Mini 886 - Popcorn Mafia - Game over!

[Xylthixlm]

Foolproof plan for winning:

Shoot ortolan, Sarag, and Bogre in any order. All 3 of them come up scum, so Vala keeps the gun. Shoot rewq, and if he's not scum, he shoots HowardRoark (or vice versa). Town wins.

[Xylthixlm]

If we hurry we can rap this game up in time to qualify for this years scummies

BTW, I see nothing in the rules preventing consecutive shots:

shoot: bogre
shoot: Sarag
shoot: ortolan

[ortolan]

you must be a mindreader Xyl, I was literally gonna make a comment like that yesterday...but with my scumlist.

Please by all means shoot me though, the majority of the town seem to favour it and I would relish the opportunity to get 4 perfect vig shots.

[Slicey]

Well.. regardless of what Yos decides, the top 4 consensus scummy people are Bogre, rewq455, ortolan, and Sarag (in that order).

If I take those four's votes out of the count, not only does the top 4 stay the same but it also removes

almost every single vote on any player not in that group

. The only exceptions are HowardRoark's votes on Slicey and Zakeri.

Curious fact: nobody put HowardRoark in their top 3.

Howard is my number 4 pick as scum. Based mostly on gut and PoE.

So far, Rew isn't giving me the bad vibe Drake was. He hasn't really said anything that hasn't already been said, though

Basically this. >_> I'm perfectly fine with either shooting him or Sarag today.

[Slicey]

Also, I love my new avatar. ^_^

[HackerHuck]

If we hurry we can rap this game up in time to qualify for this years scummies

BTW, I see nothing in the rules preventing consecutive shots:

shoot: bogre
shoot: Sarag
shoot: ortolan

I do hope you're not serious.

While I do think that will rid of us 75% of the scum, I think we're still better served by getting at least some reaction to the individual deaths.

It would also be beneficial to us to get a little more feedback from Vala before she pulls the trigger. While I feel pretty good about the likely targets, I'd like to know what her other suspects are in the event we're wrong.

[HowardRoark]

I'm all for shooting lurkers, especially scummy lurkers.

Why is the lurking of Zakeri and Slicey not scummy?

If I take those four's votes out of the count, not only does the top 4 stay the same but it also removes

almost every single vote on any player not in that group

. The only exceptions are HowardRoark's votes on Slicey and Zakeri.

You're current list was posted 27 NOV. Everyone else started dropping their lists on 09 DEC. Your list and continued strong play allowed over a week for that to settle in to people's minds. Couple that with the poor play of our leading candidates, how much variation did you really expect?


@Slicey: What's PoE?


QFT HackerHuck's 355 (except the 75% part).

[Slicey]

Process of elimination. I feel everyone else other than rewq, Sarag and Bogre is more likely to be town than you.

[rewq455]

If I had to pick another though, it would be xylthixlm, just due to how aggressive he is being

So, you think townies should be non-aggressive?

No, I made that vote off of what I saw as over agression. From what I have seen in games, that is either a good scum hunter, or a scum member.

[Vala Mal Doran]

I really wanted to post my closing thoughts of the day and shoot tonight, but I had some friends drop in from out of town unexpectedly and as a result never got around to it. Apologies for that.

I'm cutting it close, but seeing as how I still have to sleep and work right after that, expect that post approximately 17 hours from now. >_<

[Sarag]

My scumlist is now: HackerHuck, DraketheFake, Bogre, in that order.

DragonsofSummer beats out Yosarian2 for fourth place since he is obviously acitvely lurking. See below for explanations and other general catch-up. I hope this isn't too little too late. Sorry I really haven't had the time to play as well as I'd like. Some of this probably won't get answered until day 2, but I wanted to get it in before the day ends in case I'm shot.

---

I’m not seeing the general scumvibe on DraketheSnake that everyone else is. It seems more to me that he doesn’t have a proper understanding of the mechanics. Are you all really arguing that he’s scum trying to convince townies that they should try to get the gun pointed on themselves? Yes, I understand that’s what the scum are thinking, but verbalising is a sign of scum who can’t maintain an inner dialogue.

Your final sentence here seems to

support

the case that he's scum trying to convince townies that they should try to get shot. What am I missing?

