Mini 836: Commie Mafia (Game Over)

[mathcam]

Well, that's an interesting start. Maybe you guys know Hoopla better than I do, but from my experience in that dream we all had before day 1 started, it's fair to say she's a valuable pro-town asset. There's the obvious flipside that she's likely a strong scum as well, but we only have evidence of the former. She's the person I'd probably

most

like to keep alive (save myself, of course).

I don't understand Haru's line that went with his vote, but I'm much more eager to focus on either of the unexplained votes by Vaya or SensFan. Charter's vote seems so nuts I'm not sure I even find it scummy.

Vote: Vaya

, since he already has a vote.

On a completely separate note:

They say that they have already infiltrated us and will kill someone every night until we agree to abandon Democracy and God and embrace Communism & Joseph Stalin.

Can we all vote to embrace Communism & Joseph Stalin? Then we all win with none of that unsightly bloodshed.

On another completely separate note: Hoopla, you did absolutely the right thing with the restart. Replacing yourself would have just left open the possibility that someone else, possibly with lower moral standards yourself, had seen and would take advantage of the extra information.

On a final completely separate note: Sorry for the late start on my part. I have to get used to checking the site frequently again...it's been a while since my last game, so I have to dust off this old scumdar I had lying around the attic (it's the 2002 model, so it's not even that good when it's running right...)

[mathcam]

It was a completely random early bandwagon vote.

Well why not say that?

For that matter, could you elaborate? You're saying you rolled the metaphorical dice and landed on Hoopla? Or do you mean "random" as in "Eh, couldn't think of anything else to do"?

I'm all up for blatant bandwaggoning as well, as long as it's being acknowledged as blatant bandwagonning.

Cam

[mathcam]

Early reports say both Hoopla and Vaya are town. Coco looks pretty suspect with his Vaya inquisition but ignoring the bandwagon votes of others. Looks like he's trying to build up a lynch on Vaya rather than question bandwagon votes.

unvote, vote CoCo

Was going to make the same piont myself.

Unvote, vote: Coco.

.

Cam

[mathcam]

Ahhh...I suspect Haru is a non-native speaker. That should be interesting.

And I don't think we need to be too harsh on CoCo -- certainly common wisdom raises an eyebrow at a 5-person bandwaggon in the first few posts of a game. That he finds this suspicious is not that surprising. The whole "The bandwaggon is scummy" vs. "No its not" quote war isn't particularly informative, imho.

Cam

[mathcam]

If that's how you feel, then why are you voting for him?

Cuz there's a difference between finding someone scummy and being condescending to them?

Cam

[mathcam]

What do you mean explain myself? I gave the exact reason for my vote:

Coco looks pretty suspect with his Vaya inquisition but ignoring the bandwagon votes of others. Looks like he's trying to build up a lynch on Vaya rather than question bandwagon votes.

In post 59, you call out Vaya for being opportunistic, but no one else on the bandwagon. charter mentions this in his quote in post 62. You ignore this question. He then asks again in 72:

CoCo, what makes Vaya's vote so scummy but not Sens' and mine?

You again ignore this, posting in 74, 76, 78, and several more. It's only when Vaya asks it that you respond to the argument in post 87, and even then it's a pretty pathetic excuse for a reason:

Is this post a good enough reason?

Most of the argument in that post occurred

after

Charter and I wanted an explanation, so no, it's not a good enough reason. Not by far.

You can forgive us for finding it scummy that an argument that two people agreed was a strong point against you was ignored for so long. Perhaps because you couldn't think of a valid response?

That you think

you

now deserve an explanation is laughable.

Cam

[mathcam]

I have no idea what you're talking about. You quoted those quotes without making any additional commentary, and seem to think you've made a point. Most of those quotes are meta-mafia and hardly seem relevant.

Cam

[mathcam]

Second, Mathcam quotes the post by Charter and says he was "about to make that point himself."
What point? There was nothing to go on in that post.

Huh? There is a very clear point in that post -- that it is bizarre that you are attacking Vaya and no one else, and further suggests an implication for this bizarreness. You have

still

not responded to this line of inquiry.

In fact, because you seem to be missing the point, let me emphasize with some questions: On Page 2, you vote vaya for continuing the bandwagon. Why did you not mention SensFan continuing the bandwagon? On page 3, you say that it seemed Vaya was being opportunistic in voting Vaya. Why not mention SensFan then? Why not mention charter, who quite explicitly was being opportunistic in his vote on Vaya?

Also, he later tells people not to be so hard on me because the wagon did indeed look suspicious.

No I didn't. I said to not be so hard on you because I could understand why

you

(or someone in general) would think it's suspicious. Then I said to Vaya that me coming to your defense in the meta-mafia sense does not mean I didn't find you suspicious. But I don't see what either of these points have to do with anything.

coco/vaya/mathcam/charter argument is a giant mass of red herring, overreaction and nulltell

I think you've confused "I'm too lazy to read this argument" with "There is no substance to this argument." I encourage you to reconsider. Chalking it up to a gut feeling that it's an all-townie argument is a pretty strong statement -- you think all 4 of us are townies, and have made no valid points? Perhaps you could explain CoCo's behavior that I'm questioning him about above then.

Finally, I'm not particularly swayed by the Peabody thing. Seems like an overeager newbie jumping in to the game...seems pretty brazen for a first post by scum. Along similar lines, I think charter's attack on Cathart for "defending" Peabody is bizarre.

Cam

p.s.: Sorry, Cathart, I don't think Haru's posts makes much sense to anyone. Keeps it entertaining.

[mathcam]

Thank you for answering my questiosn. I will think about your responses (missed that SensFan was on V/LA). On the other hand, in the rest of your responses, you seem to be deliberately misconstruing my argument.

Where is the clear point in, "Early reports say Vaya is town?" (Paraphrased)

I think it's pretty clear from my posts that the part of the quote I'm referring to is the part about you specifically targetting Vaya and no one else on the bandwagon. I think charter's "early reports" thing was pure speculation, and not particularly founded.

But you didn't find it suspicious yourself?
If the bandwagon could be found suspicious by "someone in general,"why vote for the person that acts upon it?
What makes me suspicious for doing something you agree is possible?

Eh, maybe a little -- certainly more surprising than suspicious. But for Pete's sake, I'm not sure how much more clear I can make this -- what I find suspicious is that you singled out Vaya, not that you found the bandwagon suspicious.

I didn't say that you're all townies, I said that that's what the argument feels like. I consider that kind of an argument to be a null tell. This may seem a bit contradictory but there you go.

Hmmm...isn't that like saying "I didn't say you

were

townies, I said I

think

you're townies."? Since we're only talking about what you're thinking in the first place (and not demanding you have absolute certainty before speaking), isn't the latter the relevant piece of information? And okay, I can sympathize on the line-splitting, though I think you use the term null tell a little too loosely.

[mathcam]

Yeah, I agree that Haru's attempt at English struck me as odd...he hasn't seem confused by other people's posts either. If it's not part of his role description or something somehow related to the game, I'd go past "hurts the town" to say that it violates the spirit of the "everyone has to try their best to win" rule of mafiascum. Deliberately making yourself incomprehensible is frankly selfish and disruptive...though admittedly entertaining.

I think I find Coco's answers to my questions pretty satisfactory, actually.

Unvote: Coco

Cam

[mathcam]

A page a day is disappointing? I agree that a few of us need to step up a little more, but as a whole, I think we're doing fine. I'd also point out that

you

were the one being very dismissive of the earlier conversations.

Cam

[mathcam]

He's just parroting, buddying, and blending in. I particularly don't like his unvote, but then leaving it at that. He doesn't start any other lines of questioning or look at someone else.

You got to the Vaya comment on CoCo before I did, but I'm pretty sure I lead the charge on that front after the original post. You didn't like the unvote, but you didn't make any comment on it yourself -- what do you think of CoCo's response to my questioning? And I don't think you can tell whether or not I've been looking at someone else -- I prefer to have something to say before saying it.

In any case, this brings me to...

I agree with CoCo being ridiculous obtuse and misconstruing everything. Unfortunately, I'm not feeling scum off him.

CoCo, this is almost everyone in the game chiming in on the same topic -- you either inadvertently or consciously misinterpret just about every argument made in this game. Further, when people call you out on it, you tend to ignore their claims. You also ignored direct attacks against you for quite some time. If these are indeed inadvertent, I suggest you start taking your time reading other people's arguments. But since I'm beginning to suspect not-so-inadvertent...

I'm going to

Vote: CoCo

, for two reasons. First is the original attack -- while I think he has some "plausible deniability" in the sense that he can push off inconsistencies onto the V/LA, it's hardly airtight. Even if he decided that Vaya was the right target, why not even

mention

SensFan? The second is the argument in the previous paragraph -- delaying responding to attacks gives him time to read how other people respond to them before providing a defense, not to mention the possibility that people would forget about it. Contributing to this "hoping people forget about it" is his proclivity for strongly shifting focus on some very bizarre topics -- the "early reports" comes to mind, as does his insistence that there was no content in the post of charter that I quoted and agreed with (and a pretty implausible interpretation of what I was agreeing with).

