Mini 720 - SPQR Mafia {Game Over}

[charter]

What time/day is it exactly?

[Glork]

avoiding prod, will post tonight or tomorrow

[OhGodMyLife]

Vote Count:

5 to lynch

Erratus Apathos: 2 (Incognito, charter)
El Destructo: 1 (Glork)

Not Voting: 5 (dahill1, El Destructo, Tuberkulos, Erratus Apathos, Assmaster)

Deadline is Friday, February 6th at 10 PM EST.

Assmaster has been prodded.

[charter]

Ok, like four days until deadline, so people should be voting...

[Tuberkulos]

Personal issues are preventing me from being able to focus on anything right now. I'll try to read through from 23-30, and briefly comment. If I were forced to vote today, it would be dahill1.

[charter]

I'd vote either dahill or EA at deadline.

[El Destructo]

Hi guys. I haven't heard from Elmo since before I last posted. Not sure what's up, but maybe he's still having computer issues.

@ Dahill, Tuber and Ass -

can you respond to this?

Everyone but EA and Glork, what do you think of posts 13 through to 20?

And dahill, can you finish that player analysis?


I'm really worried about the deadline coming up and the fact that so little has been discussed today. Dahill's dodgy backtrack from the MD discussion still really bothers me - his explanation makes very little sense to me so I wonder why he'd say it as town but like I said, it seems like the steam that didn't build on the topic was more likely buddying up. That said, Yos didn't get on board and was town, so eh. Still really conflicted about EA.

charter, have you seen EA play town?

I'll try to get on again tomorrow and I hope you guys have responded to what I've asked.

[charter]

If I have I don't remember.

[charter]

Anyone want to post anything? Anyone?????

[Incognito]

Sorry, I've been away for a bit. I know I haven't responded to EA's post, but I've reread the thread and still strongly believe that EA is scum. I'm quite content with where my vote is right now.

With two days to deadline, people should really be voting. The last thing we need right now is a 'No Lynch'. This day's been rather pathetic.

[Erratus Apathos]

Done rereading. Charter's reaction to my pointing out his "slip" is genuine, so I feel he's town. (Insert word eating here.) Assmaster gives me a strong town vibe as well; his posts 33 and 59 in particular come off as honest. The other town feel I got was El Des, who I noticed seemed conflicted on more than a fair share of points. I know, "since when is being noncommittal a town tell?" but they never used their lack of conviction to later jump on one side, which tells me it's genuine and not malicious.

On the other side of the coin, Incog is scum. His attack on me doesn't at all look like he's thought it out the way a townie would - he pointed out a bunch of supposedly strange things I've done (like voting people without indicating suspicion of them beforehand) without showing why these things are anything more than strange. That's how scum score mislynches: "oh look, (townie)'s acting weird, lynch him!" I would hope he puts more thought into his decisions than this when he's town.

Moreover, I challenged him to explain his processes on Friday. He's taken a couple moments to say "Oh hi, still here, still think EA is scum" while making excuses to not answer me. He's just stalling. Look at that last post: he puts off his response to me yet again, but then reminds everyone it's two days to deadline so hurry up and end day already. If he honestly believed it was time to stop procrastinating, he would have finally answered me already. No sincerity whatsoever.

Vote: Incognito

[Tuberkulos]

@ Dahill, Tuber and Ass -

can you respond to this?

Everyone but EA and Glork, what do you think of posts 13 through to 20?

Random.

However, since you clearly have read into those posts I've tried to analyze them. And the only interesting thing is this:

Also, the fact that I only FoSed Yos clearly indicates that I'm not convinced dahill is town.

Also, I'm smarter than the average bear.

I guess one could believe that Glork is trying to distance himself from Dahill1 and after that try to draw attention from everything with a joke post which screams, "Look what a bunch of random funny posts I've made!".

vote:Dahill1[/quote]

[Tuberkulos]

EBWOP:

vote: dahill1

[dahill1]

did not make much of those posts 13-20 as i took them as joking around
will try to get to the player analysis tonight but for now:

vote EA

as i would rather lynch him than myself and a couple other reasons more tonight

[Incognito]

Vote: Incognito

Why doesn't this surprise me?