---

oh wait...I was confused...HackerHuck replaced rite?

Who did you think he'd replaced?

---

I was going with the just name names and see reactions process. Here's a quick reply . . .

Zakeri: Lurktastic.

Borge: Scummy.

Slicey/DraketheFake: Gut.

The reasons given for Bogre and Slicey and DraketheFake are not real reasons at all. And why group Slicey and Drake together both as your "third" option AND when giving reasons? Perhaps you just tacked them on as an afterthought and couldn't be bothered to make up a different reason for each of them.

---

Bogre thinks he knows the definition of anti-town. You forget that anti-town also means self preservation instead of trying to win. You're anti-town because you are too worried about staying alive instead of trying to help your team.

When was Bogre too worried about staying alive? He accused rite of doing this, he didn't do it himself.

And I don't really even see Drake's case against you, so the fact that you're worried about it is surprising, and even pretty scummy. Also worried about OMGUS, which town really shouldn't be.

Drake's case against me is in post 88 where he criticised something I had said or done no fewer than 4 times. This was all in the context of a full game analysis, so each criticism was independent and interspersed with other observations. And yet he never bothered to state plainly that he thought I might be scum, and didn't try to push a case against me. If it were me that found 4 independent things scummy about one player I would be pushing hard. That is why I find his case scummy - because he buried it, as if he's worried about pushing a case against a townie.

The reason I was worried about OMGUS is because it's hard to objectively assess an accusation of yourself. I wasn't sure I trusted my own judgement on this particular case, because his accusations seemed so obviously poor to me, and yet it was apparently not obvious to him.

His posts since then have been worse. His 166 where he says townies should try to get shot is terrible. He parrots Bogre's argument about townies not being afraid of the gun then says Bogre is scummy for saying Vala shouldn't shoot him because he's town. It makes no sense and it just looks like he's skimming.

I'm reading neutral on rewq - he's better than Drake, but nothing says town, so he stays on my scumlist.

Sarag, why do you want to focus on other players when we have a very likely scum (and even you kinda think so) in Bogre. Trying to shift the focus on someone else?

That was quite early in the game. I pressured Bogre for acting anti-town, and we got a bunch of posts from him that told us a fair bit about his playstyle. Pressuring him further seemed likely to just yield more of the same. I didn't see it as a strong scum-tell then, since it could be interpreted as poor play as easily as scum. It can sometimes be more informative to see how people play once the pressure is off and I didn't think I was going to reach a decision by pressuring him further at that time. What's more, the whole Bogre discussion was all that was being talked about, pretty much. It ran the risk of being a big distraction and there was plenty of time for more scumhunting.

So how has Bogre been since the pressure was off? 185 is just more of his same stance about townies not being afraid of getting shot. Repeating himself and conjuring excuses to keep pushing Rite.

Then a few more weak accusations of people without much content. Then his best moment in 284 & 286 catching HackerHuck out for saying he's worried Bogre will shoot Xyl. And that's basically it. The only worthwhile thing out of Bogre was just because he was tunnelling hard on HackerHuck (rite) anyway.

Bogre stays on the scum list.

---

tl;dr version: It's impossible to tell a person's meta from a single game because it's impossible to know what changes based on alignment.

This is true, but it IS possible to find a counterexample to a case using a single game, which is what ortolan was trying to do. So if someone says "Bogre is scummy because of behaviour x" and then ortolan says "but Bogre displayed behaviour x as town in the past" it is a legitimate comment.

--

That's..actually kind of a scummy reason, HH. "I don't want X to get shot today because he'll become gunbarer and then shoot me" is exactly what scum would likely be thinking in that situation.

You're calling him scummy for not wanting to get shot. Haven't we already established that no one wants to get shot?

You mentioned me at least once:

Possible scumteam of rite and Xyl?

I think yes

HackerHuck bringing it up is curious, though.

because Hacker is trying to implicate a townie along with himself

Now this is a case I can get behind. I cannot think of a reason for town-Hacker to mention Xylthixlm in this context. He goes to the top of the scum list.

---

I've been very active, and quite agressivly scumhunting the entire game. I haven't been "reactive" at all, other people have been forced to react to my attacks. Including you.

So what the heck are you talking about?

