Pick Your Power - Game. Set. Match.

[Fishythefish]

@mod

have the scum had a chance to communicate? Do they know each other’s powers? Also, could you please put your top-of-page votecounts in your colour? Makes them easier to distinguish from the actual post.

Setup thoughts:
Agreed that framer should claim, if by some miracle they are protown. The framer has no conceivable protown use, unless you count confirming that they are indeed the framer. The driver, I disagree on – there are potentially cool uses of a protown driver (certainly late in the game, and probably before).

Vigs should shoot. I think a sensible protown vig has about the same chance as a lynch of hitting scum.

Most town PRs generally help the town more than the corresponding scum PRs hurt us (exceptions – framer, driver probably, roleblocker probably, empowerer). This means that there should be a bias against lynching/shooting people from the top of the list, who are very likely important PRs. Also, if these people are scum, they are more likely to attract crosskills. This doesn’t mean we trust the top of the list; nor does it mean we don’t try to determine their alignment, but if I find Cobalt very scummy, and Dramonic slightly less scummy, I’m going to be wanting to lynch Dramonic.

Unusually, massclaim is much more powerful early in this game than late (as scum won’t know whether or not their fakeclaim has actually been taken – later there will be a supply of fake claims for “vanillas”). If scum don’t know who has what role in their team, immediate massclaim up the list (obviously including attempted draft for vanillas) is going to make life very sticky for obvious scum roles. I’m not sure whether it’s worth it though, particularly with driver/roleblocker/empowerer to screw with us.

I dislike Devotress's vote though, and will put my money where my mouth is. I've had a theory for a while that the first person to accuse someone of role fishing is scum. This has been built up over a few games of getting accused of fishing or watchign other townies getting accused of fishing, and it almost always is one of those things that scum feel so unapproachably correct in doing that they jump at the chance.

Vote devotress

I agree with this. Rolefishing is bad. But scum don't rolefish by saying "oh, let's have a massclaim of vanillas" - and I don't think anyone really thinks they do. It's such a standard "scummy thing to do", but I think using crude, blatant rolefishing as a scumtell goes seriously against the facts. I don't believe scums thought processes go "I'll suggest a massclaim of vanillas. People will agree with this very antitown idea. I win!".
@Devotress: seacore suggested that, with the agreement of the town, we out all our PRs. Accepting that this is a terrible idea (if they claim draft attempts, it will out concrete PRs and we may as well massclaim; if not, I see no benefit), what do you think seacore expected to happen next?

vote: Devotress

[Fishythefish]

Oh, and I have a short

upcoming V/LA

- next Monday-Wednesday (21st-23rd).

[Fishythefish]

You misunderstand my question. I know what his claimed plan as town was. However, you believe he's scum. As scum, what did he expect to come from his play?

I think that disagreeing with a plan does not, in a townie's mind, automatically lead to thinking the proposer is scum, and that there's no particular reason it would in this case.

[Fishythefish]

I disagree with TM's "slip." I too often pull apart novel concepts like this one, I don't think you need to be in a team to do it. You just need a job with too much spare time

Ding ding ding. We have a winner. There's a piece of paper on my office desk that can attest to this :p

Indeed. For anyone who is wondering, in the unlikely event that we all rolled dice to pick our draft pick, we can expect 11.258 power roles. The last person on the list had an 18.6% chance of being a PR; at 15th, I had a 30.1% chance. The actual chance of all roles being used is 4.4%.

Anyway, on the actual game. I agree that claiming vanilla was unwise for Dramonic, but I'd bet he was town.

BloodCovenant, on the other hand, is scum:

His second post is quibbling other wording rather than explaining lack of vote. He proceeds to attempt to use three people voting in a row as a scumtell - and, worse, to get others to use it as such. For me, this is fairly obviously a nonsense - why would this be indicative of alignment? He goes after Vi for admitting a pressure vote on Seacore, but after a very predictable response ("Seacore looked town"), he says "but you still ping'd my gut" and leaves well alone. That's no good for me - Vi didn't ping his gut, she did something specific and scummy.

unvote, vote: BloodCovenant

[Fishythefish]

Examples from games that I can remember:

Quick and Dirty - Xyl was scum

Newbie 734 - I was scum in that game - Note, I that was my first game, and i didn't know someone else was going vote right after me.

I'm just saying fishy, it's plausible. I can't find any more examples, I know it happened in an ongoing game on my alt, but the game's not finished, so I don't know. I've seen it a few times, and for the most part there is usually scum in those types of successions. I just couldn't find any more examples off the top of my head.

