Crackers! Mafia -- Game Over. See page 50

[Elmo]

I look forward to a cracking good game!

Vote

:

Raging Rabbit

[Elmo]

So what percentage of the last nine pages are actually worth reading?

[Elmo]

Now that's quality spamming.

I'll reread when we hit page 20. Or, you know, not.

[Elmo]

If that's Satin Doll Showdown, I sometimes get lurky/unhelpful when I'm bored, and that game bored the crap out of me. I don't think anyone here has any kind of meta on me.

[Elmo]

scum list:
ckd ✔
guardian

X

elmo

X

bm?

X

kison? ✔
korts? ✔
sensfan? ✔

[Elmo]

BM, stop living up to your title.

[Elmo]

1) Reread.
2) BM seems meta-townish. But 267 is daft. Hence, Jester.

[Elmo]

I'M a little curious to know how Elmo made

any

of his calls.

Eight-ball.

[Elmo]

I don't get how I'm supposed to be lurking after three days. Or ignoring BM being scummy.

I don't have a lot to say, the actual content level seems to be around 1.5 normal game pages. Like I said, I intended to wait until I felt I could add something worthwhile, but if people want, I'll make one of those "lots of words, no real content" posts that I despise so much. And then do what I was going to anyway.

[Elmo]

See, I was all ready to explain to Vollkan why lurking is pro-town, but then Yos had to post, and I just can't bring myself to in his presence. (No, I wasn't lurking, no, I don't intentionally lurk as scum, no, I'm not particularly lurky in general.)

I am still struck by the amount of spam. Hopefully that's died down; interestingly, I remember Adel posting somewhere in MD that she would sometimes try and encourage things like that when she was scum, in order to try and decrease the signal:noise ratio. Either way, it's irritating; I've had to reread 100+ page spammy games as a replacement, and it's not pretty.

Rofl's position is (basically) that some townish things are impossible to fake, therefore towntells exist, therefore Des is (probably) town. CKD's position appears to be the opposite. Okay, theory disagreement. But then CKD says Rofl is buddying up. That would imply RoflTown couldn't reasonably believe Des was town, and I'd think it fairly obvious that he could; I don't see a reason CKD would eliminate the possibility that Rofl is genuine, but (in his opinion) incorrect. So I think his suspicion is contrived, primarily because I would have expected him to have encountered this viewpoint before (it's probably a lot more common than his) but also because of the way he went about it; stuff like 114 / 116 seems more oriented towards convincing other people rather than talking it over. I think a townie would probably be more inclined to try and see if they were right or not, especially at this stage of the game. Scum are far more inclined to turn it into a "me vs. you" debate because they can be sure they're not on the same side, whereas town-town fights can be awful.

I currently think this is the real deal. I would be on this wagon if, well, I don't know why I'm not getting on this wagon. I have a good feeling (hi, Vollkan) about everyone on it apart from BM (yes, I know what I said), so I don't really have a problem with it, but I want to hear a bit more from CKD before I lay down a vote; I don't really feel there's enough material out there to justify 6/8 at this point. Also that, now I think of it, I remember thinking CKD was quite scummy in another game where he was town.

Not true. If something is obvious it means that it is readily apparent. If something is based on gut then, by definition, the player cannot point to a basis for their assertion. Thus, it isn't obvious.

This debate is silly, but: it doesn't work like that. The fact one cannot point to anything specific does not make it more or less obvious, merely less able to be pinned down to some number of specific things. I think it would be reasonable to say if you had a very strong gut read on someone from their posting that it was 'obvious' to you they were town; that's how I interpreted it.

And I normally don't say this, but I agree. Des pretty much has a huge neon "I AM TOWN" sign glued to him at the moment. I can't point to any one specific thing, but it does seem fairly obvious, especially when I played with his town self recently. I literally flipped through the thread, read a post or two of his and went "oh, good, Des is town". Currently, either he's town here, or he's absolutely godly as scum. I don't think that's contradictory at all.

Why is it more interesting that Yos was on the list?

Nice catch. rofl, are you suggesting that Yos is particularly pro-town? Buddying up much?

This is a fairly obviously bad post. Yos hadn't posted yet, so it's rather difficult to believe rofl is suggesting that. You're assigning suspicion that wasn't there in Des's post, too; this looks like you're trying to slide in-between two townies, playing them off against each other. I don't mind reaching in the random stage generally, but this looks the scummy kind. Town wants to find something kinda suspicious as a springboard, but hopefully accurate.. this just looks scummy. The fact that you're basically feeding off someone else's reasoning instead of contributing your own, that you've ignored all rofl's other behaviour in terms of coming up with a read, and that you seem more inclined to push Des into a lynch than prod at rofl and actually read his reactions are, y'know, scummy.

Unvote

,

vote

:

Korts

. Hrm.

I don't think Guardian is scummy. I kind of draw a blank on that. Seems reasonably townish so far, actually.
BM is scummy. But it seems slightly closer to the scummy where he was actually town before. BM is always scummy. Unless he moves back towards scum-scummy, then I don't really want to lynch him today. Obviously, I don't have a strong read on him.
Kison is kind of scummy. But I don't know if that's just him. Kison, are you scum?
Sens needs poking with a stick. He might well be scum, given his aggressive town meta. Writing more is superfluous.
I am running out of care-age at this point in the post. I hope you can tell.

In an instant, the future can become the present. 'Does' can be used in the future tense.

see the key word in that sentence is "can."

You have now been completely side-tracked from your original point - oops? Allegedly, BM was doing

scummy things

. Briefly, what were they?

PROJECT "TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE POST" HAS NOW BEEN COMPLETED.

[Elmo]

Name begins with B.

Sorry. x)

[Elmo]

How would I go about backing it up when I've just posted that it's a gut read which can't be narrowed down to anything specific? So not really, no. On the other hand, ask who's both pro-town and pro-gut if I'm faking it. (shrug)

More to the point, why are you (of all people) seriously under the radar?

[Elmo]

If you cannot find facts to justify a feeling about a player, than you need to abandon the feeling. Smart scum can manipulate town instincts very easily, which is one of the reasons why I have such a strong opposition to gut play (or, more specifically, "subjective assertion without objective evidence").

You know (probably) nothing about me, yet you immediately assert that my gut instincts can be easily manipulated. I literally cannot ever remember having a strong town gut read on someone who turned out to be scum. Some people can be manipulated easily, but certainly not everyone who relies on gut. I mean, Glork is basically the canonical gut-based player - how easy is he to manipulate? Not terribly, to say the least. I seem to remember you objecting to his gut when you played with him in mith's second California game, where he destroyed all the scum and was nominated for a scummie, yes? Why wasn't he manipulated by the scum there?

The trouble with that approach is that your emotions are more often than not going to be giving you a set of false positives - so it is better on precuationary terms to seek objective bases, rather than relying on your gut instinct.

This may be true for you. In fact, this probably is true for you, which is why you play as you do. But it's not true for me. And you're asserting this without giving any argument as to why it's true in general, or for me specifically, when my experiences are directly contrary to this. So I respectfully disagree.

Your fundamental problem is that you seem to have generalised about everyone, all together. What you've said may well be true for some subset of people, probably including you, but it cannot trivially be extended to everyone. Your playstyle (I would hope) is designed to fit you, with your individual strengths and weaknesses. If you find your gut is frequently wrong or misleading, then your playstyle should definitely cover that weakness by seeking refuge primarily in logic, and I approve of that. But that is

you

, and your experiences are not extendible to everyone else, because they are not clones of you, and indeed a large number are not remotely similar to you. I am honestly surprised that someone who claims to be logical would seriously try and generalise about literally everyone without a stronger basis. You are basically asserting that gut is typically inaccurate, but as far as I know, there has been no statistical data gathered on the typical accuracy of gut reads, in general or per-player. On that basis, I would assume you're saying "in my experience, gut is innaccurate". Okay; but in my experience, gut is accurate. Moreover, in my experience,

my

gut is accurate, which is somewhat more important in deciding whether I listen to my gut or not. So I don't know what kind of objective basis you're arguing on.

I really do not mind how you choose to play, but I find your attitude that essentially I am terrible at mafia and need instruction as to how to play in the Vollkan-approved manner patronising at best. This is entirely aside from my belief that you're wrong.

I don't really know why I bother writing this. But for now, there it is.

[Elmo]

Vollkan's reply is much nicer than I thought it might be. That's uplifting.

That was a scum kill, and it should (hopefully) be obvious why it happened.

[Elmo]

Also, CKD, I am pointedly unimpressed by the self-vote. Just.. don't. This is daft, whatever alignment you are. Talk to us.

