Newbie #358 - Big Trouble in Little Rome (Game Over!)

[Dr. Doom]

Addendum: I just noticed that yakults vote is still on me. Can I hear an explaantion, so I can defend myself, in case you voted for a townie?

[Jack]

I'll look over it before any lynching is done. I'll take a couple examples though:

It is not wrong for you to think someone has made a good point. Several people in this game have made excellent points. However, why bother stating your agreement? It looks as though you are trying to earn brownie points by complimenting people, so as to evade suspicion. This game is all about suspicion and not trusting people, so simply giving other people's comments your seal of approval has no possible rationale other than making a personal appeal. A good town will suspect everyone and try to reason their way through, a good scum will try and minimise suspicion against themself (to simplify). Thus, I still find you suspicious in this regard. I don't care if you agree with me, since all that leads me to think is that you are trying to influence me to adopt a particular position. "check" overruled.

what the christ is this? Why bother stating your agreement? Stating your position can only help the town. It makes it hard for scum to go with the flow if they can't contradict earlier opinions. But vollkan accuses him of trying to earn "brownie points"?

You call me inconsistent. Inconsistency is defined as:
the quality of being inconsistent and lacking a harmonious uniformity among things or parts. Now, my gameplay has been uniform throughout this game, if maybe a little defensive in the beginning. Yours, vollkan, changed dramatically. You started out with shorter posts, and now your posts have reached book length, all over strange and bizarre reasons...

This is also ridiculous. Of course the game starts with shorter posts and ends up with longer posts.

Both of their arguments appear fake and insincere to me, I think they are distancing scum.

[Mr. Flay]

Fifth Vote Count of Day One:

vollkan - 2 (kabenon007, Jack)

Dr. Doom - 1 (yakult)
Jack - 1 (Dio)
kabenon007 - 1 (vollkan)

Not voting - 2 (Battle Mage, Dr. Doom)

With seven alive, four votes will lynch.

[Dio]

Btw. do you care to comment on that? What did you wanted to say/What was your point? Did you want to defend Tendril, or attack his attackers? Or what?

My point was that your original statement was idiotic, and you shouldn't have said it. I wasn't defending or attacking anyone but you.

[vollkan]

A lot to address, but suspicion and discussion is precisely what this game requires, so it is a good thing.

@doom

As I understand it, you basically said that since kabenon said to Tendril that "being a newb" is not really a good defense, he can't use it for his (kabenons) own defense, right? Well, that is wrong. A thief may very well go to the police when he gets robbed, and a murderer is still protected by law against being killed (xept in rare circumstances). Thats what I wanted to say with my confusing paragraph as well - Even if you do something that is criticizable, you are still allowed to critizise others for it, and only you critized others f
or something does not mean you can't do it yourself (especially in this example, where Tendril could/can very well have been/be a liar and kabenon in fact a newbie).

Again, you misunderstand me. I know very well that Tendril could have been lying and kabenon may have been genuine. To avoid getting this over-complicated, Tendril criticised the newbie defence then used it himself. Firstly, the newbie defence is always bad, since unlike proper reasoning and explanations it never actually becomes fully believable. As in, saying "It is because I am a newbie" closes the discussion and, furthermore, prevents anyone pointing out some sort of contradiction (usually). Here, kabenon had relied the defence after criticising someone for it. Everything you said, Doom, is valid but you have missed what I was trying to do. If kabenon was being deceptive I may have been able to get some information to either cement or dispel my suspicions. The way things have turned out, this whole line of reasoning has been ruined by you complicating it with the fallacy discussion. I know the fallacy, I wasn't making it. I was not drawing any definite conclusions, merely trying to gather some information on the person who has struck me as suspicious.

The rest of your comments weren't actually points for me to address so I will leave them for now.

@kabenon

First of all, get rid of the agree/buddying up accusation. I agreed with you in one post and you jump all over it. You have agreed more with Dr. Doom than I have agreed with you. Your hypocritical use of the buddying up accusation nullifies your right to use it as well.