You've been better lately. I was referring to your comments on Bogre early in the game. You came in with a weak stance on an ongoing discussion. I didn't see you generate much for quite some time after that.

---

- Sarag, are you saying that you agree with both Zakeri and ort in their argument? I have no idea what you're trying to say about the two of them. Whose side are you on? Also, you really didn't make any firm opinions on anyway. You think rite is town and you think Drake is scum, but you don't sound very sure.

I said I'd be comfortable with shooting Drake, how much surer do I need to be?

I was saying I agreed with some parts of each of Zakeri and ort's arguments. I was commenting on the content, rather than the authors. I agreed with ortolan that the nature of his attacks (speculating about motivation) is not scummy, but I also agreed with Zakeri that the particular attacks were poor. So I didn't think ortolan had a case on DoS, and I didn't think Zakeri had a case on ortolan.

Basically the same thing applies to ortolan and rite. Eliminating cases is not exciting, nor does it give you an answer, but it gets you closer to one, and it isn't waffle.

---

- Ort: Okay. I agree he's town too, although he's more accurate than you are IMHO.

This is referring to page 11. Who are you talking about? Ortolan talked about both Bogre and Drake being town on page 11 but they're both on your scum list.

Page 5

On the contrary, I'm a little concerned that there is too much focus on Bogre, despite my hand in it. I think it's a real risk that lurker scum could be kicking back, enjoying the show at this point. Bogre has had this much bad attention because he wasn't very good at defending himself. I'm clearly not reluctant to defend myself from attacks that have actual substance - see the majority of my last post.

But how do you tell the difference between a town player that can't defend, and a scum player that can't defend?

That's exactly the point I was making - you can't.

---

If I take those four's votes out of the count, not only does the top 4 stay the same but it also removes

almost every single vote on any player not in that group

.

I've also noticed we are an oddly cohesive group. I don't know what to make of it. Shooting the wrong person will no doubt shake things up a lot.

[Sarag]

But how do you tell the difference between a town player that can't defend, and a scum player that can't defend?

That's exactly the point I was making - you can't.

Actually that wasn't the point I was trying to make. But you can't, and I wasn't claiming you can.

[Yosarian2]

That's..actually kind of a scummy reason, HH. "I don't want X to get shot today because he'll become gunbarer and then shoot me" is exactly what scum would likely be thinking in that situation.

You're calling him scummy for not wanting to get shot. Haven't we already established that no one wants to get shot?

No. If a townie suspect someone, they're obviously going to be less worried about "what happens when that person becomes gunbearer", because they don't really expect that person to become a gunbearer, they expect them to get shot and die. On the other hand, a scum knows the guy he's picking a fight with is town, so I would expect him to be much more paranoid about picking a fight with him and then getting him shot, knowing that person will become gunbearer.

Also, yes no one wants to get shot, but any time anyone in any mafia game is more worried about personal survival then about finding and lynching scum, it's a huge scum tell, because scum mostly care about surviving while town mostly care about finding scum; not being suspected/lynched/shot is important, but it should always be a lower priority for town then for scum.

I've been very active, and quite agressivly scumhunting the entire game. I haven't been "reactive" at all, other people have been forced to react to my attacks. Including you.

So what the heck are you talking about?

You've been better lately. I was referring to your comments on Bogre early in the game. You came in with a weak stance on an ongoing discussion. I didn't see you generate much for quite some time after that.

I wouldn't at all say it was a weak stance. I was unsure about Bogre's alignment at the time, as I made clear, and so my reactions was to immediately take steps to get reactions and get answers from Bogre in order to try to find out his alignment. Trying to figure out someone's alignment as a means of scumhunting is not a scum tell, Sarag, and neither is being unsure about someone's alignment during the early part of day 1, especally when I am unsure, so I spend time gathering more information, and then take a stance once I have information.

Now you, on the other hand, seemed to be trying to have it both ways in regards to ortolean and rite, in a way that seemed scummy to me, because you didn't really seem to be trying to scumhunt; you seemed to be trying to go down on record saying something, perhaps so you could use it later. Your wishy-washy behavior there also fits my whole "scum would be paranoid about picking a fight with a town they know may soon become gunbearer" scumtell for this setup.