The main reservation I have with my vote is that I would typically assign CoCo's fervor in this game a slightly pro-town rating, but it's not enough to overcome the above points.

Cam

[mathcam]

A player posting entirely in emoticons, or posting incomprehensibly, is just as valuable as a deliberate prolonged lurker. The remedy is the same, replacement, with possible site-wide sanctions.

CoCo: What's iso-mathcam? Why is forcing you to respond to any points made against you so difficult? Is it because of the reasons I made in my last post? Now that you understand my argument against you, why do you think I'm scum? Why are you so hung up on "early reports", when clearly everyone else in the game recognizes it as a phrase used in passing?

Peabody: I think I'm contributing fine. No one even commented on my last post, so I'm not feeling like I have to explain my reasoning any clearer. If someone wants to poke a hole in it, or disagree with it, I'd be happy to elaborate.

Cam

[mathcam]

I'm sorry I didn't comment on your CoCo post, cam. I was too busy getting all wound up about equal rights for emoticons and all that.

No need for apologies -- if there's no reaction, there's no reaction. I just took issue with the implication that I hadn't been contributing. Plus, lol at equal rights for emoticons.

Really? I'm quite single-minded. If I think someone is scum, I tend to ignore everything else until I'm satisfied either a) that player isn't scum or b) the player is scum and the case is iron-clad.
Once one of those criteria are met, I begin to judge the reactions of other players.
I became not-as-suspicious of Vaya and turned my attention onto you and Charter. If you're going to attack me, attack my arguments rather than my playstyle.

I'm not suggesting you switch targets from your key suspicion -- we can all be fairly dogged in the pursuit of the person we suspect the most. I'm saying that in addition to attacking that person, you

also

have a responsibility to respond to other people's attacks on you. And I'm afraid you don't get to pick what I attack -- if your playstyle is scummy, then that's relevant.

He was on V/LA, explain what good it would have done for me to put everything else on hold until he returned. In fact, he still hasn't said much (one post?) since he's returned. You can bet your ass I'm suspicious of him... but there really isn't much I can do until he starts participating.

Once again you replace the argument against you with the argument that you

wish

had been made against you. Take a look at what I wrote: "why not even mention SensFan?" It's hard to describe the magnitude of how different that is from "put everything on hold until he returned."

Pro-town fervor = scum?
If your above points lead to "fervor" how is that a case for me being scum?

What? No. Pro-town fervor is evidence of town. That's what my post says.

[mathcam]

@Le Chat; First, nice post. I'll concede to being frustrated with CoCo's playstyle, and I'll even concede that it's at times difficult to distinguish that from genuine scumminess. But I don't think it's as easy to separate as you make it out to be. A person's playstyle is not one fixed entity with respect to which all of that player's actions should be normalized. Rather, a person's playstyle is dynamic, changing in regard to the specific game, his role in that game, how he is prodded in that game, etc. If a person's playstyle makes them more easy to identify as scum, that's valuable information for us. I don't know enough about CoCo to say for sure one way or another, but I

can

say that his actions in this game (ignoring arguments, cherry-picking ridiculous side topics) are not very pro-town. Finally, I'm not sure I buy the characterization of him as an easy target. You and others seem to be quite willing to discount any scumminess he exhibits in his arguments to a byproduct of his playstyle.

And just for the record, I'm not necessarily accusing CoCo of being scum with SensFan, though it's certainly a possibility. My argument is only that it's weird he didn't mention him -- any time something weird happens, I want to know why. A pure pro-town approach would be to address all options, especially that early in the game, and so anything that deviates from that, implying perhaps some other motivation behind the action, catches my eye.

I'm not in love with the CoCo bandwagon, but it's my favorite right now. Cathart and Hoopla would probably be the runners-up.

Cam

[mathcam]

I don't understand mathcam's recent post where he would advocate a wagon on me, particularly when he has barely referenced me. Perhaps you can explain this one for me?

I think I would chalk it up to a general uneasiness -- from your early and active posting in the false start game, I'm a little surprised by your sporadic lurkiness. Perhaps to sit back and laugh as the town incriminates themselves over silly tangential arguments?

@le chat: Fair enough.

I think CyberBob's done a pretty good job with Cathart. I need to do some soul-searching and see if I can decide if I actually find CoCo scummy, rather than just frustrating.

Cam

[mathcam]

Huge FOS to mathcam for 270 which says "I don't see the CoCo wagon going anywhere, so I need a little time to wait for the most promising alternative bandwagon to surface".

Good news! I just went back and checked, and it says or implies nothing of the sort. Phew.

Mathcam - Vote on CoCo, then saying to not be so harsh on CoCo, unvoting after a while... and voting CoCo again? Weird back and forth.

Weird why? I found him scummy, asked him some questions based on that original read, he responded with plausbile answers so I unvoted, then I thought about it some more and decided it wasn't enough, and re-voted. I think I even narrated much of this as it happened.

It's crazy to me that with so many people trying to argue to me that CoCo is not scummy, that people think it's bizarre that I might change my mind (not that I have yet). I think you people are too jaded by playing with people completely unwilling to consider countervailing opinions.

[mathcam]

You really haven't done anything but vote for CoCo, and it's pretty pointless to vote for him. Who are you going to vote for instead of CoCo after your "soul searching" (which I see as an excuse to wait around a bit before deciding).

First, I haven't voted for anyone but CoCo, but that doesn't mean I haven't done anything btu vote for CoCo. Second, I dispute that it's pointless to vote for someone who isn't one of the current forerunners, espeically early on the first day before two major candidates get identified. Third, putting "soul searching" in quotes with an attempt to stigmatize the phrase is as ridiculous as CoCo's "early reports" fiasco. Finally, you can see it however you want, but that doesn't make it a valid interpretation -- I can see SensFan's absence for 11 days as his attempt to embody his mafia character and going and killing people in real life for 11 days on a massive crime spree, but that doesn't make it anywhere near a reasonable interpretation of events. Even without this hyperbole, this was a cheap shot. If I had just unvoted and not mentioned the fact that I was actually grappling with the decision, you wouldn't have even brought it up.

Most importantly

: I find it interesting that you think I'd vote for someone other than CoCo, and not CoCo himself -- why do you assume my soul-searching will necessarily come up pro-CoCo? Know something we don't?

Cam

[mathcam]

Btw, charter: With chat's unvote, is your vote on cathart now "pointless"?

[mathcam]

Well, I'll certainly concede that the bulk of my efforts have been directed at CoCo. You guys have the same access to my previous posts as I do, but on a quick re-read, I've: placed an early vote on Vaya, called out CyberBob out on some wishy-washy language, took clear stances on Haru and Peabody, weighed in on the CyberBob/Cathart debate, and expressed a more mediated suspicion of Hoopla. But I'm not even sure what the point of your question was.

I know that you meant you need time to think about it, but that's what I find scummy.

I don't see how. Not all of us rely solely on our gut for our votes. Brains take time to work things out.

Why do I assume you're going to unvote CoCo? Same reasons as before, the vote is pointless, it has nowhere to go and you're not trying to make it go anywhere.

Those aren't reasons --

you

think the vote is pointless, I do not. Given that I don't know who I'd vote for afterwards, how is an unvote any less pointless than the CoCo vote?

And I'm not questioning him any more because he doesn't respond to questions (he almost seems proud of this fact), which is precisely one of my most clearly stated attacks on him. He completely ignores, or at least greatly postpones acknowledging, direct attacks or explicit questions direct directly at him. As scum, this would benefit him by waiting and seeing which arguments take hold against him before responding. No sense weaseling your way out of an argument if the town is just going to forget about anyway. A recent example is Peabody's 325:

Coco- What exactly led you to change your mind about Sensfan? Not even two pages ago, you were drilling him for making a suspicious vote and then leaving.

This is a fair question, very noticeable given the bold text, and got completely ignored twenty minutes later when CoCo made his next post. And, for that matter, look what's just happened in hist most recent post -- he's basically getting out of responding to a question by citing how long ago it was and how undocumented his thoughts were at the time! Gah!!!

Bush would've hired him as attorney general in a heartbeat.

So instead of furthering my attack on CoCo by questioning him, I've been attempting to penetrate the "Coco's scummy, but that's just his playstyle" attitude. Two recent thoughts on this: 1) Tally's "Since he posts so much, he'll slip up eventually if he's scum." This doesn't work if we let him ignore questions and attribute anything scummy he does to playstyle. 2) Hoopla's "Policy lynches on anti-town play." I completely agree, so I don't see how you can ignore CoCo. I even mildly understand your feeling that CoCo's aggressiveness is helpful to the town, but I just don't think it's enough to compensate. Look, I don't know CoCo is scum (I'm still suspicious that Charter might know he's

not

,

FOS: Charter

), but I do know that if he is, we're never going to catch him unless we make him answer questions. The best way to do this is through voting pressure, and while my vote alone won't do it, it's a start.