You are using what Doom said here and I disagree. Your agreement with people has been different to mine.
ie. you @ Jack

jack raises a good point, after all, someone has to be lynched first, and without a lynch -1, we can't have a lynch.

"tis true, tis true, this we are often told: that with virtuous deed and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself."

A good point, vollkan.

My "agreement"s, in contrast, have more been in concurrence with general observations.
ie.

Doom seems to feel the same way I do that it is a completely irrelevant point (I would like the thoughts of the other players in this regard in case Doom and myself are missing something).

There are two major differences:
1) Your agreements are entire posts
2) Mine are not inserted just to say "I agree", the one I quote is a good example of what I mean. I was making an assertion "xx is irrelevant". To substantiate my position I referred to what Doom had said also. Rather than re-explaining everything Doom says, why not simply refer to Doom? Obviously, Doom is as suspicious as everybody, but that doesn't mean that it is suspicious for me to refer to his logic rather than restate it.

Yours, vollkan, changed dramatically. You started out with shorter posts, and now your posts have reached book length, all over strange and bizarre reasons...

I got this comment in my last game (Newbie 339) as well. But in the end, I was right in my accusations; only problem was that everybody accused me of being aggressive and had me lynched (I was town). That seems to be happening here as well, so let me explain..

It is the way I play. I start out watching and waiting for something to grab my attention, then I open a broadside against the person to see whether or not I can expose any further scumminess. Hence, I open with a few short posts while I am watching then I begin making massive ones once I have found something. If there is something suspicious about this playstyle do let me know. The only problem I have found (twice now) is that other people do not respond correctly for two reasons:

1) Firstly, and most importantly, somebody always interjects by inverting the accusations (Doom in this case). Of course, you should be suspicious of me, but all the interference does is protect kabenon by making me lose my authority to make accusations. Everything you have said at me, Doom, is valid but it would have been smarter to say it AFTER I had finished discussing kabenon.
2) Once a person interjects the suspicion gets levelled against me rather than the person I suspect, which defeats the purpose and ends up being worse.

How is being myself attributed to your accusation of my lack of knowledge? Please explain.

Your exact words I was addressing their were

Now if that is something that is thrown into suspicion while playing Mafia, maybe I will adjust my playing style.

Your logic is "I didn't know x was suspicious therefore I won't do x". "lack of knowledge" probably wasn't the best phrase but I basically mean "the defence of pretending you didn't know". Again, you may be telling the truth; I merely wanted to make some investigation to find out.

Please observe the bolded parts. Vollkan says casually that the whole PM against Tendril was a "completely irrelevant point." Vollkan says that! And then, in the very next sentence, he accuses me with this "you then acted as though the whole thing was irrelevant." Didn't you yourself in the preceding sentence admit that the whole thing was irrelevant?

That looks as though you are really trying to turn this round onto me. Noted. My point there is simple: your position backflipped once people had disagreed with you. That may not prove anything, but it struck me as odd so I tried to investigate. However, rather than discussing what I addressed you latch onto semantics and try and contort it against me.

3.)Defensive play. Let me ask you a question. How else do you defend yourself except defensively?

Not "defensive play", "playing defensively". Again, kabenon, you are focussing on semantics whilst dodging the questions. Let's compare my behaviour with yours to explain what I mean here. Until we criticised your use of emotiveness, you were using things like "my personal opinion" and "stupid mistake" and "apologies". Those phrases add nothing to the merit of your reasoning, they are merely an emotional appeal designed to make people suspect you less. I don't use them because I prefer to rely solely on reasoning and explanations in my defence, rather than trying to fumble around with useless, empty phrases.

Kabenon, you haven't addressed the major issues raised by me. Instead you have given me half-defenses and tried to criticise me with semantic attacks. That was the sort of information I wanted in the first place, I just had to go the long way round to get it. Noted.

