Mini 956: The Quayside (Game Over)

[Patrick]

Vote: Goatrevolt

Kill before end of page.

[Patrick]

I mean yeah, I don't have any reason to think he's scum,

Why this qualifier?

[Patrick]

A question for all; if you were scum, how would we tell?

I've got over this to some degree, but I suspect I still play more passively as scum.

Did you want to elaborate on this?

Not really.

@iamausername: Yeah, it was mostly the "we" stuff. It just reminded me of something similar that I've seen from you as scum before from way back in your very first game on here where you seemed to try to assert that you're town by asking everyone about their role preference and the like.

I think in the newbie game iamusername's scumtell was something like coming out of the gates saying, "I was really hoping for a scum role, but I'll be giving my all to my protown role lawlawl". I didn't get the same feeling from his question here.

pops: care to elaborate? I assume you must be referring to my second post, which was neither baseless nor even really an accusation. Why a joke vote on Twilight if you find me suspicious?

[Patrick]

popsofctown's play is weird, not definitively scummy. I don't really have a problem with his answers in 38, as I can p much empathise with the first two paragraphs. This is an odd stance for someone with that many posts:

@Incognito: I think scum are more likely to take RVS seriously because there really on the average isn't anything there for the first few pages. Town sit around with the mentality "when something scummy happens, i'll move and accelerate the game".
Scum sit around with the mentality "when something happens, I'll move and accelerate the game". This is kind of a chunk of the universal tendency for scum to point fingers at something that isn't a valid tell, but it's a special case because scum are even more restless in the RVS stage, they can't even give thumbsup/thumbsdown to any real scumhunting.

Can you link to one past game (or MD thread) where you've supported this?

I feel like I have no info on Elmo's alignment. Seems like something I'd do as town so based on gut town. (his only post, that is.)

More likely to do that as town than as scum?

[Patrick]

I can read 10 as a joke, though it wasn't obvious at the time.

@NabNab, which qualifications about his suspicions of me do you dislike? I've fairly often seen players say that they're worried their read of someone might be coloured by OMGUS.

[Patrick]

Hmm.

I can understand the attention given to SC's post 35, but his explanation makes sense and his posts after that look like he's scumhunting to me. Goatrevolt is moving the game forward and part of me wants to say he's slightly townish, but I don't know if it's warranted. I wonder if Elmo could comment on this.

McGriddle's powerole comment is nothing remarkable to me. He did something similar as town when we played a couple of months ago and I'm not sure I've actually ever seen scum doing this.

Ectomancer, I don't see where iamausername did that, are you talking about pops?
RedCoyote, your posts kind of give me two different impressions about what you think of Goatrevolt. You've said more than once you don't find him scummy, but your tone and wording more than once seems to imply suspicion. Do you think it's scummy to sound fake and unnatural?

[Patrick]

If you want to seem more town then lowercase starts to sentences and some broken quote tags = ftw. I think I found it suspect that you didn't express suspicions or try to get reads last time after some 2 weeks of play. What is it about Ectomancer that makes you suspect him?

[Patrick]

I would like Patrick to say something concrete after his last post, hence my question to him about his suspects.

I'll be completely open here. I feel heavily not involved with the game, even though it's under 3 days old and not even a particularly boring start as so many of my others have been. It's been happening more and more to me lately (well, if 2 years is lately) and I don't know what causes it nor really what to do about it. I would suggest anyone who wants to read me should have a conversation with me, and maybe that'll help me as well. I've read the game with a view to forming more opinions, but no vote appeals to me yet. I'm looking to remedy that sooner rather than later, but equally won't vote just for the sake of voting. It hasn't led to anything good in the past.

Something about RedCoyote's posting seems strained. In his first post he felt the need to approve iamausername's random stage vote on him, which is odd. I somewhat agree with Ectomancer on his 73, and his arguing with Goat looks more like arguing than trying to discern anything. I'd like RedCoyote to clarify what his current stance on Goatrevolt is. He's called him unnatural and fake sounding but also said that he doesn't find him scummy.