Finally, I know I should be commenting more on other discussions, but this whole he said/she said "active lurking" stuff tends to put me to sleep. Regardless of whether which pot is calling which kettle black, an accusation of active lurking is very subjective, and only in very compelling cases do I think it's indicative of scum.

Cam

[mathcam]

This is getting ridiculous. I explained how it was scummy in the next sentence.

I know you did, but I disagreed with that explanation. In fact, I spent almost the entirety of my previous post responding to that next sentence. Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that the sentence I quoted was silly.

Well then, why aren't you trying to convince others to vote Coco?

My post answered this question rather directly. Stop being cocoesque.

And your distinction about policy lynches vs. scummy lynches is pointless. I think he's demonstrating anti-town behavior, and that's why I'm voting him. I only mentioned the policy lynch because that was the language that Hoopla used, and I was appealing to this point to try to convince her.

Mathcam and Charter: I find it ironic two of the people I dogged the hardest over the early bandwagon fiasco are arguing over my playstyle. Going so far as to suspect each other! Who's to say this isn't a distancing effort?

I know you think you're being cute, but intentionally sidestepping all of the relevant debate and posting pothy one-liners is just about as worthless to the town (and to the game) as a Translation Party player or someone who posts entirely using smiley faces. That you've managed to convince the rest of the players to forgive this is impressive.

I would still prefer a CoCo lynch, but

Unvote: CoCo, Vote: Charter.

Cam

[mathcam]

Interesting.

I just took a look at Mini 835, which CoCo replaced into. This is an ongoing game, so I don't want to belabor this point, but iso-CoCoing in that game leaves a very different impression of CoCo's playstyle -- he is self-deprecating, thoughtful, and responds to questions/attacks directed against him.

Whether this shift in behavior is deliberate or inadvertent, it means we can no longer attribute the anti-town tells he's been exuding as simply a by-product of his playstyle.

Cam

[mathcam]

That's poor. Oh so poor. Did you expect people to not read the entire game, or what?

Of course not. I didn't even read the whole game, as is evident by my phrase "iso-Cocoing" (unless I've used that phrase incorrectly, in which case I apologize).

Furthermore, to use an on-going game is crap. Take a look at 807 and shut the hell up, scum.

It's not crap just because you can't defend against it. I want to emphasize that I'm not saying anything particular about whether you are scummier here or in that game...I would agree that it's a little bit "crap" to do that. What I am saying is that the two playstyles are different, and so the argument "Oh, that's just his playstyle" is incorrect.

But it's nice to see that I finally got you to respond to an against you -- that's how this game is supposed to work.

Cam

p.s. Nice post, SC -- haven't processed it completely, but I think I need to give CyberBob a solid look now. And I obviously disagree abotu CoCo -- his long post on page 5 was almost devoid of content. IIRC, a good chunk of the posts were mild paraphrasing with no commentary. I'm certainly not accusing him of shying away from pressuring people, and I can even see how someone would find that pro-town, but of the two sides of the attack/defense coin, a strength on one side does not make up for a complete absence of anything on the other side.

[mathcam]

Oh, and CoCo, I got to that game in particular just by goggling

coco site:mafiascum.net

and taking the first result. I haven't looked at 807, but I can't see how it changes the point that your playstyle is not the same in every game (which is the only argument I'm making).

Cam

[mathcam]

Lastly, CoCo's reaction to Mathcam's post about his other games was certainly... Interesting. Very aggressive even for a CoCo.

I agree. I'd like to hear his follow-up thoughts. His anger seemed genuine, though whether it comes from a sense of moral outrage or a sense that I had unfairly discovered he was scum, I don't know.

I think I need to weigh in on some of the other discussions. At this point, most of my feelings seem to correlate pretty well with how much I agree with what they're saying. (I certainly concede that this is not a particularly good way of deciding scumminess, but it's hard to separate the two sometimes, especially on day one).

Other than ones already enunciated, I don't have much in the way of a defense of this ordering. The only really new thing is SensFan at the bottom of the list -- I don't care about his lurking, but what he's chosen to focus on since he's back has felt off. Also, as another meta, I'm trying to assess if it's more or less likely that Haru was scum given that a) He decided to play the way he did, and b) He decided to disappear and be replaced. My feeling is that if anything (and it might not be anything), it would be in the pro-town category.

Would probably resist lynching: Hoopla, SerialClergyman, le Chat
Would not be too upset about lynching: Cathart, CyberBob, Talitha
Would be fine with being lynched: Vaya, Peabody
Would pick to be lynched: CoCo, charter, SensFan

[mathcam]

I'll certainly look again at Cyberbob's posts, though I didn't found anything suspicious in there. But maybe I was looking from the wrong angle.

As a side note, the last sentence struck me as a little forced and thus a little scummy. Not sure I can put my finger on why though. Hmm.

Cam

[mathcam]

Though I can't say that I'm liking everything charter's saying, in hindsight, my vote on him feels a little OMGUS. Also, somehow CoCo has managed to appear very reasonable the past couple of pages -- I'm not sure what to make of this. One thing's for certain -- that CoCo and CyberBob now both agree on Peabody means I need to stop dismissing that particular bandwagon so lightly.

Unvote: charter

.

The last couple of pages have been interesting. Aside from possibly rethinking Peabody, I'm actually feeling relatively happy with the active participants. Tally is probably moving towards the lynchable side of my list.

Cam

[mathcam]

In the first "non-canon" start to this game, my understanding is that there were actually two scum, and further, we've been told by the mod that he's changed things around this time. And even if 3 is more probable, I think it falls a little short of "pretty sure."

This is the second time that I read charter as having extra knowledge about the scum in this game, and not knowledge a cop would know either.

Or we could just kill Peabody. Man we need a night phase.

Cam

[mathcam]

I agree that Cathart's role-claim fishing was not particularly scummy.

I agree that there's something slightly fallacious about the too townie argument, but I also think there's something sketchy about the fallacy itself. Given that a majority of the players in any given game will be townies, and that all players are trying to roughly play within a set of standardized norms, any reasonable type of play or playstyle will be more likely to be used by a townie than by scum. That doesn't mean there's nothing to be read from it. Anyway...

Let's just lynch Peabody.

Vote: Peabody.

We need a day 2.

Cam

[mathcam]

I'd say 2/3 chance of town, 1/3 chance of scum. Maybe more like 60/40.

Cam

[mathcam]

I think there's either 2 or 3 scum in this game (with a predilection towards 2), so a random player in the game would be about 20/80. A coinflip (i.e. 50/50) would be an

extremely

scummy player -- CoCo is the only one I'd put near those levels, but I see some merit in the arguments in keeping CoCo alive. Tally I don't have much of a read on at all -- I honestly think she's just semi-lurking.

Also, sif?

Cam

[mathcam]

Though, now that I say that, it is a little odd that Tally didn't vote Peabody.

Cam

[mathcam]

CoCo, stop being obtuse. I never said I thought there was 2 scum, though I think it's a perfectly valid possibility. Especially given that it seems likely there were 2 scum the first time around. For the record, I think three out of 12 scum is balanced toward mafia, and balancing it with a slew of power roles often just destabilizes the game further. But regardless, what does this have to do with anything?

Hoopla -- my comment on Tally was not wondering why she never voted Tally, but wondering why she didn't re-vote in the same vote where she acknowledged her willingness to lynch him. Her recent defenses still don't seem to address this point.

I'm fine with lynching Peabody, CoCo, and possibly Talitha today. Still going with Peabody for the moment.

Cam

[mathcam]

CoCo: Okay, "think" is ambiguous. You're right that I expressed a predilection toward 2, and I had forgotten about that. To me, though, "I think there is 2" is stronger than that. But none of this is "gaming the mod" -- it's trying to make an educated guess as to what the game setup looks like. You have weird ideas about what stuff is off-topic to talk about.

Charter: This new bit you're harping on, that I'm voting someone I "think" is town (again, it seems people use this word more generally than I would), is just silly. I'm

always

happy with "better than random" on day one. If you end most day ones with your vote on someone who you evaluate to be more than 50% scum, you're too easily deluded by craplogic. Do you think I'm more than a 50% chance of being scum? Make sure to go back and add that to your mental database of how right you are when the game is over.

----
I'd guess most of you can ignore this part, but I feel obligated to respond.
----

To address some of the other points (sorry, this looks a lot longer than it is...lots of space).

• His revote of Coco, a mere two posts later. He uses Coco original attack on Vaya as one of his reasons, BUT this contradicts why he unvoted. Not only that, but if you look at what he says (Post 215), he justifies it by saying that Coco's answers gave him "plausible deniability" and Coco's reasoning for solely questioning Vaya is "hardly airtight".

There was 50 posts between those two posts! That was a blatant misrepresentation of the truth, and thus scummy. How does the number of those 50 posts being mine have any relevance whatsoever? And changing your mind is not a contradiction. When I re-voted for the same reason as my original unvote, it's clear that I no longer considered CoCo's responses satisfactory.

• Having to wait and think about if he wants to continue voting Coco when it's clear no one else is interested in pursuing Coco. I still maintain it was just to wait to see who else would emerge as an easy target.