@Jack

I swear, neither kabenon nor vollkan are making ANY SENSE to me. Does anyone what the hell they are talking about?

I'm going to assume it's distancing, especially from vollkans list of points against kabenon which is just bizarre vote:vollkan

See above (somewhere) for my playstyle in general. The listing of points was just to simplify what I wanted kabenon to explain and so that he could answer with "In response to 1)....." rather than "In response to what you said about me saying....." I just find it a tidier way of doing things.

At this stage, I would advise people to look over the criticisms of kabenon I have raised, putting aside my apparent aggression for the moment. I know my post was aggressive, but the point of it was to see whether kabenon had some valid explanation for his conduct. In response, he has dodged the major questions and made sideways attacks at me. If Doom had not intervened and questioned me until after I had finished with kabenon then people would be able to read my comments objectively, rather than as now where they appear to be in defense. For that, I stand by my vote.

[kabenon007]

vollkan, you force me to use more defintions. Semantics: the study of the meaning of words in context with their form and surrounding words. In this game, all we have are words. If we cannot debate and discuss the way that they are being used, eg. semantics, what else have we to discuss? Sure, we have suspicions and allegations, but how do we deduce when suspicions are true? We read the person's posts. So that is why I believe that delving deeper into the semantics is a way of discovering mafia.

If you mean something a different way, then say it before it comes under attack. Otherwise you could be just making it up.

If there is something suspicious about this playstyle do let me know.

Ooh, everyone, look! Lack of knowledge! Playing the newbie card! Or at least, if we are to believe vollkan's post, he is. He accused me of using lack of knowledge when I said "now if that is something that is thrown into suspicion while playing Mafia, maybe I will adjust my style." vollkan here is asking whether or not his play... is suspicious. Well, if not knowing is counted as suspicious, as it was with me, the vollkan is definitely suspicious.

[Jack]

Why did you respond to my first post and not my 2nd? Also, I wasn't objecting to lists of points but to

you

list of points.

I need to reread kabenon before deciding if it's distancing.

[vollkan]

I was in a hurry because I had to catch a bus to uni so I didn't get round to finishing up my last post @ Jack.

what the christ is this? Why bother stating your agreement? Stating your position can only help the town. It makes it hard for scum to go with the flow if they can't contradict earlier opinions. But vollkan accuses him of trying to earn "brownie points"?

My problem was not with agreement, as I said, it was with the way that kabenon was doing it. ie. I have referred to comments made by Doom in agreement but always only to show that my position at least has substantiation somewhere else.

Kabenon, in contrast is:

"tis true, tis true, this we are often told: that with virtuous deed and pious action we do sugar o'er the devil himself."

A good point, vollkan.

or at you Jack:

jack raises a good point, after all, someone has to be lynched first, and without a lynch -1, we can't have a lynch.

My point is that, whilst not inherently scummy, it contributes nothing to the discussion other than him effectively saying "Yes, I second that". I don't like it because it doesn't help us determine who is and who isn't scum because it adds nothing to the discussion. Since town needs ample discussion to win, I find it highly unhelpful.

I need to reread kabenon before deciding if it's distancing.

I assume that was addressed at me. Read over what I said. I know you don't like my list, since the points are not certain scumtells, but I made my accusations because I had spotted those things in kabenon's behaviour. As I said previously, if you had allowed me to make my questions and receive answers then maybe we could have determined better whether or not kabenon is scum. What has happened now, is that Doom has intervened and accused me of being aggressive. The accusation by Doom of me is valid, but because of its timing it has effectively nullified the point I was trying to raise. Plus, my suspicion of kabenon has been offset by kabenon jumping onto the accusations raised against me, rather than addressing my points plainly.

Reread it and you should see what I mean.

@kabenon

Sure, we have suspicions and allegations, but how do we deduce when suspicions are true? We read the person's posts. So that is why I believe that delving deeper into the semantics is a way of discovering mafia.