[Elmo]

Tajo is all growed up! =)

Gut play avoids both the logic and the assumption. It's unknowable. I cannot now subject Rofl's SensFan reasons to analysis, or determine the reasonableness of his assumptions - because he has completely internalised them by redudincg them to gut

I suppose it won't come as a surprise that I don't have a problem with rofl's play. I think the big thing is that I find it (his stance on Sens) informative, indeed somewhat moreso than some people who

have

posted their reasoning. Does that seem bizarre to you?

Do you frequently find that shaky logic indicates scum? I've thought that approach tends to end in the lynch of whoever is least skilled in the use of logic. In the worst case, can scum not simply say "oh, I was wrong"? I am genuinely intrigued by people who are smart but significantly disagree with me.

Also, I find it odd that Korts, Volkan, and Destuctor are all all attacking for my vote on CKD and yet not one has shown the slightest bit of curiosity for why I am voting him.

Yos.. what

precisely

is the intent behind this post?

I would like people speculate as to why Guardian was killed. No, really.

[Elmo]

Depends on what you are looking for. Would it be a fair characterisation to say that you seem to want to know what rofl's opinion is, whereas I want to know why he holds that opinion?

No, I think I have (i.e. had at the time I said that) a decent understanding of his stance on Sens, including why.

SCUM:

vollkan

?

curiouskarmadog ✔
Battle Mage

X!

Korts ✔

TOWN:

DrippingGoofball

~

destructor ✔
roflcopter

~

Yosarian2

??

populartajo ✔

AMBIGUOUS:

Raging Rabbit ✔
SensFan ✔
Elmo ✔
Kison ✔

I think maybe we are on the same wavelength, but you are townifying Yos too easily. Take a long look at that thingigummie next to his name, and tell me you want to file him under town at this point. (Most other people, yeah, maybe.)

I don't think CKD's self-vote would have made me unvote. That said, I wouldn't and indeed didn't get on his wagon in that position, because I didn't feel the case was strong enough to warrant it. "Gut" or no.. it seems obvious that stuff you do should be in proportion to the strength of your belief, right? And maybe I should go over it again, but to a small extent at the point of his vote, and (like Des points out) to a larger extent after, where Yos is effectively leaving him at 5/7, there seems to be a disparity there. Yos doesn't really strike me as the wagony type.

One thing is for sure: Yos2's interactions with Des creep me the fuck out. That is the clearest thing to come out of this thus far.

Still procrastinating on the reread. Yup. ⊂( ﾟヮﾟ)⊃

[Elmo]

Hm. Put it this way, Yos, are you fine with me voting you giving nothing more than "idk, gut" as a reason?

[Elmo]

Ok. I'm not actually going to have any real logic behind most of this, so don't expect it, but based on my readthrough: {...} Based on some weird feelings I got from them earlier, I'm currently trying to decide between a CKD vote and a Guardian vote. (shrug) vote:curiouskarmadog

This doesn't look like "I have reasons which I am withholding for now". This looks like "I have no real logic and I'm basing my vote on some weird feelings", which is only negligibly different from "idk, gut". Which I have no problem with, but one is not the other.

Especially, I find it invidious to say "Wow, people were saying my reasons were just gut! That's really weird - they must be CKD's scumbuddies!" where, really, that's a very natural interpretation of that post. I mean, even if (somehow) that's not what you meant, the misperception is pretty easy to make, no?

[Elmo]

If someone killed someone earlier in the day, and then was targeted by a tracker, would the tracker get a result that they targeted whomever died?

nope

What if some non killing role sent in an action earlier in the day, and then was targeted by a tracker, would the tracker see that they targeted another player?

nope {...}

fyi:

Adel, are the mafia allowed to talk one on one via PM? {...}

-mafia are allowed to talk via quicktopic -- see PM. {...}

I'm sad that Adel didn't answer my questions in the thread like she did with the last ones .

The above seems obvious to me; I would strongly suspect that is why he was killed. I would give good odds that he was killed by group scum, and they discussed it in their quicktopic first. Therefore, someone speculating on his death would have to fake the thought process of considering why, and perhaps we can draw tells from that.

We're past page 20. I should totally reread. Right? Do I get a cookie if I reread?

[Elmo]

Sorry, computer problems still; I need to give this another reread to say anything useful. For the record, I'm happy leaving my vote on Korts.

[Elmo]

Shameless prod avoidance post. Computer seems wobbly but usable.. I'll try and come up with something in a day or two.

[Elmo]

Loosely, yeah. I'm irritated by the degree to which this game seems to have slipped away from me, circumstances notwithstanding. I was around halfway through a reread yesterday when I folded up, so I should probably get it done today. (I am coughing up icky stuff, fwiw.)

[Elmo]

I'm in pretty bad shape, so this may not be too coherant.

Right. I remember CKD saying that keeping him at L-1 would provide a bunch of information later; I don't see it. At least right now, it just doesn't look that informative, and I'm still irritated he didn't actually vote for Korts (although I don't think I said it at the time). If anyone got some keen insight that I've missed, feel free.

It's basically ridiculous to think that Des is scum with Yos.
Yos' speculation about the Guardian kill means that my idea would probably not work since he would have told people what to do via quicktopic, oh well.

Curious about Vollkan's relatively early move against Yos in 411/423. He seems like the type to be afflicted by Stoofer's Syndrome... it's kind of odd, in that I think a bunch of people had the typical YosScum reaction of thinking it was weird but not really going after him for it; he's the only one who pressed him early in the wake of Des. Maybe there's just something specific he looked for, I don't know, but it seems out-of-place. I'm not at all wild about accusations based purely on bussing, especially since I think it's entirely possible he would have found roughly the same stance as town. But it is an oddity, and if you told me for sure that exactly one person was actively bussing Yos, he'd probably be my pick. Which is annoying, because it's the kind of environment you'd figure scum'd be bus-happy, and I think (at least from my perspective) the degree to which he was going down in flames in his debate with Des would necessitate some bussing. I feel if he is scum, though, there should be more than that independantly, which does not spring to mind. Eh.

CKD makes an interesting point that in 338, Vollkan basically agrees with his stance. But his random (?) vote is still on CKD, at 5/8 to lynch. I missed why Why?

rofl's stance on Des looks precisely like how I've seen townies in similar situations before. So I still think he's very townish. It's relatively easy to have the stance he had (Yos, scummie, manipulative, etc), but scum will rarely if ever make any kind of comment outright directing attention away from someone under pressure, and I feel it's tricky to fake properly.

DGB is trying desperately to play to a meta. In fact, I'm starting to feel DGB is being an intentional distraction while scum-Yos lurks away. Unvote, Vote: DGB

Seriously, BM, are you doing this purposely? This vote is even less justified.

Hey, Korts, what's the thought process behind this post?

FL feels pretty townish upon entry. I remember that Sens response felt decent, too. (Also, I since learned that Sens had RL issues, I think, which changes the interpretation of the lurking a bit.) Hum. Yos pressing on Sensfan seens opportunistic enough that I give her slight town points for it.

if I were to die this moment…and I flip town, who would be on your scum list..would it change?

you won't, but i'll humor you. if you flip town, i would have to take a very close look at yos and vollkan

Why those two specifically? Given he did flip town, what did your very close look turn up?

Raging Tabbit's 441 is interesting. He actually outlines a good case against Yos, but ends up with FoS: Yos, Vote: Korts, when his stated reasons against Yos look stronger to me. Perhaps that's 40:40 hindsight.

Curious. I don't think Vollkan is scum is Yos + Korts.

Korts thing with Tajo circa 559 looks bad. Somewhat OMGUSsy, maybe.

It's unusual how there's a sort of pause between Vollkan attacking Yos and Yos trying to throw suspicion on him, which seems to start around 598. It's generally best to start that as soon as possible, I think.. and he did it pretty much immediately with Des, I wonder if the scumgroup discussed some kind of plan before going for that. I don't think that reflects anything on Voll's alignment, though. (He actually says he'd be willing to see Voll lynched in 600. I didn't remember that.)

DGB, why did you decide to start a wagon from scratch on BM

one single day

from deadline? Are you perhaps trying suddenly to disassociate yourself from the CKD wagon now that you've pushed it almost to the finish line?

This post is like Korts is failing at being Yos2. (Okay, earlier, I think Yos2 failed at being Yos2 wrt Des, but whatever.)

I think Yos asking about the case on Korts could easily have Korts as either alignment. He could be looking to join a town wagon if it looks like a good pick, or (possibly) he could be trying to figure out where people stand on a scumbuddy and maybe get the heat off him.