Goatrevolt seems different to last time we played, where he was scum. My wariness at the moment is because in the game so much of day 1 was spent discussing the mechanics, and he pretty much completely snowed me.
I don't mind the pressure on popsofctown. I disagree with his view on towntells but I don't think it means much and I don't think trying to convince him he's wrong is going to help anything.
SerialClergyman I would guess is town.
Incognito actually seemed kind of off to me, but his last post changed my mind.
I don't have a problem with Ectomancer's play.
I have a weak town read on Elmo.

Reading over Nabakov's case against McGriddle, I found it unconvincing. I thought McGriddle's bad scum card read fairly naturally and not like something put in to try and lull people into a false sense of security (also, based on a small snapshot, I think it's true). The first point has a bit of a cooked up feel to it.

Point taken. I had seen his EBWOP below that and not the fact that he included that line in the first post.

The first line in the EBWOP is iamausername's question to McGriddle. What was it that you missed?

--
Incognito, what's your opinion of Red Coyote?

[Patrick]

My wariness at the moment is because in the game so much of day 1 was spent discussing the mechanics, and he pretty much completely snowed me.

As in what?

As in, I don't remember ever thinking he was scummy.

popsofctown is annoying and unhelpful but pretty neutral to me. At the risk of overusing the word, I think Jahudo's vote on him looks strained. A vote to pressure him into contributing more I can see, but a charge of deflection for posting that picture is a stretch, I think. I saw the picture more as a piss-take than anything else.

I did? What seemed off about me?

Your comment about Ectomancer's loose voting struck me as the kind of dense comment you might make as scum since he's only cast two serious votes so far and I'm pretty sure you've seen much more off the wall play than that in the early stages of the game. For some reason I was immediately reminded of your read on Coriolanus in SPQR, even though I don't think you made a comment about his voting style, just a vague statement about getting weird vibes from his play when his play struck me as pretty normal. Your expansion on Ectomancer made more sense and I can see where you're coming from even though I don't particularly agree with your interpretation.

Red/Nabs, is Elmo more likely than average to be scum?

Both Jahudo and Nabakov have brought up the point about McGriddle sneaking into being suspicious of pops. I'd rather not answer too much on McGriddle's behalf but I read his earlier post as stating some kind of suspicion of pops, so I don't see it as an inconsistency.

Maybe more after food and political debates.

[Patrick]

I support the wagon on NabakovNabakov but not going to put him at lynch-1 now. His attack on McGriddle looked less like he was interested in his alignment and more like he just wanted to make a case against him. If he's scum there's a possibility he was trying to turn attention away from RedCoyote or pops with this. This strikes me as unreasonable:

I don't really get why he unvoted pops in consideration of voting me or Jahudo. He's said that it's his suspicion of me that has increased, and his suspicion of pops has remained constant. Unvoting only has bearing on pops, so unvoting when his position with respect to pops hasn't changed doesn't make sense. Further, if he really thinks I'm more likely to be scum than pops, why the hell isn't he voting me? Maybe making the 5th consecutive reasonless vote on this wagon seems like a dangerous play if this whole things goes belly up.

The second half I could see someone thinking at a pinch but the first half looks contrived. Suspicion of players is relative, so even if someone's thoughts on a player don't change they can still become more suspicious of someone else. I don't see anything unusual about what McGriddle did.

I don't like this from Jahudo in isolation:

I can still get behind the idea of finding Elmo hard to read, when he doesn't explain what he's thinking, but Nabakov's method is questionable upon a second look. His question here:

Oh, hi Elmo, nice of you to show up 8 minutes after someone first asked for your opinion on something. Care to elaborate on... anything?

Looks like a setup to confirm his suspicion in the second post here...

Well, I'm clearly not happy with Elmo's contribution so far. An unaccompanied random vote I can handle, but staying entirely out of discussion until somebody specifically asks for his opinion is just bad form. Even when he gives his opinion, as with his vote, there's nothing to support it.

