Mini #893 - Dollhouse Mafia (Game Over!)

[SerialClergyman]

Has anybody gotten back to me with why they think 'buddying' with someone you view to be town is problematic? I'm still awaiting any form of answer..

Short Form: It's scummy.

Slightly Longer Form: There's no advantage to doing it as town, while there is an advantage to doing it as scum.

Long Form: We aren't here to teach you to play mafia, if your so curious at to why people dislike blatant buddying D1 I'd direct you to MD Forum or the Wiki.

You might want to check your sample size there. I know many, many excellent players who have no problem with this at all. I'm not going to get into a bigger dick contest with you about who knows more about mafia, what I'd like is a more concrete analysis on why you find it scummy.

It has a lot of benefits to town - it gives you an ally, someone who you can bounce ideas off of and start to form a picture of the game. It also means you aren't throwing shit on a townie that the scum can capitalise on. Whereas as scum, all you're doing is obviously linking yourself to someone and making the tie between the two of you very clear.

I've played entire games where my sole purpose was to find scum by process of elimination, finding town tells and lynching other people. All you need to do is have 1 more confirmed town than scum and you'll win the game.

[SerialClergyman]

As you may have figured out, I am entertaining the idea that DN, VMD and Lew are all scum together. And you are currently proposing the idea that Lew is scum as well. So why then do you make an argument that's based on a scenario where he is town?

See bolded.

Also - this:

Note also that in this post, she wants to allow for Starbuck to "become guilty by association" to DN and lewarcher. And she also re-states that she wants to keep around DN not because she doesn't find him scummy, but because she finds someone else more scummy. This is the kind of stuff that makes me very suspicious

(note also that her behavior towards lewarcher at this stage made me lean towards town on him, this is for future reference once I analyze xRECKONERx)

.

Doesn't make sense....[blah blah]

[TheButtonmen]

You might want to check your sample size there. I know many, many excellent players who have no problem with this at all.

Links or it didn't happen.

[CrashTextDummie]

I actually think it's quite spurious you'd even suggest that me being on the wagons or even 'approving of my lynch' D2 is in any way the same. I clearly did a LOT of the leg work for those wagons, and I was following my gut. Messaiah did bugger all leg work, bugger all scum hunting and followed the reasoning of someone who he voted in D1, D2 and D3. The first quote is where he votes me for my theory about Starbuck D1, the quotes on D2 are where he hammers Starbuck for that same reasoning

I am not suggesting that it's the same. I'm suggesting that you basing a case entirely on voting records, while at the same time suggesting that me doing the same would be hypoctritical, is more than a little hypocritical in itself.

I don't think my predecessors behavior is above scrutiny, but a) I'm not going to take it into account when looking for scum because I know my own role PM and b) I find your way of scrutinizing it ("he voted similarly to another guy I suspect") severely lacking.

So yes, him and Reck are almost identical in their voting actions as well as in their reasoning for their voting actions. They both have been suspicious of me all game and yet both used my reasoning to lynch Starbuck, even after both voting me at the start of D2. They also both move their votes and roughly the same time, they take up rtoughly the same spot on the wagon, which means they feel compelled to have this change of heart and roughly the same time (like when the D2 SC wagon runs out of steam?)

So your theory is that the scum are using their capacity to daytalk, which keeps you from being able to get a proper read, to facilitate obvious tandem moves onto bad wagons? Is that about the gist of it?

[CrashTextDummie]

Note also that in this post, she wants to allow for Starbuck to "become guilty by association" to DN and lewarcher. And she also re-states that she wants to keep around DN not because she doesn't find him scummy, but because she finds someone else more scummy. This is the kind of stuff that makes me very suspicious (note also that her behavior towards lewarcher

at this stage

made me lean towards town on him, this is for future reference once I analyze xRECKONERx).

My opinions tend to change as I delve deeper into an analysis. There are arguments for and against pairings between the 3 people I have so far analysed, and I am still in the process of weighting them.

Besides, the particular thing in this quote that made me doubt a VMD/Lew pairing is the fact that she wanted to lynch Lew over DN. I hadn't even considered the angle we're currently discussing.

