nothing to us though, we have no knowledge of your alignment." - Either I'm telling the truth, and would come up a dead townie if hammered (in which case nothing is eliminated tomorrow), or I'm not and the game would be other (in which case there isn't a tomorrow at all). I know the latter isn't the case, but it's irrelevant to the argument I was making (that there can be no information gain from him actually hammering me, if the situation were to arise).

I actually can see circumstances where it would be useful, and it's also possible of course that you hammer a scum and thus win.

"I don't see why." - ~shrug~ See the Hangman Ratio thread. I don't get lynched often, and haven't been lynched as town (on the forums) in about 6 years.

Why is the fact you don't get lynched often a good reason for not suspecting you and indeed not lynching you should you act sufficiently scummy?

"they are a way of faking activity" - As you say, not relevant to this game... but not relevant to the process of everyone posting lists anyway. Do you really think someone could lurk along, post a list because they were asked to, and then use that as evidence of activity?

Like it or not this happens in lots of games (but isn't relevant here).

"people can spin what you say any way they like really anyway" - And that's a good thing! Not only do I get to see where everyone's claimed suspicions lie (to compare to how they have posted so far, to see if they match up, and to compare to later posts, to see if they abruptly change for no reason), I also get to see if anyone tries to spin things out of some scummy motivation.

This is true. I also accept your justification for list-posting in this setup.

(eliminating a possible pairing is just as beneficial to scum as to town)

How so?

I'm also getting a little weary of the comments about how hard particular people are to read. It's defeatist (what's the point of playing Mafia if you are going to give up so easily on your ability to read players?), and in some cases looks like a cop out to avoid having to give them a serious look.

On the flipside, he could simply be an easy target if you're scum. And I by no means advocating not investigating Empking, I just think one should be wary when subjecting him to typical "scumtells"

Note that I am still voting for him - him believing that the plan is a valid one for a pro-town player to make is not the same as the plan being pro-town (eliminating a possible pairing is just as beneficial to scum as to town), and after the lengthy discussion I now have other reasons for thinking he is scum (his reasoning for voting me, for one; I'll get into more detail later when I post my lists).

I am yet to see this detail. And your list is just an ordinal one with no added information.

Are you going to post an updated/more comprehensive suspicions list also zwet? I'm happy if it waits until after Empking's/mine.

[ortolan]

183 makes me feel better about my mafia ability in general.

I had my post almost typed out as to why Plum was in my favoured scumpair with several people, and mith was one of them, but it got lost when I forgot and turned off my computer.

Plum's standard meta is to appear substantially pro-town and I don't believe I've seen her as scum. I've no knowledge of her scum meta but her posts strongly suggest to me she is scum, and is not yet good enough at hiding it.

Ironically both mith and Plum's metas are apparently quite townie, and interestingly they've directed all their efforts towards Empking and zwet, who we know scum-tells are most unreliable with.

Also note mith and Plum's general failure to discuss one another (in particular mith, he barely mentions her but directs pretty much all his attention onto other players- in particular easy target of all easy targets Empking). Plum is more cautious to mention mith as much as possible, but hell if I was scum with him I'd play on the reputation as much as she has.

Plum is smack bang in the middle of mith's (cautious) list, while Plum thinks she can just get away with putting mith last under the assumption no-one will want to lynch him due to his experience/reputation (irrespective of the fact he's a priori just as likely to be scum as any of us), with little discussion.

I agree with ortolan's analysis of Plum here, and would go a step further to suggest an Empking/Plum pairing as a leading possibility. zwet/Plum also a possibility. ortolan/Plum looks unlikely, for now (though Plum mentioning ortolan when she wasn't really interacting with him at all is quite odd).

here mith can't help but admit Plum looks scummy.

FWIW, I agree with ortolan's (and, if I'm reading correctly, Plum's)

He knows he agrees with me but isn't quite sure of what Plum is saying, but probably agrees with her. Again, implying he has trouble understanding what she is saying thus he can't possibly know her well enough to be her scumbuddy.

Happy scumday, mith .

Appears to be an attempt to appear irreverent while interacting with mith i.e. "hehe he's not my scumbuddy because I address him so casually".