Korts needs to give reasons for his BM vote in 729, unless he did before and I missed them.

Does anyone here have a meta on Vollkan?

Meanwhile, the debate between Yos and des doesn't seem to give proof of either one being scum. Yos seems to be slightly reaching, while des seems to be extrapolating Yos's scumminess from the fact that Yos is slightly reaching. Of the three main participants of that line of discussion (Yos, des, vollkan),

vollkan seems to be the one who chimes in for personal motives

.

THIS POST SUCKS.

Korts apparent lack of insight where he says Yos2 was trying to buddy up to/incriminate him shortly after he throws suspicion on me because Yos went out of his way to say he wasn't voting me when he had no reason to vote for me in the first place is bizarre at best. Uh, hello, is this thing on?

Tih is probably really disjointed, probably, but something > nothing, right? Hopefully this

So, yeah.. I think Yos was being bussed. A bunch of people (Des, Rofl, Tajo) are probably town. Korts is still scummy and not getting any better throughout. Beyond that, I have an irritating lack of.. handholds, I suppose. FL and DGB seem slightly townish, DGB based on a couple things but nothing really solid. Raging Rabbit is only the really odd one out, and he hasn't done anything terrible either. So I'm missing something. I'm... still fine with Korts dying, but I'm unhappy about figuring out who his buddies are supposed to be if he is scum. Muargh.

It would be more than cool if people asked me questions. (Ths still technically counts as today, since I haven't slept yet, DGB! )

[Elmo]

Why did you kill Guardian and Kison?
What was with the timing of the Kison kill?

[Elmo]

The other thing interesting here is that you raise Yos defending her as relevant. By that stage, Yos hadn't flipped as scum and you had barely anything to say about Yos that wasn't relational to DGB.

This is an interesting point.

o o

DGB, the only person I would've voted would be Korts, and I didn't think it best to add another vote, since my suspicion of him was mostly day 1 stuff + inertia. I don't actually know who I want to lynch, right now. I'm aware that deadline is drawing closer, but I don't want to vote immediately.

I'd be very surprised if Des was bussing, and I'm certain RR wasn't. But I don't like a Vollkan vote on merely the basis of his interactions with Yos2; I think it's probably well within his reach to bus convincingly in a situation like that - and not only possible, but good play because he could probably take it all the way afterwards - but I cannot bring myself to vote him essentially for (on the face of it) finding scum. If he was actually bussing, there

must

be more, and I'd be interested in a comment on that from people inclined to vote him right now (DGB, rofl).

It's irritating, because I seem to keep saying X isn't strong enough, Y isn't strong enough, but I'd much rather do that than go a mile a minute in the wrong direction. I think FL is probably the person I have the weakest read on, right now... the quote above means I'm probably going to be rereading (again) Sens/her next.

A good thing to do is go back and look at any attempts by people to fish for who killed Guardian/Kison. I remember Yos2 sniffing around

something

to do with a kill, but not where or when.

I would point out that, due to the rules (which I approve of), I'll be replaced if I have to be prodded again. So I'm disabling any kind of quality control for a while (uh oh). Again, if people directed questions at me, or engaged me in Viguous Debate or whatever, that might help me to get back into the swing of things. I'm not 100%, but I seem to be past the worst of it.

[Elmo]

Meanwhile, the debate between Yos and des doesn't seem to give proof of either one being scum. Yos seems to be slightly reaching, while des seems to be extrapolating Yos's scumminess from the fact that Yos is slightly reaching. Of the three main participants of that line of discussion (Yos, des, vollkan), vollkan seems to be the one who chimes in for personal motives.

This is not putting Yos as #2. Based on this, I would have guessed you would have vigged Vollkan if someone told me you were a vig for sure. Also.. how imaginative does one need to be to come up with the idea of killing off the most popular lynch roughly halfway through the day?

If the mafia has a mafia doc, why wasn't Yos protected? Did they just underestimate how bad he looked? He seems far and away most likely to be vigged apart from a) Korts and b) townies, and you'd obviously want to keep the GF alive. Maybe I'm biased.

[Elmo]

If the mafia have a doc, then you're probably actually a liability even as a vig, especially if we're going to direct you, because you can only kill townies. By deduction, whether or not the mafia have a doc is important in whether or not to lynch you.

How am I scummy?

yos was way too concerned about why people were wagoning you day one and made it his business to make sure your wagon didn't outcompete ckd's.

{...}

I can see your point of view. He was a bit too obvious, though. Buddying up, incriminating me, red herring for the town, I don't have much else I can reply with.

So right after this, you are pushing a connection between me and Yos on the basis that he went out of his way to mention he wouldn't vote for me, when he had no good reason to vote for me in the first place? If you're town, does it not occur to you

maybe he was doing it again

?

Why is DGB a good partner for Yos?

[Elmo]

Also, if you are a compulsive vig, I'd be surprised if they didn't have some way of stopping the kills. That probably means (I think) doc or RB. And figuring out which they have is probably useful. The fact a mafia doc cannot kill might be abusable in some way.

Actually, having a compulsive vig around vs. something like mafia doc + goon is probably less bad than I thought provided we lynch one of them. Either we lynch the goon and the mafia lose their kill, or the doc and the goon is viggable again. There's also the chance of vigging the doc, which is 50-50 at random.

But yeah, that's roughly why I'm thinking about that.

[Elmo]

Yeah. When we hit prisoner's dilemma territory depends on the number of scum. Is 1 SK + 4 mafia too much? Probably, so.. 9 -- lynch -> 8 -- mafia kill -> 7 -- Korts kill -> 6 is effectively LyLo with two shots at hitting scum. But we only get the one lynch before that. So, yeah, if Korts is a SK, we kinda have to figure it out today, I think.

Meh, I hate this kind of mechanic stuff. Let's see how much of Sens/FL I can reread before I tap out for the night.

[Elmo]

Yeah. When we hit prisoner's dilemma territory depends on the number of scum. Is 1 SK + 4 mafia too much? Probably, so.. 9 -- lynch -> 8 -- mafia kill -> 7 -- Korts kill -> 6 is effectively LyLo with two shots at hitting scum. But we only get the one lynch, Korts has no compulsion to follow . So, yeah, if Korts is a SK, we kinda have to figure it out today, I think.

I don't want to speculate about what happened to the mafia kill day 1.

Meh, I hate this kind of mechanic stuff. Let's see how much of Sens/FL I can reread before I tap out for the night.

[Elmo]

I would have to agree, I dislike the way this wagon has gone. I pretty specifically made note of it as something odd, not anything that I'd run you to L-1 for. I think this is disproportionate. Now, I've been bitten by bussy scum or just a very eager town before, but I really want to see a more solid case than just the thing with Yos. If he's scum, there's got to be more than that.

I also feel Korts' attempt to link me with Yos goes far beyond the natural interpretation into the scummy kind of reaching, especially since he just said Yos was actively trying to link to him. But perhaps I'm OMGUSsing slightly... it looks ridiculous, though.

Eh. Statement of the obvious, Vollkan is pretty good if he's scum here. I would like to believe that I'd go metagame him by reading some previous games where he was scum, but I know deep down it'll never actually get done. I am curious to see his %-list, if that's appropriate.

[Elmo]

I would like people speculate as to why Guardian was killed

{...}

Why do you think this question will help in any way?

Seems like something a real vig is more likely to say. It's not that strong, but eh.

Things are crystallising a bit. DGB seems to have got this far sans any serious scrutiny; I'd like people to say if they find her town, and preferably why.

roflcopter, what happened to your sens hate?

lurking is only one part of the equation of sens' scumminess

if we get a sens replacement bm is a good wagon

And I don't understand this progression. You called him obvscum, then seem to pretty much drop it after he's replaced. You basically jump onto the BM-wagon quite happily out of nowhere, actually.

Hey, Vollkan, when FL replaces in, she doesn't talk about Yos2 much. Why don't you push his lynch at that point, if you're trying to get him lynched at the time you're having a back-and-forth with her?

I'm wondering if BM really has that Jester magic, or if there was scum on that wagon. It seems to have taken off like wildfire.

[Elmo]

the fact BM's entire suspicion list jumped on him the minute a bandwagon was viable. She was on it, and I feel the most scum vibes from her.

What do you think of the other voters on that wagon? Why is she worse than them (e.g. roflcopter)?