You can maintain what you want. Thinking about what you want to do next is what rational people do.

• Despite what he says in 356, he really hasn't done any scumhunting.

Not sure what to tell you, no one else seems to have this opinion.

• Puts me at L-2 in 362, no real reason given, though we find out later it was OMGUS.

I still admit that there was probably some OMGUS, but since then I remembered my original FOS on you.

• Does a complete 180 on Hoopla in 410, but no mention of why.

I don't make a habit out of explaining every single change of suspicion I've considered. Unless that person is a serious candidate for lynch or I'd like them to become one, you'd all drown in text every time I changed my mind about someone.

• Unvotes me after pretty much everyone not voting me says they don't like the charterwagon. Once again, drops all lines of questioning.

First, there's an extent to which it's only sensible to drop a wagon I'm not particularly enthralled with once I find there's no support to be had. I also thought at the time that the only reason I had

• [Tries to lynch someone he thinks is town in 505.This is horribly scummy, how does anyone think this is a town move?

[/list]
It's not, and I'm guessing they manage to think this is a town move by actually thinking about the likelihood of a player being scum instead of attempting to score cheap points by deliberately being obtuse about how percentages work.

[mathcam]

So, what are you going to do should I get lynched and flip town?

You are not going to be lynched today. Stop trying to pre-empt a wagon forming on you.

Seriously. The level of over-defensiveness being displayed over the last couple of pages is overwhelming. Unfortunately, there are too many people entrenched against a CoCowagon to pursue this until tomorrow.

I'm putting the chances at CoCo surviving the night at 98%.

Cam

[mathcam]

Interesting. To the contrary, I think we'd get tons of delicious information to digest if we lynched CoCo.

Cam

[mathcam]

I think Bob is saying it's weird that though CoCo opposes the lynch, he's still willing to place the hammer ("claim or die").

charter: Don't you think it's a little ironic that you accuse of me waiting to see which bandwagon will take off before committing, as you at this very second are asking people which bandwagon they'd be more likely to join so that you know which one to join yourself?

I'm putting the chances at CoCo surviving the night at 98%.

Obviously because you're scum and he's a massive detriment to town.

That this is the most obvious explanation to you is more telling of your psychology and how prone you are to confirmation bias than it does anything about this game.

Cam

[mathcam]

I'm pretty inclined to believe Vaya is town, actually. I don't think Peabody was trying to ruin the game (he'd been much calmer before that post), nor, given that Peabody is relatively n00bish, do I think that Peabody was making the extremely daring play of outing his partner Vaya with the intent that other people would no longer suspect Vaya because of it. It was a nice try by Peabody (starting with his post two earlier in which he claims he doesn't think he's about to be lynched, raising his credibility), but it doesn't make a ton of sense.

In fact, I think this calls for a re-read of Peabody with the knowledge that he's capable/interested in making slightly tricky plays of this sort.

Not sure about CoCo -- it seemed somewhat likely Peabody was going to be lynched at that point. Would CoCo have come out so opposed to the Peabody lynch, that close to the lynch if they were co-scum? You suspect deliberate counter-distancing? But yeah, there's no dying that last post was weird.

Cam

[mathcam]

Based on a (not profoundly deep) re-read of Peabody, I'd classify his claimed opinions on the rest of the players as follows. Medium means either he expressed both town and scum thoughts, or neither, or I just couldn't decide.

Town

mathcam
Tally
SC
Cathart

Medium

:
Hoopla
Vaya
SensFan
CyberBob
le Chat

Scum

Charter
CoCo

Basically, I think I'm more suspicious of the medium people than either of the extremes. I don't think Peabody's the type to either go crazy attacking his partner(s) day one or to go out on a limb and stick up for one either.

In other news:

statistically, lynching scum D1 doesn't improve town's win percentage)

Really? That doesn't sound right. [citation please]

Yay, we've started again.

For some reason, this feels forced to me. As if to ever-so-subtly imply that she hadn't been busy killing someone overnight.

[mathcam]

charter, I don't. I also don't think you read my post very carefully.

Doesn't sound too far off. I know that Town win percentage plummets if one of the two Scum is killed N0, since there's no connections between the Scum to look for.

That sounds totally preposterous. The loss of one scum-hunting technique couldn't possibly compensate for having one less scum to worry about.

Going by here, in a mountainous game, 2 out of 12 mafia starts with a 35.21% town in probability, whereas 1 out of 10 mafia (which is what happens after a correct day one lynch) has a 59.37% town win probability. One out of 11 mafia (which is what happens after a N0 scum death and no other deaths) has a town win of 50.78%. Those are pretty compelling numbers.

Cam

[mathcam]

A funny thing about words typed over the Internet, I've found, is that you can make them say whatever you want regardless of whether what they're saying is true or not.

Lol.

And I agree that the other topic is not pressing and probably distracting, but I'm pretty positive I'm in the right here. Sens' example (and note that it is only one example) doesn't prove a whole lot -- that same game where the fist scum was still alive might still have been won for scum. While scum-pairing is a handy tool, it often leads to false connections (perhaps even cleverly placed by scum), so it's a bit ludicrous to assume you would've won if you hadn't killed that scum. And you can't just dismiss the percentages because they're random and we're not -- over a large number of games, we average out to about random. Plus, you treat it as if the fact that we're non-random would inherently be a plus to the town, but this is not so clear. Non-random means allowing in human weaknesses as well as human strengths, and there's more townies to do dumb things than there are scum to do dumb things. Finally, Hoopla's Flay's quote is being taken a bit too literally, I think (but I could be wrong, maybe he actually believes that). I think an interpretation like "Lynching scum day 1 has some drawbacks to go along with its obvious advantages" is fair and true, but it doesn't mean that lynching day one scum is anything short of awesome for town. Damn...this was supposed to be a short note to stop this discussion. Oh well.

[mathcam]

Oh wow, I'm an idiot. Sorry mathcam. Which of the people in the middle are you most suspicious of based off Peabody's posts?

No problem. And it's hard to rank people based off of Peabody's posts when they're most noteworthy for being absent from Peabody's posts, but...

The one that seemed like the most fake distancing was with SensFan. He brings up that he's lurking a couple of times, and tosses him an FOS for attacking SC. The only thing relevant on Hoopla (to me) is that she thought Tally's attack on her seemed pro-town. The Peabody/CyberBob interplay would be the one that I would say looks the most like Peabody was keeping intentionally neutral on. There's plenty of CyberBob references, but not even the slightest attack or defense one way or another (the one minor attack was soon recanted). And then le Chat and Vaya barely get mentioned at all, so not much of a read possible there.

So if I was to only look at Peabody's posts looking for possible pairings, I'd go SensFan or CyberBob.

Cam

[mathcam]

The CyberBob side of the CyberBob/Peabody interactions definitely are more indicative of a town CyberBob. Though on the other hand, if I was going to try to get a read from one out of the two people, I'd expect the n00ber of the two to give away more. Back on the first hand, I've been digging almost everything CyberBob's been selling today.

I might be leaning toward a SensFan vote. Other candidates are Cathart (I think charter is looking mildly good in their back and forth, but a Peabody pairing doesn't seem likely) and Hoopla (who I'm just getting inexplicable scum vibes from, though from her end, was pretty aggressive on Peabody).

Ah, what the heck.

Vote: SensFan.

Cam

[mathcam]

^---- I agree with everything in that post.

[mathcam]

No takes on SensFan? CoCo and cathart are both reasonable second-bests for me.

Posting in response to prod, will get back to this game later.

You are in too many games.

Cam

[mathcam]

Interesting, Sens. I had exactly the opposite reaction. Peabody didn't seem particularly bitter about being lynched, and I think it's more fitting of Peabody's playstyle to make a fake stab at incriminating someone on his way out, not realizing that the natural tendency would be to assume he was making it up.

On a slightly impalatable meta-note, the absence of the mod stepping in or any site-wide ban of peabody is evidence that either it wasn't a legitimate game-ruin, or possibly that the mod talked with scum vaya and vaya said he wanted to play on.

That said, even though I'm pretty pro-Vaya at this point, I think you have a fair point that I would still be uncomfortable letting her live in a LyLo situation. Maybe that does mean he needs to be lynched sooner rather than later. Hm. I really need to hear Vaya's response.

@CyberBob: My arguments from yesterday on SensFan were pretty weak, and I'm not really citing them as support for my vote. I'm more relying on my discussion today, how I think people showing up in my "medium" list make more natural targets, and then having other reasons for not voting other people in that list. SensFan is someone I don't feel particularly pro-town about who happens to show up in that middle list.

Cam

[mathcam]

So you think Peabody is crafty enough to make Vaya not obvscum after his claim, and yet are assuming his buddy(ies) are in the people he didn't defend or attack much?

I think this is fairly believable "smart n00b" behavior. Play quietly and don't make any splashes while you can, and if you're about to get lynched, why not try to stir up a mess before you go?

there's no way in Hell we can let her win as Scum at this point.