Mith is, on basis of experience and impression (as Zwets said, hey guys, we actually are playing with the founder of this site and all) the least likely player to reach L-1 - especially Day 1.

This is scummy. I have not played with mith before and have zero intention of giving him a free pass. Your attempt to do so with this appeal to authority is scummy.

New stuff: Zwets' inane focus on the supposed scumminess of Sekinj's 'fabricated' percentages is noted and scummy - though this is Zwets, and, as I've learned, with Zwets an obvscumtell needs to be downgraded a few degrees.

FOS: Zwets

, though.

Wait so the same argument I applied to Empking and which you criticised me for isn't valid here?

So yes, my big scumpair is mith and Plum.
Another less likely possibility is Plum and zwet.
Or indeed Empking/zwet.
I originally was going to exhaustively list pretty much any at all viable pairs but the more I read the more the mith-Plum scumpair just seems really obvious.

Vote stands on Plum.

[ortolan]

(What I can't decide is whether she's trying to distance from scumbuddy sek by putting him second on her suspect list while not expressing suspicion in her pairings - going so far as to say "But Sekinj hasn't looked hugely scummy" at one point - or if she's trying to distance from scumbuddy zwet by going after him harder in the pairings than her expressed suspicion list warrants.)

This is a good point.

3. orto hadn't done anything I found particularly scummy to that point (though that has now changed, and I also find Plum his least likely partner now).

I am confused/bemused by this. You agreed with my attack on Plum enough to vote her for it but apparently the fact of this attack alone makes me more scummy?

Myself and my method may have crashed, and if that's the case I bear the brunt of it. The method, in this case, having been rushed, I may have taken the wrong route in analysis of possible pairings and been more stringent in analysis of whether a pairing was likely based on interactions vs. interactions and individual scumminess. In which case my 1-10 scale would be a scale less of suspicious pairings and more of 'not unlikely do to interactions' pairings. Having now realized this, it obviously necessitates a rectification by way of a new list of pairings and probabilities, being sure to correctly weigh both variables, on my part. Seeing as some of my suspicions have shifted (for example, Zwets looks scummier for various reasons which I plan to list in my next post, coming ASAP).

This is pretty much just meaningless waffling.

I often congratulate players, regardless of my own or their alignment, on a scumday or birthday. I did find it amusing that it was the scumday of the site's founder, and acknowledged that feeling.

This point fit in with my theory of you being scum with mith, so I made it. I agree taken by itself it doesn't necessarily mean anything.

Completely taken out of context, sorry. I was musing about the fact that Emp made his declaration about mith, who (yes, having stumbled across the MD 'Hangman Ratio' thread) for various reasons might be less likely to be put in a position where Empking would have the opportunity to hammer him. Which might weakly indicate that Emp was scum trying to gain the benefits of looking townie while avoiding as best he could the risks inherent in making such a declaration, on a scumbuddy or not.

Well, my view is that I was amazed and a little jealous of mith's propensity for not being lynched as town. It seems almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, but one which could readily be exploited by scum- by both mith and a potential scumbuddy- "hehe you're not going to vote for me, because I never get lynched, because I always look town, like here", which is circular and is almost meant to intimidate us into being more hesitant to lynch him.

You applied an 'I can't read Emp' attitude while criticizing me for not taking a stance on Emp, which I found hypocritical and potantially scummy. I'm perfectly willing to try to get a read on Zwets but recognize that Zwets says a lot of stuff which for him are nnulltells, even though for others they may be strong scumtells.

Your insistence that one can read Empking but not zwet is making me re-evaluate zwet. I see them as very similar in it being difficult to identify when they are scum/town.

Zwets continues to be erratic, accusing me and Emp of fabricating numbers (what are you referring to?)

I love how you characterise zwet as merely "erratic" here, while reading nothing scummy into his play.

FOS: Ort

. Misrepresentation does not sit well with me, sir.

This single line is extremely scummy, from the deferral to mith for reasoning for attacking me, to the extremely vague (itself a misrepresentation? ) accusation of misrepresentation, to the fact she doesn't have the guts to vote me, but merely FoSes me.

:arrow: Having said all this, I don't believe that getting two votes on me now is, in the long run, necessarily a bad thing. It's the bitter medicine part of my thoughts on optimal strategy.