No matter how Elmo would have responded or not responded. He asks Elmo to elaborate on his opinions then says Elmo is only contributing when people are asking him to elaborate on his opinions.

Jahudo had previously been ok with Nabakov's pressure on Elmo, and I don't see specifically what was wrong with what Nabakov did here. He called Elmo out then later expanded on what he dislikes, what's the "setup" aspect of this and why is it scummy?

Goatrevolt: are you feeling that if Nabakov and Jahudo were scum together Jahudo would bus earlier? When I saw the above I have to say bus was the first word that popped into my head, and I'm not really feeling much townness from him. I was quite surprised to see two people express town reads on Jahudo shortly after this.

Neither of you mentioned McGriddle's bizarre, selfadmitted-ignorant vote. Thoughts?

My thought is it's rather brazen for scum to do, but I've waffled over that a bit. What do you think about it?

[Patrick]

I never said I was okay with Nabakov's pressure on Elmo. But yes, post 179 was the first time I noticed it was wrong.

You didn't say it in so many words, but it was the impression I got. It would be fair to say you were ok enough with it to voice some kind of agreement and to say that you didn't like Elmo not explaining his positions. Anyone can change their mind of course, but yours stuck out to me because it came shortly after it became obvious that the Nabakov train was gaining real momentum. Whilst his play looks scummy, what you pointed out didn't strike me as an attempt to make Elmo look scummy whatever he did; I just read it more as trying to get him to contribute something and a seperate critisism for showing up after I'd asked for his opinion.

Haven't really read the text walls that have sprung up, will do so tomorrow.

[Patrick]

The observation that suspicion is relative would have bearing in an "unvote; vote..." context. But like I said, when you are only talking about an unvote, the only factor involved is suspicion of the player being unvoted. When Germany moves troops from the Western to the Eastern front, it's because they consider Russia a larger threat than France. But when Russia moves troops from the front, it's because they don't want to fight any more.

Well, I see your vote as representing your world-view. Unvoting to me means that you're no longer confident that your current vote is the best one and you want to re-evaluate other suspects (which is roughly what he said).

I'm gonna need you to elaborate on this a bit more. Because I got the same feel Patrick did in his #196 about Jahudo's post #179, so it surprised me when you suddenly mentioned you had a town read on him. What specifically is it about Jahudo's posting that made you feel he was town?

I'm glad I'm not the only person bothered by it. Was there any particular reason you didn't question him about this yourself?

It was probably 2:30 in Sydney and he thought, "I'm tired and it'd be easier to wait for the litmus test for pops to come back from the lab before i comment on it anyway."

If that was the case couldn't he have not posted at all and gone to bed? I've seen this point brought up by more than one person and don't really get it.

I largely disagree with popsofctown's case against SerialClergyman, but whether it's genuine or not I have no clue. One thing I think we can deduce from what SC said about Ectomancer's post though is they're probably not scum together. I think if they were SC would want to see what a few others said rather than just calling Ectomancer very unlikely scum.

iamausername's posts are pretty thin; would like some more content from him. I'm also curious if someone who's reading him as town could explain the towntells on him.

[Patrick]

Incognito, what's your view of popsofclown?

Mod

: Please give iamausername a prod.

[Patrick]

Patrick, where's your scumlist at at the moment?

I'll give my worldview since I'm thinking about it. Nabakov is my best choice for scum atm, but with this day cooking nicely I'm still not in a rush to put him at lynch-1. Jahudo is the other main person I'm getting scummy vibes from -- I could see him as scum with or without Nabakov. RedCoyote I've bad a few bad vibes from but probably need to reread him since I've been glossing over some of his posts recently. On one or two occasions I've thought he may be using his thing with Goat to look active and avoid more important stuff, but again I'll really need to reread him to see if that's justified or if my feeling about him is really just that I disagree with alot of what he's saying. I saw a possible connection to NabakovNabakov too, but want to avoid building too much of my view of this game around the idea that Nabakov is going to flip scum.