Two problems with this:
1) Relying on semantics as a source of suspicion is downright reckless. Each person will use words based on their own personal style (You, for instance, seem to like emotive language). If you think targeting people's semantics is a good way of deducing scum then you are mistaken, all you are doing is contorting people's language usually to find a positive result. The way to out scum is with inconsistencies and behaviour not by nit-picking at an alternative meaning of a particular word.
2) Even IF semantics were valid, your usage of it was deflective and evasive. Rather than addressing my criticisms of you like any reasonable person would do, you attacked my language. Easy to do and it moves me onto the hook whilst pulling yourself off.

[kabenon007]

Rather than addressing my criticisms of you like any reasonable person would do, you attacked my language.

That's not all I attacked, but it is the only thing I attacked you that you are addressing...

[kabenon007]

oh, and, is it not possible that a strategy could be made of getting a person to rant and rant, about say, semantics, hoping that they will make a slip, which the person then attempts to reduce in severity by saying that the semantics part is irrelevant? I am not accusing you based on semantics, more like accusing you based on the responses to my semantic banter.

[Mr. Flay]

Scarecrow replaces yakult upon request, effective immediately.

[Scarecrow]

Hello, I'm here. I've gone through the thread, and several things have struck me as somewhat scummy, like Jack's -1 vote, of course, but at the moment I don't really have anything concrete.

I have to say I'm a little disappointed that this game has already deteriorated into quote-by-quote fighting involving semantics arguments and other unhelpful stuff.


I'm going to go ahead and

unvote

, so I can start off fresh.

[Jack]

I didn't put anyone at -1.

[Scarecrow]

Good point.


I'll take back that statement and replace it with: "BattleMage is very aggressive".

[Battle Mage]

why? do you have any REASON for such a comment?
evidence perchance?
and if you can draw a reasonable conclusion from said aggressiveness, what is it?

BM

Good point.


I'll take back that statement and replace it with: "BattleMage is very aggressive".

[Jack]

A little defensive are we, BM?

[Scarecrow]

why? do you have any REASON for such a comment?
evidence perchance?
and if you can draw a reasonable conclusion from said aggressiveness, what is it?

BM

Actually, I have two:

1. You jumped hard on Jack after he put whoever it was at -2, as well as aggressively responding to my off-hand comment.

2. I'm pretty sure that somewhere in this thread you said you are an aggressive player.

[Dr. Doom]

Great! A third replacement - Hey guys, maxbe we can break a new record and turn it into some kind of endless meafia, where nonme of the original players reamin...

Okay, Im too tired to post soemthigh useful now, sorry. I'll reread and postv tomorrow.

Good night!

[kabenon007]

Great! A third replacement - Hey guys, maxbe we can break a new record and turn it into some kind of endless meafia, where nonme of the original players reamin...

Okay, Im too tired to post soemthigh useful now, sorry. I'll reread and postv tomorrow.

Good night!

You know, I watched a mafia game that dragged on for so long, the mod got replaced, and the new mod replaced half of the players. Pretty funny stuff.

[Battle Mage]

1. that was a natural protown reaction. unfortunately its hard to read Jack at the beginning of games, because he always tries to play the fool, by making silly votes, but i felt this overstepped the mark a bit.

2. You may not be aware of this, but i dont like it when people try and put suspicion on others without giving reasons. Its a strong scum-tell, and you comitted it blatantly.

In all, i dont understand your logic atall. It seems you made a comment, which was then defended against, and then you retreated with a stupid comment about me-presumably in an effort to make it look like you are contributing to the game...
Then when you are asked for an explanation, you claim that your statement was referring to aggression WHICH HADN'T HAPPENED YET.
You also recognised that my playstyle may tend to be aggressive, yet your comment does not appear to reflect this.