"I'm going to feign calmness with two votes on me (despite my lynch being an auto-loss), that way no-one could possibly think I'm scum".

I would like some thoughts on Plum from sekinj, Empking and zwet asap please, let's not give mith a justification to unvote for his (possible ) scumbuddy

[ortolan]

This single line is extremely scummy, from the deferral to mith for reasoning for attacking me, to the extremely vague (itself a misrepresentation? ) accusation of misrepresentation, to the fact she doesn't have the guts to vote me, but merely FoSes me.

You took a quote from me about Empking completely out of context in your argument for a mith/Plum scumteam. That was blatant misrepresentation, which concerned me a lot. You made a similarly stupid attack on mith, again in the context of a Plum/mith scumteam, which mith himself addressed.

Firstly, this is doesn't even fully deal with what you've quoted. Why did you FoS rather than vote me? Secondly, I have re-read and I'm not even sure what quote I took entirely out of context? Finally, do you think you can just generalise like that "you made a similarly stupid attack on mith, which mith himself addressed" without even quoting what you're referring to?

No argument against my argument that you took my statement completely out of context, but not an acknowledgement thereof in sight. Do you think if you don't mention it I'll forget? Here - we both have expressed in the thread knowledge that mith has a propensity for not getting lynched as Town. I see your point that a scumbuddy of mith's could try to use that to his or her advantage in this game. You do not, however, prove the point that what I said was an attempt to do that sort of thing. Explain?

Okay, I'll be more specific. mith himself saying that he doesn't get lynched as town is I suppose fair enough with a track record like that. It proves nothing either way.

You

however pulling it out, however, is scummy, if for no other reason than the fact you clearly should not know his alignment and therefore whether it is relevant to this game, if you are town.

I've had more exerience with Zwets, which might have caused me to express feelings about the difficulty of reading him more strongly. I'm willing to agree to that statement and work to hunt scum from all the players despite it. You are, too?

I've had loads of experience with both Empking and zwet. I would have thought you were aware of Empking's meta also. They are very similar in being difficult to read, except that it's manifested differently.

And of your points about my speculation on interactions between you and mith- think of them as like "circumstantial evidence", not damning by itself but it supports the case.

No, actually. My main thought is that having multiple, even many, bandwagons form (with reasoning and not randomly) Day 1 would be optimal - this is the strategy on which I had been musing.

Well that's kind of fair enough, except how is "having multiple bandwagons form" a "strategy"? Are you so good you deliberately orchestrated people's reactions to create just the right amount of tension between a variety of players in order that "multiple bandwagons would form"?

So, Ort, you still have a strong belief in a mith/Plum pairing? Explain? You neglected to post a full scumpairing analysis, instead arguing strongly for that pairing, I note.

Yes. To extensively analyse other tells when I see/saw such a strong connection would be disingenuous. This setup does not really have the sometimes-present-in-mafia elements of a "logic puzzle". We have no night interactions or role-claims to go off, it's mainly psychological- certainly on day one of this setup anyhow.

At the moment, I think I may even go so far as to say that I think you are the most likely candidate for scumscumscum if Plum is innocent

This lining-up-of-lynches is interesting. It increases the likelihood of you being scum, but actually decreases the likelihood of a pairing between yourself and Plum, because there would be no benefit to lining up lynches with your partner first for obvious reasons.

The attack that mith was trying to earn townie points 'uncalled for' is a badly-expressed weak suspicion at best and a logical fallacy at worst, as, in general, everyone is concerned with looking town.

A pantomime of being town and the genuine townies attempt to catch scum while not dropping scum-tells themselves are two different things.

The attack that mith was trying to earn townie points 'uncalled for' is a badly-expressed weak suspicion at best and a logical fallacy at worst, as, in general, everyone is concerned with looking town.

"Okay, I admit I'm scummy, but mith isn't!" Goes back to my earlier point about you pulling out mith's defences for him, for an odd reason. Again this doesn't necessarily increase the chance of Plum-mith pairing (scum defend town to look good when they die, not that mith is looking like he's going to die right now) but increases your individual chance of being scum, because you simply should not be so sure of mith-town.

The case is almost completely baseless aside from accusations which are either stupid at best or downright scummy at worst.

This is far from the first time you've just thrown out a huge generalisation without justification like this.

