There's like two days of no activity and all of the sudden overnight, a flood of new 20 big post appears that I have to read. I hate you.
Anyway, contray to popular flow, which seems to be "I can't be arsed to pick holes on long posts to argue something" I'm prepared to argue HeH's raised points. And here they are.
Hang 'em High wrote:I'll ask you to look at all this another way. If I were scum, why would I act this way? There's simply no reason for the scum to draw attention to themselves. In a speed game it is much easier for the scum to lay low, particularly on day 1. If I were scum, the only reason to be as aggressive as I have been would be to try and lead the town into a bad lynch today. But that's the most likely outcome anyway, since there are at most 8 townies left and 6 of us have to agree on a lynch today if we're going to get a mafioso. So being this aggressive would be a very high risk / low reward strategy for a scum to take.
If I were town, on the other hand, my play would make perfect sense. We're on a deadline and we can't wait for the scum to out themselves. We've got to aggressively dig them up, and that's what I've been trying to do.
To summarize my playstyle: I've been actively trying to unearth scum. If you look back over my posts, you'll find that my views have been consistent. I've warned against sitting back and being cautious and have advocated aggressively pushing to unearth scum. I've also been consistent in saying that my metagame findings are weak and that we shouldn't read too much into them. In my opinion, advocating a lynch with specious arguments is scummy, but trying to find possible leads without exaggerating their importance is pro-town. I've really been trying to do the latter, but of course you folks will have to be the judge.
For starters, beginning sentence makes you smell fishy, regardless of your alignment. Don't use it. What more, I can tell you why you would act this way, if you were scum.
You argue from the point of view that if you were scum, you would lay quiet, as any good scum would do in a speed game. This argument has a situational flaw.
1. Let's assume you are scum for now. You are the leading wagon. If you lay quiet now, you are going hang for sure. Hence the only way out for you
is
to talk your way out. Since the best course of action is identical for a townie as well, this argument is null.
2. You metagame from the POV that scum would lay low. Whilst this is a good tactical play for scum, in the games where I am scum, I often use this to my advantage and be vocal on purpose, and I've seen many others do the same. Hence this point is a classic WIFOM.
Hang 'em High wrote:Start with the assumption that I'm town -- which I know is the case but the rest of the town won't unless I'm killed. Since I'm in obvious danger, anybody who tries to deflect my lynch is most likely not scum since scum would certainly not say anything that might derail the bandwagon against me (an innocent townie). If I get lynched, you'll see that I was town.
Simpler way to state this would be "if you unvote me, or put up a defence against me, I won't think you are scum". I can't extract any alignment out of this, because it can swing either way. This could be a scum trying to shed some votes, or it could be a clever townie trying to trap the scums on the wagon. What I'm more interested in is the reaction of those who unvoted after seeing this.
This is of course, a very appealing proposition for two groups of people. One is mindless townies, and other is scum group. The action will effectively buy off one vote for them. And it will make their action look town-like, so long as nobody points out what I am doing now. So I wonder which it was...
