Mini #582: Meta Mafia Mini! GAME OVER!

[TheSweatpantsNinja]

Stoofer: I see what you're saying about emptyger and mneme both being scum, but I don't see how it follows that one of them must be.

[EmpTyger]

mathcam:
Honestly, I’m trying to reevaluate your *older* posts. Primate is confusing me enough now that I’m suddenly wondering whether I should be more tolerant of your extreme hedging. Although I’m still leaning towards “no”, just in comparison to everyone else- plus considering how you’ve been with DotS.

[If you’re referring to [121]: that’s for later reference. I wanted your response on record before my hypothesis presentation would clue you in to what you, if guilty, would need to be guarding against.]

[mathcam]

Mneme:

I really do need to do a re-read already, I think. I started glazing over the more recent Stoofer arguments since they sounded like more of the same and have been caught up only thinking about the sloppiness portion of the attack.

Emp: I guess I don't see what's so bad about hedging, and I'm not sure the "extreme" modifier is particularly appropriate. If I'm not confident one way or the other, should I pretend to be more sure than I actually am? I'll make a decision when I feel confident enough to do so or when it becomes strategically necessary to have me in one camp or the other (e.g., deadlines, risk of game-stalling, etc.).

Primate is confusing me enough now that I’m suddenly wondering whether I should be more tolerant of your extreme hedging.

I don't understand what that means. You were so sure that Primate was innocent that you couldn't see how I could think he wasn't, but now that he's acting weird you can see why I was hedging? If not, why wouldn't you have been tolerant about it in the first place?

Also, I'm not sure what "How I've been with DotS" means. I'm not particularly sure about him either, but I do think I have a valid point against him, and my remnant of a random vote certainly isn't doing much harm there. Also, if Primate and Stoof end up both being town (or even if not), it might be nice to see how various individuals reacted to a third option for a bandwagon.

Cam

[DestroyeroftheSky]

I'm going to do a quick catch up now. But I just noticed this, and figured I'd give us something else to think about.

Greasy Spot, roleswitcher

has died. 11 available votes means 6 to lynch.

Possibly a long shot, but there's no mention of Greasy Spot's alignment besides the colour green. If we take the 'meta' flavour into account, we could consider that green

doesn't

actually denote pro-town alignment.

Looking at Greasy Spot's "bah!" post:

Bah!!!!!!

No, "Go town!", just "Bah!"

I'll have more soon.

[mathcam]

I disagree 100% with just about everything in that post.

Cam

[Mr Stoofer]

Stoofer: I see what you're saying about emptyger and mneme both being scum, but I don't see how it follows that one of them must be.

I hope I didn't use the word "must". I just think it likely that one of them is.

Also, trying to suggest that a dead Townie was Scum is a huge Scum tell.

[TheSweatpantsNinja]

You didn't use the word must, but having one's probabilities at 48/52 and the other at 52/48 seems to imply that that's what you are thinking.

[Mr Stoofer]

Indeed, and the figures assume that.

[TheSweatpantsNinja]

And that seems like a big jump to conclusions. Isn't it quite possible that they're both town?

[Mr Stoofer]

Well of course it is possible! The whole point about this game is you give your thoughts/opinions; and my thought/opinion is that one of them is Scum. Of course I don't know if I am right. That's the thing about Mafia, you don't know who the Scum are!

[DestroyeroftheSky]

I'll cover Mr Stoofer first.

Here is the case as I see it was being made:
The first semi-serious accusation I saw was Johoohno's FOS for "being sloppy". He elaborated here:

Being sloppy is, in my eyes, a scum tell (not the strongest one I admit, but enough to make a note of). I get harassed for it in some other games, but I stick to it for now (partly to be able to look back on some of my games and evaluate the truth of it). My take is that scum can afford being sloppy readers and stay in the present most of the time, and when the time comes they can do a reread and create a case on the player they want to frame. (Plus sloppiness isn't helping the town.)

At first, I found the FOS to be unfounded, but I'm more content with it given this explanation.

I found KingPin's comment in the next post really reachy.

The point here is that if you had bothered to read the thread, it wasn't that long at merely a page in length, you would have found that everyone had posted. But your post suggests that you overlooked more than just my post.

I would assume that you had read the thread, and are feigning sloppy play.