As for asking Xyl, i was trying to see if he remembered Quick and Dirty. And if any other games he had played in, the same thing occurred.

So, in both of these the second player was scum, and the others weren't. So these are just as good examples of "two votes in a row make the second person scum".
And even if they were good examples, these are only two cases, and you only need one of three people to be scum, which isn't exactly hard. This is bad evidence for using this as a scumtell - and, further, I see absolutely no logical reason why it would be one.

Generally, to use something as a scumtell, you want good reasons why scum would do it. Failing that, I suppose a decent number of good examples might do. You have neither, and so I view it as randomly throwing out suspicions onto other players.

[Fishythefish]

Examples from games that I can remember:

Quick and Dirty - Xyl was scum

Newbie 734 - I was scum in that game - Note, I that was my first game, and i didn't know someone else was going vote right after me.

I'm just saying fishy, it's plausible. I can't find any more examples, I know it happened in an ongoing game on my alt, but the game's not finished, so I don't know. I've seen it a few times, and for the most part there is usually scum in those types of successions. I just couldn't find any more examples off the top of my head.

As for asking Xyl, i was trying to see if he remembered Quick and Dirty. And if any other games he had played in, the same thing occurred.

So, in both of these the second player was scum, and the others weren't. So these are just as good examples of "two votes in a row make the second person scum".
And even if they were good examples, these are only two cases, and you only need one of three people to be scum, which isn't exactly hard. This is bad evidence for using this as a scumtell - and, further, I see absolutely no logical reason why it would be one.

Generally, to use something as a scumtell, you want good reasons why scum would do it. Failing that, I suppose a decent number of good examples might do. You have neither, and so I view it as randomly throwing out suspicions onto other players.

[Fishythefish]

Apologies for duplicate post.

[Fishythefish]

@mod:

do the scum currently know each other's power roles/draft picks? Since the mechanics of this game are open, it feels like we should be able to know that.

Horrific. A terrible wagon on the second highest drafted player. Urgh. I am very suspicious of the 4 or so players on the end of it. That wagon was clearly headed towards a claim, and making the top-of-draft players claim is a Bad Thing.

As well as his horrible position on the wagon, Cobalt becomes scummy for not picking the most protown role (@Cobalt: I

don't

want to know why you didn't pick cop).

HoS: Cobalt

If the answer to the question at the top of the post is "no", I think that tips things in the favour of massclaim, from the bottom of the list. The only safe claim for any scum who picked framer is cop, and I'd be surprised if anyone low on the list really did pick cop. We may well get a confirmed fakeclaim or two, and we'll have solid suspicions on anyone low on the list who picked cop, and anyone at all who picked a few other roles which are clearly more useful to scum than town. Other assorted information will come out as well. We likely have enough powerroles that even with everyone outed, scum targeting won't be obvious.

[Fishythefish]

@Cobalt: I "lurked" through that wagon, as you put it, because I see no reason comment on awful cases. Why on earth shouldn't I criticise the wagon? It's early days. As I've previously stated, I think that we should be hesitant about lynching high-draft players (I suppose for this reason, there may be a slight element of "I told you so" about my phrasing).

Noone

commented negatively on this - and yet we have a wagon on the second highest drafted player based on virtually nothing. I'm saying that I find that wagon scummy - how is this an attempt to make myself look more protown?

I agree with elvis about Seacore.

unvote, vote: Seacore

[Fishythefish]

@ Cobalt: Oh please. At the time of my last post before elvis's claim (all of 15 hours ago), elvis was at L-5. Hardly looked like she needed defense - it's not typical for an early wagon based on very little to go to L-1 like that one did. The bit of the wagon I find most scummy (ie when it turned from pressure to a genuine lynch threat) is the bit that came after I last looked at this game.

[Fishythefish]

Why didn't you mention this

first

?

I don't understand. My original post -

Horrific. A terrible wagon on the second highest drafted player. Urgh. I am very suspicious of the 4 or so players on the end of it. That wagon was clearly headed towards a claim, and making the top-of-draft players claim is a Bad Thing.

I said that it was the end of the wagon I'm suspicious of.

[Fishythefish]

Look, I could try and defend it by saying that

several people told me not to consider the draft when voting

, because it's giving those scum with powers a free pass.
I could say that I'd changed my mind after 12 pages of text.

But the fact is that I went "holy crap, that conversation between DGB and Elvis looks scummy, I'm jumping aboard.

Who said what you refer to in the bolded? I missed this.

[Fishythefish]

@Cobalt: I "lurked" through that wagon, as you put it, because I see no reason comment on awful cases.