Sekinj - a bunch of her latest posts are short bits of stuff which don't entirely address new issues. She's asked some decent questions, I suppose, but I'm interested in seeing some new analysis out of her. Especially because her relative tendency to not come up in my mind when I run through the game mentally gives me a very bad gut feeling.

Um wow did you just solely appeal to your own mental state to justify why sekinj is scummy? Die scum.

The gambit, or whatever you'd like to term it, wasn't smart and had more downsides than potential benefits (qualitatively, not quantitatively) - I believe that and it's what I'd call the general consensus. Scummy or not? was the question, which I eventually believed to be a 'yes'. Especially having considered the fact that Empking stated that he agreed that 'as a general rule you should only hammer players you actively suspect, rather than hammering an arbitrarily chosen-in-advance player' but argued that in the case of this game, if the town knew about hammer-resolution in advance, after the good arguments put forth against it (to summarize: being pressured by your declaration to hammer someone you feel is

not

scum, scum could use it as an excuse to hammer an innocent, townie-Emp looking scummy if you avoid hammering because you don't believe specified player is scum, etc.). The useless diversion into whether mith's playstyle - specifically

general post length

was closer to his scum or town meta, especially as his argument that it was closer to the scum meta was based on multiple clearly stupid assumptions, was obviously useless, unhelpful, and distracting.

"In this game Empking is mildly anti-town for pursuing a hopeless or neutral point relentlessly ergo he is scum."

Looks like typical Empking to me. It's a null-tell in his case but jumping on him for it adds another scumpoint to you. And how is any diversion "useless". Admittedly the manner of his attack on mith sometimes was downright wierd (metaing a 6 year old game and then saying he gets the best idea of meta from mini theme games LOL), but you at least should be attacking him for that rather than the generic and itself meritless "it was a useless diversion, therefore he is scum."

Having said that . . . but wait, I'll leave that until the end. Analysis of mith:

A lot of his early play was focused on Empking; understandable, and his arguments were reasonable. Rereading, however, I do have a couple of questions:

They always do.

I haven't seen exactly where and why you came to the first conclusion or what you mean by 'striking'. I see that later you think he might be using it to try to look town rather than help town and that it would therefore slightly indicate Emp-scum.

Here are you interpreting mith's arguments for him. Stop sucking up to him. This has me thinking you're scum but independently of him. Thus your most likely partner would be...you guessed it, my second contender, sekinj.

I haven't seen exactly where and why you came to the first conclusion or what you mean by 'striking'. I see that later you think he might be using it to try to look town rather than help town and that it would therefore slightly indicate Emp-scum.

You could probably call "detours" like this scummy in a larger game but, come on, this is 6-player. You can still say what you like. We're still only 10 pages in anyhow. Either way the fact of having created a detour in itself, either deliberately or unintentionally isn't necessarily scummy.

- Hypocrisy: Criticizes me for not taking a strong stance on Empking's declaration early (he calls it 'useless-looking', I believe) but doesn't elaborate himself, and when asked about Empking, matching up with an example of Emp's scum meta, etc., says only

I find it hard to distinguish Empking-town from Empking-scum. That said perhaps he is a bit more aggressive as scum.

Please read the game I linked, where I was scum with Empking. Tell me if you noticed anything unusually scummy about him from it, and tell me if you see any comparisons between it and this game. The same still applies for everyone else. I was being completely genuine in my "poker face" assessment of Empking.

More points on my scummy spin gets you the "circumstantial evidence" response again. That's how I roll.

Suspects, New List:

Ort
Emp
Zwets -- sek
mith

Pairings, this time correctly weighing things in my mind, but, as it's late, without extensive comentary.

Ort/Emp - 7
Ort/Zwets - 6.5
Ort/sek - 6.5
Ort/mith - 6
Emp/sek - 5.5
sek/mith - 5
Emp/Zwets - 4.5
Zwets/mith - 4.5
Zwets/sek - 3.5
Emp/mith - 3

Totals are approximate and subject to change.

LOL @ Plum (hey, rhymes with scum ) now having me as the most likely scum-partner with...EVERYONE! After having accused me of myself posting disingenuously/apathetically by only naming my top 2 suspect pairs she proceeds to update her list to imply "ortolan is almost equally likely to be scum with pretty much everyone except myself. ortolan is scum. over and out."