He went on to FOS Stoof. I don't find this a convincing. The accusation, which I've bolded, leaves us with questions about

why

Stoof would have done this at all and

what

he could possibly have gained through lying about it. That he seemed to have given no thought to this makes his whole line of reasoning suspect. Emp echoed this point (post 53), again, not addressing the why and what then going one step further and asking Primate to vote Stoof for him. To me, this comes across as contrived reason to point fingers.

To the suggestion that Stoof lied about his explanation, it being scummy because he'd be trying to mislead us, I have to agree with mathcam here:

Much like my vote on DotS was not seriously accusing him of lying when he claimed he pulled out a spinning wheel, I wouldn't expect Stoof to be held to his claim that he made a list and picked at random from it.

Your explanation was that you:
1) looked at all the players who had not posted
2) chose one of them at random

You did neither of those things, but you said you did.

That's lying.

And it's not a harmless lie either, but lying about how and why you cast a vote.

What is wrong about this is that Emp is trying to describe an early barely-serious vote and the motivations behind it as somehow equal to those of a hammer. Sure, not in those words, but it's clear from this quote that Emp is attempting to describe Stoof's actions as dangerous and harmful when this is so far from the case. He's completely taken Stoof's vote out of context, making it and the reasons behind it seem more significant than they are.

Let alone vote-worthy, I was really surprised by mneme's suggestion that sloppiness was

lynch

-worthy, especially in this context.

Of -course- sloppiness is lynchworthy. So is saying "I did X" when you did nothing of the sort. It might not be as signfiicant as something else someone does, but sloppiness is every bit as lynchworthy as, say, consistently being third on bandwagons.

@ mneme

- Based on this post, would you be willing to lynch Stoofer right now for not reading the thread carefully in the first 24 hours of the game (being sloppy) and providing a false explanation for his actions (saying X but doing nothing of the sort)?

Also to mneme:

I'm not suggesting that you lied as a matter of strategy, nor am I invoking LAL. But the level and type of inattention involved in your prevarication regarding your "lurker" vote (not to mention the error in the vote itself), combined with the levels of inattention involved in your -1 -on-Primate vote read "scum" to me.

Is there a reason town wouldn't have done exactly what Stoofer did?

@ massive

- In post 60 you seems to be treating Stoofer's KingPin vote as something altogether different from a 'random' vote. Why?

I have found Stoofer's explanations believable, even if they're not watertight, but I really don't believe they warranted the amount of attention and scrutiny they've received. Occam's Razor makes his actions much easy to comprehend, and that's clear enough: Stoofer was trying to "get the game moving" (post 28), so he voted for a player he thought hadn't posted

on page one

vs Stoofer wanted to vote KingPin for a specific reason and decided to, firstly lie about this reason

on page one

, and secondly to lie about how he came to this reason (massive, post 86 and EmpTyger, post 97 and post 131). This just leaves me asking... but why? And that's exactly why I don't believe it's the case. Stoof may be scum, but his 'sloppy' vote for KingPin and the related discussion that ensued doesn't provide us the reason to believe it.

Even if the explanation is sloppiness, isn’t it more likely that he’s guilty, and he’s overdoing it either to either justify his first errors or else because it allows him to get away future antitown actions?

No, I don't believe this is more likely, mostly because he

hasn't

been particularly sloppy for the larger part of this game so far.

I did say before that if something similar happens again, I wouldn't be so lenient and I think it did when Stoofer put Primate at L-1. Perhaps because I thought Primate was scum, I didn't feel Stoof was in the wrong. But on reflection it seems more questionable.

Unless I missed it, Stoofer still hasn't explicitly told us what happened there.

@ Mr Stoofer

- Why didn't you mention that you were putting Primate at L-1?

Also, you didn't answer this (at least):

Stoofer:

I believe that one of you is scum because I can't believe that both of you could be sincere in your pursuit of the bullshit Stoofer-wagon.
<snip>

Why us 2, and not, say, massive?

I did actually have an eye on Stoofer, as well as Primate, earlier, but it seemed to fallen off. As of this post, I still think Primate is scum and his latest posts haven't done anything to address my suspicion. I think either one of both of them are scum and am overwhelmingly leaning Primate. I'll post on him tomorrow or something.

[DestroyeroftheSky]

I disagree 100% with just about everything in that post.

Why?

Also, trying to suggest that a dead Townie was Scum is a huge Scum tell.

Because? And there's no way for a townie to honestly say they know Greasy Spot was town at this point.

