Newbie 906 - Game Over!

[Perez]

I’m sorry I couldn’t reply sooner, however I hope this post will make up for that. I’d like to address some of your earlier points Zorblag.

Perez I've already talked about his predecessors. For his play I find it pretty striking that he's taking such a positive view of jmurph3. He praises how strong her support of the fuzzylightning mislynch but doesn't make any mention of the fact that she agreed that the Apathy lynch was what she thought should happen when the replacement came up. He praises jmurph3 for getting fuzzylightnint hammered when if fact she's pretty clearly happy with either the Apathy lynch or the fuzzylightning lynch at the end of day one. He had trouble with Skill006's lack of votes on Day one but apparently there's no problem at all with jmurph3's only lynch today being on RayFrost.

I'm a bit thrown off by the fact that Perez seems to think that Apathy would have been the right lynch yesterday (outside of thinking it was fine for jmurph3 to want the fuzzylightning lynch) and that I haven't done anything that he finds worth praising other than avoiding that lynch but that I'm not in his top choices for a lynch today (I think I'd only come it at number 4 if I understand what he's written.)

Regarding my positive view of jmurph3 isn’t because she supported the fuzzy lynch but how she defended her reasoning as to why she voted for him. Since D2 started I don’t believe there have been many other than yourself Zorblag who suspects jmurph3 strongly. Could she be scum? Of course but I don’t believe she is and I’m staying by that conviction (until proven horribly wrong).

As for the Apathy lynch, if you were not in the spot you were and instead an outside looker, I think you’d agree that Apathy did look very scummy and at that time it did make sense to lynch him. His opting out and you replacing in and defending yourself well is of course warranting praise and yes you are my #4(note that it means I think you‘re innocent or the least suspicious). None of what you’ve said in this post or the further ones below make me suspect you more. For you I can’t really say comfortably that I’d vote against you which is why I’d rather go after the people who are suspicious to me, which again is Ray, Smash, and Skill.

His case on Skill006 seems to rest entirely on her day one play and not take what she's done day two into account.

For me this is all it takes. I think it’s important to see what people did at the beginning and not forget their actions. Wouldn’t you agree (I’m not sure if you’ve answered this and if you have I apologize) that her changing her vote twice and then not voting at all on D1 is a very good reason to be suspicious? Not having voted with her partner in order to make sure one of them was somewhat protected is a reasonable explanation as to why she hadn’t voted. And as I stated, today she is voting for me and I know why. There isn’t much I can say to refute it because Phaen did appear scummy for not posting/inactivity, and not defending herself much. You voted for her(me) too for the same reasons no?

I absolutely still see a jmurph3/Perez scum team. There's plenty of reasons to suspect them individually (despite the fact that people continue to seem to want to write the Phaen case off as inactivity when that hasn't been the main argument against her at all.) I hate the case that people are trying to build on Skill006. I hate the fact that half of the reasons people seem to want to vote for RayFrost have to do with a diminished activity level when others have gotten passes for activity (and there's been plenty of argument that lynches for lack of activity are policy lynches and bad for the game now.) If RayFrost is scum then he's decided to buddy with me this game. He hasn't been subtle about it at all. From the minute day two started he was opposed to my lynch and he's actively thrown himself in the way when I came under suspicion today. RayFrost of all the players in the game has a reason to know that I don't trust it when people do that. If he's scum I really don't think he'd want to walk that line and yet he has.

You may not like our reasons for RayFrost but he is a very experienced player (as is my understanding) and for his behaviour to change so drastically is part of why I’m voting for him. It’s not necessarily that he posted a lot and was active for all of D1 but that he was leading the group almost, giving some excellent arguments for his choices and such only to stop posting for a long while and when he came back to posting it was very different to D1 in terms of no longer making long excellent arguments. Judging by his D1 posts he could have just made one long intricate post and if it was strong like those other ones that would have been enough for me to not go after him and instead start on Smash/Skill. However I don‘t think this was the case and it‘s part of why I suspect Ray the most. You say you two seemed to be working together and that everyone could see that. While that may be true it isn‘t a good reason, to me at least, to suspect you two working together.

As for jmurph3 and myself working together, I see how you could see that but keep in mind that you were after jmurph3 from the beginning which I think skews your view of me since I don’t believe her to be scum. If she turns out to be scum then I’d understand why you’d go after me but I’m stating what I’ve gathered from the game so far and my feelings towards each of you. Unless jmurph3 does something I really don’t like, I’m going to stand by what I said and not vote for her since others look like much more dangerous targets.

And if I believe Ray or Smash or Skill won’t be lynched this day and jmurph3 is on the chopping block, I will follow suit and vote against her since I could very well be completely wrong and her lynch will either prove me right or make you believe me to be scum.