[ortolan]

At the beginning he seemed to try too hard to give emp the benefit of the doubt and understand his point of view, and then trying to 'help' mith understand emp. Although he says emp is hard to get a read on (which I agree with) look at the difference in the way he reacts to emp and the way I reacted to emp. This may be too fine a point, but thinking emp's behavior is a null tell (me) is different than excusing that behavior (ort).

I have never argued Empking's behaviour is anything other than a null-tell. Ironically I find players like himself and zwet and even myself in my more unbridled/downright bad times can be useful in that they attract scum to vote for them with justifications which can be ultimately exposed to be scummy, because they do not ultimately cohere with the scumplayer's other expressed beliefs. This is my justification for my offensive. And I don't like your "this may be too fine a point" clause plus "this is inconsistent with how I'd react therefore it is scummy". Entirely WIFOM-y.

"Ironically both mith and Plum's metas are apparently quite townie, and interestingly they've directed all their efforts towards Empking and zwet, who we know scum-tells are most unreliable with."
apparently ort suspects mith and plum for acting townie? and excuses emp and zwet because of their meta? seems backwards...

This is clearly not what I was saying, and was elaborated on in my above post. Hell, mith agreed with some of my points on scum even though my case was originally for a Plum/mith scumpair.

I think ort fabricated the connection between mith and plum.

most likely scum I believe is ort. I see lots of connection between him and emp, and slight less between him and zwet.

Parroting Plum very blatantly and failing to critique her. Think we've got a femme fatale scum-team on us here guys.

Regarding Emp, the way he answered my questions (and his tone in doing so) led me to believe he genuinely thinks his hammah plan was a reasonable course of action for a pro-town player (whether or not he is pro-town is a separate question). By "striking", I meant more noticable; I got a much clearer view of how everyone was treating Empking (and myself) than I would have just calling it a dumb plan and/or ignoring it. It's not why I voted him (I voted him because he was my top suspect)

This seems pretty disingenuous. Didn't the way he answered your questions in large part

constitute

the reason he voted for you?

Sekinj, what, if anything, do you think your questions along the lines of 'X, do you think Y is your scumbuddy' will achieve?

What, if anything, you do think busing your scumbuddy will achieve in a Lovers setup?

Ortolan, still waiting for any new thoughts on your proposed mith/Plum scumteam, and, if possible, a complete list of pairing suspicions, because I believe you expended most of your energy to arguing for the former and neglected the latter.

Yes, I did, and unashamedly so. And like a good townie I've updated my suspicions in light of new evidence. But don't worry, you're still scum, just mith is no longer your scum-buddy.

If not for the ort/zwet possibility, I would be ready to suggest we lynch Plum and Emp in some order and win the game.

That sounds like a good cross-section of the populace. But screw you if you're going to use the same "lining up lynches" point I just made against you

[ortolan]

wow I'm a little bit out of it/drunk/Freudian:

This is clearly not what I was saying, and was elaborated on in my above post. Hell, mith agreed with some of my points on scum even though my case was originally for a Plum/mith scumpair.

I actually meant "some of my points on Plum" LoL!

This seems pretty disingenuous. Didn't the way he answered your questions in large part

constitute

the reason he voted for you?

"

constitute

the reason

you

voted for

him?

"

[ortolan]

I doubt that will be hard

[quote="sekinj (232)You are not even trying to hide the fact that you are not reading from an objective prespective anymore. If you were, shouldn't this go into your evidence of why you are WRONG? not into your evidence of why plum is stupid?[/quote]

Um...no?

No. My post was immediately after Plums and in fact I was writing it while she posted. I did not see hers until after I posted mine. therefore, (although I doubt you will beleive this, scum) we actually came to the same conclusion independantly.

Well, yer, you're right (I don't believe it). Especially considering scum can day-talk in this setup anyway.

[ortolan]

...

Please hammer Plum, sekinj

I promise you can lynch me tomorrow if she flips town.

[ortolan]

Um, yes of course I'm serious.

Right now please, before I go to bed.

[ortolan]

well I'm fucking retarded

I swear it's a conspiracy against me, TinVision posted 6 minutes after the bloody hammer.