Anyway, I realise we won't be finding anything conclusive from this discussion right now short of scum saying, "yes, he was one of us." I'd still like answers to the above questions, though.

[the silent speaker]

Greasy Spot was town. All pro-town players will be in green, and all anti-town players in red, when reporting their deaths. And, because I have been asked about this, I will announce that no one's role PM included any color other than black.

[TheSweatpantsNinja]

Well of course it is possible! The whole point about this game is you give your thoughts/opinions; and my thought/opinion is that one of them is Scum. Of course I don't know if I am right. That's the thing about Mafia, you don't know who the Scum are!

I feel like we're talking past each other here. I also, generally, agree with DOTS' post above. Particularly the part about primate.

[Mr Stoofer]

@ Mr Stoofer

- Why didn't you mention that you were putting Primate at L-1?

Because I didn't know (I would have checked if there had been a risk of hammering, but I don't think it ever crossed my mind that my vote might be a hammer).

Also, you didn't answer this (at least):

Stoofer:

I believe that one of you is scum because I can't believe that both of you could be sincere in your pursuit of the bullshit Stoofer-wagon.
<snip>

Why us 2, and not, say, massive?

Because I feel that mneme and EmpTyger have been the most vocal/irrational in pursuit of the bullshit Stoofer-wagon.

Also, trying to suggest that a dead Townie was Scum is a huge Scum tell.

Because? And there's no way for a townie to honestly say they know Greasy Spot was town at this point.

At the time I made that post it was obvious to me that Greasy Spot was town for the following cumulative reasons:
1. With one death Night 1, it is highly likely to have been a Scum kill rather than a Vig kill (I don't expect to see Vig kills night 1).
2. His name was in Green. This is a conventional method of denoting Town players in the list of the dead (I have done it).
3. I don't see any possibility that a Mafia Roleswitcher would be revealed as "Roleswitcher". The fact that his role was revealed showed to me that this was a death-reveal game (I hate no-reveals).

Those were the reasons in my head when I first saw GS' death post and when I made the post you quote. If I had been in the slightest doubt about Greasy Spot's alignment I would have asked for clarification in the thread on page 1.

[KingPin]

Remember, D-1. My impressions thus far.


Dots - Early random vote on Primate.... still on Primate for the vote lending. Read way too much into the post about Greasy Spot... though only recently cleared up by the mod. More town than scum.

Emp - (expansive post coming) More scum than town.

Johoohnoo - Inquisitive, expanding the field for question. Generally straight forward, nothing to suggest scum. Town.

KingPin - Town obviously.

massive - On more than one occasion he has questions designed to elicit information from Stoofer that would clear up some scum feelings (for me at least) and give Stoof a more townie feel. Town

Mathcam - Experience makes my view of Cam's alliance hard to read. Though he is still voting Dots for 'pandering' and has not employed an Emp strategy for a bandwagon. Town

Mneme - Believes that sloppiness is explainable, however, flat out lying and then bringing a player to L-1 is anti-town, and is voting behind this logic. Town

Mr Stoofer - Sloppy, liar, and anti-town actions have him defending every action. His defenses seem to be reduced to slight personal attacks and jumping on another bandwagon to shift the attention from him to Primate. Scum

Primate - Gives vote to someone he thinks is scum. Reason enough to vote IMHO. Defends his actions with very personal attacks and claiming that it would be more beneficial if Emp had a vote. Of course this is true, except that Emp does not have a vote. Primate has two. Scum

The fonz - Unvote Primate and pointed out that he was at L-1 with Stoof's vote, then voted for Stoof for bringing Primate to L-1 without a notice to the town. Town

TSN - Points out reasons why Stoof wouldn't derive a benefit as scum with his actions. Votes Primate for actions he would not do. Town

[EmpTyger]

DotS is innocent.

Temporarily assume DotS were guilty. His rolename would be black. He would have no way of knowing that the scheme wasn't protown roles=green/antitown=black, in which case he'd be lynched immediately for revealing he didn't know this in [153].

This makes mathcam and Stoofer’s attacks on DotS in [154-155] very alarming. Why didn’t they realize this?

---

mathcam:

<snip>
Emp: I guess I don't see what's so bad about hedging, and I'm not sure the "extreme" modifier is particularly appropriate. If I'm not confident one way or the other, should I pretend to be more sure than I actually am? I'll make a decision when I feel confident enough to do so or when it becomes strategically necessary to have me in one camp or the other (e.g., deadlines, risk of game-stalling, etc.).