There's only winning and losing. I don't see how there's any difference (other than making for a good story afterwards) between letting Vaya win as scum and having someone else win as scum.

And while I the "we're going to lynch him eventually anyway" argument has some meric, the policy lynch argument is silly --

this would be the craziest policy lynch of all time.

The policy being advocated is letting a dying scum pick the lynch for the next day. Why on earth would we want to give scum that power?

Cam

[mathcam]

And I also made another read on Peabody. Yeah, it's true, he has some questionable moves out there (hypocrisy when he questioned CB's word using, and I agree, that the 'Random Vote case' is not looking so null-tell as I initially thought), but in my opinion his case on CoCo is very good, and full of good points. He also asks some questions here and there. I think he is doing more for the town, than for example Talitha, Vaya, CoCo or Charter.

This is (I think) the part of Cathart's post 485 which charter thinks is the scummiest. I just wanted to throw my two cents in that this is roughly were I stood at this point yesterday. I originally thought the random voting thing was a little silly, began to realize it was more than that (by how he defended it), and thought that the whole "feeling" thing was hypocritical but not necessarily scummy.

This is more or less why I don't want him to be lynched today. We have a far better policy lynch in the form of CoCo and a very decently scummy (IMO) lynch in the form of Cathart to choose from - I'm just not feeling this sudden thirst for Vaya's blood today.

Well, but just because one argument for lynching someone is crap doesn't mean we shouldn't lynch them. Right or wrong,

if

we're definitely going to lynch Vaya if it comes down to LYLO, Sens is right that it's better to do it sooner rather than later, even if it means Peabody's ploy worked. I'm not sure if that "if" is true, though (see previous posts), so this doesn't mean I'm advocating a Vaya lynch.

Cam

[mathcam]

IIRC, I was pretty thoroughly dismissed when I suggested 2 scum was a reasonable hypothesis. In any case, the odds you suggest are the same for any player in the game...major victory if they're scum, minor loss if they're not. I admit it's not quite the same, but it's not far off either.

Basically, my feelings about possible lynches right now are:

1) SensFan: Highest on my list just because of neutrality between he and Peabody in both direction (though SensFan's post 53 in an iso-SensFan jumps out), at least until it was relatively clear Peabody was the pick for the day.

2) Cathart: He's not particularly scummy. Mostly he's just been caught up in defending himself in charter. But in addition to not appearing very scummy, he just hasn't appeared pro-town to me in a single post.

3) CoCo: My gut says there's enough genuine distancing between him and Peabody on day 1 that they're not likely scum together, but my brain really wonders about that hammer quote we've been talking about today.

4) Vaya: Definitely wouldn't oppose the lynch if others were interested. Sens has some valid points here, but I don't like the idea of playing right into Peabody's hands, especially since I believe my argument that he was just trying to mess with us.

In short, I could be persuaded to any of these four, with a current preference for Sens. We need more participation...if nothing else, post your top 3.

Cam

[mathcam]

The pact idea is intriguing. I think if I had been in that game, I would have been in favor. Here, however, I'm not sure anyone feels that the scum odds for Vaya are as low as 5-10 percent, so I'm not sure that idea will fly. I seem to be among the most pro-Vaya (at least from the peabody perspective), and even I find Sens' case mildly compelling.

Another note: Roughly, mafia wins by outsurviving the town (i.e., long enough to hold a majority). Every false lynch takes them one step closer, even if it's a "just to be safe" lynch.

Cam

[mathcam]

Having a couple of suspects above 20% pushes down that par percentage for every other player. Some players dropping to 10% isn't that much of a stretch, especially after a scum lynch...

It's interesting that Peabody outed only one name. This makes the possibility of a 2-man scumteam likelier, in my opinion.

Two good points. Though for the second one, it's not like he was pretending to go nuts and out his scum team, it's that he was pretending to go nuts and out the scum that bussed him. So this leave room for 3. This might be important later -- if we do lynch a second scum (and it's not Vaya) and the game's not over, it seems likely that the third scum was not on the Peabody wagon.

The more happy I become with my pro-Vaya stance, the more happy I become with my Sens vote. If it was just him and Peabody, he needs all the extra days he can get. What better way to accomplish this than to have us waste a full day on a Vaya lynch?

And while I'm usually quite fond of the pouncing on the inadvertent use of the word "mislynch" myself, I think CoCo's pretty in the clear on this one. I don't think he's making a ton of sense at the moment, but I do think the word mislynch there was appropriate.

Cam

[mathcam]

I can see why you'd be confused. Let me put it like this. I believe, moreso than an average lynch, that:

a) If Vaya is town, a scum SensFan would be more likely to be pushing for his lynch.
b) If Vaya is scum, a town SensFan would be more likely to be pushing for his lynch.

Regardless of how convincing you're being, if I end up thinking you're wrong, you end up looking scummier (especially if, given arguments against Vaya being scum that I find compelling, you seem unphased, which you do). Plus, as I've argued, I think some of your argument (namely, the policy lynch part) is downright backwards and (perhaps inadvertently) pro-scum.

Do you have any reaction to what, say, Hoopla is saying about

I think I'm pretty anti- a CoCo lynch at the moment. It's just a gut read, but based on what I would expect from CoCo's playstyle, he wouldn't hesitate from vehemently bussing Peabody if they were scum together. Cathart would be an acceptable compromise, but I wouldn't mind hearing Charter weigh in on the latest with SensFan first.

Cam

[mathcam]

I agree with Sens that if we're going to lynch Vaya eventually, it should be today. I'm just not deadset on lynching Vaya eventually.

I think the difference between Rage and Peabody is that (and this is a point I emphasized earlier) Peabody

didn't

explode. He fairly calmly claimed that someone else was his scum partner. He didn't give any more information about scum, like the size of the group, whether they had any powers, etc. It feels very much like a ploy. On the other hand, Rage's final in-game post is emotional, reveals his own role's mechanisms, and reveals the actual role name of his accomplice. If Peabody had made the same show about it, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I'm not sure how even I feel about this, but here's a third option: Ask Vaya to claim, and go from there. I don't think even Sens would claim to be dead-set on lynching Vaya (at least not today) if Vaya claimed a power role, or better a proveable role.

Cam

[mathcam]

Lol. It is incredibly humorous to me that charter unvotes Cathart the very post before I was going to vote for him.

Idunno about Vaya...there were a lot of stances to take for scum other than the one that he knew was automatically

not

get him out of trouble.

Cathart's "Oh, I

guess

I could support a Vaya bandwagon" vibe was the tipping point for me there.

Unvote: SensFan, Vote: Col. Cathart.

Cam

[mathcam]

Oh, missed Vaya's self-vote. Sheesh. I hear ya on the not enough nooses front. Still like Cathart -- I didn't even mention his cop speculating stuff.

Cam

[mathcam]

Agree with SC. Happy with vote.

Can someone explain why we're not questioning the presence of a "hot nurse" in a commie mafia game? Doesn't exactly seem topical...

Cam

[mathcam]

Agreed. And shopping around for another lynch (unless it's Vaya) is just prone to outing a role we'd even less like to get rid of. I'm fine with offing cathart. And I'm a little surprised CyberBob isn't.

Cam

[mathcam]

Sure it's possible. I'd say likely. I'm fine not speculating on the other roles, but I think it's significant that most of these scenarios lead to Sens targeting mafia. So the question is:

"Who does Sens think was not mafia and not likely to be targeted by the mafia?"

I think Vaya and CoCo are clearly out. Sens wouldn't have taken the chance of hiding with them. Not sure about charter, but I'd put everyone else as a plausible hiding target. If I had to pick the most likely, I'd go with Cyberbob. Sens' interactions with him yesterday made me think he found him townish.

Further, the fact that Vaya was blocked yesterday without stopping the kill is a pretty strong pro-Vaya point. I think Vaya is the natural killer from a 3-scum team because there's little sense in exposing the other partner to investigation, and he's obvtown if there's 2 scum. So I'm currently pretty against a Vaya lynch today, and mildly against a CoCo lynch today.

I also think it's easy to get carried away with the LyLo argument...I'm not comfortable with

anyone

in LyLo -- it's not a comfortable place to be. Even then, I'm pretty sure I'd be most uncomfortable with, say, SC and Le Chat, who I feel I have the weakest reads on, than I would even with a mathcam/CoCo/Vaya endgame.

I'm not sure who that leaves me to be in favor of lynching today, but it might be charter.

Cam

[mathcam]

Charter continues to ignore me. Does no one think it odd that I bring something up in which Charter must respond and he pushes the town to ignore me as well.

Not that odd, no. You seemed to ignore just about everyone's points against you on day one, so charter decided to play your game and policy ignore you. I'm not sure it's helping the game, but it's not odd.

Early reports show that you did.

Okay, that was funny.

[mathcam]

It would be immensely funny if after the game it turned out that Sens did not in fact target

anyone

last night (assuming he was allowed to).

Hm, I assumed he had to. In fact, that's a plausible distinction between "coward" and "hider" -- cowards have to, hiders have the choice.