Regarding your arguments against jmurph3, although you may be right about it I don’t think it is enough to try and lynch jmurph3. She was making her points and the only way to do that is to appear to be defending Phaen/myself or at least that is what you have stated. There isn't much I could say to refute this except if jmurph3 is scum she's throwing me under as well, which is something I would do if I were scum since it brings doubt in others.

@PranaDevil

As I’ve just said to Zorblag, despite my suspicions I don’t think he is scummy and especially not as scummy as those I’ve named before. I won’t be changing my vote for Zorblag unless it appears to be a no lynch. That said, this day has had so many targets and the whole town has been indecisive. Are you really going to stick by your choice with Zorblag?

Also, regarding you “how scum may behave” part of your most recent post, I believe you are correct that scum could try any combination of strategies as Zorblag stated as well and that we each may have an idea of how two people have played and that it could fit. I don’t think we can wait for us to agree on something though. We’re all at some point going to have to compromise our beliefs of others to get something to happen. Now it is just a manner of who do we lynch today? Unless Ray responds soon with something to make me believe otherwise, I’ll continue believing Ray to be scum and keep my vote there.

@Smash

I know that this same argument can be made against me but I feel even more suspicious of you now that you’ve thrown yourself against Ray as well. To me you are going after Ray would make you a fourth person to have strong suspicions against him and could be the lynching vote. It isn’t a good reason to suspect you but to me it is enough to say I’m very wary of you but I doubt I’ll be able to get enough people to lynch you this day. Do you have anything to say in that regard?

@Ray

I’d really like to hear what you have to say with regards to Smash and myself entering the game and our arguments.

[Perez]

Also, does this forum often freeze up? Ever since I signed up it freezes every now and then for 5 minutes and won't load anything, despite me being able to browse any other website fine. Just me or something I should expect in case I make a big post and it doesn't go through because it freezes up?

[PranaDevil]

First, yup, the forum does occasionally go a bit nuts and decide to have a screwy five minutes or so. My advice is whenever posting any lengthy post, copy it first, so if the forum screws up, you don't lose it outright.

Second, it is seeming to be getting close to the end of the day again, and we are all seeming to go in various directions. (In fact we have a mere 3 days to make a decision... which means I'd call it 2, because you never know if someone wont be around).

Based on that, someone (or someones) will have to compromise their main choice, in favour of someone below them.

Right now my favoured lynches outside of Zorblag, would be Ray or Skill.

I would suggest we get everyone to post their top 3 lynches for the day, but scum could hold off on stating theirs until the end to see where things lie.

As it is, I don't see a Skill lynch as being as happening as easily as Zorblag or Ray, so as it stands, it may be better to go the Ray route, if nobody else is willing to go after Zorblag either (and considering I don't think Skill wants to vote him, and Perez doesn't, and Zorblag definitely doesn't, it would require myself, jmurph, Ray and Smash to agree to that lynch, whereas I think Ray might be more viable as an overall feel for the day).

So, if town as a whole would honestly rather the Ray lynch, I will go with that, but I would much prefer the Zorblag one.

[Kison]

Day Two: Vote Count

RayFrost (

2

) : jmurph3, Perez
jmurph3 (

2

) : RayFrost, Zorblag
Perez (

1

) : Skill006
Skill006 (

1

) : smashbro_of_the_SSS
Zorblag (

1

) : PranaDevil

With

7

alive, it will take

4

votes to lynch.

The day's deadline is currently set to:

March 27rd, 2010, 11:59:59 PM, EST

Prodding RayFrost.

[Zorblag]

@Perez, I'm not sure why lack of people suspecting one should be a scum tell when you're looking at jmurph3; shouldn't it be more important to look at her actions and decide if they're scummy? If that does matter RayFrost is voting for jmurph3 at the moment so apparently he thought there was some sort of case there. I'm also not sure why you'd want to stand by your conviction until proven horribly wrong rather than want to get your read right but so be it.

I do agree that Apathy's play was at the very least anti-town. I haven't tried to defend it and I don't plan to. I've said that I expected to be lynched when I joined the game and that he should have been the lynch day one at various times.

As far as wanting to look at day two when making your reads it seems that you're doing for players other than Skill006 so I'm not sure why you're not doing it for her. Certainly day one actions are important but so is their continued play. I know I don't start every game I play strong day one (Tofu Mafia would be a fine example of pretty weak early play from me.) If you look at Skill006's later play and don't see a turn around then that's one thing but not taking it into account is troublesome. Your case on RayFrost seems to be that his day two play has changed from his day one play (I'll talk more about that in just a bit) and you've got me as low on your list of suspects as you do because of my play since entering the game (which has almost entirely been on day two) despite the fact that you apparently found Apathy's play scummy.

You are right that I've suspected your player spot and jmurph3's since I entered the game. I almost certainly have been filtering my view of the two of you through that lens to some degree perhaps especially when looking at connections. Having said that, I dislike the things that both player spots have done for enough independent reasons that I don't feel like I'm building a case primarily from the connections but rather that they strengthen the strongest cases I've already got.