Extreme because every other playing in the game was able to take a stance for or against either Primate, Stoofer, or both. Whereas the player you did take a strong stance on was DotS, which seemed strange in comparison, because at the time and especially in retrospect, it doesn’t seem like you had enough to make a strong decision on him but had to waver on both Primate and Stoofer.

And I’m quite skeptical that you need the theory behind why hedging can be bad spelled out. But anyhow: While hedging can be appropriate at times, it also greatly allows antitowns to get away with opportunistic behavior. Here for example: you could have either defended or attacked either Primate or Stoofer, whenever it was at maximum advantage, and it would have been consistent with your earlier behavior.

Primate is confusing me enough now that I’m suddenly wondering whether I should be more tolerant of your extreme hedging.

I don't understand what that means. You were so sure that Primate was innocent that you couldn't see how I could think he wasn't, but now that he's acting weird you can see why I was hedging? If not, why wouldn't you have been tolerant about it in the first place?

Also, I'm not sure what "How I've been with DotS" means. I'm not particularly sure about him either, but I do think I have a valid point against him, and my remnant of a random vote certainly isn't doing much harm there.

I mean that I understand a little better being uncertain about Primate (in either direction). But I wouldn’t have been tolerant about it the first place for the reasons I said in the above para. And it’s not just compared to me- everyone else seemed able to take at least a moderately strong stand on at least one or the other.

Also, if Primate and Stoof end up both being town (or even if not), it might be nice to see how various individuals reacted to a third option for a bandwagon.

Um, I agree? Which is why I’m curious how the player who ignored those 2 bandwagons tried to start this third one?

---

Stoofer:

@ Mr Stoofer

- Why didn't you mention that you were putting Primate at L-1?

Because I didn't know (I would have checked if there had been a risk of hammering, but I don't think it ever crossed my mind that my vote might be a hammer).

So why didn’t you say this when mneme called you on in on page 4, instead of calling her a liar?

And, then what are your actual percentages? Your trying to acknowledge there’s a chance that both {EmpTyger, mneme} are town with your “likely”/”must” distinction, but the percentages you gave give it a 0% chance, and you haven’t revised them since it was brought to your attention.

---

<snip>
What is wrong about this is that Emp is trying to describe an early barely-serious vote and the motivations behind it as somehow equal to those of a hammer.
<snip>

For the record: I am not arguing that that kind of early vote was necessarily serious- only that lying about the motivations behind a vote is. I’ve been in many a game in which mafia do and have reason to lie in early D1 play. Heck, I’ve done it before myself- most recently in Calvin & Hobbes mafia. (Which, incidentally, Stoofer modded, so he at least knows how true this is.)

[Mr Stoofer]

Please note: I am only answering EmpTyger's stupid questions to avoid getting into an argument about not answering questions.

Stoofer:

@ Mr Stoofer

- Why didn't you mention that you were putting Primate at L-1?

Because I didn't know (I would have checked if there had been a risk of hammering, but I don't think it ever crossed my mind that my vote might be a hammer).

So why didn’t you say this when mneme called you on in on page 4, instead of calling her a liar?

Because -- as is blindingly obvious -- I interpreted mneme's complaint as being that I made no comment about why I voted Primate. I did not realise that mneme was complaining about the fact that I did not comment on the fact that it was L-1. I don't think I have ever seen anyone accused for putting someone at L-1 without mentioning that fact (although no doubt someone with ASD will now find an example of a game I was in where this happened); but I have seen people accused of voting for someone without giving reasons. I interpreted mneme's complaint as being the latter.

And, then what are your actual percentages? Your trying to acknowledge there’s a chance that both {EmpTyger, mneme} are town with your “likely”/”must” distinction, but the percentages you gave give it a 0% chance, and you haven’t revised them since it was brought to your attention.

~Sigh~ (I knew doing percentages was a bad idea but I was trying to make myself clear.) My percentages assume that one and only one of {EmpTyger, mneme} is Scum. Which I have already said at least once now. As to that, I may be wrong or right. Which I have also said several times. Is that not clear enough for you?

I am not going to give percentage permutations of every possibility because that would be stupid. My position on this is and has always been absolutely

100%

totally clear and to suggest otherwise is plain wrong.

[mneme]

DotS is innocent.