Really? I agree with you about SC, but I've been feeling le Chat as being rather townish. If I had to pick two people for my weakest reads they would be SC and Hoopla.

Yeah, maybe. I have a general uneasiness about the fact that a small subset of the current players are getting any attention at all (CoCo, Charter, Vaya) and the rest of us are somehow managing to stay above the fray. And not in a good "I think we've narrowed down scum" way, either. More a bad "we've picked out the easy lynches and the mafia are laughing the way to the bank" way.

Cam

[mathcam]

Hmm...I expected a little bit more commotion about the fact that I am against both CoCo and Vaya lynches today, at least for the time being.

Cam

[mathcam]

Hmm...I expected a little bit more commotion about the fact that I am against both CoCo and Vaya lynches today, at least for the time being.

Cam

Why? It makes sense.

Oh. Okay. For some reason, my impression from reading the start of the day left me feeling like we were on a path leading almost inevitably towards one of their lynches. Never mind then.

I suggest you pursue other avenues of attack if you're unhappy with a Vaya/CoCo lynch. It worries me slightly that a player of your caliber has almost no scum read after 4 alignment flips (including one scum).

Fair enough, I suppose. But just like pressure doesn't materialize from nowhere, neither does an attack. I guess I need to go re-read.

CyberBob, charter still third? I think he'd be my top choice if I had to pick right now.

Cam

[mathcam]

Wow, that was the scummiest vote in quite some time, Vaya. I still need to get around to a re-read, but that makes me doubt my pro-town Vaya read.

Cam

[mathcam]

Okay, started the re-read. Man, there's a lot of juicy stuff in the first 10 pages. Also, rereading CoCo is as frustrating now as it was living through it the first time. That is all for now.

Actually, let me re-open a discussion. Given that there were only 2 scum the first time around, why aren't we taking the default position that there are 2 scum this time? Certainly Kublai probably re-worked the game a little between the two runs, but changing the number of scum seems like it would be cause for a major re-balancing, and take a lot longer.

Cam

[mathcam]

I personally would tend to agree with you, but attempting to outguess the mod rarely ends well no matter how "certain" one thinks one is.

I really hate the phrase "outguessing the mod" -- it's only Bastard mods who think of themselves as being in a guessing competition with the players.

Every

time we make an inference about the game (there's probably not 6 scum, or 4 cops, or a cult, etc.) we're "outguessing" the mod in that sense. There's no sense in throwing our hands up in the air and bemoaning the fact that we can't know for certain anything about the setup -- we use facts and inference to create plausible scenarios (keeping fully aware that our scenario is only one possible scenario), and then make decisions based off of those deductions.

That the original setup had 2 scum is an incredibly important piece of information at our disposal, and you would have us completely ignore it.

If we do proceed under the assumption that we started with 2 scum that might make us a bit too complacent with our lynches. It's safer, IMO, to act as though the larger scumgroup is the one we're playing with.

Well, good, at least this is an actual reason. But really? You think our standards for lynch will be different? Regardless of how many scum there are, don't we always want to lynch the scummiest person? And it's

not

safer to assume something if it leads us to worse decisions. Say I was absolutely positive (which I'm not) that the scum group has size 2 -- then I would be sure that Vaya is not scum. But then I figure to be safe, I'll assume that there's 3 -- then I note that Vaya's done some scummy things, and end up lynching a (say) townie Vaya. Isn't that complacency just as bad? In fact, I think the only potential complacency going on is in regards to avoiding making hard decisions in the name of "not outguessing the mod."

Wow, that was supposed to be a 2-liner. Sorry about that.

Cam

[mathcam]

You are hypothesizing that SensFan's death came from his mis-hide as a Coward, and therefore we should attempt to hunt and lynch those people that he thought were pro-town enough to hide behind? You are basically saying that we should entertain the idea of voting to lynch those people who Sens thought were pro-Town, those people that we most likely also think are pro-Town. Can you explain to me how that isn't directly anti-Town?

I'm not saying that this should dictate today's lynch, but it's very relevant, yes. And I said something a little more specific -- we should find someone who Sens thought was town,

and

would be an unlikely kill target, the safest possible place for Sens to hide. And while I'm not looking at a list in front of me or anything, I'm not sure that the people that Sens found town are exactly the people that I think are town -- if there are people for whom there is near universal consensus on their townliness, that fact would definitely trump this idea. You'll note that despite the fact that this idea pointed me toward CyberBob, I haven't pushed an attack forward on him at all -- I think his apparent townliness is more important than the fact that I think he was a plausible Sens target.

I do not think we can use Sens' role and his death to determine scum. I think that opens too many possible doors. Especially considering the fact that it is super odd to see that he, a Coward, was a lone night death, when his role makes it seem like there is either 0 or 2 deaths when it concerns him. It is super confusing and I don't want it to cloud my judgment.

Ignoring important facts because they're confusing is silly. There are several plausible scenarios for what happened that night, Sens targeted mafia and mafia targeted Sens being my personal favorite, but others which involve any number of pro-town roles (blockers, docs, etc.)

Cam

[mathcam]

Okay, finished re-reading day one. Still want to do the rest of the game, but I need a break and don't want to lose one particular train of thought:

First, charter. Here is to me the defining post of the day, where he unvotes Peabody at a critical point in the wagon.

Upon further reflection, while many people are ignoring Peabody, there really isn't anyone trying to stop his lynch, which I would expect to happen if he was scum. Seems unlikely his buddies would leave him to the vultures without hardly a word or a last minute bus attempt.

This is an incredibly off post:

• a) First, I disagree that his buddies would do something noticeable with regards to the wagon one way or another. Latecomers to the wagon attract serious attention the next day, as do people who attempt and fail to stop the lynch. Unless they had a really empassioned argument as to why Peabody shouldn't be lynched, better to stay quiet.
  b) Second, there
  were
  people trying to stop his lynch! On that very page, SC and Tally both expressed a pro-Peabody sentiment and voted for the other. Tally's in particular was an unvote, definitely slightly reducing the steam on the wagon.
  c) Even if we
  don't
  include Tally and SC as in the above bullet,
  charter became exactly this stopping force with this and subsequent posts.
  . He goes well beyond a peabody unvote and suggesting an alternative bandwagon, to quite forcefully pushing either of two alternate wagons (myself or Cathart). It's as if he's screaming "I don't care which we lynch, just not Peabody." This sideshow becomes the single biggest distraction to the Peabody lynch. A simple "Oh, I guess I was wrong about Peabody" doesn't cut it for me in response to something that strong.

I don't think charter's overall play in this game has been altogether super-scummy, but this sequence of events is pretty up there. I'll compare him to other players when I get around to gathering those thoughts into a coherent post.

Also, apologies if these points have been made before. As I said, I'm not up-to-speed on days 2 and 3 yet.

Cam

p.s. Definite LOL at last two posts.

[mathcam]

Okay, all caught up. I have a lot written down, so I've only posted a small number of coherent thoughts.

Currently pro-town in my book: Hoopla, CyberBob, Vaya.

Charter actually came off very strongly pro-town to me ever since day 1. His posts around his "NOT ENOUGH NOOSES" explosion in particular seems very genuine. Because of day 1, he doesn't go in my pro-town book, but he goes off my favorite lynch targets for today list.

That leaves CoCo, le chat, and SC:

CoCo did not fare well in a re-read. I think in the re-read, he came off less crazy to me than inconsistent, so whereas I was willing to attribute oddities to craziness before, now I think they might be scummy. CoCo, I'd like you to specifically address why you claimed at the start of the day. Another thing that caught my eye is the rampant accusations of just about every player in the game...with the exception of me, who was probably his strongest attacker day 1. An attempt to mollify perhaps?

I still have a hard time with SC and le chat.

SC: One meta-thing I've been pondering is how likely it is that Haru was going to go through with his translation party idea if he were scum with a partner. If you're going to pull a crazy gambit, you're more likely to do it if you don't have a partner at stake. On the other hand, presumably the account had been created before the game began, rendering this argument somewhat moot. Nonetheless, we could go back and see who was least surprised by the translation party hypothesis -- note in particular that Hoopla was the one who suggested it when it seemed not to have even dawned on anyone else that this was anything but a non-native speaker. If SC turns up scum, this might be an interesting finger to point toward Hoopla.

As for his own merits, I think charter had a nice post in 940. That SC though Bob was "gut scum" in 338 is weird to me, and he continued being pretty anti-Bob all day. And while I can sympathize with starting the Tallywagon on day 1, it sure doesn't look good in hindsight when it took a Peabody unvote to get it started. Finally, SC's quote in 708 "I'm surprised I haven't copped more attacks" feels non-genuine (as if "Hey, look at me, no scum in the right mind would suggest they aren't being attacked enough! I must be town!").