[SerialClergyman]

Voting analysis is a tool, and only part of the story. But even then - being at the ends of wagons is different to being at the front of them. The thrust of my case against you is the same as my case against Reck - defending Starbuck then voting starbuck, all the while saying SC is scum, then not then scum then not.

(I understand when I say 'you' i often mean 'your slot'.)

Even with the emphasis on 'at this stage', I don't know how you could EVER come to think that lew is likely to be town in that scenario after knowing SB's alignemnt is town.

Button - I have to run right now but for startes look at Xyl, kmd and Spyrex in this game: http://www.mafiascum.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11656

They almost won they game based purely on backing their town reads, it's incredibly frustrating to face as scum.

[farside22]

@ Serial,

Yes I'd vig you but there's a lot more power roles then vig.

@ Farside

; How do you feel this being nightless is affecting your ability to scumhunt and who do you feel the least sure on at the moment (As in can't decide if they are town or scum)?

I do not support vigging. I don't understand why you would not investigate SC but you would shot him.

As for my question I feel uncertain about plum and SC the most. I feel that if reck would flip scum some of the interaction between EK and VMD would match my set as the top 3.
I don't really think about this being a nightless game. The fact the scum can day talk I can see mess with you a bit but the last time I was scum with day talk it really wasn't used that much. I think it depends on the players.

[CrashTextDummie]

Even with the emphasis on 'at this stage', I don't know how you could EVER come to think that lew is likely to be town in that scenario after knowing SB's alignemnt is town.

Your original argument was "why would VMD try to stop me from tying SB to DN if she was scum with DN"?

Answer: She didn't. She specifically allowed for SB to become guilty by association to DN.

You then argued "why would she try to tie SB to Lew (if he's a townie)?"

Answer: because it doesn't cost her anything. If Lew comes up town, the ties that were established between Starbuck and DN don't go away.

The fact remains that she tried pushing a lynch on Lew (unknown alignment) over DN (known scum) based on weak reasoning and a weak defense for DN.

We've already established why she would try to tie Starbuck to Lew if Lew is scum.

The only question remaining is why would she push Lew if she was scum with him. The answer is distancing.

I don't know if VMD and Lew are scum together. All the above scenarios work for me, some better than others. The simple matter of fact is that VMD tried to push a weak wagon to stop the DN wagon, and that is scummy. And that is what I see as the main purpose of her post, not the tying together of people.

Your whole argument here is laced with hypotheticals which are quite frankly beside the point. I'm taking things one at a time, meaning I concentrate on VMD's scummy action and not the implication thereof.

Answer this, please:

So your theory is that the scum are using their capacity to daytalk, which keeps you from being able to get a proper read, to facilitate obvious tandem moves onto bad wagons? Is that about the gist of it?

[Limerickx]

Checking in! New years at the bar, what dedication!

I wanted to ask, it appears that we've leant away from imprinting two-no lynch to either lynch one-no lynch or lynch plus one imprint. Id like to stick with two imprint at the least and here is why.

Before imprinting buttonmen
, I think its safe to say we were in favor of two imprint. If we imagine we were wrong about button (not that I think it is the case, I voted to imprint him after all) then it would be in the mafias best imprint to cut the imprinting there. Id rather safeguard against this. If people want to couple this with a lynch, well, whatever.

Am I really off base with this? Being too paranoid?

[SerialClergyman]

Lacing my arguments with hypotheticals is what clergymen do best. I need to sig some of this stuff.

More seriously, VMD specifically stated that lew's flip was a GREATER INDICATION of Starbuck's scumminess than DeathNote's flip.

I remember this specifically because I thought she was scummy for suggesting it, especially when DN flipped scum. I thought SB was scum with VMD and lew was town that VMD was trying to tie to Starbuck's alignment more so than DN.

Now - that's untrue, SB wasn't scum. So if VMD was scum, she was trying to say that lew was more indicative of starbuck's alignment than deathnote was. There is no way to spin this to suggest that if you think vmd is scum it makes it more likely lew is town. It means you're suggesting that a scum player was trying to suggest that a town player's flip should clear a town player more so than a scum player's flip. Zero motivation.

Now - I grant you that all of them scum is a possibility but a) I don't think it's likely and b) that's not what you originally wrote - I don't know how you ever came to the lew=town conclusion from that piece of play.

