Mini 1800 - Game Over

[MechaGoomba]

I'm not defending him. I'm just providing my opinion

"which is that he isn't scummy and shouldn't be lynched."

I could potentially see you deciding to defend Kappy as town, but going back on it when you're called out? Pure self-preservation.
VOTE: Chumba

[MechaGoomba]

Because I'm vein pushed at by messy scum.

OK, so the scum have decided that they're going to push to lynch you, specifically, within the first IRL day of day 1, and care about accomplishing that so much that they'll double down rather than admitting their mistake when confronted with an obvious error. Why? What makes you so important that the scum are going to be putting themselves at risk to lynch you this early in the game?

[MechaGoomba]

I'm not sure you are even reading. I wasn't eve accused of defending kappy I was accused of defending sick.

Yes, I made a mistake. Does this mistake impact my case against you in any way, and if so, how?

which is that he isn't scummy and shouldn't be lynched."

Also not sure why you typed this. I certainly didn't say this

OK, so if you don't think sick isn't scummy, why are you objecting to someone saying he is? For what purpose did you make that post? How did it benefit your win condition?

[MechaGoomba]

Chumba, do you think sick is scum? Yes or no.

[MechaGoomba]

OK, so have you always had a nullread on sick? If no, what caused your read to change? If yes, why did you reject Persivul's read of him?

[MechaGoomba]

So, you are adamantly claiming that you never defended sick or townread him and that everyone that thinks you did is an idiot that can't read properly.
Surprisingly, this makes me scumread you less. In new players, it's common for town to be obstinate under pressure, since they know they're town and can't get into the mindset of people that don't. Scum, on the other hand, know that they're scum and so tend to easily admit to scummy acts.
However, if you could cut down on the insults, I think everyone would appreciate it.

UNVOTE: Chumba

[MechaGoomba]

In all seriousness, I don't see a good target for a serious vote yet. I don't think kappy is in danger of being quick-lynched, but I don't want to be implicated if it does somehow happen while I am away.

Your worry is about being implicated, and not the (highly unlikely) quicklynch itself?

I don't like kappy but it could just be playstyle silliness. This sounds like scum thinking.

It bothers me that this post got buried so easily, because it's 100% truth.
VOTE: karnos

[MechaGoomba]

TBH I'm a little confused about where the argument that Chumba was defending anyone came from - I took her arguments as devil's advocate. Is that an incorrect interpretation?

People don't generally get that invested in devil's-advocate arguments.

This is kind of funny if it's what I think it is.

You are of the opinion that 2 scum are voting the towniest-looking player in the game, start of day 1, and no one else is?
I'm afraid I have to ask why scum would ever do such a thing.

[MechaGoomba]

Links are only really useful if you're invoking meta on a specific player. For general tells, you have every single game on the site to pick from, so you could cherry-pick links to prove almost anything.

[MechaGoomba]

I am huge eye candy for an easy scum lunch d1. It's definitely happened before. My play style is sloppy and I am admitting that but it's a reach to say I'm contradicting myself for it.

[...]

If you are town, keep the fuck out of my way and help me scum hunt. If you are scum, keep following my scum filled wagon and expose yourself all the more.

"I'm being lynched because scum are voting me" reads as town frustration to me, but I'm not entirely sure. Can anyone that's played with sick before tell me if he does this often as town?

On Mizzy vs karnos: I feel like this is nothing major. While 123 did point out some mistakes on karnos's part, and it was good noticing (is that correct grammer?), I feel like it is actually nothing important.

Percy vs Sick will merit it's own post.

What is the difference between Mizzy vs. Karnos and Percy vs. Sick that makes you dismiss one out of hand but do an in-depth analysis on the other?


qubixes and Chumba are rapidly moving up my townlist for their ability to say exactly what I'm thinking.

I meant that in a joking manner, maybe it wasn't obvious enough.

If you're going to joke, put emoticons indicating it. Otherwise, we'd have every scummy post ever written off as a joke as soon as someone notices.

[MechaGoomba]

species's ISO is pretty bad. Not necessarily for having few posts, but because the posts they have are uniformly contentless. Especially when they go into a theory discussion about the RVS self-vote, for which they apparently searched through threads, but are unwilling to discuss any actual game relevant information. 3 posts out of 7 on the same topic and it's barely even game-related.

What is the difference between Mizzy vs. Karnos and Percy vs. Sick that makes you dismiss one out of hand but do an in-depth analysis on the other?

Completely different things. Mizzy vs Karnos seemed unimportant. I have a lot to say about Percy vs Sick, tho. Expect a big post from me later. Right now I have to run.

This is literally the opposite of an answer.

If Mizzy vs. Karnos seemed unimportant, then what was it that convinced you to jump onto the Karnos wagon? Just Chumba's comment?
Did you look at 638 prior to voting Karnos? If so, then why do you have to look at 1700 and 1692 before unvoting?
Are you still planning on posting a Percy vs. Sick analysis now that Percy is no longer voting Sick?

[MechaGoomba]

Sick, would you mind saying exactly what Persy's contradiction is? I don't see anything of the sort in his ISO, and you don't seem to have said anything about it. The only thing like a contradiction is that he missed Kappy changing his vote, and, um, that is entirely NAI.