So for those of you who think that RayFrost's play today compared to his play yesterday (his hyper-activity followed by a disappearance) is a scum tell I'll invite you to take a look at the following games. I've simply gone to recently finished games in the newbie queue where he was a player (he's in enough of them that they're easy to find). Compare the activity there with the activity that you're seeing here. For the most part I believe that his activity is dropping off pretty much across the board.

Newbie Game 911 (townie killed in endgame)
Newbie Game 905(townie killed night one, mostly here as an example of his acitivity being similar to what it was in this game)
Newbie Game 909 (townie who survived, actually he's active up to the end here (two weeks ago) in a way that overlaps his inactivity both here and in Newbie Game 911 which I wasn't expecting.)
Newbie Game 908 (townie, lynched day three, this one ended around a month ago, another example of play to compare with day one more than anything)

Past that the games I'd find would suffer from the same problem of ending too long ago to be useful for comparison purposes.

I'll think a bit about how Newbie Game 909 works against my expectations (and general observations) that his activity is down across the site recently, but Newbie Game 911 fits my expectations well.

I clearly prefer a jmurph3 or Perez lynch at this point today. I've got no interest in lynching PranaDevil or Skill006 at this time. I don't think that there's any reason to start a new wagon on smashbro_of_the_SSS right now and, like I've said before, I was happy enough with jammer's play when he was around. If RayFrost is the way we have to go to get something done it would be better than a no lynch but it's a pretty distant third choice for me.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Zorblag]

@PranaDevil, now that I think about it I wonder if you'd be willing to give just a quick recap of why you think that the cases on Myself, RayFrost and Skill006 are clearly the ones to go for at this point. I'd like to confirm I understand what your current thoughts are.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[smashbro_of_the_SSS]

@smashbro_of_the_SSS, I've only seen you in the one game that I modded. I'm very glad that you've not drawn the wrath of this town with your posting how you did that one but you're going to need to do more than that. Take a good look at what people have said and reassess the game after this flip. Take a look at what people have done to find scum especially as the day goes on.

I know what you mean, and I would have more time to post anything once school settles down. The flip (and night kill) will help a lot on suspicions, but I’m fairly satisfied with my ideas for scum right now. To be honest, Skill’s reply did make me think that she is less scummy than I had previously believed, but she is still on my list.

@Smash

I know that this same argument can be made against me but I feel even more suspicious of you now that you’ve thrown yourself against Ray as well. To me you are going after Ray would make you a fourth person to have strong suspicions against him and could be the lynching vote. It isn’t a good reason to suspect you but to me it is enough to say I’m very wary of you but I doubt I’ll be able to get enough people to lynch you this day. Do you have anything to say in that regard?

My idea behind the posts I made was to analyze everyone, but evidently I don’t have the time. I, however, believe that Ray has acted scummy at times. But I don’t see why you’re “wary” of me, and why you’re worried about getting enough people to lynch me today. My lack of time to compile walls of text may not help, but I don’t believe that stating suspicions that are the same as someone else’s is entirely scummy. If I had come on and said, “yes, Ray is scum, let’s lynch.” Then I’d understand. But I went back and compiled the highlights of cases that I believed in, starting from the scummiest down.

My top 3 would be:

Rayfrost and Skill as 1 and 2, can’t quite decide which is scummier, though leaning Ray atm

And then 3rd would probably be Prana, but not strongly. Has anyone else noticed how often Prana changes his vote, and how he continually worries about “which lynch is most likely” and “who the town will go with” at a point where there are currently 5 people with votes. I don’t think that this is vote worthy right now, but I don’t like where this is going.

So, I’m going to

unvote

, and

vote: Ray

because, after going back and looking at them both, I see Ray to be more scum worthy. While it might be true that he is dropping off the face of the earth right now, He’s shown that he would be able to make one good post, and then take time off instead of his posts with little to no content.

I understand this puts him at L-1, but I don’t believe that anyone here would vote to lynch without consulting the town. If everyone would feel better without the vote I will remove it, but maybe it will get Ray to tell us what he’s waited for to help the town more.

[PranaDevil]

If I'm honest Smash, I haven't liked my own play this day, but I think that has a lot to do with how much D2 has been stalled until, essentially, the last week. When it's picked up sharpish. I don't think my vote changing would have been such a big issue had the discussion happened over the full course of the day, as opposed to what has, in essence, felt like a sudden rush job in the last week. The delaying at the beginning of the day was rather a big problem for town I felt. Of course, short of actively dragging people into the thread there's no way of getting the game moving more than it was.

As far as my cases on Ray, Skill & Zorblag go...

I may miss a little out here or there, but I state it's because I don't have the time to go searching through the entire thread right now, and we're close enough to deadline that it wouldn't be in town's interests to attempt to wait until I do have time, as I can't even be sure that will be before deadline. So I'll say everything I do know, but an ISO on me will bring up my cases on them in full anyway.