@ Cobalt: Oh please. At the time of my last post before elvis's claim (all of 15 hours ago), elvis was at L-5. Hardly looked like she needed defense - it's not typical for an early wagon based on very little to go to L-1 like that one did.

Hm, I don't like this. These don't have the same connotation.

The first is the reason I never commented on the case on elvis (which was pretty well fully formed, IIRC, 15 hours ago) because it had no merit that I could see - I thought this was the reason you were criticising my "lurking through the wagon". The second was a response to your accusation that I let elvis get "run up". These are different aspects of my response to the wagon.

[Fishythefish]

I'm afraid I don't have much time at the moment - tomorrow will be better.

If there is enough opposition to lynching a high-draft power role today, I would be fine with stalling a Cobalt wagon today -

but

- I suspect there should be one in the future.

I definitely don't think draft no.1 is one for today. I do think Cobalt is likely scum (and agree that SK is likely - in which case comisserations to Cobalt for being drafted first), but not so certain that he's worth lynching today.

[Fishythefish]

So, lots of people were saying Seacore was town. So I reread him, and they turn out to be right.

unvote, vote: BloodCovenant

[Fishythefish]

I'm not looking forward to catching up with this game after I miss the next few days.

- Fishy, the problem with having a bias against going after high-in-the-draft guys is just what you said: there are a bunch of roles extremely helpful to the Town and not so much for scum, but there are roles which conversely are pretty damn useful to scum and not so much as Town. Also it's pretty obvious what Seacore-scum would have done after his massclaim idea went through had that come to pass: make sure to kill the guys outed as most likely to be useful PRs.

I disagree somewhat. I think that the roles of cop, tracker, watcher, bomb and are all more useful than any scum role.

Maybe we should be directing the vig, and promising to lynch the vig if they don't follow orders (unless we tell them to kill themselves)? I for one am completely petrified of an empowered-double-killing-vig-scum. And fakeclaims are difficult high in the draft (where the vig is likely to be), so very likely our orders would be followed. Most obvious con is mafia doctor or jailkeeper, but I see those as relatively unlikely (unlike mafia vig).

On who is scum: I'm finding the Xyl/DBG interaction very difficult to get a handle on. I've got no clear read on either atm. I like my BC vote, because he is scum. I have no objections to a Budja wagon either.

I don't think wagons with probable scum on them are necessarily bad, remembering that they are also scum hunting (and scum hunting significantly more info than us)

It's true that they're scumhunting. But their info is exclusively about not lynching their own team. So it's going to be monumentally unhelpful for us.

[Fishythefish]

Fair enough.

[Fishythefish]

Access bad. Catch up in a couple of days. Apologies.

[Fishythefish]

So, this isn't a catchup post, and I still intend to do a proper catchup some time.

However, to get my priorities right:

What's actually worth reading in the last 11 pages?
Other than Cobalt-vig, have there been any other claims, hints, claims of interesting role-related information?


Reasons for a night kill not to go through (obviously, Cobalt is vig, and almost as obviously he did what he claimed to do):
1) Bulletproof
2) Doctored
3) Roleblocked
4) Jailkept
5) Driven
Of these, I'd say Driver is scummy (not definitively so, but it is likely to do more harm than good as a townie), bulletproof is marginally scummy, and the others are very nearly alignment neutral. I'd like Devotress to claim whether or not she is a driver.

I believe a lynch on elvis would be insanity itself. If she's town, leave her two days and we have two more answers. If she's scum, very likely any guilties she feeds us are true, so she's very helpful catching the other mafia. If I was 100% certain elvis was scum, it would be a tough decision. As it is, lynching her is crazy.

At the end of the day, if elvis is a caught scum cop, she is still far, far more dangerous to the other mafia than us. They need to kill her off. We don't, at least until dangerous numbers start to loom.

[Fishythefish]

This may have been said, but Cobalt is almost clear of being mafia with that dead empowerer. To not empower your vig would be madness.

[Fishythefish]

fishythefish post 342 seriously FOS!! How could you not comment if you know the case to be awful in the first place?!
fishy post 348: FOS and I would vote for you [k]now for blantly lying. I saw your profile and you posted else where but didn't look here? I mean I know I'm busy but don't use the I wasn't here to stop it as an excuse.

The second point is a complete nonsense. My posts in the relevant time period (my time zone):
10am, I posted here, before the EK wagon got lynch-threatening.
10:47pm, I posted elsewhere
11:29pm, I posted elsewhere still
12:08am (next day), I posted here, and criticised the EK wagon.
These are clearly consistent with reading the games I am involved in one at a time, starting a while before 10:47pm - which is what, in fact, happened. Please expand.