I haven't responded to your response yet because even after reading it, I still pretty much feel the same exact way about you and simply haven't felt up to responding to it at this time. Like I mentioned in my second to last post, I haven't been feeling well, I still

don't

feel well, and the fact that a grand total of 11 posts (7 of which were pretty much non-game related) had been made since my second to last post, I still didn't feel up to responding to it. I was also hoping to draw at least

some

reactions to the vote when I placed it but apparently half the game's gone absent. I like how you call only

me

out about my inactivity but not anyone else. Why is that exactly?

In response to this:

And what the SHIT is "inflated your reasoning" supposed to mean? I get a strong feeling that you're just pulling all this stuff out of your ass here.

you mentioned that "it'd take a hell of a tell for you to prefer any lynch other than charter" over what seemed like a very minor inconsistency in what he was saying about the Conspirator role PM. If that's not an inflated reason to not only vote for someone but also to decide that you weren't going to switch your vote for the entire remainder of the day, then I don't know what the hell is. How do you justify this not being the case?

Re: Thinking Glork and dahill1 were masons. I find this rather interesting actually. Glork specifically had the following to say about dahill1 during Day 1:

I feel very "meh" about dahill.

And then during Day 2, he eventually mentioned the following:

(For the record, yes, I still firmly believe that dahill is protown.)

Why did you come to the conclusion that dahill1 and Glork were likely to be

mason buddies

as opposed to maybe Glork being a Cop or something of that sort? (And yes, this is a very relevant question.)

Comparing my play in this game to my play in the one or two games you've seen me in isn't meta, it's statistically insignificant horse shit. If you're not aware of my tendency towards frequent vote switches, you definitely don't have enough to make a reasonable comparison.

Fair enough, but I wasn't only using those two games to solidly form my opinion of you. I've been reading your play in this particular game and still strongly feel like some of your tendencies here match the tendencies of scum play as opposed to town play. I don't need meta to determine that one.

[El Destructo]

My access is still seriously limited and I start my new course on Monday, so I'll have even less free time.

A lot of this is copy+pasted from the quicktopic Elmo and I use. I'd try to be more tactful, but seriously, given how close we are to deadline and how little access I'm likely to have, I don't know what else to do right now.

What I'm thinking about post 12-20:

I would have expected people to comment on your slip with Erratus and odd non-sequitur defense (the FoSed Yosarian part, not the bear part). I found it uncanny that no one noticed this at all, and instead wagoned Xtoxm to try and kick off the game without it.

There was definitely something odd about how it all went down. Specifically, 1. Glork's comment about only FOSing Yos "clearly indicating" that he wasn't convinced that dahill was town, which is questionable, and 2. EA backing off on the serious and decent FOS (considering the context) and upgrading to a jokey vote.

That nothing came of any of this but the Xtoxm mislynch began instead seems way to convenient.

Elmo and I were talking about possible distancing between EA and Glork, but Elmo pointed out how it was unlikely that Glork and EA were on the same scumteam on account of charter's investigations. So, the question I'm asking myself now is, which of Glork and EA is scummier?

Elmo and I are both tending towards finding Glork scummier.

The only scumteam I see as viable if both EA and Glork are town is Incog+dahill1, which is freaking me out.

So basically, I wish we had 3 lynches instead of 2.

I wrote this to Elmo about a week ago.
---
"PossScumz [re-arranged] [assuming one of EA and Glork is scum]:
2. dahill1
5. Incognito
7. Erratus Apathos
11. Glork

1. EA + dahill1
2. EA + Incognito
3. Glork + dahill1
4. Glork + Incognito

1. EA + dahill1 - Possible, but not incredibly obvious. I remember EA making a REALLY late vote on dahill in Day 1, but that's about it.

2. EA + Incog - If this is true, Incog is preparing to bus EA right now and was doing some weak distancing by linking us to him. It's interesting that he voted for us, though. What has EA said about Incog?

3. Glork + dahill1 - Definitely possible, given Glork's overt defence of dahill. I'm cautious about it, though, since it looks like it could have been buddying up, too.

4. Glork + Incog - Definitely possible. Incog stayed away from commenting on my metaing of Glork. Glork hasn't really said anything about Incog. They've both very much been staying away from each other the whole game until asked. Is this sort of behaviour more likely for scum in a mountainous game with only 2 scum?

Looking at things this way, EA-scum seems [less likely]. Glork+Incog makes the most sense. If I'm right, Incog's questioning about my metagaming, with intent to discredit?, was pure chainsaw defence.
---

EA+Incog is not likely. Incog's pushing the case on EA right now. Given how slow things have been, I expect he would have changed his target if he'd been distancing from him buddy. I just don't see bussing as sound play for scum in this game, especially when they can easily avoid it.

dahill is still a big freakin huge enigma to me. If he's town, he's playing a game that's sloppy as and not helping anyone. If he's scum, I'm not sure where I'd look for his buddy. I guess it'd have to be one of EA, Incog and Glork. So, yeah, dahill, if you're town, pick it up, please.

I was suspicious of Incog because I wasn't getting town vibes from him throughout my read. My experience of him as town is of a player who is proactive and involved in all discussions of a game. Here, he seemed to be sitting much more in the background and trying not to be obtrusive. His play feels better now, but I can't shake the feeling I got from his earlier play.

I mentioned his reaction to the dahill-MD thing. Doing some rereading a few days ago I found this from Pathetric, and it was exactly what I was thinking:

The quoted post most certainly does seem to lean one way or another. Dahill dedicated a full post--no debating with anyone else except Animorpherv--to quoting the counterpoint Glork made, starting off with a "take it away, glrok!". That's pretty strong on its own, and he didn't throw in any disclaimer about him personally disagreeing. Yeah, Incognito. That post had a lean. Regardless of his alignment, it bothers me easily you swallowed that.

It should be clear why I asked Glork about Incog not commenting on the meaningfulness of my meta of him. That was something that really got to me. Incog decided to focus on my use of meta as opposed to how well I was actually applying it.

I'm obviously disappointed that he hasn't been on to respond or really do anything lately.

If we assume Caesar is in this setup, I think he'd have to be one of Incog or dahill1. Personally, I'm leaning towards Incog-scum since his reactions to dahill actually appear to be more likely those of scum towards a player they know is innocent (or possibly their buddy). I'm seeing Glork as his most likely scum buddy. Then dahill1, then EA.

Please, thoughts quickly.

des

[charter]

How is Assmaster and Tuber completely off of your list of possible scum?

[Incognito]

Stole the words right out of my mouth.

Also, there's so many other things terribly wrong with that analysis... I don't like how you keep mentioning that I "avoided commenting on your Glork-meta analysis" and are saying that this was somehow a "chainsaw defense of Glork" when I was already

voting

you by the time you made entrance into the game over actions that your predecessor made over the course of time he was here. That's kinda the wrong way around, ain't it? Clearly I was and still am suspicious of you and when I noticed something as inconsistent as knowing you have always been so hard-pressed against meta-gaming and then noticing you using it to the level of detail you did on those previous pages, I'm obviously going to question that before looking at the actual content of your meta-analysis, aren't I?

[El Destructo]

Ass and Tuber both seem town to us. I don't see the point in getting into this discussion if no one has a good reason to think they're scum.

Incog, what I say is true though. You were intensely focused on my

use

of meta and didn't make a single comment about Glork in relation to the metas I bought up until I asked you to. Whether you were already voting us is irrelevant in the context of a chainsaw defence here. I started attacking Glork, and you attacked my method of attacking him, which is what makes it look like it could have been a chainsaw. With your questions, you were scrutinising the legitimacy of my actions in a meta sense without commenting on their actual application in this game.