Case on Ray:
Complete change of play since D1, previously was pushing strongly for lynches, making himself known, giving tons of advice, and someone else pointed out (Smash or Perez I think) pointed out he was strongly steering town in the direction he wanted (that could be trying to give advice, or trying to make people go his way).

His sudden quietness is strange, and meta or no, it's still not play I like, and it doesn't necessarily mean he's not scum either (though if there are issues outside of the game, I hope it gets sorted Ray as you seem like a decent guy).

Case on Skill:
D1, managed to avoid making any and all important votes, mentioned she didn't like to lynch people even if she knew they were scum (fair play, it was a nod from a previous game, but it's a nod that if she were scum, could be written off as a joke too), suddenly changed her play come D2 by being extremely vocal and pushing for a lynch of Phaen/Perez (possible the change of play came from night talk with scum mate who advised her to do more to appear to be scum hunting), and I feel was trying to push a policy lynch through (while appearing to be scum hunting and hiding the policy behind weak reasons).

Case on Zorblag:
I don't think I really need to go over it once again, as it feels like I'm just going over old ground (and making more for everyone to dig through). But a quick rundown would be that most of Zorblag's play (and I'm ignoring the replacing Apathy stuff here entirely) has come down to "why would scum want to do that, it would be against their win condition." When, as I pointed out, nothing is against their win condition as long as they stay alive. Scum's only way of winning is to survive until the end game, getting people lynched is just a faster way of getting there.

So with a ton of WIFOM, pushing what I feel was still some form of hidden policy lynch (I agree, I was considering the Phaen lynch, but I'm not so sure now anyway), and of course I would be stupid to dismiss everything from Apathy the day before outright, but I feel Zorblag's WIFOM has been there to try and hide everything he's done by trying to show he wouldn't do something as scum as it would be detrimental to his win condition, despite the fact it's meaningless.

So yeah, I feel Zorblag is the number 1 lynch for me today, followed by Skill, and lastly Ray if that has to go down that way.

[Zorblag]

@jmuph3, out of curiosity, how accurate do you think the description of my play PranaDevil just gave is? I ask you in particular because you've been here while it was happening more than anyone else who'd be able to respond just now.

If others would like to give their opinions I'm happy to hear that as well.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[jmurph3]

Sorry that I haven't been on; I had a lot of classes and such today. As such, I clearly have A LOT to catch up on, but for the moment, I'll answer the most recent question posed to me first:

@jmuph3, out of curiosity, how accurate do you think the
description of my play PranaDevil just gave is? I ask you in particular because you've been here while it was happening more than anyone else who'd be able to respond just now.

I'm going to assume you're referring to Prana's most recent post, in which case, Prana said this:

Case on Zorblag:
I don't think I really need to go over it once again, as it feels like I'm just going over old ground (and making more for everyone to dig through). But a quick rundown would be that most of Zorblag's play (and I'm ignoring the replacing Apathy stuff here entirely) has come down to "why would scum want to do that, it would be against their win condition." When, as I pointed out, nothing is against their win condition as long as they stay alive. Scum's only way of winning is to survive until the end game, getting people lynched is just a faster way of getting there.

So with a ton of WIFOM, pushing what I feel was still some form of hidden policy lynch (I agree, I was considering the Phaen lynch, but I'm not so sure now anyway), and of course I would be stupid to dismiss everything from Apathy the day before outright, but I feel Zorblag's WIFOM has been there to try and hide everything he's done by trying to show he wouldn't do something as scum as it would be detrimental to his win condition, despite the fact it's meaningless.

If this is to what you refer, I completely agree. I'm sure this is not surprising to you, as, according to Ray, I "follow Prana's every train of thought," but he and I have both pointed out your WIFOM, which, in my opinion, has only served to distract town and confuse them about how they should handle it. In fact the more I think about it, and the more I'm reading back over things, reading what Prana has to say, looking at your most recent posts and your posts over all today, I am going to

unvote; Vote: Zorblag

.

I will follow this up with a more lengthy post elaborating more details, but I'm going to give the rundown here:

1. He accuses me of defending Phaen, but now has taken more recently to defending Ray.
2. WIFOM. Everything he has said in his own defense, including his long post from yesterday where he elaborated what scum would and would not do, has been to show why everything he has done scum would not do. This just confuses the town, especially when coupled with the earlier things from D2 where he kept pushing the fact that we dropped the apathy case so quickly.
3. There's the way he has hounded both myself and Prana not letting little things go, such as my word choice in "diatribe". These have, in my opinion, also distracted the town, because continuing to bring things up when we should be moving on to hunt for the scum is detrimental.
4. There's the fact that in my opinion he forced me to defend Phaen much beyond the point that I ever would have wanted or ever intended, then turned around and said that of course I had a choice in the way I answered.