Incognito is an interesting case, in that there's not alot wrong with his posts but I haven't had the strong protown vibe that some people have been getting either. I was mildly concerned that his vote and play around pops seemed inconsistent with protown Incognito who finds pops scummy; for example when pops made a post witih probably more analytical content than all his others put together, Incognito seemed to ignore it other than to make a passing comment about not really buying the cases against you. His answer to my question makes me feel better about him, and after reading pop's post again I can see what Incognito is saying about it. He also won the small bonus cookie by mentioning his fears of Jahudo voting pops in his answer, so I'm gonna say slightly town on him. I don't want to write him off though.

Serial, Elmo and Goat I have in my town column. Aside from that, no strong views on other players; iamausername I have very little read on, and the others are pretty neutral.

This is from memory, but I'm pretty happy with it atm. My vote on Goat has no particular relevance, so I might as well

Unvote

.

To respond to iamausername, no, there was no particular issue I wanted your opinion of, I just don't feel like I have much of a read on you at all. Was your comment on McGriddle making it up as he goes along meant in a jokey way, or as an expression of suspicion?

[Patrick]

Rubbish. I read you as town on one post. If you do scummy things, that read will deteriorate. Sitting there doing nothing without a vote on anyone counts as a scummy thing. (Patrick can take note of this too.)

And aside from being a possible scumtell, no matter what your alignment it's DEFINITELY useless.

I don't think "doing nothing" describes my play, and if that's your implication I want you to back it up. On a more theoretical level I hate attacks on people for not voting, outside of a few circumstances. I think I've been pretty clear what I think and why I'm not voting. If I think someone else is more suspicious than Nabakov then I'll vote them.

I'm slightly surprised to see Elmo's postcount generated this much discussion. I don't find postcounts terribly useful myself, but I didn't see it as an attempt to appear active / hard working. Ectomancer's vote for that seems very meh to me. Part of me wonders if he just did that because of Serial's badgering.

@McGriddle: You know, in all that time you spent typing color tags, you could have been playing the game. I mean, your list functions perfectly well as a list. Elmo only color-coded so his votecount would make sense. Do you see why I occasionally feel that you're being disingenuous?

I know he's responded to this, but roughly how long did you think he would have to spend colour coding his list? I find it hard to believe this point is genuine.
-- Sidenote, yellow is a bad colour. Difficult to read.

I'm thinking RedCoyote's thing with Goat may be genuine. One question though, do you think making scum pairings and packaging the game up is scummy or bad play? Again, not really the vibe I got from him when he was scum.

[Patrick]

Let's just be as clear as possible then. You're on the NabNab wagon in spirit, but you're waiting for the deadline to draw closer.

I thought I'd been completely clear about that, but apparently not. I'm now rather annoyed by the apparent bloodthirstyness/laziness/whatever it is that I've been seeing from some people. I think over the past few years people have become alot more conscious of the health and pace of games, which is a good thing. I don't see nearly as many situations where days drag on endlessly for a month or more and don't even have posts made for days on end. That's cool, but in this game I just don't get what the rush is. We've had pretty good posting apart from that one Sunday that everyone had off, and I'm still able to read stuff into what people are posting. If that's a dull process then I'm not sure what it is we're playing mafia for at all. Maybe I've just been out of the loop for too long. The point about bankable deadlines is more valid, and might be worth saving a few days now for use later.

Btw, did goat do this whole scumpair projection thing when he was scum against you? So far from what I've read his play here is more consistent with his town play, though I'm a little spooked that I'm following his self-meta there, lol.

* PATRICK:
I don't know if its his style, but Patrick kept his random vote on Goatrevolt for most of today without finding him suspicious. It looks like he calls Goat town in Post 146 but he doesn't unvote until 258. This non-vote has allowed him to push cases without taking ownership or possible backlash that might come from a vote with holes in it. By that I mostly mean the Nabakov wagon, which he started to agree with when it was at L-6, in Post 146, but he doesn't say he'd vote or not until Nab's at L-2 and Patrick wouldn't want to be the L-1 vote. It could be stalling if Patrick didn't have more reasoning to be on the wagon since 146. And that's what I'm trying to read into with his posts and the evolution of the wagon.
@Patrick: What about the Nab wagon looked better by 196 that wasn't around by post 146.