As for 342, I don't think it's generally helpful to comment on active wagons which aren't threatending lynches and which I completely disagree with. Basically, because wagons are interesting, in the people who join them and the reactions of the wagonee.

Why do you think I should comment on awful cases as a matter of course?

[Fishythefish]

Telling people the case is awful after EK claims and saying you saw it as an awful case but didn't comment looks bad.

It means you didn't want to be known what you thought at the time and then try to hid[e] the fact after you see a cop claim.

I see this as someone trying to proclaim innocence on a cop claim after the fact. IE scummy.

I didn't want people to know what I thought at the time, and I don't see any problem with that. I haven't said that I said everything I was thinking about EK - I really don't see how I tried to "hide" what I did.

You don't address your "you posted between those" point - I'd like an explanation for this totally false attack.

[Fishythefish]

Official Vote Count

Players needed to lynch: 10

BloodCovenent

- 2 - Faraday, budja - (L-8)

budja

- 1 - BloodCovenent - (L-9)

devotress

- 5 - SerialClergyman, DeathNote, Farside22, Cobalt, TonyMontana - (L-5)

elvis_knits

- 3 - Xylthixlm, Benmage, Seacore - (L-7)

Faraday

- 1 - drippinggoofball - (L-9)

SerialClergyman

- 1 - devotress - (L-9)

Players not voting: Benmage, chamber, Cruciare, Dramonic, elvis_knits, FishytheFish, Vaya

If I was 100% certain elvis was scum, it would be a tough decision.

elvis is scum,

or

she has completely changed her town playstyle to be nothing like her normal town playstyle but exactly like her scum playstyle. One or the other.

Thanks for this extremely strong statement, it helps clarify your stance. It certainly makes a difference to my view of her (and will do so even more should you ever flip town).
@everyone who knows EK's style: who agrees with what Xyl says here?

[Fishythefish]

Oooo L-1. Doctor is a pretty null pick.

Time for a catch up. Wish me luck – 17 pages to go.

Post 549 from DeathNote really, really tickles my scumdar. It feels like he is constantly distancing from his own opinions by using a lighthearted tone.

Simul hammer fail seems likely to be genuine mistake. It would be a terrible play as scum.

663 from Vi seems a bit odd. She posts the rather nice “top wagoner” statistic, and chamber criticises it as misleading. Vi then says that chamber’s stat isn’t worrying – but that’s not the point, and this assumption that people are thinking primarily about their own scumminess is a bit off for me. (edit: Vi has flipped town. I’ll let her off this time)

Again with using rolefishing as a tell, this time on SC. Can someone point me to some examples in their experience of scum fishing by saying “I think that {insert role here} should claim now”? It doesn’t happen.

Bloodcovenant’s 784 says that Vaya lurking when he’s lurked as scum before is null. Why? I see no reason to suppose activity (and particularly activity in comparison to other games) isn’t correlated with alignment. And odd thing to defend someone about.

I thought that DGB was claiming information that Devotress was not BP. So that he picked BP in the draft. @DGB: what did you mean when you said that Dev was not BP?

DGB’s 858 is an awesome tour de force of scumhunting. I doubt it’s actually right, but it’s produced good results. Faraday’s reply seems to be more picking at words than addressing the case itself: he makes an irrelevant point about the second scumgroup, and attacks old opinions of DGB’s. Neither of these is relevant here. He also claims that other things in Plum’s post did register – this is a non-argument, as the point being made is that they didn’t register originally – you can’t correct a scummy action after you’ve been called on it. Faraday’s response, rather than the initial case, makes me think him scum. If he’d said “that’s a pretty terrible, reaching, overelaborate scumtell”, I’d have some sympathy, but trying to pick at the factual accuracy of DGB’s idea stinks.

Looks at profile during the time. See's post when EK was brought up and 2 other post in other games before coming here. I welcome anyone else to look at your profile during that time period.

Yeah. I gave the timestamps of the posts concerned. Are you seriously saying it’s a scumtell that, when looking at my mafia games, I looked at this one third?

I’ve got surprisingly little to say. Faraday is scum, and BC probably is too. Votes for EK are still wasted votes – assuming she’s scum, her motivation is still to get rid of the other scum team. If she gives us a false guilty, she knows she’s dead. And even if we think the chances of her being town are 5% (which is ludicrously small), that is potentially a 5% where we just win the game.

vote: Faraday

, for what little it’s worth. Looks like devotress is dead; I’ve got no idea what her alignment is.