All of these things, coupled with the scummyness of Apathy from D1, have convinced me that Zorb is the more convincing lynch today. I don't mean to split the Ray wagon, since we're getting to a point where we again need a lynch. I will lynch Ray if we cannot get enough support on this side, but I encourage Smash and Perez, the other Ray voters, to reread the things on Zorb and see what opinions they might make of him.

[Zorblag]

@jmurph3, that was the post that I was referring to yes. And it's interesting. I can understand why you'd give all the reasons that you just gave to vote for me. If you're scum then it's a case to make that probably seems plausible to you and if you're town then I pushed you in particular and it's pretty easy to see why you wouldn't like that and how you'd have that sort of reaction. I'll talk about your points in just a bit but look at all the parts of my play that you're complaining about. You feel as though I've defended people, attacked you for defending (and in fact forced you to defend) and hounded both you and PranaDevil without letting little things go when you think I should have.

Personally I'd describe what I've done using very different terms and I'd focus on other things but I think that it's pretty clear that I've been taking a part in multiple aspects of the game today. Here's how PranaDevil describes my play today:

I don't think I really need to go over it once again, as it feels like I'm just going over old ground (and making more for everyone to dig through).

But a quick rundown would be that most of Zorblag's play (and I'm ignoring the replacing Apathy stuff here entirely) has come down to "why would scum want to do that, it would be against their win condition."

When, as I pointed out, nothing is against their win condition as long as they stay alive. Scum's only way of winning is to survive until the end game, getting people lynched is just a faster way of getting there.

He thinks that most of what I've done today is generate the WIFOM. His case against me isn't that he dislikes the other little things that I've done today (they get mentioned in passing as something I'm trying to hide with my WIFOM along with Apathy's play being scummy. I just have a huge problem believing that after all the time I've spent going over other topics in the thread (many with him in particular) that he'd think that's anything close to a reasonable description of my play.

It's interesting how he's been at dealing with details in this game. Day one when I was reading through his play I thought he was doing a pretty good job of catching them. I need to go back and see if that's still true. Today that's not been nearly so much the case. With me alone he seemed to have missed that I had RayFrost listed as my third choice for a lynch a number of times when he was trying to figure out who potential lynches were (he seemed to think that I'd be opposed to it.) He seemed to think that my switch back to you after I decided you were a more likely lynch than Phaen today was surprising rather than fairly expected (and indeed that I'd explained that as my motivation when I did it.)

I'm not sure what I think of it. It probably doesn't matter today but in future days town needs to look over that. If the rest of you disagree with my assessment there I'd be interested in hearing it but I think that I've done as much as anyone to focus on the details of what people are saying and doing today. If you look through my posts in isolation I think that you'll find a fair amount more of that than what is being called my WIFOM.

In any case, regarding what you dislike about me, here are some reactions:

1. I have been defending RayFrost today, yes. I've also defending Skill006 and jammer. I don't think that I've particularly defended PranaDevil but I certainly would have if I thought someone was making an attack on him that I didn't agree with. I also think that all of those players are probably town. When I was pushing you about defending I started out asking why you were doing it and you were pretty particular about pointing out that you didn't think Phaen was town. If you don't think that someone's town then you shouldn't be particularly resistant to their lynch.

2. I have been hounding you and PranaDevil about various details. Details are how you catch scum. If you think that pointing them out is distracting from scum hunting then I'm not sure what you expect scum hunting to be. When I think there's scummy activity going on it's in my interest to point it out and get other people to commit as to whether they think it's scummy themselves. If it feels like you and PranaDevil got an unfair dose of that it's mostly because you two were the ones that were most clearly around. Aggressive attention to details is something that everyone here is going to need to get used to in these games and it's certainly not something you'll be seeing primarily from scum.

3. I think that you pretty clearly had many choices about how to answer the questions I was asking about Phaen and that the stance you took was a reactive one that tried to walk the line of being opposed to a lynch while also not committing to thinking that Phaen was town. I think that your reactions under pressure about that connection in particular were valuable and I don't regret looking closely at that issue how I did in the least.

4. This is a newbie game. Part of what I feel I should be doing here is pointing out what scum will and won't do. Town should have motives for not pursuing what they've called scummy in the past and my pursuit of that and pointing it out is what started this whole WIFOM idea. I've said before that I don't mind if it makes me look scummy. It's still true. After the game I'll say it again and hopefully people will take that as a lesson going into future games. If I die along the way then that's fine; at least I've gotten the things that town needs out there. I've said this all before so none of that should be surprising in the least.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

[Perez]

@Zorblag

Well what is there to say really about jmurph3 in D2 so far? Going through it yet again she had her sights on Skill and Phaen with similar reasons as to everyone else, you included. Then she went after Ray for the same reasons I’m stating which was his sudden change in attitude towards the game. This may be his strategy and as you posted he has done similar things in the past. Still, for the game now it just doesn’t sit well with me in terms of something an townie would do. As for jmurph3‘s actions, they are largely her refuting you and your case against her over how she is defending my slot and is choosing weak arguments. I think her arguments work and I don‘t believe you agree to that and I doubt there is much I could say to change your mind over this. To now you’ve made it clear you want her out and I think that because of what I am saying and what I have said you’d like to see me gone too. Also, I didn’t mean that I want to be proven wrong with what I said. I believe my arguments are not only valid ones but they’re true. If I turn out to be wrong then I’ve buried myself and I know that but I believe my reads are right.