Le chat: I have even less of a read on as a player. But:

One point I'd like to make is that I've made two specific lists of suspects in this game: One to see who Peabody acted somewhat neutral towards, with the idea that a n00b scum would want to shy away from creating a strong link to their partner. This led me to the list {Hoopla, Vaya, SensFan, CyberBob, le Chat}. The second list was the people who Sens would plausibly have hid with, under the idea that the reason there was only the Sens kill was that Sens hid with a mafia: While I didn't write down the list, I'm pretty happy postulating that Hoopla and CyberBob appeared pro-town enough that they'd be at risk for being nightkilled, and Vaya was scummy enough to be too risky. This leaves the innocuous-looking le Chat as the only member of the above list.

I'm not sure this vote is going to stay until a lynch, but I at least like my argument behind a

Vote: Le Chat.

SC and CoCo are close behind.

Cam

[mathcam]

Do you mind if I ask why you see Vaya as being protown? I would put him at neutral at best.

I'm pretty happy with my read on Peabody's gambit. There's also the fact that he was blocked and the kill went through anyway. In fact, Vaya's the only one I feel like we have objective evidence in favor of. Also, in the reread, Vaya came off pretty well when combatting with CoCo. The only niggling worry I have is the self-vote, but Vaya seemed pretty genuine (eve if misguidedly so) when discussing his own lynch.

SC - Okay, maybe. And lol @ real estate read -- very fitting. I have to admit I have a voice in my head arguing (similar to Hoopla) that there's no way that Bob could've been

that

sure that Peabody was scum that he wouldn't change his vote all day.

Cam

[mathcam]

My vote on Le Chat is not based on inactivity. In fact, none of my comments were based on inactivity, I don't think.

While I understand your objections, CyberBob, it's also just not true that anyone who's scum automatically does something scummy in the first couple of days (especially if there is a decent amount of inactivity on that player's part). Thus process of elimination has to be considered as an alternative technique. The paragraph before my vote explains how I narrowed in on specifically on Le Chat. I'm not trying to oversell this case as airtight, but it's less...air-loose... than just randomly picking someone that satisfied a particular criteria (responding to your "hardly unique to le Chat' comment).

Cam

[mathcam]

Yeah, I got your post, Cyber. I was responding to "the latter" argument, since we had already discussed "the former" argument when we discussed the number of scum. But now that you bring it up again...

I'm saying that we should consider all possible situations, and that we should come up with a plan of action that minimises the risk of causing too much damage to the town in case we get it wrong.

You said this in response to my complaint that it was silly to dismiss pieces of information relevant to the game, even if they aren't slam dunks, 100% guarantees of finding scum. But it doesn't sound like "not putting much stock in" is really any better than dismissing them outright. Is it that you don't think wondering about Sens is worthwhile since his actions are inherently unpredictable, or that you disagree with my conclusions? I'm certainly open to the latter, but can't really see the former as a tenable stance.

Cam

[mathcam]

I'd argue that

all

tools at our disposal are more or less guesswork and supposition, barring extraordinary revelations. You think CoCo is scummy, for example, because you guess/suppose that a scum CoCo is more likely to make the posts he's made in this game than a town CoCo. Reading CoCo myself, I certainly have my concerns, probably for the same reasons you do, but I usually put my own scumreads on the back burner when I can get something a little more objective to come along. I think the process of eliminating people that Sens wouldn't have hid with is more objective than my attempting to delve into CoCo's psychology (though I'll grant you that my Peabody pairing argument is a little less so, which was important in singling out Le Chat).

In the end, I guess maybe it just comes down to how much faith you're willing to place in a scum read you get off of someone. For me, not a lot. For you, a lot.

Cam

[mathcam]

And I think of the thought experiment as the "more solid" option of figuring out what's going on, leaving more subjective things like active lurking and psychological analysis as the thing you do until you have actual information you can process. But regardless, I think we see where each other is coming from.

On a different note -- what do you think about the argument that, inactivity aside, Le Chat's stances in this game have been rather mellow? Would you agree that it's easier for scum to hide behind such a playstyle?

Cam

[mathcam]

Hm. L-1 is a pretty serious place to be for someone who hasn't posted today.

Unvote: Le Chat.

Just a preventative measure against reckless hammers (not that I think that's particularly likely in this game, but with CoCo around...) When Chat gets back, he should still be thinking of himself at L-1.

Cam

[mathcam]

Agreed.

And interesting on Vaya, though I imagine he's a lurker in every game he plays. He's over-committed. I don't see why people prefer to half-ass 10 games instead of playing 2-3 games well, but to each his own, I suppose.

Cam

[mathcam]

Don't get me wrong, I'd shed no tears after a CoCo lynch. It's just to me that the evidence on him is, given his playstyle, very subjective. I think most of us at some point in the game have gone from being pretty sure he's town to pretty sure he's scum, or vice versa. I remember Day 1 Hoopla was a big CoCo champion. Subjective is still better than non-existent, though, so that's something.

Cam

[mathcam]

I agree completely, even with the reasonableness of him being scum. I only meant that, for example,

I think CoCo's abrasiveness is an asset to the town, despite getting caught up in useless semantics debates occasionally, and is starting to appear a little pro-town, if only because of his activeness which is a loose town-tell.

is almost exactly the reverse sentiment. I certainly concede there's been plenty of time to change your mind since that post on day one, but if it's anything like my experience, you've been going back and forth between the two extremes all game.

So what do you think about the fact that a hider SensFan would almost certainly not (imo) have hid with CoCo?

Cam

[mathcam]

Just a general comment: I'm totally fine not drawing any conclusions about who Sens

did

hide with it, but I do think it's pretty clear that he

wouldn't

have hid with CoCo. I have a mental picture of a hider has not being able to choose not to hide, but I think my knowledge of hiders may be several years out of date. If that was an option, I definitely see Sens not hiding as a possibility, though I tend to agree with Hoopla that you might as well...especially if you can work in a breadcrumb beforehand.

I've been following the game since mid day 1 and I'm already mostly familiar with what's been going on, so it shouldn't take me too long to do a quick reread to refresh my memory.

Wow, I've been barely following the game since day one, and I'm

in

the game.

Nice to have active people again.

Cam

[mathcam]

Man, one day I'm carrying the conversation, then the next, I'm behind with 4 pages of stuff to catch up on. Still haven't parsed everything, but...

I don't think Raskol's original "no PBPA" stance was entirely unreasonable. For example, I think an explicit list indicating who's most town, who's second most town, etc., is more beneficial to scum than it is to town (though mostly because I don't think it's all that beneficial to either). I also think that part of charter's attack does, as Raskol points out, indeed stem from anger (or whatever other emotion) at Raskol's refusal to indulge him. But, I also think that Raskol played a bit of the same game himself -- clearly there were compromises between "only post on le chat" and "post PBPA on everyone", for example posting a top 3 suspicion list, or roughly dividing the town in to town thoughts and scum thoughts. Instead, in what I would attribute to a stubborn stand on his principles, refused to accommodate to fairly reasonable requests from the town. I'm not sure if there's anything to be made out of either stance...both are plausibly genuine regardless of their alignment.

Glad to see we got some emotion from Raskol in

Raskol v. SC

...Raskol came off town there to me.

Can someone explain VI to me? Why do we think CoCo was a VI? Or is this a playstyle description and not a role? We remember he claimed vanilla town right?

SC continuing his "Why doesn't charter find me scummy?" approach is a little intriguing. Given that I already called him out on a similar argument as scummy, it says something that he's willing to push it further.

Donny hasn't done much to throw me off the Le Chat wagon, so vote stays for now.

Cam

[mathcam]

Cam, VI = Village Idiot.

Yeah, someone posted that earlier. I just didn't know what that meant -- whether it was a role, or a playstyle. But a quick trip to the Wiki has set me straight.

People keep saying this, what is so unreasonable for me to ask for his thoughts on more than just one person?

Really, someone said that was unreasonable? I sure didn't. Maybe you could quote that somewhere.

Cam

[mathcam]

Also, Mathcam, what do you make of Raskol claiming he scumhunts by interacting with other players, but then he sits back and demands that we quiz him (as SC so elegantly put it)? He flat out refuses to do anything but answer questions. I actually find him to be quite a bit scummier than Coco.

I agree that there is a mild contradiction in philosophies here, but I'm not sure Raskol is

actually

guilty of this. He's been active enough in the short time he's been in this game that I'm not sure it's fair to say he's been sitting back at all.

Don't get me wrong, my suspicions of CoCo haven't instantaneously disappeared. I just think it's difficult to get a further read this quickly on a replacement paper...I find I'm skeptical to the idea that he got a role, decided on a playstyle different from his usual fare, and his scumminess got revealed as a consequence.

[mathcam]

charter: That's silly. I post a lot of the same stuff whether I'm town or scum, because I believe a lot of the same stuff whether I'm town or scum. You haven't made

any

points on Raskol that aren't very reasonably attributed to having a consistent, and not

that

unreasonable, playstyle.

Hoopla: Complete agreement with the emoticon summary, though agree with SC that yours is amusingly inappropriate.
When you're done with that, you should come back to the game.

Bob: I think you're way over-reacing to butthurt. Are you interpreting it as a gay slur? I took it as a synonym for "pain in the ass," which is a fairly mild epithet.