[Elmo]

There aren't a lot of places where Sens is mentioned; rofl's "obvscum" stance and switch away is really the only interesting thing apart from Yos' lurker vote. I don't think you can safely read anything into the latter. FL's set of long posts is the only real thing from the role - they seem fairly.. unfocussed, for want of a better word, pretty much like you'd expect someone trying to get a grip on the game anew. I find it odd that she narrows in on DGB's behaviour towards BM, it seems fairly arbitrary.. the lack of analysis of Des - Yos is kinda worrying. It just feels unnatural to go concentrate on the BM wagon instead of looking at that, it seems a more "immediate" issue than the day 2 lynch, especially when you're primarily rereading day 3; again, I'm biased, Yos was creeping me out slightly with his first couple of posts, heh. (Yay meta.)

One thing I don't like is that she says Yos2 should be looked at closer, but doesn't seem to e.g. look up why Des suspects him. I think she asks if she missed reasons someplace, but it doesn't seem like it should take more than a couple minutes to skim back and get the overview of it. I don't think Des posts between then and when Yos is killed, but the direction of her posting doesn't seem to be towards Yos2, she doesn't ask him any questions, for example.

Overall, that is a megapost of bullshit to paint me red by using semantic arguments as well as blatant lies

I really fucking hate semantics. I would like you to clearly, concisely lay out the parts where he's definitely deliberately lied rather than misinterpreted, been incorrect, etc.

I find Vollkan's infatuation with "emotive phrases" or similar pretty odd. Yeah, you can sometimes manipulate people a bit by using loaded terms like OMGUS or whatever, but there needs to be some analysis of whether or not that's actually what they're doing. And he doesn't appear to go deeper than "she said it was OMGUS when it was not OMGUS and that is kind of scummy". The situations in which that kind of thing are useful are actually fairly specifc, in my view, so it'd make sense to look for them. I'm not (I hope) being critical, but I don't really get that.

916 seems horribly OMGUSsy. And fairly weak into the bargin. FL, could you sum up briefly exactly why you are voting Vollkan? (I suppose this is subsumed by what he already asked people to do, oh well.)

Calling it a night.

[Elmo]

Elmo is scum. Does it get any simpler than that? That's not just my opinion.

What exactly is that meant to mean?

I don't think Elmo is a good vig target. I'd like to point out that Korts has kept on saying I'm scummy without ever making an actual case beyond that insane Yos2 thing. I don't expect reasons from rofl, but I'm pretty sure you don't have any beyond "I saw Elmo be ill when he was scum once and he was bored + ill here", which sucks.

[Elmo]

This is making me do a double take a couple of times a post, so, FL is a she

Loosely, getting people lynched is persuading other people, and generally (imo) the best way to do that is to talk directly to potential voters. I would have thought that you would have taken that opportunity, conversing with FL, to try and get her vote on Yos2 instead of talking about BM. I don't currently take issue with you case on Yos, but it seems odd to me that you talked about something essentially tangental. If I were you, I think Yos2 would have been uppermost in my mind, and I would definitely have tried to persuade her to vote Yos, if you see what I mean. Do you follow roughly my train of thought? Basically, you don't seem to have actively sought a wagon on him, and you can contrast that with what Des did by e.g. asking people to comment on his case, and this is especially noticeable in the subject you chose to talk about with FL. I'm curious why you didn't do that.

Volk, assuming FL is scum, what's her motive for saying essentially "DGB OMGUSsed"? If there is a consensus on what OMGUS means, it seems silly to misrepresent what she was doing in an attempt to make a case on her. Offhand, I'd agree that her stance is probably incorrect, but I don't see the leap between "bad logic" and "scum". Yes, it's

harder

to present good logic as scum, but I really don't think bad logic alone is indicative of much. And I don't currently draw much more than that from what you referenced.

I'm kind of wary of the argument between you and FL, since it looks not unlike a typical town-town-OMGUS situation. I went over it yesterday; I don't think either of you has convinced me, really.

Korts, just anything resembling a summary would be nice. The degree of near-certainty implied by what you've said should mean that it's not so difficult to sum up, right? Or were you just being opportunistic?

I wish I had more to work with from FL (yes, I know, irony) because her last post seemed quite townish, again. In fact, everyone seems at least a little townish except Korts and Vollkan, and the only reads I'd consider too weak to rely on are DGB, FL and (kinda) Tajo. I'm just not sure what the margin of error in a DGB read is supposed to be (and I mean this in a good way). I do think Tajo is town, but that's not really based in anything 'solid', he had a good post on day 1 but has kinda chipped in here and there since. I dunno I'd trust that read in LyLo.

If I'm correct, the next day will have a deadline of 12 days, so we might do well to think ahead, somewhat. What pairings do people feel are most likely? I can't think of a particularly plausible group aside from {Yos2, FL, Vollkan}.

[Elmo]

Oh, yeah, someone: from memory, the reason Yos jumps on Sens in the first place is that someone else brings up the fact he's lurking. Yos doesn't seek out a lurker, he joins on an easy wagon that is already formed. So that's why; no double standard there, that I can see.

rofl, have you finished going through the phase where you struggle to remember why I was supposed to be scummy, yet?

[Elmo]

I would obviously vote for him over being lynched. That would make four. You could easily make him the deadline lynch by keeping your vote on him, I think. Why the switch?

[Elmo]

The thought occurred of there being a SK out there while Korts is mafia fakeclaiming. It seems a pretty bizarre move, though. I think Guard + Kison kills follow his stated suspicions, Yos2 less so.

I forgot this detail, but I think it's important: the mafia are likely to have some way of stopping the vig/SK kills, be it doc or roleblocker. I think, based on the way Yos wasn't protected, it's more likely they have a roleblocker. It's important that we don't rely on Korts being able to kill, though. Even if his kill fails, we won't know why unless we lynch scum. In fact, the only reason to keep him alive is if we think either a) the mafia has a doc/RB but we will lynch them within the next two (?) days or b) the mafia can't stop Korts killing. The doc/RB is subtly different, because the doc cannot self-protect.

And I really don't like the way Korts jumped on me with basically zero case. I don't think he has one, and I'd be entirely unsurprised if we don't get an answer out of him for a while on that, even a summary. He then jumps right onto FL; okay, he wouldn't know anything about her alignment as SK, but I didn't think the part he quoted is as persuasive as it'd need to be consistent with his leap onto her. Those two votes seem very opportunistic, and that sorta "anyone dead but me" attitude seems something I'd imagine coming from an SK.

I'm also wondering why the mafia kill for today hasn't arrived. I suppose that it's purely speculation that maybe it landed on Korts. I feel they would probably have killed by now, given the deadline. Maybe they're waiting for some reason, but I can't think of any.

I think all other things being equal, FL is a better lynch than Vollkan, because she's said she's behind, we have less content from Sens to work with, etc. I'm struggling to reconcile her post where she basically says she doesn't mind just being lynched with her being scum; maybe she's playing the WIFOM, but I really feel that scum-FL would be scrambling for survival. I'm not wild about her position on Yos, but I feel it's hard to blame her for it given the timing of her replacing in. My main problem, really, is that town-FL doesn't always look very townish - the only game I can remembered skim-reading, I was convinced she was scum and was lynched as vanilla town, although town won. I don't know much about scum-FL other than she got past Incognito in WOMAFIA. I'm more worried about meta-ing Vollkan at this point.. I'm probably going to go read a couple games instead of typing / rereading more.

I think at some point, I'm just going to have to close my eyes and pick someone who seems to fall in the 'least townish' category. Which kind of sucks.

Why'd you think Tajo's scum, Rabbit? He seems townish to me. Not contributing tonnes, but what is there reads town. I suppose that haven't seen him as scum, and I only played with him once, like a year ago in a newbie game. But I'm more confident about him than a bunch of other people.

[Elmo]

If she's scum, she has huge metaphorical cajones. (She implicitly claimed townie in the post before her last, talking about 'more dead townies', so that's not just an attempt to reinforce my view.)

I want to see Vollkan's %-list.

[Elmo]

Wow.

I really don't like that list, but I have no idea why.

[Elmo]

Well, that takes some of the edge off. I would guess we have a mafia roleblocker left, although we can always hope it's a doc and they now cannot kill. I think we shouldn't count on Korts being able to kill today. (We'll know if he's lying, because he's compulsive either way.)

rofl, my condolences, but you mentioned something about your reasons against me. It is basically only you and the horribly opportunistic Korts who were interested in my death at any point, after all.

I will dig up my stuff for the Elmo case tomorrow, promise.

I find the fact you have to "dig stuff up" instead of posting a summary like I asked quite significant. Could it possibly be that you don't have anything to hand because you never had solid reasons, and are only now looking for stuff you can plausibly spin?

[Elmo]

I'm doing some reading over his involvement in the FL wagon and he seems overly cautious about it, like he was biding his time, hoping he wouldn't have to join it if he didn't need to.