Of course, it bothers others and myself to an extent that you’ve taken it upon yourself to defend Ray very strongly. Prana and jmurph3 seem to be going after you for this behaviour. I may not know Ray like you do and his postings on other games do follow for the most part what is happening here but I still don’t think it’s good enough to change my views on him since he could easily defend himself with the same arguments. I do not believe you aren’t scum still but to avoid a no lynch I will change my vote unless things change.

Another point I’d like to make, not really against you but to say in general, is that your method of scum hunting where you ask for more details and more explanations to peoples’ choices/reads makes sense to rule out people but at the same time I believe you are experienced enough to realize doing just that would be an excellent cover and way to keep others distracted if you were scum. It, like everything else, goes both ways. That said, I realize you are also helping us out with insights to the game. Like I stated before I’m new in the sense that I’ve never participated in a game and never one of such serious caliber as this. I appreciate what you’re doing (and what Ray was doing) to help people figure out who scum/tells/general advice and I wanted you to know I try to keep it in mind. However I try to keep that advice separate to my suspicions of you since it could be an excellent way of causing people to doubt you are scum.

@Smash

It isn’t whether or not you can compile long intricate arguments or not. You have made a case for Ray and I may support that case but so far with your posting I remain wary and still unsure whether to go after you or Skill after this flip. What do you think of the case against Zorb right now with Prana and jmurph3 asking for votes against him?

@jmurph3

As I’ve just said, I don’t really think Zorb is scum but if it comes down to it I will vote for him if you and Prana and anyone else doesn’t go for Ray anymore. That said, I also don’t want to prolong this day more than it already has been prolonged and I’m really only waiting to hear anything back from Ray.

[PranaDevil]

It's interesting how he's been at dealing with details in this game. Day one when I was reading through his play I thought he was doing a pretty good job of catching them. I need to go back and see if that's still true. Today that's not been nearly so much the case. With me alone he seemed to have missed that I had RayFrost listed as my third choice for a lynch a number of times when he was trying to figure out who potential lynches were (he seemed to think that I'd be opposed to it.) He seemed to think that my switch back to you after I decided you were a more likely lynch than Phaen today was surprising rather than fairly expected (and indeed that I'd explained that as my motivation when I did it.)

I just wanted to say... I'm actually in agreement with this, my ability at checking the details has faded since, there's been numerous reasons for that (issues with the girlfriend (ex now), illness, depression etc.) But regardless, I wont make any serious excuses, I have missed a few things out when looking at stuff as I've not been able to do any in depth re-readings this time around.

What I will say, is that I made mention at the start of that last post that I would miss things, and my previous posts would have everything in it. I was just pointing out what I felt were the strongest parts of the cases without going through to do everything in depth when I really didn't have the time (and neither does town).

[RayFrost]

Hey smash, you do realize that attacking me by piggy backing others is a really great way to make me notice you, right?

Let's analyze

your vote post

on its own, ignoring everything else on this page.

I'd like to point out the lack of any mention of skill past the initial 'skill and ray are suspicious to me and I'm not sure which is scummier!' stuff.

The poke towards Prana is highly contrived and weak at best. Changing votes is hardly scummy, and prana has been consistent in the worrying about getting the town to agree with a lynch, which is not a scumtell (a town-wide decision is good).

Then goes on to vote me and not say anything about skill. He then essentially says... 'he's gone, and he shows he can do good posting, but isn't consistent about this' as his reasoning to vote me. Really?

And then the last paragraph is so much bow and scrape that I want to dayvig him. It's 'okay guys, I know I'm doing something scummy, but I think nobody will do anything even further, and I'll do whatever you say if you say I should do it, oh, and this is totally a pressure vote' - the pressure vote statement is the 'maybe it will get him to explain himself!' as if that's the reason for the vote. It contrasts with the pseudo-reasoning he gave earlier in his post.

Now, if we do lynch smash, I would like to direct you to skill as Most Likely Scumbuddy.

I'm just sayin'

unvote, vote: smashbro

woohoo, call in the claims that this is just completely obv omgus using veiled smokescreen reasoning that fails (note that using this argument will result in you blowing yourself up)

[RayFrost]

By the by, I play games like this...