So your theory is that the scum are using their capacity to daytalk, which keeps you from being able to get a proper read, to facilitate obvious tandem moves onto bad wagons? Is that about the gist of it?

They aren't as intimately related in my mind. Scum's ability to daytalk could be an indication that yours and reck's moves from me to DN to me to starbuck to me were planned moves as you reacted to the viability of the wagons or a need to bus dn or whatever, or you could argue the ability to coordinate makes this unlikely to happen. That's one of the few wifom sandwichs I'm not too keen to touch.

I'm keenly aware of the scum's ability to day talk and it makes my style of scumhunting harder. My current theory of the game is looking for people with disingenuous motives for their actions. your predecessor and reck have spent much of this game moving from my wagon to the lynch wagons and back again. They seem to do it at similar times, often against their originally stated views.

Would you admit your voting record/suspicion record looks much the same as Reck's, the record you brought up as a point against him in your case?

Would you be prepared to vote for reck after a no lynch?

[SerialClergyman]

Limerick, I don't like your reasoning but I'm reluctatnt to jump on you because it's NYE and maybe a little boisterous. Come explain it a bit further when you're sober

[SerialClergyman]

The only question remaining is why would she push Lew if she was scum with him. The answer is distancing.

This irks me. It's the popular tactic of saying 'if you defend them you're defending a buddy, if you attack them you're distancing a buddy'. You need a theory to explain the relationship or else any time anyone has a relationship with someone else you can claim it's scummy, no matter what the content of the relationship.

Still - this event seems to further point towards a reck lynch. If you know reck's alignment, you'll have more info about VMD's push of reck = starbuck. Plus he's in your top three. Looks like a good lynch to me (after a no lynch).

[CrashTextDummie]

Dear SerialClergyman,

I'm off to a family thing, so I'll keep this brief. I'm getting tired of your arguments being based on "why would I"s and "why would she"s. So from now on, whenever you make such an argument, you can assume the answer to be either "I DON'T KNOW (and I don't care)" or "BECAUSE YOU'RE SCUM".

Example:
Q: "Why would I work so hard to clear a townie as scum? I need to get town lynched!"
A: I DON'T KNOW (and I don't care).
Q: "Why would I push so hard to get a townie lynched? It makes me look suspicious!"
A: BECAUSE YOU'RE SCUM.

Modify as applicable (i.e. "BECAUSE SHE'S SCUM").

I will make concessions if an argument manages to make me reconsider. Otherwise, that's the deal from now on. And before you ask, no it's not because I don't have a better answer (there are easy ones for the two example questions above), it's because I find this kind of arguing beside the point and potentionally harmful.

Now - I grant you that all of them scum is a possibility but a) I don't think it's likely and b) that's not what you originally wrote - I don't know how you ever came to the lew=town conclusion from that piece of play.

I'll say this once again, as clearly as I can:
DN was scum. VMD tried to push another wagon ahead of him based on crap reasoning. That makes me suspicious of VMD, irregardless of anything else.

It bothers me a great deal that you haven't discussed this aspect in the slightest. You're trying to dismantle my argument against her with convoluted hypotheticals about wanting or not wanting to make ties between players. Why haven't you discussed the simple fact that

she attempted to stop a scum-wagon

based on flimsy reasoning? I find your approach to this very disingenuous.

Still - this event seems to further point towards a reck lynch. If you know reck's alignment, you'll have more info about VMD's push of reck = starbuck. Plus he's in your top three. Looks like a good lynch to me (after a no lynch).

Of course knowing Reck's alignment would give me more info about VMD. Everyone's alignment would give me more info about everyone. But this doesn't make him a better lynch than VMD, because I don't use backwards logic like you. I think VMD is scum independent of Reck's alignment. I think Reck is scum independent of VMD's alignment. So the only thing for me to figure out here is which suspicion I'm more confident about. And I'm still leaning towards VMD. And I won't give you a definitive answer to this until I've analysed the rest of the players.

Last post for me today because of said family thing. I'll be back tomorrow with more analysis and discussion.