I need to have a look at the Vaya thing some time.

[Fishythefish]

You see Cobalt, I just live two minutes in the future.

[Fishythefish]

Just because someone replaced out as scum in game 1, doesn't make them scum in game 2 when they do the same thing. It actually means nothing, and is a null if anything.

Sorry, you used "replacing out" - pretty much equivalent here.

[Fishythefish]

the second scum group point was very relevant. i was accused of glossing over townies, but even if someone is scum they don't know someone is town this game.

Not true. What you were really being accused of is having a reaction to one scumpartner bussing another. Knowing the alignments of other other players is irrelevant here.

i was fucking asked what else registered, i wasn't trying to correct anything.

*checks*
This is true, and makes that part of my case irrelevant.

picking @ the factual accuracy was inherently more fun actually, glad i did it.

I think it's scummy, as the case was absolutely fine except in the robustness of the scumtell it was based on.

[Fishythefish]

Yeah. I gave the timestamps of the posts concerned. Are you seriously saying it’s a scumtell that, when looking at my mafia games, I looked at this one third?

This is my thought on what scum would do seeing a cop claim.

Dudes I so thought that push on EK was scummy and I would have said something had i realized things would go this far.
IE: I'm hiding, lurking, don't want to vote, reply or comment on the EK wagon but hey she claimed cop so I'm going to say I thought it was a BS case even though I never said anything before and cover my tracks by saving I wasn't around for the case even though I posted else where during said time.

Let me know if you missed my thought process.

This might make sense, if you had any reason at all to think I'd "lurked" and "hidden" in this time. Then I'd be lying, and lying is bad. But as I've now said about three times, it is thoroughly misleading to translate looking at mafia games sequentially into "posting elsewhere in that time". And yeah, there's a bit of your thought process missing. As scum, why would I want to paint the EK wagon as BS, or to be seen to do so? This is the point that remains when you discard the ludicrous point about post times - that I criticised a wagon in retrospect.

I'll reiterate the relevant timeline:
10am, elvis is at L-6, and I post.
10:47pm, I post in another game (by now, elvis has been up to L-1 and is now on L-2)
11:29pm, I post in another game still
12:08am, I post here, criticising elvis's wagon.
Are you seriously saying this is evidence that I was lurking so as to avoid commenting on EK's wagon?

My claims:
1) I didn't feel the need to comment on a BS case at L-6.
2) I didn't read the thread between L-6 and elvis claiming.
3) Afterwards, I was suspicious of the people who had forced the second drafted player to claim based off a crap case.
Which of these don't you believe?

[Fishythefish]

WHO KEEPS JAILING ME
in other news

vote xyl

N1 you targeted a driver, so there's every possibility you weren't blocked.
Who did you target N2?
If a townie blocker targeted Cobalt; it's clear that Cobalt isn't scum. Don't do it again.

vote: BloodCovenant

[Fishythefish]

The framer is better than vanilla. The framer is dead.

[Fishythefish]

vote: Xyl

[Fishythefish]

unvote, vote: xyl

[Fishythefish]

Those votecounts aren't totally complete. In particular, I'm missing from the first one (and thus, I believe, from your blue scumlist?). I don't know if there are other omissions.

[Fishythefish]

I don't believe Seacore merits a green colour. I see no reason he shouldn't be mafia B.

[Fishythefish]

Oh, and why is Seacore green? AFAIC there's no reason he shouldn't be red.

[Fishythefish]

^^ the above two posts are the same.

[Fishythefish]

BC, that's rubbish. Even if she conceded bad analysis, that doesn't then equal scum, and not having herself on her own wagon analysis is as far from a scumtell as possible. That's a terribad FOS, imo.

This.

[Fishythefish]

I believe that's only L-1, actually.

[Fishythefish]

vote: DGB

If a tracker ccs, we lynch Budja (and any tracker must cc). Otherwise, Budjascum is less dangerous than DGBscum (no roleblock, DGB may have one).

[Fishythefish]

unvote

. Actually, some thoughts occur. I'd like to hear from DGB.

[Fishythefish]

I disagree. I'd like DGB to confirm or deny Budja's report before we go any further.

[Fishythefish]

That's good. If DGB were scum, likely she would have lied and claimed townie blocker/jailer, with that visit. This way, if scum, she is dead by the end of tomorrow at best.

vote: Budja

[Fishythefish]

Oh. Yeah. Still, likely Budja is lying, because of the lateness of his claim.

[Fishythefish]

I really liked this idea, and I'd definitely be in for a similar game. Many thanks to Spyrex for modding, and for the town for being totally awesome.