'FLURRY OF AWESOMENESS'

'out of gas'

'refuel'

'FLURRY OF AWESOMENESS'

It's rinse and repeat.

I don't have much gas in my tank, folks.

[jmurph3]

I just have a huge problem believing that after all the time I've spent going over other topics in the thread (many with him in particular) that he'd think that's anything close to a reasonable description of my play.

Perhaps I'm misstepping my bounds here, as this is regarding Prana, and I may be interpreting what he's saying, but the way I see it, the problem isn't that the entirety of your play has been WIFOM, as you have made cases, mainly against Phaen and myself, it's that everytime you defend yourself or say something about the game in general or about the Apathy player slot, it comes across as WIFOM.

It's interesting how he's been at dealing with details in this game. Day one when I was reading through his play I thought he was doing a pretty good job of catching them. I need to go back and see if that's still true. Today that's not been nearly so much the case. With me alone he seemed to have missed that I had RayFrost listed as my third choice for a lynch a number of times when he was trying to figure out who potential lynches were (he seemed to think that I'd be opposed to it.) He seemed to think that my switch back to you after I decided you were a more likely lynch than Phaen today was surprising rather than fairly expected (and indeed that I'd explained that as my motivation when I did it.)

1. I have been defending RayFrost today, yes. I've also defending Skill006 and jammer. I don't think that I've particularly defended PranaDevil but I certainly would have if I thought someone was making an attack on him that I didn't agree with. I also think that all of those players are probably town. When I was pushing you about defending I started out asking why you were doing it and you were pretty particular about pointing out that you didn't think Phaen was town. If you don't think that someone's town then you shouldn't be particularly resistant to their lynch.

I think, more accurately, I neither ruled out the possibility that Phaen was either town or scum. Certainly I said that she might not be town, but I never precluded the possibility that she was. And if I see a weak case, without some kind of strong evidence, which I did not see either you or Skill giving, I'm not going to vote for it. I made the mistake too often D1 of throwing my suspicion on who other people thought with weak cases were scummy, and that came back to, pardon the expression, bite me in the ass, and I'd like to think that I can learn from my mistakes.

2. I have been hounding you and PranaDevil about various details. Details are how you catch scum. If you think that pointing them out is distracting from scum hunting then I'm not sure what you expect scum hunting to be. When I think there's scummy activity going on it's in my interest to point it out and get other people to commit as to whether they think it's scummy themselves. If it feels like you and PranaDevil got an unfair dose of that it's mostly because you two were the ones that were most clearly around. Aggressive attention to details is something that everyone here is going to need to get used to in these games and it's certainly not something you'll be seeing primarily from scum.

Here's the problem with what I was referring to. The back and forth posts about my word choice of "diatribe" are very different from the kind of details which are helpful to town. As you noted in your post in regards to Prana missing details:

It's interesting how he's been at dealing with details in this game...With me alone he seemed to have missed that I had RayFrost listed as my third choice for a lynch a number of times when he was trying to figure out who potential lynches were (he seemed to think that I'd be opposed to it.) He seemed to think that my switch back to you after I decided you were a more likely lynch than Phaen today was surprising rather than fairly expected (and indeed that I'd explained that as my motivation when I did it.)

Those are very different than going on about one word. You tried to make it into some argument about my propensity towards "spinning" things, but then, once the argument has been dropped, you bring it up again to say that you were wrong. It was, in my opinion, unnecessary, and much more distracting to the grander scheme of things than normal details are.

3. I think that you pretty clearly had many choices about how to answer the questions I was asking about Phaen and that the stance you took was a reactive one that tried to walk the line of being opposed to a lynch while also not committing to thinking that Phaen was town. I think that your reactions under pressure about that connection in particular were valuable and I don't regret looking closely at that issue how I did in the least.

Well, I'm glad you got something out of it. I clearly don't think that I had another way to answer. And if what you got out of that was the I was opposed to her lynch and to calling her town, then congratulations! You got it right. I don't see what that proves, as I would have told you that anyway (and did above), but c'est la vie. I don't think that being opposed to a lynch when you're not positive of whether or not the player is scum because the case on said player is weak is scummy. If you do, that's your business.

4. This is a newbie game. Part of what I feel I should be doing here is pointing out what scum will and won't do. Town should have motives for not pursuing what they've called scummy in the past and my pursuit of that and pointing it out is what started this whole WIFOM idea. I've said before that I don't mind if it makes me look scummy. It's still true. After the game I'll say it again and hopefully people will take that as a lesson going into future games. If I die along the way then that's fine; at least I've gotten the things that town needs out there. I've said this all before so none of that should be surprising in the least.