What is 'overly cautious'? I mean, what part of my behaviour seems unlikely to have come from town? We have pretty much a single post from FL, the only game I've read with her in had her being scummy and lynched as vanilla town, and if we mislynch her, we're quite conceivably going into LyLo. At minimum, I'm interested in Vollkan's reasons for suspecting her. I dunno exactly what you think I should have done differently, or even gained from that, I mean the wagon on her wasn't shifting. That was part of my concern, the way she was playing, she was going to end up lynched and didn't seem to care at all. I still find it surprising she basically didn't attempt to defend herself.

and, again, how he seemed to bide his time without committing to a position on Yos until after he was killed.

One thing is for sure: Yos2's interactions with Des creep me the fuck out. That is the clearest thing to come out of this thus far.

Especially, I find it invidious to say "Wow, people were saying my reasons were just gut! That's really weird - they must be CKD's scumbuddies!" where, really, that's a very natural interpretation of that post. I mean, even if (somehow) that's not what you meant, the misperception is pretty easy to make, no?

No?

I'm also fairly suspicious of how silent he became about Yos

Reverse order because the above are my last two mentions of Yos before the long quiet. I posted once quickly to say the thing about Guardian before I forgot. The next time I post 'for real', Yos is dead. So, uh, what?

Tajo, those aren't contradictory. Her initial post seemed somewhat townish, but it's literally nearly the only serious thing I had to look at from Sens/FL, so obviously I have stronger reads from other people.

rofl, my condolences, but you mentioned something about your reasons against me.

What did you mean, your condolences?

i'll give some details on why i think elmo is scum tonight or tomorrow, i've just spent the day at the funeral of someone very close to me and am not up to that right now

That. I am not a cheesy Bond movie villain, nor am I subtly breadcrumbing my nightkills so I can better convince people when I later claim mafia goon.

I have already said that I saw a strong connection between you and Yos. The quotes I provided so far are very incomplete (pretty much only the first couple posts of Yos'). I will have to get the quotes to justify my stance; what's so "significant" about that?

That I asked you to give a summary, and that apparently you couldn't do that. If you'd had reasons already, you'd have been able to summarise them. It seemed more like you avoided doing so in order to stall for time to look for a plausible case.

[Elmo]

Whichever it is, assuming a 3 person scumgroup there'd be no way for them to both kill and block Korts.

Possible Roles

All roles that appear in the game are from this list. Not every role in this list is used in the game.

Mafia Roleblocker

You may perform both a kill and a roleblock in the same period of day.

Yeah, there is, which is my point.

Korts, let me quote you:

yos was way too concerned about why people were wagoning you day one and made it his business to make sure your wagon didn't outcompete ckd's. then the continued expressions of exasperation over the fact that not many people did address his concerns about your wagon. thats the biggest thing.

He was a bit too obvious, though. Buddying up, incriminating me, red herring for the town, I don't have much else I can reply with.

So basically you are saying, yes, Yosarian2 was deliberately trying to connect himself to you, no, there's not a lot to reply beyond that.

So when the mafia godfather GOES OUT OF HIS WAY TO SAY HE'S NOT SUSPICIOUS OF SOMEONE, especially when THERE IS NO CASE ON THEM VOICED BY ANYONE, you might take a moment to think "hmm, perhaps they're trying to connect themselves to someone they're not aligned with". But apparently not.

From memory, there was no argument presented against me at any point up until now, apart from what you already said, which I have refuted. No-one even suspected me apart from roflcopter, which was stated as pretty much purely for lurking. I don't think anyone ever accused me for 'deliberate lack of content' at that point. So to say he is mischaracterising the case against me is completely wrong, because THERE WASN'T ANY CASE MADE.

"It didn't seem odd to you that they ___" is a question. It is not a request for support, it is an attempt to get me to look at his attackers in the hopes I'll suspect them rather than him. It is CLASSIC OMGUS. The first step in getting X to suspect Y is to get X actively looking for reasons why Y might be scum, and in answering this question, I am essentially forced to look for reasons why the mentioned people might be scum. It's as plain as day, at least it should be.

If he wanted me to support him as scum, yes, he would just have asked me to in the quicktopic thread. Scum do not try and force each other's hand to support them or take a specific course of action, they work AS A TEAM in a coordinated fashion. If I was scum with him, we would have done something like read over the thread together, figure out whether or not it was the correct move for me to defend him or bus him, and then act accordingly, and all without giving any indication of it in-thread. Probably it would come out roughly like how Vollkan acted.

The question is very relevant, because the whole point of what he is doing is OMGUS, that is, finding a way to attack his attackers instead of answering their case against him. Therefore, he is implying that there is some good reason to find them suspicious for believing that his vote is based on gut or that he didn't have reasons. But he almost literally said both of those things in the post where he voted CKD. So he is clearly manufacturing reasons to suspect his attackers, right at the point where they start attacking him, and this, in my opinion,

is the ideal basis on which to get him lynched

, and getting him to unambiguously say that people are scummy for pushing that position is the first step. This is probably (arguably) better than what Des was pushing on him. And my posts before I had to essentially drop out for a while continue that theme.

I have not said that Yos is suspicious for having an award. I meant precisely WHAT I ACTUALLY SAID, which is that DGB was far too quick to file him under town, given that he's good at manipulating people to think just that. And golly gee, given that he turned out to be scum, perhaps that remark is totally justified. "Keeping him ambiguous" is inconsistent with the remarks I quoted in my last post.

I think you know full well that Yos was trying to connect to people, since he tried to connect himself to you, and you pushed this to direct attention away from you at a critical point. Again, your absolute certainty of me, then the quick switch to FL for a dubious reason stinks of "anyone but me".

Next.

[Elmo]

I suspect it's resembling that thing that scum like to do where they'll basically abandon any pretence at judging alignment and move straight to trying to get the person attacking them lynched. Difference is, I've been saying KortsScum for ages, and I'm probably OMGUSsing to some degree.

Or it could be something else; I don't know. I was feeling pretty ratty when I wrote it, if that's any info. (shrug)

[Elmo]

That wasn't intended as a direct accusation of Vollkan. I don't think I've ever said "Voll bussed Yos so he is scum", I am merely stating the obvious, which is that it's a reasonable possibility that Yos was bussed by Vollkan.

It's not just WIFOM, it's outright ridiculous to suggest Yos would need to subtly hint at what he wanted me to do when we'd have a quicktopic thread if I were scum. Korts admits that much, so he has to find some hypothetical reason why Yos would want to do it in-thread to support his case. Non-terrible scum work as a team, that is to say they don't attempt to strongarm other people into doing what they want; it's ridiculous. Bluntly, Yos wouldn't do it, because he's not an idiot, and if I was scumbuddy to anyone who tried to do something that, I'd probably bus them to kingdom come while yelling at them in the quicktopic. It's ludicrous.

I don't see what is at all questionable about that paragraph. That's roughly what I or any other competent player would have done as scum when they have access to daytalk; you act as a coordinated team, since that's the principle advantage you have as group scum.

[Elmo]

I claim Cop. I got an innocent on BM Day 1, didn't manage to get anything in on Day 2, innocent on Raging Rabbit Day 3, and I just got a guilty on Vollkan. The crumbs are the X! on BM in my list, and my fairly obvious turnaround on Rabbit when I said I was sure he didn't bus Yos right after saying he was the 'odd one out' and not being very sure about him.

This is why I am 99% sure there's a mafia roleblocker, by the way; cop + doc in a game almost always means RB.

So, yeah. What I already said.

[Elmo]

Like I'd ever make that kind of mistake. Pfft!

[Elmo]

I suppose there's a bunch of stuff I could say, but it's not really that relevant or interesting. Trying not to be actively townish

and

fairly obviously not actively scummy is really weird. I did want to survive unclaimed until around day 4, and I just about got there. Wish I'd picked someone other than BM, though, I was amazed by that lynch.

Wondering if Korts' kill will actually go through, and what provably having a mafia roleblocker present means.

Zzz.

[Elmo]

I wasn't actually around at the time, I popped in purely to say hi and read the last page or so, at which point my eyes budged out at what he'd gotten himself into. I was in no state to do anything, so I went to bed; when I came back the next day, someone had accidentally hammered.

I just figured he'd live longer, and people wouldn't be trigger-happy. In retrospect, it's easy to see he was a sub-par choice, but in most games he doesn't seem to get lynched much "because he's BM". (shrug)

It's not even a bus-happy move from him, by the way, she was going down in flames, and Yos was a ticking time bomb. The killer is the way a) he was the

only

person to see things from Des' point of view quickly b) his stated reasons for FL-scum were very thin relative to his style.