[SerialClergyman]

Lol. My questions aren't intended to pin you down in some logical trap, they're intended to try to get townies to reconsider their positions. When I ask why would scum work so hard to clear a townie, it's not so that I can 'beat' your argument, it's because it's a good question that I'd expect a townie to at least acknowledge within themselves. Even if your answer is 'I have no idea' - you definitely SHOULD care. It's important. And that's because it SHOULD be affecting your read. Even if it doesn't CHANGE the read, you need to at least acknowledge that there's a piece out of place.

SerialClergyman wrote:

Now - I grant you that all of them scum is a possibility but a) I don't think it's likely and b) that's not what you originally wrote - I don't know how you ever came to the lew=town conclusion from that piece of play.

I'll say this once again, as clearly as I can:
DN was scum. VMD tried to push another wagon ahead of him based on crap reasoning. That makes me suspicious of VMD, irregardless of anything else.

Did that totally not answer the question?

But never mind, to address yours - VMD tried to link a townie to an unknown rather than a scum. This is, even if not a town tell, not a scum tell. Her more general actions of regarding Deathnote as neutral is a reasonable way to deal with people with anti-town metas and was open enough that I don't consider it a likely scum tell.

In my mind, the biggest scum tell for VMD was her asking what would happen if Starbuck was town. That looked like fishing for town points on a town flip. But I don't think that's strong enough to outweigh my read.

I'm back on the scent peoples. I'm feeling good about CTD scum.

[elvis_knits]

Serial, you're thinking VMD is town... I've keep going back and forth on her. But these are the things I think are scummy, and maybe you and others can discuss with me.

VMD
1)vote on buttonmen (discussed ad nauseum)
[1.5)Reckoner called her buttonman vote a towntell, later retracted]
2)talking about DN's contributions to the scum QT:

Smart scum will bus their scumbuddies if they think the benefits will outweigh losing a member. Period. For a scum attacking a scum!DN, they would receive far more benefits from bussing him early and hard than they would from keeping him alive,

assuming he's as useless in the QT as he is here

. If DN is scum I expect to find at least two of the scumbags on his lynch trying to make themselves look good, if not all three. You're completely disregarding the fact that he is a blatantly anti-town player, and not someone scum would probably want to keep around if he's going to undermine their strategies.

(I bolded that part).

It seems really weird to me that she would speculate on DN's contributions in the scum QT. Although, if she's scum I don't know why she would say this either exactly. I guess I'd just like to hear more about this and why she was thinking about this?

I don't think she ever answered this. I'm wondering if it's a slip. Maybe DN did actually suck in the QT.
3)Recently replaced out when under suspicion (could have been totally due to her job which she said is retail which I have no doubt sucks hard this time of year)

[SerialClergyman]

To be honest, and this is just me, but it'll take a lot to get over the town tell I suggested earlier. It's THE tell that I use as an example of a near-infallible tell. Of course, once I say all this it's open to abuse, but I doubt VMD meta'd enough of my theory discussions to construct it. But especially in this context, with lots of scum around and they're vulnerable to lynches - it doesn't make sense to not take a side in a town v town argument, you know? So that's where I'm coming from, I had to think about it because when the day started I was suspicious due to the tell I mentioned earlier about asking about Starbuck's flip but came around to trusting this town tell.

As for what you wrote, I didn't like the vote on buttonman at the time and said so. The QT point is one of those language tells that sounds good but I find are rarely accurate. Think kmd in /inv 4. I'm not saying it can't be true, and possibly might make me raise an eyebrow, but language tells < action tells in my opinion. Plus it's not an unreasonable assumption that scum have QTs. Might be worth checking to see if VMD has been scum before actually - will post after this.

Replacing out under suspicion as you say seemed legitimate, but who knows.

Well - let me turn this back on you - what's your top reads for scum and how convinced are you?

[SerialClergyman]

Also, do you think I'm onto something with reck/ctd or am I tilting at windmills?

[farside22]

@limerick: if you were given an investigation role who would you look into and why?

[SerialClergyman]

A quick meta shows her replacing out of a different game with the exact same replacing out message. I think thatp robably rules out point 3.

However I see no evidence of her playing as scum, although she replaced out of one ongoing and her profile suggests that she's played one game as a different name. This is significant in that I'm not sure how she knew QTs were the norm, so you might have something with that second point.