Temporarily assume DotS were guilty. His rolename would be black. He would have no way of knowing that the scheme wasn't protown roles=green/antitown=black, in which case he'd be lynched immediately for revealing he didn't know this in [153].

Huh? Does your role mention a color scheme? Mine didn't.

So why didn’t you say this when mneme called you on in on page 4, instead of calling her a liar?

"her?" Who do people keep making this mistake? Do I need to put my harp icon here to avoid this?

[mneme]

Temporarily assume DotS were guilty. His rolename would be black.

This appears to be pure misreading, but might not be...

Protown roles are green.
Antitown roles are red.
Nobody got "red" or "green" in their PMs.

Some roles apparently mention "black" -- but black is not protown or anti-town (by elimination, it's presumably neutral, unless it's a special kind of protown or antitown; meta, after all). So no, if DotS were scum, his role would not be black and he wouldn't have mention that it was.

[EmpTyger]

mneme:
(Bah, sorry on the gender. I blame MeMe.)

Er, that’s precisely my point. The roles did *not* have any color or mention any color scheme: Nobody got "red" or "green" in their PMs, as confirmed in [162]- everyone’s role-color in PM was black. So:

If DotS were antitown: he would have a black antitown PM, and have seen Greasy Spot’s was green. From his point-of-view, it would seem that black=antitown, green=protown. By asking about this, he reveals that his role not-green. Since [from his point-of-view] protowns would have green rolenames in their PMs, he would be incriminating himself as antitown.

But if DotS were protown: he would have a black protown PM, but have seen Greasy Spot as green. And his actions are consistent with this explanation.

Therefore, DotS is protown.

---

Stoofer:

<snip>
Because -- as is blindingly obvious -- I interpreted mneme's complaint as being that I made no comment about why I voted Primate. I did not realise that mneme was complaining about the fact that I did not comment on the fact that it was L-1.
<snip>

How’s this for blindingly obvious:

<snip>
Er...I don't -care- whether you explain your votes when you make them. If I want to know an argument why -I- should vote for someone (or, for that matter, if I want to know why you are voting for someone), I'll ask.

I -do- care whether point out, when you put someone into the hammer zone, that you are doing so. Not doing so risks lynching two people -- the target and the unwitting sap who hammers.

Voting primate in that way was an extremely anti-town action.
<snip>
But each vote progressively reduces difficulty of lynching someone -- in a 5 player game, the first vote takes you from needing 3/4 of the game to needing 2/3 of the remaining game, the second to needing 1/2 of the remaining game, and the third to needing 0% of the remaining game. And these numbers are even harsher in a larger game -- in a 12 person game, l-3 needs 3/7 to lynch, l-2 needs 1/3, and l-1 needs a mere 1/5 (and, of course, L needs 0/4). Drastically increasing the ease of a quicklynch without any real deliberation is antitown.

In response to this, instead of either recanting or reexplaining or doing anything approaching protown behavior, you try to twist mneme’s actions.

Firstly, you said that I voted for Primate without comment. That was wrong, wasn't it? Was it carelessness, or a lie?
<snip>

[Mr Stoofer]

How’s this for blindingly obvious

Not especially.

[mathcam]

Ack! Major misunderstanding -- my apologies.

My post 154 was entirely a joke post (or at least it was supposed to be). I thought DoTS had posted in the wrong thread, since I forgot that GreasySpot had been in this game in the first place and I didn't remember anything about color schemes. The post was supposed to mirror my 148 where I jokingly agreed with mneme when she accidentally forgot to truncate my quote.

I'll respond to actual content soon.

Cam

[Johoohno]

I've had some really busy days but now I'm back. I've just skimmed through the posts since my last check-up and have noticed two things I find note worthy before I go back and read the posts more thoroughly.

DestroyeroftheSky

is chalked up quite a bit on my scum scale since his fishing around dead players' alignment (the question is if it was just stupid or if it was eager scum trying to appear looking for scum).

Primate

seem to disappear for quite some periods. I'm not sure if that is his way of play or if he is trying to "lurk away" any suspicions still lingering on him. I'll leave my vote on him for now, until I've reread.

[massive]

@ massive

- In post 60 you seems to be treating Stoofer's KingPin vote as something altogether different from a 'random' vote. Why?

Because he had already randomly voted -- in post 6. For him to change his vote by post 20, it is definitely presented as no longer random.