[Elmo]

Apparently hitting submit is a good idea.

Oh. Yeah. We have at least a tracker, a doctor, and a cop. What I was worried about was IF my read of Korts was wrong, then he's a vig, and we have AT LEAST tracker + doc + cop + c. vig vs. mafia. And in that case I suppose it's plausible there would be 4 mafia. Everyone's analysis seems to suggest three mafia, but I'm curious to see how that changes if (for the moment, I suppose hypothetically from your point of view) you add a cop into the mix. I don't know how far this goes towards rolefishing, so maybe people'd be more comfortable waiting until after Vollkan dies.

This is just me being paranoid, but y'know, sometimes it pays off. If there's three, that's game, so examining the possibility of more makes sense.

[Elmo]

Maybe I am missing something, but I don't see what a Korts investigation buys us. I did actually um and arr between Vollkan and Tajo, but I still believe Tajo is town, and claiming an innocent like that would be fairly weak sauce. There is also the point that if (somehow) Vollkan is town, we need to know about it now.

We have 3 pretty-much-confirmed innocents (Des, RR, DGB). I need to sketch stuff out, but I think we're pretty much home free unless we've got a SK + 4-strong mafia group, which is the absolutely worst case. I actually think I can sort-of break it from here, but it involves a massclaim and a bit of balance speculation. Might be better for someone (e.g. Des) less involved to do the analysis instead, though.

What do people think about the mafia being essentially confirmed as having a roleblocker?

[Elmo]

Ding ding ding.

That is weird. I would have thought the mafia have a RB with cop+doc in the setup. Are we looking at a four person mafia?

o o

Vollkan's reaction is certainly consistent with pretty much either 3 or 4. But I woulda thought they'd have blocked Korts. Ugh.

Does c. sk vs. 3 mafia vs. tracker + doc + cop seem at all balanced to people?

dgb, des and raging rabbit are all surely town, so i think we're in pretty great shape right now.

is almost certainly the list of people he protected. Actually, I suppose it's possible the scum simply didn't get a kill in on day 2, so at least one of those might not be confirmed. Hrm. I suppose not confirmed, then.. I was just taking rofl literally, so to speak.

[Elmo]

Maybe Adel thought a godfather + 3 goons was enough compensation for the cop. That might effectively be stronger than GF + goon + RB.

Anyway, I can make the balance argument that I'm fairly obviously a real cop. It should be fairly obvious; either I'm mafia or cop, if I'm mafia then the town requires more power in order for this to be balanced. There aren't really any power roles left to claim other than roleblocker. A hypothetical real cop would have counterclaimed me by now. But I guess this is superfluous.

I suppose it's possible, DGB, Korts was pencilled in to be vigging me, but I think everyone except Tajo (?) posted since then.

mod

: Hypothetically, can mafia power role choices be submitted by other mafia members? As in, could Vollkan have submitted an action for an Inuit Mafia Roleblocker if one exists?

Even the worst case looks fairly decent, now. I suppose I should be curious what exactly the case against me was supposed to comprise, but there we go. (I have not forgotten you, monsieur Korts. )

[Elmo]

4 scum is much more likely than 1 GF and 2 Goons against a Cop-Doc-Vig-Tracker town.

I love how your argument is predicated on an existent cop. Would you please explain to the gallery how compulsive vig + doc + tracker is balanced against 1 GF + 3 goons? Or why the mafia would have even have a godfather with no cop in the setup?

[Elmo]

I think there are holes in that, RR, but I'm too tired to sketch out a better one. Probably we should just massclaim first.

I still think one of the biggest arguments in my favour is the presence of a godfather, even beyond the balance factor. Not sure this really matters, though. (shrug)

[Elmo]

rofl must have protected Des. I don't think he can be scum.

[Elmo]

I can think of another problem, but I don't want to voice it. I will if someone I trust asks me, though.

[Elmo]

I'm pretyt wasted righ tnow, but maybe. Yeah. Depends if the scum already saw it.

[Elmo]

If we're going to start the party by lynching Korts, I need to be told who to investigate tomorrow. I think we'll have game over, but there may not be much time between sending it in and me eating a NK if we do have more scum.

For that reason, I'd like to be that hammer, if we lynch someone; I can wait until Adel is around, hammer, send in the investigation, and post the result back here before scum get the kill/RB in. I can't think of any benefit to me as scum for doing this, offhand.

[Elmo]

Post.

I can't think of much to say. Just waiting for Des/RR to agree on which plan. Posting so I can't get replaced. Merry Christmas!

[Elmo]

After I think it through, there is a problem with my problem with RR's plan.

I... still really couldn't care, I think we just kill Korts now.

[Elmo]

Elmo, are you okay with being killed by Korts for RR's plan?

Yeah, I don't think it's ideal because it involves me dying, but then I'm biased on that note and I don't really have a plan that would be better or probably acceptable. But I think we win anyway. (shrug)

I'm hammering Tajo and investigating Korts, right? People please say if you're okay with me doing it now, I don't want to be premature if we're missing something. Deadline snuck up fast, actually, but apparently we know what we're doing, so eh.

[Elmo]

I think two godfathers would be overly abnormal. If there's something in Adel's modding history that I have missed, feel free to point it out. Hmm, skimming, I see that Nice Shot had two mafia roleblockers. The convention of a single godfather is much stronger, though, seeing as thematically he is 'head of the family'. I suppose this comes down to the debate of whether players are right to rely on non-explicit conventions or not but I'm not suspicious of RR, I also don't think there is any realistic chance of the inuit mafia kill being blocked when rofl protected him... I mean any one of those on their own is probably not very likely, the only way he can be scum is IF he's got past our collective scumhunting and IF he's a godfather because there are two and IF some bizarre circumstance that would account for rofl. That's pretty unlikely.

I don't think Tajo is scum. He hasn't posted a great deal, but I think what is there has that 'townish sheen' about it, in my mind. I think RR's main gripe seems to be lack of raw material to look at, and I'd probably be agreeing with that if I hadn't played with him before and thus had a better handle on how he 'feels' as town. He seems very similar to how he was as town, albeit obviously more experienced. The way he said he expected to get a town vibe from Vollkan/Yos but didn't, and actually got a very neutral vibe pretty much matched up exactly with my feelings, for example. I think that's hard to fake.

DGB is a bigger question mark in my mind, but I don't have any reason to suspect her, and there are certainly points in her favour. At minimum, they've done a fairly good job of distancing, faking interactions, etc. If it were me, personally, I would probably be lynching Korts. Take that as you will; I have said roughly why. He has basically been on my shitlist since early day 1.

While we're here: DGB, what was it that made you so confident that Vollkan was bussing Yos? Or was that just posting style? Or is that a trade secret?

I would point out that we have approximately 47.5 hours before deadline hits. Practically speaking, either DGB or RR would need to move their vote to him in order for me to hammer Korts, even hypothetically. Part of the reason I wanted what we're doing sorted out ahead of time is so we wouldn't have the traditional deadline scramble.

Honestly, I haven't been thinking about the game that much since around the point we agreed it was probably straightforward. But I can recall roughly my level-of-suspicions, and that's them.

[Elmo]

By overly abnormal, I mean that this game is set up to encourage speculation over the setup, open roles, mod history in the first post, etc. And all the role interactions and revealed roles indicate a fairly normal, standard game. If I remember correctly, she has said it would be a normal game, as in Large Normal, New York, if it weren't for the deep south mechanics. Now, I wouldn't take it too far, but all that makes "bastard mod" setups like multiple godfathers - and indeed, godfather without a cop - relatively unlikely in my mind.

[Elmo]

Why'd you think Tajo's scum, Rabbit?

Ever since his entry post he seems to happy sticking to the backround, posting little substance that almost always goes along with popular opinion. I get this feeling he doesn't really care much about who gets lynched, which is very different from the town-tajo I played with who seemed much more emotionally invested in the game.

Okay, so RR's gripe is not amount of material per se; that's not accurate, sorry. His response is roughly this:

I usually get more involved in small games and in games near to Lylo. Nice Shot Mafia is a perfect example of this and you can ask des if it helps you increase your possibilities of finding scum..

I think maybe this factors in as well, if not more:

Vollkan,

Im admitting I am a lazy bastard

and just thought that one (if not both) of you and FL had to be scum since I have townie and neutral reads from other players.