The problem that I have is not that you bring up things that will help town. The problem is your timing with when you bring things up to "help town" and then what those things contain. You start out D2 by essentially saying if you had been in our shoes, you would have lynched yourself. This started off a very confusing read to several of us, making it hard to decide how we felt about you going in to D2. Then, your extremely long post about "general wisdom" comes when there's pressure building on Ray, where suddenly, everything that Ray has done isn't scummy in your general wisdom, and nor is anything that you've done this game. But still, you say we should lynch you over Ray. It's extremely bad timing for a post like that, however much you meant to just help town.

@Ray: still waiting for your "flurry of awesomeness".

[RayFrost]

@Ray: still waiting for your "flurry of awesomeness".

this was me revving up, I can't just jump into being badass all the time

[jmurph3]

this was me revving up, I can't just jump into being badass all the time

Well. Forgive me if I'm underwhelmed.

[PranaDevil]

My biggest issue with Ray's play there is... we have just a couple of days to go before the end of the day, and rather than cast a vote in the direction of one of the more viable wagons (personally it would appear to be a choice of: Ray, Zorblag, Phaen, Skill, just from what I've seen today, even if I don't agree with the Phaen one). He casts a completely fresh vote in the direction of someone who's not really been under fire, with no real "oomph" to the post either that would make us want to switch our votes that strongly.

He even makes mention that he feels Skill is "most likely scumbuddy" of Smash, and then votes Smash, why not vote Skill when people might be more inclined to vote her? We don't have long to really do much more, and while looking in other directions is fine in general, 2 days before deadline is not the time to start causing more distractions for town as a whole.

I'm happy with the vote on Zorblag for now.

[RayFrost]

My biggest issue with Ray's play there is... we have just a couple of days to go before the end of the day, and rather than cast a vote in the direction of one of the more viable wagons (personally it would appear to be a choice of: Ray, Zorblag, Phaen, Skill, just from what I've seen today, even if I don't agree with the Phaen one). He casts a completely fresh vote in the direction of someone who's not really been under fire, with no real "oomph" to the post either that would make us want to switch our votes that strongly.

He even makes mention that he feels Skill is "most likely scumbuddy" of Smash, and then votes Smash, why not vote Skill when people might be more inclined to vote her? We don't have long to really do much more, and while looking in other directions is fine in general, 2 days before deadline is not the time to start causing more distractions for town as a whole.

I'm happy with the vote on Zorblag for now.

Eeeehhhh, I hadn't really considered that.

Good point.

unvote, vote: skill

[Perez]

@RayFrost

I’d have to agree that it was hardly a flurry of awesomeness. That would have been D1. Now, not really but I’m glad you seem to have reappeared. I know you’re voting for Skill and many of us are fine with that too, however I’m sure you’ve seen how intensely Zorblag has been defending you in the last two pages. Do you suspect him at all? How do you feel about how he’s been arguing that your strategy is normal?

Unvote

(for now)

Just to clarify, who doesn’t suspect Skill enough to lynch her today?

@Skill006

What do you have to say about Ray's disappearance until now or Prana and jmurph3 wanting to go after Zorblag?

[PranaDevil]

Okay, we have 2 days before lynch, I'd suggest we make our decision in the next 24 hours roughly (we don't want to be making last minute decisions with an hour to go to deadline people).

I would rather the Zorblag or Ray lynch at this point, I would go with Skill if that's how things seem to go... I would be unhappy with any other lynch.

In fact... can I suggest everyone posts their top 3 suspects, in order as well (to give us an idea of where we should go).

Mine would be:
1 - Zorblag
2 - RayFrost
3 - Skill006

[Perez]

My suspects are

1 - RayFrost
2 - Smash
3 - Skill006

And since it seems people are voting for him I should point out that 4 - Zorblag.

[RayFrost]

Zorblag's defense of me is characteristic of what I've seen of him - he vehemently opposes any lynches that he believes will end up flipping a townie. I find it to be a town-tell on zorby.

By the way, I have a distinct distaste for the skill wagon when looking over skill's posting (as in logically speaking), as skill's play has been consistent and such, but I still want the lynch (as in instinctually).

My main issue is that skill, at minimum, gives me a read on

everybody

in the game, regardless of her flip. I feel that she will flip scum, but i think she won't, and my own wishy washy contradictiveness is bugging the hell out of me.

ugh x.x

[Zorblag]

At this point I'm still opposed to a Skill006 lynch. My top choices remain jmurph3, Perez and RayFrost though there's a pretty reasonable argument to considered for my being the lynch today if people plan on continuing with the same sort of reasoning that we've seen thus far today. You can be wrong with the sort of WIFOM attacks that PranaDevil seems to be convinced by up until LyLo but then you need to get lynches right. You're going to need to look for actual scummy behavior (actions and the lack of actions) rather than building your case around the fear that someone is trying to trick you by caring more about what makes people think actions are scummy than looking good them self or sharing their experience in a newbie game. Our chances of hitting LyLo tomorrow seem especially high to me at this time. I'll have some more to share on that tomorrow but for now I'm off to bed.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh