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

[Plum]

I would vote Mith if the votecount were reset. Instead of responding to my accusations of Plum pairing he asks me why Emp isn't as suspicious. Emp is playing like he does in every game, being largely unhelpful and not really making much sense. Mith, however, has an urge to try to reason and argue with him, which he ALREADY KNOWS is useless to do. I'm not sure if he's trying to prove that he's being objective with him, but if that's the case I find it an uncalled for attempt to look more townish. Sekinj, YES, fabricating percentages is a scummy thing. Plum, I'm curious as to why you want my scum meta so badly. Looking for what to accuse and what not to, eh?

I've got no idea how to read you and in fact do not know if there

is

a way to read you. Obviously I want to be able to get some sort of read on you if possible and thought that looking at your scum meta would indicate things to look out for amid your general . . . Zwets-ish-ness; unfortunately, your scum-meta is about as meager as mine (which is saying something).

Do you believe that Sekinj really intentionally "fabricated" percentages (scummy) as opposed to just happens to be bad at math, as she claims (nulltell)?

[zwetschenwasser]

Yes, I believe she fabricated the percentages.

[sekinj]

[sarcasm]I have scholarly sources to back them up. [/sarcasm] How can I 'fabricate' my own opinion?

[zwetschenwasser]

You want to quickly mislynch.

[sekinj]

That doesn't answer the question, and is a change of tune from what you have been saying. Can you point to anything as evidence of me wanting to quickly mislynch? I'm not even voting anyone currently...

[zwetschenwasser]

Your 50/50 numbers suggest that you're more prone to lynch someone off not-so-sound grounds.

[sekinj]

I'm simply looking at each person's liklihood (or percentage) of being scum Individually. and then between pairs. I started that way since emp asked "out of 100". now, that apparently doesn't match up with other people's idea of what percentages should be, so that is fine, but it does not say anything about how prone I am to lynching someone.

[mith]

zwet, what response did you expect? I admitted that I can see why someone could view Plum's posting as an attempt to deflect things away from the mith/Emp argument, and on that grounds your accusation made sense. There's not much I can do about things other players do that reflect badly on me (other than vote for them when I think they are the most scummy).

I asked you why it didn't apply to Emp because the statement was (at least on the surface) inconsistent with what you had posted previously. You still haven't addressed that, despite my previous requests. Do you think ignoring questions is helpful to the town?

I totally disagree that arguing with him has been useless. (I also like it when people suggest that I "already know" something which I in fact disagree with.) I've been attempting to determine whether he actually thought his "plan" was a good idea for a pro-town player (somewhat successful: I do now think he believes that, whatever his alignment), and the reactions to the argument have likely been more striking than they would have been had I just said it was a dumb plan and dropped it. I'm curious why you are so quick to dismiss Empking's posting as "playing like he does in every game", while not considering that perhaps reasoning and arguing with people is exactly what

I

do every game - if you think arguing with Empking is useless, you should try it with Korlash sometime.

Would you post your suspicion/pairing lists, please? I assume from 124 that I am at the top, but that's about all I feel confident stating right now.

[mith]

(And choose the next player to go; I will assume you are choosing me if you don't explicitly choose someone else.)

[-TinVision-]

Fourth Vote Count of the Day

sekinj (2) -- zwetschenwasser, Plum
Empking (1) -- mith
Plum (1) -- ortolan
mith (1) -- Empking

Not voting (1) - sekinj

With six alive, it is four to lynch.

[ortolan]

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

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

because I would be a dead townie

. It would eliminate absolutely nothing for tomorrow.

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

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

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

Correctamundo.

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

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

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

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

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

.

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

I find it highly unlikely I will be.

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

but your plan does not accomplish your goal.

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

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

50%

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

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

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

This is true.

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

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

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

I believe the usual problems with these lists are

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

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

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

Heya, Ort!

What?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, I believe she fabricated the percentages.

This is getting scummy now.

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

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

[mith]

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

"It is usually considered anti-town to post lists such as these." - By who? I'd be happy to find a few games where I have suggested this to show that there is no scum motivation on my part (Treestump and Minvitational 9 are recent examples, off the top of my head), and I tend to post such lists frequently in all my games, unprompted.

I'm surprised that anyone would be against people posting suspicion lists. Any information we can generate is good for the town and bad for the scum.

"I don't know why you keep saying this. It's 100% WIFOM and won't become anything else the more times you say it." - See above. I'm saying it because it's true, but my alignment isn't relevant to the argument.

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

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

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

You're already giving a perfect example of the first type of information yourself: "None of the justifications Plum has given for placing me prominently in her standings make sense".

Worst case, either nothing useful is generated, or it is decided that there are too many possible explanations and the lists should largely be ignored - in which case, we have lost nothing by going through the exercise.

"This is a huge about-face." - I wouldn't say huge, but ok. Earlier, I said I didn't believe he thought it was a good plan, because he had "dodged and weaved" around the point. After about a page of back and forth, I do now believe he thinks his reasoning for the plan is valid (even though it's apparent to the rest of us that it's not).

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

---

FWIW, I agree with ortolan's (and, if I'm reading correctly, Plum's) belief that sekinj's percentage thing is a nulltell, but I don't agree that zwet's pressuring is necessarily scummy. I've been in similar arguments before (Treestump again comes to mind, with Korlash), going after a player for posting "percentages" that didn't make sense.

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

[mith]

First paragraph, that should read "game would be

over

".

[Empking]

In night games suspicion lists help the scum make a more informed kill descision.

[mith]

Right; that's why in night games I tend to just post/ask for top two or three suspects, unless we're at lynch-or-lose.

(Even so, given how radically suspicions can change over the course of a game, telling the scum who you are least suspicious of day 1 doesn't help them very much. The benefits gained from getting a clearer picture of what the group consensus actually is - easier for the scum to manipulate through normal voting - and looking for possible linkages outweighs that. The scum can probably guess easily enough anyway who isn't under fire at that point, and are generally more concerned with power role hunting in games with power roles.)

[zwetschenwasser]

I would like a sekinj lynch after mith's. I don't see how he made an about-face as ort pointed out, though.

[mith]

zwet, if you do not answer the questions I asked you previous in the next post, I will be moving my vote to you.

Is that all you are going to post regarding pairings/suspicions?

[mith]

*Previously.

[zwetschenwasser]

zwet, what response did you expect?
Plum shouldn't have done that. I'm not sure what I expected, however, but her response stuck at me like a sore thumb.

I asked you why it didn't apply to Emp because the statement was (at least on the surface) inconsistent with what you had posted previously. You still haven't addressed that, despite my previous requests.
Empking is useless and it is useless to discuss things with him.

Do you think ignoring questions is helpful to the town?
When I'm confused by the question, I'd rather ignore the question than give scum a free pass to point out silly mistakes

Would you post your suspicion/pairing lists, please?
Done.

[mith]

Thank you. May have some more questions after I read through the thread again.

Here's my lists. Will add some reasoning later (about to AFK).

Pairings (Most to Least likely):

Emp/sek
Emp/zwet
Plum/sek
Plum/zwet
Emp/orto
orto/sek
orto/Plum
orto/zwet
Emp/Plum
sek/zwet

Suspicion (Most to Least suspect):

Empking
sekinj
Plum
zwet
ortolan

Empking next, then ortolan to finish it off.

[ortolan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How so?

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

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

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

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

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

[mith]

"I actually can see circumstances where it would be useful, and it's also possible of course that you hammer a scum and thus win." - Do tell. And of course it's possible you hammer scum with a plan like this, but:

a. That's irrelevant to the generation of information, and
b. Is less likely to happen if you are hammering someone arbitrarily than it is if you are hammering someone out of genuine suspicion.

I believe you already agreed with this (when you quoted post 99), so why are you arguing with me about it now?

"Why is the fact you don't get lynched often a good reason for not suspecting you and indeed not lynching you should you act sufficiently scummy?" - Where did I say anything like that? Empking asked me why I was so sure I would be lynched, I replied that I wasn't, and that I found it unlikely I would be lynched. I find it unlikely I will be lynched because I don't get lynched often as town, and I know I am town. I never said or implied that this was a good reason for people not to suspect me. This is mildly strawmanish on your part.

"How so?" - The less possible pairings involving a particular player, the less likely they will get lynched (all else being equal) - this is true for town or scum. (Obviously, the ideal goal for the scum is that the rest of the players will eliminate the

actual

pairing.)

"I am yet to see this detail. And your list is just an ordinal one with no added information." - I ran out of time, sorry (an elderly cousin of mine had a triple bypass Tuesday, after having heart problems the day of my sister's wedding - went to visit him last night).

---

Reasons I currently suspect Empking:

1. As stated above, eliminating pairings is just as beneficial to scum as town. I actually find it slightly more likely that Empscum would carry out his "plan" than Emptown; the way he did it makes it seem he is more concerned with making himself look town than with actually helping the town.

2. His vote on me felt very OMGUSish (I suppose mine may have looked that way too, but I am quite certain I would have reacted similarly if his plan had been directed someone else's way, so I'll hold back on giving myself an FOS for it). When questioned about it, his reasons were either quickly debunked or based on a hastily thrown together six year old meta which wasn't even that far off how I'm posting now. (For that matter, his claim initially was that he had done a brief meta on my "recent" games. The search defaults to most-recent-first, as do the topic lists, and he would have had to go out of his way to dig up a game from 2003; that's not something he could have done by accident.)

3. The reactions of other players. Given the perception of him being an "easy target", I would have expected more explicit pressure on him sooner if he were scum. zwet has advocated ignoring him completely, while sekinj's posted suspicions don't seem to match what he has posted so far (would anyone else have guessed from his posts that he would have Empking and I indistinguishable at this point?).

4. It's the way the pairings break for me right now; Empking's possible pairings are more likely than anyone else's. (I'll get into the reasoning behind my ordering after Empking/ortolan have posted their lists.)

5. A dash of gut, a touch of vibe, and a sprinkle of filé powder.

[sekinj]

<---female

[sekinj]

Mith - as I explained, emp is just always like this, imo. Just because I can argue with him does mean that I think he is scum. I've seen him lynched as town too many times to suspect him for this. I will see how he continues to play before I am suspicious of him.

[mith]

Sorry, sorry. I was doing so well keeping genders correct, too.

Anyway:

a. I just find it hard to believe that you have us exactly the same, after 6 pages of discussion.

b. My point is that I would think that scum would be less likely to take a stance like that if Emp were town. That isn't to say I believe it's completely impossible that Emp is town, just that I think the slate of reactions so far has me leaning toward him being scum.