Vote: Scarecrow

i will reread your predecessors posts soon, however in the meantime, im happy with my vote on you

BM

why? do you have any REASON for such a comment?
evidence perchance?
and if you can draw a reasonable conclusion from said aggressiveness, what is it?

BM

Actually, I have two:

1. You jumped hard on Jack after he put whoever it was at -2, as well as aggressively responding to my off-hand comment.

2. I'm pretty sure that somewhere in this thread you said you are an aggressive player.

[Scarecrow]

OK, I'm awake, and a little disturbed by the fact that no one has posted. I guess that's normal here.


In some games I've played, we've gotten up to fifteen pages in the first twenty-four hours.

I've tried to go through vollkan and kabenon's posts, but for the most part they just seem like petty argument.

[Jack]

I don't like BM's vote. Very reactionary.

[Scarecrow]

Whoops. Didn't see the simulpost. I'll respond to it in a bit.

[Scarecrow]

Well well. This is a very interesting post by BM.

Firstly, you are entitled to your own opinion, of course, in this case about Jack’s vote at the beginning of the game. You felt he was overstepping the sill mark.

However, I, too, am entitled to my opinions, and I feel that you reacted rather more than you should have to this occurrence.

You accuse me of a “strong scum tell”, assigning “suspicion” without reason. I don’t know where you got this at all. All I said was that you were a bit more aggressive than I would like, which is

in itself

a valid reason. I was simply giving voice to my initial feelings about the game and, by extension, its players, not screaming “Let’s all lynch BM!!1!”

You appear to have read too much into my simple comment about Jack, which was due to a misread, nothing more.


You say that my statement was “referring to aggression WHICH HADN'T HAPPENED YET.”

I don’t quite know what you mean here, as the aggression I was referring to occurred on page two, at which time you OMGUSsed Jack, as well as attacking him for his vote on Dio, apparently trying to start a bandwagon. (Putting him at -2, the very thing you said he was scummy for doing. Although you were the one doing it while trying to cover your tracks with some pathetic fabricated “reasons”, even citing the phrase, “Lynch all lyars”)




Finally, you finish with a vote on me. Apparently because I said you were “aggressive”, a statement you proved 100% while coming out of lurk mode with your crap-cannons blazing.

[Battle Mage]

in response to your misunderstanding, my comment about "aggression which hadnt happened yet, was in reponse to your explanation for your original comment. a bit of a mouthful, but i felt the fact that you listed it as a reason was suspicious, so i mentioned it.
Meantime, i find it quite ironic that you accuse me of aggression, then when called up on it, you act more aggressive than i ever do...

oh and btw, 3 days of absence does not qualify as 'lurk' mode. Most people dont post that often when they are active...

Well well. This is a very interesting post by BM.

Firstly, you are entitled to your own opinion, of course, in this case about Jack’s vote at the beginning of the game. You felt he was overstepping the sill mark.

However, I, too, am entitled to my opinions, and I feel that you reacted rather more than you should have to this occurrence.

You accuse me of a “strong scum tell”, assigning “suspicion” without reason. I don’t know where you got this at all. All I said was that you were a bit more aggressive than I would like, which is

in itself

a valid reason. I was simply giving voice to my initial feelings about the game and, by extension, its players, not screaming “Let’s all lynch BM!!1!”

You appear to have read too much into my simple comment about Jack, which was due to a misread, nothing more.


You say that my statement was “referring to aggression WHICH HADN'T HAPPENED YET.”

I don’t quite know what you mean here, as the aggression I was referring to occurred on page two, at which time you OMGUSsed Jack, as well as attacking him for his vote on Dio, apparently trying to start a bandwagon. (Putting him at -2, the very thing you said he was scummy for doing. Although you were the one doing it while trying to cover your tracks with some pathetic fabricated “reasons”, even citing the phrase, “Lynch all lyars”)




Finally, you finish with a vote on me. Apparently because I said you were “aggressive”, a statement you proved 100% while coming out of lurk mode with your crap-cannons blazing.