I'm inclined to see what Pathetric pointed out in 351 as the actions of someone towards a player they knew was town. I admit that I've been vocal against meta-gaming in the past and that it wasn't a surprise that Incog questioned me about it, but I still don't see how Incog, or anyone, could disregard dahill's MD comment, which is still really hard to read as anything other than agreement with Glork.


charter, what are your thoughts on all of this? Do you think Incog's reaction to dahill's MD comments are reasonable? Am I barking up the wrong tree? I was being very sincere when I asked for thoughts on this in my last post.

[El Destructo]

Hey. Sorry for being away for a while; the computer situation is now mostly resolved, but some other stuff came up, which I'm still deadling with. This was meant to be posted yesterday, but it didn't get finished, so, hier.

I don't know what the fuck with this game. I'm pretty much flying on pure gut, which is fun. I think charter is town because of the claim; I felt he was a little townish before that, albeit there wasn't masses to look at. Various things (hand-waving is pro-town!) about assmaster's play make me think he's town, in particular the way he acted around charter's claim.. I don't know exactly, but it seems the kind of "probing" you'd expect from a townie.

Tuber, I believe I said that you hadn't been poked at much; that is, people haven't interacted with you much, questioned you, that sorta thing. I'm generally more wary of people who haven't been 'grilled' at all since it's a much easier situation to play in if you're scum. Personally, I think you're town, right now; again, I can't really quantify it, but you just felt very natural to me when I was reading along.

Aright. So assuming I'm right about those three, and two scum, I've got 50:50 odds to hit from here. The thing is that coming into today, I was thinking Glork + EA as a pairing, and charter's results eliminate that possibility, at least in my mind. So, really, there's only a couple options:

dahill1 + Erratus Apathos
dahill1 + Incognito
dahill1 + Glork
Incognito + Erratus Apathos
Incognito + Glork

The obvious observation from the above is that, if I'm right so far, one of dahill / Incognito has to be scum. Irritatingly, I could pretty easily see either as scum. Des knows Incog far better than I do, and he's suspicious of him; he hasn't really done anything that makes me think he's town, but I haven't found anything staggeringly terrible either. The problem is that basically no-one has really done any particular action that I'd call pro-town, so although I'd generally agree that "not seeming town" when someone usually does is a bit shifty, I don't like the idea of using it here. And the last time I did try and use it with him, I got bitten

T T

so there's that. I have difficulty articulating exactly why this "scumhunting well so seems town" thing is different to my view on Tuber/Ass, but I think it is.

Pretty much the one 'big' problem I have with Dahill is his comment on pointless votes. His playstyle doesn't really seem very 'pro-town'.. and he hasn't really contributed as much as Incog that I can see (or at least that's my perception without going back over it in detail), but that seems to be more of a consequence of his playstyle than anything really likely to be alignment-related. I figure that theoretically I should be somewhat more willing to lynch him because of that uncertainty. Ugh.

And my position on EA has to be influenced a fair amount by the fact that he can't be scum if Glork is scum. And I do have the persistent bad vibes from Glork, I've said that.. I don't really see a Glork lynch happening right now, much as I might prefer it. And I haven't really seen anything huge that'd point to him being scum with either Incog/dahill if he is scum.

One real interesting thing is that Glork appears to have a double standard; he went from pretty neutral on RV to OMG DIE on us over Des not using a large sample of games when meta-ing, yet he's pretty much ignored Incognito doing the same with EA. I don't like that. It's possible there's something with the timing since he hasn't posted in a while, but it looks sketchy to me. I don't think it necessarily makes Incog more likely to be scum with Glork, though, I think Glork just wanted to pull a reason to accuse us out of his ass.

That's kind of where I'm at. I suppose I'm questioning myself about Ass a bit more, in retrospect, but I'm sticking with it for now.

Tho. Incog's last couple of posts seem townish to me. I'm probably more inclined to vote dahill now. Would be interested to hear his response about his position on dahill's MD thing, though.

Also: someone not being "PossScum" doesn't mean they can't possibly be scum; in my head, "poss scum" is a corruption of "poss sub" or POSSSUB, a classification used by ships hunting submarines; it basically means "hmm, might be something here". You can read a bit e.g. here if you really care. (For clarity, I wrote the list of possibilties, and Des wrote his comments on them back to me.)

I would probably be voting dahill at this point.. I'm pretty much netural on Incog, so due to what I posted above I'm not hugely against lynching him. I figure Des knows better than I do with respect to him, heh. So I'm okay with both, I guess.

Elmo

[Glork]

I'm still baffled that El Des is on nobody else's list, apparently. Setting aside my pre-existing reasons for suspecting El Des, Elmo's flavor discussion is easily the biggest factor I have pointing to anybody being scum. Arguing that

flavor

takes precedence over

game balance

literally screams "I'm trying to make people believe something that probably isn't true." Add in the fact that there appears to be no rational explanation for the flavor behind the scums' nightkills, and it makes Elmo's "flavor takes precedence" argument look completely arbitrary.


Now, to answer some Glork-related things.

It should be clear why I asked Glork about Incog not commenting on the meaningfulness of my meta of him. That was something that really got to me. Incog decided to focus on my use of meta as opposed to how well I was actually applying it.

I thought his opinion of your meta (including its "meaningfulness," as you put it) was implied and apparent. Furthermore, the validity of your meta had already been throughly exhausted (via our discussion), as I contended that your examples were an inaccurate sampling of my play, and proceeded to provide a number of counterexamples, in spite of your best efforts to pull out minor differences and make them appear significant. The existence itself of a meta can be critical. In CT:San Francisco, MBL was going off on how my metagaming of him was all bullshit, and I used our game history to point out that the mere existence of "Glork is metagaming MBL" led immense credibility to "Glork is protown and is trying to discern MBL's alignment."


@ Tuber: I believe I covered this at some point or another, but I strongly felt that dahill was the easy run-up towards the end of D1, which put him in my "protown" category. At the start of D2, even though Xtoxm wasn't actually scum, I still felt that the Dahill wagon was bullshit, and largely a distraction, because he hadn't been playing any differently from what I had experienced or expected. A big, steamy wagon like the one on Dahill doesn't just go away -- and indeed, Dahill has been a topic of discussion literally all game. So even though my original reasoning of "dahill is a distraction for Xtox or Corio" was incorrect, the reasoning of "scums were railing on Dahill for being Dahill" to keep unwarranted pressure on him was valid as of the start of D2, and is still valid even today.

El Des, I would also like to know why you have talked about Assmaster and Tuber so little -- not only today, but in this game. Why aren't they possible scum? Do you (BOTH Elmo and Des) have a history of ignoring lurkers/inactives as possible scumbags? Do you think that scums would want to reduce associative tells between them in mountainous games?


@ Re:

However, since you clearly have read into those posts I've tried to analyze them. And the only interesting thing is this:

Also, the fact that I only FoSed Yos clearly indicates that I'm not convinced dahill is town.

Also, I'm smarter than the average bear.

I guess one could believe that Glork is trying to distance himself from Dahill1 and after that try to draw attention from everything with a joke post which screams, "Look what a bunch of random funny posts I've made!"

and

What I'm thinking about post 12-20:

I would have expected people to comment on your slip with Erratus and odd non-sequitur defense (the FoSed Yosarian part, not the bear part). I found it uncanny that no one noticed this at all, and instead wagoned Xtoxm to try and kick off the game without it.

There was definitely something odd about how it all went down. Specifically, 1. Glork's comment about only FOSing Yos "clearly indicating" that he wasn't convinced that dahill was town, which is questionable, and 2. EA backing off on the serious and decent FOS (considering the context) and upgrading to a jokey vote.