Raskol: Quit being a pain in the ass. You know very well that a much more reasonable response to "You haven't talked about anyone other than to Le Chat": would be to actually link to posts where you talk about other people than Le Chat, rather than to berate people, right or wrong, for not having seen them. In this sense, you are either intentionally or inadvertently trolling.

SC: Good question for DDD.

DDD: Good question from SC. Can you be more specific on why you don't think he's scum?

Cam

[mathcam]

You two think you're scoring points with these pithy one-liners, but you're really just making yourselves out to be asses more interested in one-upping one another than advancing the game.

Let's lynch DDD.

Cam

[mathcam]

I consider getting charter to admit that his vote on me is based on policy and emotion rather than my probable alignment is an advance, as it allows people who might not be interested in letting his feelings dictate the outcome of the game make a better decision about whether they should hop on my wagon.

I would consider that an advance as well. I dispute that your tactics are anywhere near likely to achieve this. He is very clearly not admitting that in 1156, if that's what you're referring to -- he's saying "If that's what you want to tell yourself, sure." This can only be considered a victory in only the most pyrrhic of senses.

I 100% agree with the quoted sentence.

Well, that's sort of a no-brainer. I agree as well. But I didn't quite catch your point -- are you arguing that the charter/Raskol interactions are productive?

Cam

[mathcam]

EBWOP for Raskol: That's in reference to the "emotion" part, not the "policy" part. He definitely is admitting to a policy motive for lynching CoCo. I'm not sure that part of it is completely unreasonable though.

EBWOP for Bob: Or was the "mislynch" directed toward my wanting to lynch DDD? I thought you were in agreement that he wasn't looking so good today.

Finally, I think that's the first time I've ever used "EBWOP." Go me.

[mathcam]

Hoopla, Bob, and Socrates, at the moment. Probably leaning town on Charter and leaning slightly scum on Raskol. Suspicious of you and most suspicious of DDD.

Cam

[mathcam]

He really is le Chat 2.0.

Lol.

Okay, the last few posts seem to have everyone in agreement -- why aren't we lynching DDD?

Cam

[mathcam]

Oh.

Vote: DDD

Cam

[mathcam]

The problem when people handle themselves well against emotionally-charged attacks is that the attack is counter-productive -- I'm less eager to lynch Raskol than I was at the start of the day. Whereas DDD has made some fairly scummy posts, the attack on Raskol seems to be based primarily on his philosophy of the game.

In short, I'd encourage Bob and charter not to bemoan the standing of the Raskol bandwagon too much....we on the DD 'wagon are in a completely symmetrical position. We can't lynch until/unless a couple of you work your way over.

But yeah, we need more from Hoopla definitely.

In the interests of contributing, though, here's some advice: if I do get lynched, you guys should consider trying a no lynch tomorrow.

Okay, I'll bite. How come?

Cam

[mathcam]

Oh give it a rest, Raskol. You're not being persecuted here -- you got in a mildly heated (lukewarm at worst) disagreement with another player. It's going to happen from time to time, so get used to it. And you're self-hammer comment isn't helping your cause any.

Cam

[mathcam]

I didn't say I was being persecuted. I'm just making fun of them a bit (mafia is supposed to be fun, don't you think?).

Okay, fair enough, I misinterpreted. But you have to admit, posting a commentless historically poignant photograph does invite the reader to a certain intended tone...

No lynch is because a 5-person LyLo is better than a 6-person MyLo.

MyLo? And that statement's only valid in vanilla games...or at least it's only sure-fire in vanilla games. Otherwise we'd be no-lynching every day from the start.

Last couple of pages have been very interesting. Gonna take a bit to parse.

Cam

[mathcam]

If you lynched me today, and you were forced to lynch again right away tomorrow with no additional discussion, who would be tomorrow's vote?

I don't see why you keep bringing this stuff up. If there's any merit to be had in your initial argument that some stuff should be kept hidden to prevent mafia from using information to their advantage, surely it applies to how people are going to vote tomorrow.

If you think my flip would narrow your scum pool down than Danny's flip, then by all means, lynch me today. The worst thing that could possibly happen imo would be to lynch one of us without getting a soft-confirm on the other one.

No. The point of lynching is not to gain information about the people you didn't lynch -- this is a side benefit which hopefully can be analyzed to some benefit later. The point of lynching is to maximize your chances of eliminating scum. (Note: I readily admit the existence of situations in which lynching for information is the right play, though these are by far the exception, rather than the rule).

Cam

[mathcam]

Bob, can you elaborate on SC?

Some of this theory discussion is stupid. Obviously there are some benefits to every lynch (i.e., increased information), but many of these are completely dwarfed by the detriment of losing a pro-town player and giving scum another kill.

Raskol, it might behoove you to drop some arguments. Given that you're having trouble convincing people of the arguments you feel most strongly about, no sense diluting it with trying to be right about every little policy dispute. We're never going to get consistent play out of everyone in the game at the pace the pagecount is increasing.

Cam

[mathcam]

Read a little more carefully.

Bob: Never mind.

Raskol: There's no amount of posturing that will stop you from being a target tomorrow if you're not lynched or killed tonight, so stop worrying about that. You don't have control over who gets discussed, so just make your points. I still don't think you've put together much of a case against charter -- you two clearly have incongruous playstyles, and somehow you've both convinced yourselves that everything the other is saying is a scum ploy.

I also think you've too quickly dismissed DDD as scum in favor of pursuing Charter -- there's plenty of reasons for him to defend you if he's scum.

SC isn't looking all that scummy to me. Not jumping on Raskol's self-vote was a pretty town move, imo.

Cam

(Preview edit: Still working on catching up on theory stuff, SC. I'll get there)

[mathcam]

SC: From my point of view, Raskol could be scum with any of SC, DDD, Hoopla, or Socrates. I agree that Raskol/DDD is a little stretch since they've been defending each other, and that I have a pro-town read on Socrates, reducing that pairing's probability. But Raskol/SC doesn't seem completely ridiculous to me.

All in all, not a ridiculous theory, though I'm not sure I'm confident enough in it to lynch Hoopla over people I find more individually scummy.

DDD: Nice post. Hmm.

Cam

[mathcam]

...though 1318 is now confusing me.

[mathcam]

But like I said, that's for after the game! I don't want to get too caught up in this, as apparently some people don't want to have to read it

I'm pretty okay with single-line complete destruction of arguments like that one was. Charter, if you don't want him to make "dumb comparisons," don't make the dumb argument in the first place. You know very well that a single example of something doesn't make it "100% correct." (Or at least you should...come to think of it, I think you made that exact same logical absurdity earlier this game when talking about lynching scum on day one not helping...but I digress).

Alright, so I'm not so sure talking's going to do us much more good today. I feel like I have a few solid town reads (though some of these are fading), but no definitive scum reads. So I have to go back and question my assumptions, and the strongest one I'm making is one of the ones keeping Raskol alive, namely that Sens wouldn't have hid behind him. The possibilities that Sens chose not to hide at all, or chose to hide behind a different scum, or that he went crazy and hid behind CoCo after all, provide ample opportunity for this hypothesis to be wrong.

So...sorry, Raskol. I like your play, but you just make the most sense for today. CoCo did some damn scummy things, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense to lynch someone else given that (given that DDD is looking less likely, and his last few posts have been okay-sounding). I know that personally, I get much more excited and involved when I'm scum trying to come from an impossible scenario (e.g., subbing in for CoCo), and I could definitely see your excitement coming from such a place. It's worth a shot.

Unvote, Vote: Raskol

Cam

[mathcam]

Mathcam, what do you make of Serial's unvote and sudden 180 on Raskol after he self votes?

Looks to me like an unvote to prevent a lynch caused by a self-vote, and a change of opinion. He does spend quite some time explaining where his theories are coming from (whether or not they're valid).

Cam

[mathcam]

The breadcrumb is a bit of a stretch, imo, but that exact quote was one of the reasons I thought le Chat was a likely hide for SensFan.

I'm willing to go back to a DDD vote, I think, but I will note that it's not just a little intriguing that Raskol defends DDD all day until I semi-reluctantly switch from DDD over to him.

Cam

[mathcam]

Unvote, Vote: DDD.

Cam

[mathcam]

After 20 pages of discussion, I find myself in about the same place as where I started. Though personal sympathies may have changed toward both, DDD and Raskol are my top two, in that order, with SC probably coming in third.

charter -- I disagree about Peabody's final words. Certainly his

intent

was to trick us, but that doesn't mean we can't try to outplay him at his own game. He doesn't have automatic victory in this front (unless you think that Peabody was such a brilliant mastermind that such an attempt is futile).

Cam

[mathcam]

I'm really starting to feel like Raskol's been using a fake willingness to self-vote to try to appear pro-town. For all the talk about how willing he is to do it, (you know, "just to piss people off") it didn't happen. He's just been soooo over the top about the whole thing (the bolded

Vo

really did it for me...) -- it just doesn't feel genuine.

I think SC is the wrong lynch. I'd really, really like to lynch Raskol now.

Cam

[mathcam]

Ah, right.

Unvote: DDD, Vote: Raskol.

Cam