Page 5

On the contrary, I'm a little concerned that there is too much focus on Bogre, despite my hand in it. I think it's a real risk that lurker scum could be kicking back, enjoying the show at this point. Bogre has had this much bad attention because he wasn't very good at defending himself. I'm clearly not reluctant to defend myself from attacks that have actual substance - see the majority of my last post.

But how do you tell the difference between a town player that can't defend, and a scum player that can't defend?

That's exactly the point I was making - you can't.

And that kind of wishy-washy defense you're making for Bogre here might either be an attempt to disarm a wagon against your buddy while maintaining deniability, or, if Bogre is town, an attempt to make nice with him before he becomes gunbearer.

[Xylthixlm]

Why is the lurking of Zakeri and Slicey not scummy?

Did you realize that both of them have made at least as many posts as you have? And Slicey's play strikes me as fairly town.

[Xylthixlm]

Just under 24h to deadline left.

[HowardRoark]

The reasons given for Bogre and Slicey and DraketheFake are not real reasons at all. And why group Slicey and Drake together both as your "third" option AND when giving reasons?

Can't help it; just gut there. I have a hard time seeing more than one or two possible scum until someone flips and I have more to work with. (Either that or everyone looks like scum which sucks worse.) Notice any other players out there with a "gut" third or fourth choice?

Did you realize that both of them have made at least as many posts as you have?

Yes. (Well, not now.) I also replaced into the game on page 9.

[rewq455]

Foolproof plan for winning:

Shoot ortolan, Sarag, and Bogre in any order. All 3 of them come up scum, so Vala keeps the gun. Shoot rewq, and if he's not scum, he shoots HowardRoark (or vice versa). Town wins.

That is the kind of agression I found a little scummy. This could potentially kill 4 townies. I will definitely kill one.

[Xylthixlm]

Did you realize that both of them have made at least as many posts as you have?

Yes. (Well, not now.) I also replaced into the game on page 9.

True. If you add Vaya's posts to yours, you actually have more posts than Zakeri. But you still have fewer than Slicey.

[Xylthixlm]

Foolproof plan for winning:

Shoot ortolan, Sarag, and Bogre in any order. All 3 of them come up scum, so Vala keeps the gun. Shoot rewq, and if he's not scum, he shoots HowardRoark (or vice versa). Town wins.

That is the kind of agression I found a little scummy. This could potentially kill 4 townies. I will definitely kill one.

It can't possibly kill more than one townie.

[rewq455]

Foolproof plan for winning:

Shoot ortolan, Sarag, and Bogre in any order. All 3 of them come up scum, so Vala keeps the gun. Shoot rewq, and if he's not scum, he shoots HowardRoark (or vice versa). Town wins.

That is the kind of agression I found a little scummy. This could potentially kill 4 townies. I will definitely kill one.

[Xylthixlm]

Is there an echo in here?

[rewq455]

Sorry, IDK why it posted more than once.
*I know that Bogre is going to try to use this against me, so I will say it now.

This could potentially kill 4 townies. I will definitely kill one.

Should be: This could potentially kill 4 townies. It will definitely kill one.

Foolproof plan for winning:

Shoot ortolan, Sarag, and Bogre in any order. All 3 of them come up scum, so Vala keeps the gun. Shoot rewq, and if he's not scum, he shoots HowardRoark (or vice versa). Town wins.

That is the kind of agression I found a little scummy. This could potentially kill 4 townies. I will definitely kill one.

It can't possibly kill more than one townie.

What if one or more of the others are town, and then after shot, the gunman dies. Then, if I am shot by a person following this plan, they die .

[rewq455]

BTW, did anyone ever replace Vaya?

[Bogre]

HowardRoark did.

[Xylthixlm]

Foolproof plan for winning:

Shoot ortolan, Sarag, and Bogre in any order. All 3 of them come up scum, so Vala keeps the gun. Shoot rewq, and if he's not scum, he shoots HowardRoark (or vice versa). Town wins.

That is the kind of agression I found a little scummy. This could potentially kill 4 townies. I will definitely kill one.

It can't possibly kill more than one townie.

What if one or more of the others are town, and then after shot, the gunman dies. Then, if I am shot by a person following this plan, they die .

But part of the plan is that the first three are all scum, so obviously if one of them somehow turned out to be town, they couldn't follow the plan and would have to stop.