You guys are stupid. First of all, I answered a bullshit argument with a bullshit argument. So the "non sequitor" about which Ether spoke is explained by the fact that it was Page ONE of the game, and I was engaging in Page 1 meaningless, stupid banter. Nevermind that "Yosarian was joking, and Glork's implication that he was scum for trying to trick someone" is

just as stupid and meanlingess as the posts which ensued

.
Secondly, even if there WERE a slip regarding Dahill, it would not imply that I was his SCUMBUDDY. The "assumption" I made, which EA "called me on" was that Dahill was TOWN. If I were scum and I had actually slipped up there, that would be evidence that dahill is TOWN, not my scumbuddy.

[Glork]

EBWOP: Okay, so El Des posted while I was posting... Meh. At any rate, I still want to know if Ass/Tuber have done anything specific to make you believe that they are protown, or if it's more "they haven't been around to do anything wrong," and I would still like answers to my other questions.

Since Elmo is actually HERE, I demand that he answer my question about the flavor of nightkills.

One real interesting thing is that Glork appears to have a double standard; he went from pretty neutral on RV to OMG DIE on us over Des not using a large sample of games when meta-ing, yet he's pretty much ignored Incognito doing the same with EA. I don't like that. It's possible there's something with the timing since he hasn't posted in a while, but it looks sketchy to me. I don't think it necessarily makes Incog more likely to be scum with Glork, though, I think Glork just wanted to pull a reason to accuse us out of his ass.

Firstly, RV wasn't really around and didn't really do anything. The reason I went from "nothing" to disliking you is because an inactive player who got replaced became a player who tried to push a bogus attack against me.
Furthermore, Destructor's whole "nope, this doesn't fit exactly with my perfect idea of the context/situation" rejection of every counterexample I provided was at least as important as his failure to do his homework, and I believe I made that very clear. I'm not sure there EXISTS a situation exactly like the one in Mars 3 - Weasel Mafia, because every mafia game is so incredibly different. As I had already stated, Des' behavior when I attempted to defend myself made it look like he was just finding excuses to push his point, regardless of what was actually going on.
Thirdly, I would probably put OMGUS as a factor in my reaction, but I would (obviously) assert that it is the protown kind of OMGUS, where I look at a player who I feel should know better and go "there's no way you can be legitimiately making an argument THIS bad against me." You know how egocentric I am as a mafia player, and that would perfectly explain the "double standard" you pose.

[Glork]

One more thing regarding Dahill:

Yeah, sorry. What was your intent in posting what you did in Mafia Discussion?

mainly because everyone else was arguing the opposite point and i wanted to show the other point of view. and i as EA said i just wanted to own animorph, basically. if you look through my games, you'll see that i don't actually follow that practice or even necessarily agree with it.[/quote]I find it very interesting that people are still discussing the "contradiction" from MD without actually acknowledging this. Here, dahill asserts that in past games, he has gone against what he posted in MD, which would reject Pathetric's "contradiction" outright, and confirm Dahill's explanation.

[El Destructo]

Elmo's flavor discussion is easily the biggest factor I have pointing to anybody being scum. Arguing that

flavor

takes precedence over

game balance

literally screams "I'm trying to make people believe something that probably isn't true."

Haha, thanks for being obvscum. I

specifically said

that I was somewhat doubtful of it because it would affect the game balance, hurr? I've never once suggested that flavour should take precedence over balance. My win condition is not "flavour"; trying to work out precisely what "the imperial threat" constitutes is kinda important, don't you think?

I don't get what you mean about the flavour of the nightkills. Someone got stabbed; that's perfectly consistent with roughly what we know. I have no idea what kind of contradiction you think exists.

Elmo

[Glork]

My vote was primarily a reaction to this:

Glork, would you agree that if charter is town, Caesar is in the game? If so, what do you think would happen if we lynched Caesar? Logically, if Charter is town, you're saying lynching Caesar wouldn't end the game - why is the 'imperial threat' not ended with the death of Caesar? This is the part I don't understand. I agree that something feels 'off' about the game possibly ending on day 2,

but I can't find a logical argument against it.

Emphasis mine.

While you acknowledge that you feel that it would mess with game balance, you assert that IN SPITE OF THAT, you can't find a logical argument against "Caesar's death ends the game." Is this not what you meant there?