Now I'm biased because I have to admit to being something of a lazy bastard too in various games at various times. But I don't see anything inconsistent with being town (or more likely to come from scum) coming from Tajo. I think being in the background is a natural result of not being involved with the game, which would make sense to me. I just.. ugh. If you're not feeling motivated to get stuck in the game, then regardless of alignment, a lot of that behaviour follows naturally from that. Yes, it's somewhat anti-town in a manner similar to lurking because of the problems we're having now in terms of figuring out his motivation, but I don't think it's telling of alignment, personally.

I'd also note that, CKD apart, the majority opinion has mostly been correct, I think. I don't think willingly following the majority is a significant tell under those circumstances. Apart from CKD and BM, it's been largely scum wagons. I think it's hard to blame him for adapting at least a vote pattern that looks interchangable with "lynch everyone who I don't have a town read on" when not only pretty much everyone else has done that, but it's been pretty effective too.

..I am now irrevocably destined to get a guilty on him after we lynch Korts, of course. </pessimism>

[Elmo]

My balance is kind of shaky, that's why I keep asking everyone about it I did think the mafia should have a RB, but that was based on a kinda skewed viewpoint seeing as things have gone as they have. Also, I pretty much assumed that cop & doc = mafia RB, in retrospect for basically no reason. I guess godfather just doesn't seem that powerful to me. But I've never modded my own setup, so. Oh, yeah, and I thought the mafia would have some way of stopping the KortsKills either way.. they're basically sitting ducks. But I suppose that's true in any setup where there's a SK. I didn't think that far through it.

Vig is kind of controversial (obvious statement is obvious), I personally think that vig would make it at least town-leaning, but then we've heard nuff about Korts from me. I think cop+doc+tracker vs. sk vs. 2 goons + gf could work fine. My main thing would be how the number of potential deaths interact with the power roles, but then again you've got quite a benefit from the two info roles w/ doc. I would still be liable to give the mafia a RB, maybe in addition to GF, though; it would avoid cop+doc better than having a GF, I think. The point is that claimed innocents are still pretty useful, and can be very useful if you happen to lynch the GF before approaching endgame, even after the cop dies. But like I said, shaky... I suppose the mafia RB still has to find the cop in the first place. Meh. But yeah, it's certainly not terrible with 7 townies. I still can't wrap my head around the way deep south changes the balance, it seems more dependant on the players remaining attentive. I don't think it's that different to 'normal' mafia, though, and it definitely seems at least reasonable to me.

[Elmo]

Hmm. Unless I'm mistaken, if either Tajo or DGB are mafia, they have a ready-made plan to win if we lynch Korts, based on RR's opinion of me. I'm thinking maybe it's actually in my best interest to be vigged tomorrow, if that's the case. But they're probably not mafia, so... I can't think of anything that Korts could do to get out of it, though.

I hate the way we seem to be going back and forth on this. Note that I cannot effectively do anything other than hammer Korts at the moment. I am loosely fine with either, but I'm constrained by what the confirmed innocents are thinking/doing, so if you could settle on one or the other, that'd be nice.

30.5 hours.

[Elmo]

Logically, if either of them are mafia, then either Korts is a vig or we're facing more than one remaining scum. In either case, it should be trivial for them to kill someone, probably Des, and then push my mislynch based on your opinion of me, after Korts is dead.

My reasoning is simply that Korts is very likely doomed SK, so the only thing that can screw us is a mafioso. I don't think it's at all likely, but it changes my mind about which plan is likely to be better. Like I said, I think it's probably academic, but since we're here.. (shrug)

[Elmo]

That's.. roughly what I just said.
I don't think another mafioso is at all likely, but it remains the only way to lose.
What I said is not only possible but actually quite likely if we lynch Korts today and the game doesn't end, so bearing that in mind, I have a preference to lynch Tajo. I am basically assuming you won't change your mind, since people rarely do. (I don't even know why you suspect me, but whatever.)

[Elmo]

Yeah, I think that's fair; I mean, I don't suspect them either.

So yeah, Des, I think lynching Tajo offers a better contingency, now I think it through. Even though he's prob town. Blah.

[Elmo]

Yeah, that's mostly because I find it hard to get a good read on her. I do think they're both town, though.

RR's plan basically assumes there's only one scum left, I think. I believe that's why he's not accounting for scenarios where we face prisoner's dilemma. I'd have to loosely agree.

The things with Korts killing someone else was part of my 'problem'. I think what would happen is, someone'd die, we'd all look at Korts and go o_O why isn't Elmo dead, and he'd be left with nowhere to go. I think. I suppose it's strictly better than autolosing by confirming my investigation of him, but I can't see him not being lynched post haste in that scenario.

My problem is that "old fashioned scum-hunting" tomorrow probably ends in my lynch. Generally, I like the idea, but the specifics are lousy.

Lemme post something similar to the list...

[Elmo]

Eh, RR did it better than me. I'm not at all worried about a solo mafioso, since I'd (we'd all) have to be completely wrong about Korts and one of DGB/Tajo. I do think that 4 mafia + SK sounds excessive to me, but it's the only thing that can go wrong.

About 16 hours, 45 minute left. Des, are you going to be around before deadline beyond now?

I kinda want to sleep soon. (Don't ask.)

[Elmo]

Hmm. Tajo, if you assume I'm town, and that we'd lynch Korts-SK, Des would be killed, and RR+DGB would lynch me for the town loss tomorrow, which do you think is better?

Des, if we lynch Korts, then we'd have five alive tomorrow; minus the mafia kill, that puts us with four alive in LyLo. So we couldn't practically lynch me to confirm my results, right?

It's interesting to note there isn't actually an endgaming mechanic that I can see, but it's pretty much the same, I think.

[Elmo]

No, I think she's town; but pretty much every other realistic scenario leads to a town win. Meh.

Also, yeah, I think Adel is probably laughing her ass off. How long have we been at this, now?

[Elmo]

I think everyone's town except Korts. My point is, that's literally the only way we can lose, from my point of view. (I think.) So if you've got two plans, one which allows it to possibly happen, and one which doesn't, it seems better to use the one that doesn't.

Thinking about it, I think we lose either way if DGB is mafia.. it goes, lynch tajo, I claim prob guilty on Korts, I'm vigged, Korts is lynched, someone is killed for the mafia win. Well, isn't this a pointless excercise.

[Elmo]

No, I meant that the only realistic way we can lose, from my point of view, is if there's a SK and a mafioso.

From my point of view, it's really obvious that Korts = SK. Therefore, it's not a question of SK / Mafia / SK+Mafia, it's a question of SK / SK+Mafia. If it's just SK, we win. That's my reasoning.

[Elmo]

Okay, I'm pretty much past it, if you've got anything to say before I get my beauty sleep, now's the time.

I'm okay with hammering whoever is at L-1. I'm not actually sure which offers the better chances; very helpful, I know.

[Elmo]

With five alive before the kill, we need three to lynch. I don't see getting a lynch together before the kill happens as viable, unless I'm missing something. Especially when we're, y'know, talking about it here.

[Elmo]

If it's not Korts, I'll hammer and investigate Korts.
If it's Korts, I'll hammer and investigate Tajo.
Changes to that, say now, preferably in CAPS LOCK mode.

I personally think Tajo is more likely to be town than DGB, for whatever that's worth. But, again, I think they're both town. I rather doubt that RR will change his mind on his ordering, he seemed quite convinced that DGB was more townish if I remember correctly.

Hi, DGB.

[Elmo]

<-- bedtime. Catch you later.

[Elmo]

vote populartajo

[Elmo]

Korts = guilty

[Elmo]

I propose that we now argue about the optimal course of action for another 15 pages.

[Elmo]

I wonder how long it'll be before Korts realises why he's still screwed if he doesn't send the kill.

[Elmo]

vote Korts

!

[Elmo]

a) They would have blocked Korts when he was scheduled to kill Vollkan.
b) This was my "problem" earlier, but I then realised we can still force a win in this situation regardless of who you believe. I wouldn't elaborate, because I'm curious if anyone else sees it; also, I simply can't be bothered.

[Elmo]

Elmo played a good Cop. I appreciated his comment about trying to play just scummily enough not to be a nightkill but also not be a huge suspect and I think he did that well.

Yeah, I think I played it about right, it went bit different to how I thought it would go due to almost everyone alive being obv town, haha. The missing kills make my play seem fairly pointless, actually, but I think if it hadn't gone that way, getting the cop through to endgame alive with a bunch of living innocents might have been much stronger. Oh well. I thought the town was probably strong enough that we had good chances if I backed off scumhunting a little - I would have gone psycho on Yos2, Korts, and Vollkan in that order had I been vanilla, so I think I was probably right on that @_@. Definitely right about the town's scumhunting too, they did really well. It actually looked

easy

, surprisingly.