I will try to save myself from the gallows tomorrow (my time)

[ortolan]

Sigh.

Oh well, at least I can point out that mith/zwet is now off the table. We are both on, and could lynch sek if we were scum together.

I'm not entirely convinced by this. There's still a decent element of risk in going for a hammer, and it assumes scum are very active in their day-talk, are actually looking at this game at the time, and don't think it's too risky to try to synchronise their votes before the relevant townie unvotes the other townie.

But assuming competent scum it does increase the likelihood of these being our viable scumpairs.

Empking is BY FAR the best lynch choice. Almost all of our possible pairings involve Emp based on the relationships between him and other players.

This is pretty scummy. He

cannot

be scum with more than one person. Thus if he has links to multiple people then at least some are definitely invalid, so indeed they all might be.

I don't think Emp/sek is a possibility, though. It would take some serious guts on sek's part, as I was expressing a leaning toward Emp and she couldn't have been sure I (or ortolan) wouldn't hammer before she went back to indecisiveness.

I agree.

(Mild WIFOM, but there is no reason for me to keep ruling out scumpairs unless I am in fact innocent. As scum, I could have just kept silent about ort being on; it wouldn't have hurt me any relative to where I am now if someone else had spotted him, and it would have helped for there to be more possibilities.)

Strong* WIFOM.

why? what's the flaw? I'm trying to think through this... why didn't he hammer her if he is scum?

Well, because he is usually aggressive and unself-consciously scummy when town but was peculiarly restrained about hammering Plum.

I don't understand why you are continuing to have ort/zwet has a possibility. ort was on earlier. They could have quicklynched you and won. Even if they are scum and somehow missed that opportunity, they can lynch you at any time and there's not a thing either of us can do about it. I won't be voting for either of them, so there is no point in trying to convince me they might be scum.

This now is obviously true though. With me/zwet as scum we would have co-ordinated a lynch on Empking or sek in the huge amount of time we've had to. Ergo we are not scum together. As mith also said, the same goes for everyone else. One of the scum is pretty much guaranteed to be present in Empking or sekinj (unless they are both scum...I'm not thinking that's likely at this stage though).

[ortolan]

going through with it would be even more retarded than having made it in the first place

[ortolan]

- ortolan created links that were not there between plum and mith

This is subjective and I believe the arguments were "ort is being hypocritical" which is not so much a problem with my arguments but a problem with me if it's the case.

Anyway, ort, READ THE FREAKING PAGE. Every single most likely pairing involves Emp from a slew of good reasons. Chances are high that he's scum with one of these suspicious people.

That might be how you'd play in a normal game with more days up your sleeve but that's just bad/lazy play for this game. If Empking has lots of connections to everyone, then if he is scum the evidence for all but one of these hypothesised connections is wrong anyhow which suggests they

all

might be incorrect.

I hope I am not digging Empking's hole deeper by continuing to defend him. There is of course a very good chance he's scum. However I couldn't live with giving zwet/sek a free ride through the endgame especially after my promise on Plum. That said I am all but sure mith is town at this point and if you genuinely believe Empking is scum then hammer (at least I won't have to accept responsibility then )

[ortolan]

Where is Empking anyway?

[ortolan]

damn.

good game, town played well. I'm not 100% sure how scummy I would have found Emp if I wasn't, well, scum with him but you got the right lynch anyhow.

[ortolan]

I am curious- this seems like quite a difficult one for scum to win when you have good townies. Is that the usual experience? Have scum won previous games?

[ortolan]

my hand was somewhat forced by the setup here, where you can't strongly bus your partner

I honestly couldn't be bothered trying to fabricate an entire suspicious pairings list and it would way too difficult for me to stay consistent with it and still have a chance of getting someone other than Empking lynched. So I just gambitted with the Plum-scum "promise".

Empking's gambit in "being happy to put mith at L-1" was very poorly applied- he shouldn't have used it in a game where several of the town players knew what they were doing and could see right through the lack of logic. I think that lost us the game. That said if mith had previous experience with Empking I think we would have had a better chance of winning, because I genuinely could see Empking doing that as town also.

[ortolan]

http://www.quicktopic.com/42/H/H6MfCUPuAhB

We didn't use it, basically