That is my style, and I'm pretty fed up of similar accusations against me / others in what feels like nearly every game I play. As for Nabakov, I would argue that I've actually made more points about him than anyone voting him, so I don't think the idea that I'm trying to avoid backlash is fair at all. I've also said when I see a point that I disagree with. The only reason I didn't vote him in 196 was because I didn't see any point putting him at lynch-1, as I've talked about already.

As to your bottom line, when I made 146 I didn't like Nabakov's case against McGriddle and asked him about the first point, since that struck me more than others as the kind of thing scum would come up with to try and cobble together a case, and something town would be less likely to miss if they were reading to discern someone's alignment. In post 196 I pointed out another thing he'd said that I disliked. There were a few minor things playing on my mind too, such as his very mild reaction to what I saw as pretty opportunistic behaviour from you, but at this point it seems I'm in a minority in disliking that (I think only Incognito got the same feeling as me).

Based on your Goat section, I am curious what Goat thinks of SC individually rather than conditional on Nabakov flipping scum.

[Patrick]

@Jahudo, even from memory I know that SerialClergyman gave a reason against you that's completely seperate from a Nabakov connection, and it didn't take long to find it in iso. Did you read his posts?

[Patrick]

Is that about the "bad scum card" comment? That was the only thing you mentioned, so you're saying it wasn't strong enough for a vote at that point?

Yes. I went for question rather than vote.

I can't find this, so I'm not sure what changed from 146 that made Nabakov worth voting (if he wasn't already at L-2)?

I said in that post that his newest attack on McGriddle looked contrived. I quoted it in the post. I've had that feeling several times about the way he's attacked McGriddle, actually.

The minor things were feelings he was trying to turn away attention from Red or pops? And then the part about me in that post makes me think you'd rather lynch me first to find out Nab's alignment, rather than adding suspicion onto Nab.

I said that the way he reacted to your attack on him looked odd. I also thought he pushed the point about McGriddle's meta on pops rather a long way, trying to make McGriddle's lack of an in depth analysis of the differences between here and the other game look like he was being inconsistent between two posts in this game. Those are more minor gut things. I also pointed out something I found scummy from you in isolation. I brought up busing because it struck me as plausible and I found it odd that Goatrevolt seemed to think it was unlikely, and that someone else had said you were town shortly after. That doesn't mean that yours and Nabakov's alignments hinge on each other. I could easily imagine one of you being town and the other being scum.

[Patrick]

Lots to catch up on. I'll try not to post a huge wall myself.

I struggle to think of any scumhunting you've done, Patrick. You can argue about the relative merits of having a vote down or not, but i've personally prodded you for content throughout the day and I haven't seen you apply pressure or even ask many incisive questions. Ecto is similar. I understand you guys view this as a playstyle issue, but I'm not picking up what you're putting down. (I also view not joining a wagon you support because it puts them on L-1 to be a pretty weak reason, unless you are REALLY worried about a quicklynch.)

I've been scumhunting all game. Dunno what you mean by incisive questions, I've asked plenty, pretty much all for a reason, and some of them gave me useful replies. We seem to have very different views on what scumhunting is. I didn't put Nabakov at lynch-1 before because that tends to lead to a claim, which sometimes leads to a quick end of the day, or at least many people switching their brains off for the rest of the day. For example, vanilla claims usually draw a crowd of "must lynch claimed vanilla!!11", other claims may get policy lynched, etc. I saw zero advantage to having him at lynch-1 at that point. In hindsight, I could say one advantage would have been avoiding this kind of bluster, but I still think it was the right choice.