[Knight of Cydonia]

I love how SC and Elvis are both refusing to discuss my post and focusing entirely on VMD. Easier to pick on a less experienced player than her replacement? SC, you still haven't answered the question i asked of you in my catch-up post, as far as I can see. Neither has Elvis, IIRC, but I may be wrong.

[SerialClergyman]

I just searched her posts for QT for context and found she actually had a conversation with you significantly earlier about it in this post here It made me feel that what you quote is less likely to be a slip, although rereading some of her early posts is a little affronting.

Maybe we could hear more from KoC on current events?

[elvis_knits]

The scum-slip thing --

I'm not pushing it because I have been wrong before on "slips" like in /invy4. But I do believe they happen a good amount of the time, and I continue to look for them, I just try not to put 100% confidence in them anymore.

But I don't think this possible slip is language related. The rolepm's say the scum have a QT and I know I have mentioned it and others have also. So it's not that she's talking about the QT that makes me suspicious. It's that she's saying DN is probably useless in the QT. It's just really odd to me that she's imagining or thinking about what DN is like in the scumQT. It feels almost like she's griping here, like "not only has DN made him a target here D1, but he won't even post in the QT, what a bad scum buddy, I hate him!" Or maybe like she was trying to remind DN to check the scumQT because they rest of the scum team was going bananas trying to figure out their moves and DN was not posting. Maybe they needed to communicate with him, and wanted to remind him to check the QT?

I don't know. I know I'm speculating heavily, and I won't ever really KNOW why VMD wrote that, it just seems very abnormal to me. Am I overreacting?

[elvis_knits]

To be honest, and this is just me, but it'll take a lot to get over the town tell I suggested earlier. It's THE tell that I use as an example of a near-infallible tell. Of course, once I say all this it's open to abuse, but I doubt VMD meta'd enough of my theory discussions to construct it. But especially in this context, with lots of scum around and they're vulnerable to lynches - it doesn't make sense to not take a side in a town v town argument, you know? So that's where I'm coming from, I had to think about it because when the day started I was suspicious due to the tell I mentioned earlier about asking about Starbuck's flip but came around to trusting this town tell.

I think this is a pretty good town tell... scum don't want to stop townie fights most of the time.

However, I know that as scum, I tend to be a wuss, and am sometimes scared of how it will look to pile onto bandwagons or which side to take in a town-town fight. SO, in the past, I have said something was probably town-town, so that I could build a case elsewhere. When I am scum, and I think I can't get onto a wagon and look town, I will start another bandwagon in hopes that I will look more protown by doing it that way.

FWIW.

[SerialClergyman]

Ask and ye shall receive in the same minute you ask.

I'll go find said question.

(By the way, I'm ostensibly defending on you, not picking on you. Making me read your case against me which contains such thrilling reads as DN was obvscum, SB was obvtown isn't helping).

Ok, so your question was:

= VMD asks this very question and SC replies... OH WAIT, he doesn't. ¬_¬ So now I'M asking it: Why, if Starbuck-scum would have equalled VMD/me-scum, is the opposite not true?

This is because it's not either or. If a claimed cop has a guilty on a player and you lynch the claimed cop, if they are a cop that player is guilty, but if they are mafia that player

is neither guilty or innocent necessarily

.

It's the same with VMD's relationship with Starbuck. There was enough there that if Starbuck was scum I'd have thought it was evidence that VMD was partners with Starbuck. But if Starbuck was a townie,I could see wither VMDtown or VMD scum having that relationship with her.

Now I'll turn around the question and say what was the point of linking you to Starbuck if I were scum and knew Starbuck to be town?

[SerialClergyman]

Speculating heavily is something I wholeheartedly approve of, so no complaints here, but I can't really share your convictions. I think speculating over his input into the scum QT is perfectly natural when discussing whether he would have been bussed. If the point was how did she know about a QT, then there was some merit to it, but if it was obvious that a QT existed and she'd talked about it before, I don't think it's unnatural.

Crazy no, convincing not really. That's my take on it, anyway.

As for the town tell, yes, I totally get what you're saying, and it wasn't them ost in depth effort and tearing us away from each other's throats, but in a scenario that is so scum-rich, I thought it was at least unlikely. I've just re-read KoC's opening content post though, so I don't know any more. Ugh.