I'm not sure if I'd play cop the same way again, but it's certainly something I wanted to try out sometime. It's surprisingly stressful to have to avoid looking scummy

and

avoid looking townish

and

know that you have to hide that you're doing it. Especially I was worried that someone would just tell Korts to kill me without thinking of asking me for a claim. I thought Yos2 was scum, and hoped that he remembered being town with me in Packrats where I showed the same kind of attitude as vanilla, otherwise I might have done it a bit differently.

The only real mistake made by any town player was Elmo not sending in an investigation during day 2. Even though he had an innocent on BM from day 1, I don't think that it was a mistake for him to not clear BM. Letting BM hang was probably good for the town.

I could be misremembering, but I think Day 2 was in the period where I had the bout of lurking. I didn't want to make another decision when I posted my "hi, here" post because I couldn't think straight, I thought I'd come back after some sleep and try and assess if defending BM was plausible. I suppose it's arguable whether I made a mistake not sending in an investigation or whether the town made a mistake of accidentally hammering. I would probably have defended him as vanilla, but it would probably have been a bit obvious given the roles and my d1 breadcrumb.

The bigger mistake was simply investigating BM. A decent cop aiming for innocents should simply not have their investigatee run up the next day. That, again, was a too-quick decision after Guardian was killed and I saw the day might end without me getting an investigation in. I was really amazed at how he managed to draw that number of votes that fast, especially in a strong town who know his reputation full well. (I did genuinely think he was a bit likely to be town on day 1.)

FWIW, the 2-week lurking was not intentional and totally unavoidable, I'm sorry about that. I approve of the rules on replacements. I pretty much forced myself to post every day even though I felt I was going to be incoherent to try and compensate.

I'm curious as to what people think of my play. The only thing I wish I did differently was choosing between FL and Vollkan; they were both scum, and yet again I kind of really struggled to choose between them because of that, which always results in: scum lynched, hey wasn't Elmo being really wishy-washy, vote Elmo. I wanted to get more out of the day since I thought it was likely something weird was going on (and it was). I wish people would stop seeing "I'm not sure" as automatically scummy.

I really don't like that list, but I have no idea why.

I finally figured this out!

4. FL - {bad reasons}

75

You know better than most how much I tend to vacillate and obsess about different possibilities.

is why. I have no idea why people thought he wouldn't be bussing FL, it's almost a textbook situation where bussing is the only viable route. Chalk another one up for "bussing is magic pixie dust". =D

i also tried really hard d1 to make des an nk target, so that whole "who do you think is town" schtick was part of my strategy

That's pretty smart. I was surprised you were the doc, since you were so obviously town. WIFOM?

I was right about the Guardian kill being mafia! Whee. I wonder if it was why I thought? I'd be really interested to see the quicktopic. I have no idea why they thought Korts was a good kill. Hadn't he claimed Guardian, a mafia kill as his own at that point?

Elmo hasn't done that much yet, but I totally expect him to nail the scum godfather given another 48 hours or so, so I'll give him some breathing room.

This is some serious irony, right here. I read this and thought "how does he know the scum have a godfather?" which made me suspicious of him. I later considered investigating him, but avoided it because I felt that he was scummy and based on what he said, if he was scum he was likely to be a godfather. And thank god for that!

Can't agree more with what's been said, the night actions paint a slightly different picture than my thoughts of the game, but the town was pretty devastatingly good. It was quite literally like X, Y, Z are all obv town, who's left? I think it's ironic that Vollkan began the game with a tirade against towntells and ended it having his mafia group destroyed by them

That was long. gg wp town!

[Elmo]

Yeah, that, and we didn't really get much information from your wagon, I don't really know what you envisaged happening in later days but I just didn't find e.g. the self-vote at all helpful when I was rereading. Yos2's vote on you was probably the only really helpful thing, and that happened really early in the day, way before you were lynched. Personally, I would have much preferred a Korts lynch when it got late in day 1 (I don't think I ever voted you?). I think you would actually have tipped the balance over if you voted for him.

I think pretty much what I did at the time, there was a valid case against you, but it was very thin, and not enough for a lynch - although, you know, it's day 1. I think defending yourself instead of self-voting (!?) would have been better.

People who consider voting 'the other guy' a scumtell are just wrong. I would actually have encouraged you to do so and probably defended that specific action against anyone who said it was scummy, FWIW.

[Elmo]

elmo, At the time, I thought vollkan and rolf were scum...and I didnt think anyone would pressure them until they knew my alignment. So I really didnt care if I hung(just vanilla).

They didn't get pressured after we knew your alignment either, though.

I want to avoid having a race to see who can submit a move first following the start of a new day.

Yeah, that's the only thing I'm not wild about in this setup.

I like the deep south type of role wherein you make a choice during the day and it happens as if there were a night one -- as long as you have some choice in you get some result -- and you can revise your choice any time during the day.

Seconding this, with the proviso that getting investigation results in real-time adds an interesting twist (I personally think it makes the cop role significantly more powerful), and that having the kill take place in the middle of day 1 tends to provoke discussion a bit more, I think.

I think the deadlines were spot on, although the holidays could have bitten us significantly if we hadn't been in a good spot.

[Elmo]

Generally, if a town player attacks a scum player, and someone unknown very quickly agrees with them, they're scum bussing. It's

extremely

rare for anyone to be persuaded quickly; if you think of the hassle and discussion you typically have to go through in order to convince people to vote your suspect, there's something definitely unnatural about the way you seemed to have a "eureka!" moment right after Des started wailing on him. That, and you seemed very keen to make a long, detailed case on why you thought he was scum without going out and persuading other people (e.g. FL) to vote for him; that's generally a sign of bussing, since being seen to suspect someone is more important than getting them lynched.

With FL, I just found your reasons really disproportionate to the level of suspicion, especially seeing as we had very little content from the role over the course of the game; I didn't consciously remember your quote earlier until afterwards, but I felt there was definitely something off about the whole thing. See, everyone else was lynching her on the basis of "everyone else is town", but you don't believe in towntells, and indeed you had most people at 50%.

Now, I don't think bussing FL in the way you did was a mistake, because generally the whole point is to look more pro-town at the expense of it being more obvious you knew what was going on, and it worked, but I think I would have spotted it as a neutral observer. I just don't think there's any happy medium there. But generally speaking, the ideal for bussing is not necessarily to be undetectable, in my view.

That's my 1p, anyway.

[Elmo]

Also, I'm curious about your view on towntells in the context of this game. Obviously the lack of kills helped, but that seemed the decisive factor, to me. Probably the only time I have felt completed screwed as scum is this one scumchat game where about 2/3 of the town were pretty sure each other were town within about the first 3 minutes of the game (Yos may remember this one). And it just seems like there's not a lot you can do then. I have no idea how the mafia would have scored a further mislynch (me aside, obv).

[Elmo]

I think generally pro-town behaviour is not difficult to fake. I also agree with the basis by which you give people town points (if scum have x% chance to drop tells per post, then by deduction someone who has made y posts without dropping a noticeable tell is z% less likely to be scum). But I would have to part company with you in that I feel there are certain types of pro-town behaviour that are extremely difficult to fake; interestingly, I pick up on virtually all of via gut, so maybe for your playstyle towntells shouldn't exist. I can't think of any reliable way to make towntells work with a mostly logic-based style. I am, FWIW, still totally at a loss to verbalise what Des did that was obvtown, and virtually all the time when I pick up a towntell, I can't say what it was, I just sorta know it when I see it.

I would say when one talks about a towntell, you are basically betting that they cannot fake it as scum. In that sense, the skill of the player has to factor into it a fair bit; this is roughly what I alluded to about Yos2 earlier, I think. And there obviously has to be some conservatism, because the penalty for being wrong about a towntell is far higher than a scumtell, because you'll be moved towards lynching everyone

except

that person for the rest of the game. In that sense, I think they definitely have sharp edges and maybe need a bit of experience, but also that they definitely have a valid basis and can be a strong tool for the town.

[Elmo]

Yeah, I played with him in Aoada, a mini theme before, where we were both town. I was in Open 55 with him aaages before that, but that hardly counted as played, lol.

My gut does tend to be a lot more productive (more accurate and more confidant of accuracy) with people I've played with before, now you mention it. I actually used to go back and read a couple of completed games of anyone in a game I was interested in, which was pretty helpful.

I personally think that gut is good at picking up a large number of very small tells. At least some of the time, that's probably why it's difficult to pin down to one specific thing. He wouldn't have to just fake one thing or ten things, but

everything

, I think is the idea.