As for Elmo, I get the feeling that he's used his numbers for informational purposes too. I don't think it had to be dragged out of him at all; I get the feeling that he didn't fully understand the purpose of it when he initially posted it but then he began to think of the potential for it later on down the line.

This is also bullshit. "Oh, I don't think he knew what he was doing, but he quickly came up with an excuse for doing it!"
Well blow me down! There is no way it could be busy work if he came with a reasonable reason for it after the fact!

Actually, that was pretty much how I saw it as well. What exactly is your theory for what happened here? Elmo as scum decided to post a postcount chart to somehow appear active and involved, but failed to forsee that he might be questioned about conclusions, therefore was forced to invent conclusions after the fact to present to the town? I don't get what you're arguing at all.

Anyway, Nabakov's claim. I'm leery of lynching claimed poweroles but I'm leery of the claim too. I also don't like how little he's posted since claiming, after saying he'd fight the wagon like hell. I don't see him scumhunting, and I think a town powerole would be at this point.

RedCoyote... I'm struggling to agree with anything he says, but he's seemed more genuine to me as the day has gone on. He sounds like believes what he's saying. I feel much worse about the way Ectomancer has pushed Elmo.

I'm having extraordinary difficulty figuring Incognito out. No idea why.

If Nabakov does flip scum then I'm not entirely sure if Jahudo is a buddy, though I still find him to be a shady figure in this game. If they are then Jahudo seems incredibly blatant at this point, trying to start a wagon on pops like that. I won't speculate anymore about pairings until we see whether Nabakov is scum or not. I'm happy to move forward with a Nabakov lynch, so

Vote: NabakovNabakov

[Patrick]

I've always been able to get a read on you with relative ease, and here for whatever reason it isn't happening. I felt that way in Portal Mafia which is why I haven't attacked over it, but I'd be lying if said I'm comfortable assuming you're town at this point.

[Patrick]

gg everyone.

I'm not entirely sure about the two scum roleblockers, though I think the setup is balanced. Bankable deadlines were a good idea - I was actually considering running a speed game with these in about 2 years ago but never got round to it. I will say that I did get something useful out of the last part of day 1, as it was only then that I realised RedCoyote was town. I also became suspicious of Ectomancer, but just far too late.

I'm pretty surprised Patrick thought SC was obvtown tho. Didn't remember him saying that; don't see it at all.

The "obv" part is an exageration based on hindsight; I said a couple of times on day 1 that I was reading him as town, but not obvtown.

"damnit, why do I never reach a day 2 as town? Watching these guys is like drinking a bottle of cough medicine."

I don't know what this means, but I'm guessing it's not much of a compliment. XD

Just frustration at being out of the game and watching the town head towards a likely loss. As I think I mentioned in the QT though, I've really no idea whether I'd have done any better if I'd been alive. I was trying to decide between voting Jahudo or Ectomancer on day 2, but I have a sneaking feeling it might have been Jahudo. Must be something about the way he plays just gives me bad vibes.

All in all, I will say that Patrick's death did contribute to really the only suspicion of Incognito I had all game

I was rather pleased to see this going on, especially when he had hoped my kill would have the opposite effect (I think you took the WIFOM cab one stop too far, Rex ). I had hoped the same would happen with Ectomancer. I can agree that I wasn't pushing most of my reads very convincingly, mainly because I just wasn't very confident in them, especially the scum ones. I at one point tried to work out why Incognito was feeling odd, but nothing really came into words.

Seriously, don't feel too down about your play. I thought you did a good job creating the right conditions for us to find scum, and I never felt like you were too domineering over the game in a harmful way. You were also easy to read as town after a while.

Well done scum, well modded Hoopla. Rematch with same teams please.

[Patrick]

On that basis, I would assume you're saying "in my experience, gut is innaccurate". Okay; but in my experience, gut is accurate. Moreover, in my experience,

my

gut is accurate, which is somewhat more important in deciding whether I listen to my gut or not.

[Patrick]

I cared. Possibly should have made more posts, but basically felt engaged the whole time after I made my concrete post.