[MechaGoomba]

Mm. I was sort of assuming that the contradiction happened before post 57, because he voted you then, and at that time, I don't really see anything to prompt the "not reading the thread" comment.

I feel like I'd be perfectly happy to put Sick in the same box as Chumba was, but then there are things like this that just don't add up. I don't really know what to make of him.

[MechaGoomba]

Mecha has been acting like he has been reading th thread and isoing and whatnot but has missed something I posted like twice.

Would you mind telling me what it is, please? If I'm missing something important, then the pro-town action is to tell me so I can update my thought process, not to use it as a weapon.

Kappy certainly has an interesting relationship with Sickofit1138.

I pretty much agree with your analysis, and, combined with his continual question dodging, I'm going to VOTE: Kappy until explanations materialize.

The answer that comes to my mind is that Kappy and Sickofit1138 each had three votes with no other major wagons (as of 27), so the desire to move votes away and perhaps open another wagon should be fairly strong.

I don't understand this. Percy is at the top of a lot of people's townlists, and, without really good arguments, that doesn't seem likely to change. Why not push the wagon on karnos instead? They had plenty of opportunity to, since it was a pretty viable wagon, but they both ignored it until there was seemingly-damning evidence, and then only Kappy jumped on.
For that to make sense with Sick and Kappy both being scum, karnos would also have to be scum, and at that point we're talking about having fingered the entire scumteam day 1, which does not happen unless one of the players is a god of scumhunting.

I could potentially see them both being scum, especially given how Sick conspicuously ignores Kappy, but something about it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I don't want to do preflip associatives if at all possible. Could you help me figure this out?

[MechaGoomba]

PS: This is L-2 for Kappy. Count your votes carefully to avoid derphammer.

[MechaGoomba]

Were not talking about my contradiction... ive explained it already, we're talking about yours.

Your contradiction is "he called me scummy for sloppiness but later said sloppiness wasn't scummy", correct?
Well, the thing he is saying is that he didn't scumread you for your contradiction.

People push to sort. For me,

the issue wasn't his contradiction, it was how he would react to it

. But, I couldn't say that at the time, as it would affect his reaction.

He was reaction testing. He never scumread you: your contradiction just gave him a platform to reaction test.
Therefore, he never believed sloppiness was scummy. No contradiction exists.

(You could argue that this is deception and therefore scummy, but reaction testing like that is a well-known strategy for town, and, well, it worked here. He sorted you as town.)

[MechaGoomba]

This is where it all starts. Sickofit claims to have think he was the first poster, and didn't know he was on a wagon. Then he claims he saw the previews of the other posts, but didn't change his vote. Percy presses him for this, as if he saw the other posts, he knew he was on a wagon.

IIOA. No actual opinion given, just "unsure".

This is not a good post. By you pointing out that you are town, that could be WIFOM. You could be purposely careless scum being careless for the sole purpose of pointing that out. If someone else pointed out you were towny, rather than you yourself, I would be more likely to believe it.

WIFOM argument. Chumba brought this up in 61, before you did, so this is unoriginal reasoning.

Btw the reason I haven't been scum hunting as much as I would like us because I've been busy trying to explain some kind of "contradiction" in the RVS.
I just got started scum hunting, and someone interrupted it bringing up old news.

I have a pitch.
We lynch persivul today: here's why:

Incredibly low-hanging fruit. Everyone else has already pointed out why these posts are bad: nothing new there.

Sick's pointing out why he was scum, could have been, as I pointed out earlier, WIFOM. It seems like Sick wants to trick Percy with this and have him admit Sick is town.

WIFOM argument again, and it's still unoriginal.

tl;dr: Literally nothing in 235 is in any way useful. It's all recycled or meaningless.

[MechaGoomba]

I think that kappy has been playing somewhat "loose". However, I think it fits more town-loose than it does scum loose at this point.

Any particular things you can point to that illustrate this? Because I don't see it. Even if it's a gut read, what statements are giving you that feeling?

And I think that if I would think of Kappy as super strong experienced player, I might scum read him for that

Yeah, but look at the difference between what he's doing and what Sick (another inexperienced player) is doing.
Sick's case on Persy wasn't good, but it was original. He made it himself and he was going to defend it. He was invested in it. He knew he was right. Kappy, on the other hand, is throwing points out. Once he's made them, he forgets them and moves on to the next one. He has no investment in his cases.
One of these is a town player who believes they're telling the truth. One of these is a scum player who just wants to look town by having a case.

[MechaGoomba]

I think that kappy has been playing somewhat "loose". However, I think it fits more town-loose than it does scum loose at this point. Obviously I had some reasons to put him on top of the list before I (for now) revised my read. First the reasons why I initially scum read him (most of it already pointed out I believe):

10: His fear of RVS wagons
28, 71: His weird jumping around he sickofit wagon.
35: "Because it's RVS", which I interpreted as trying blend in as scum doing the proper thing.

Right now, his fear of RVS wagons still bugs me the most. I think when taking looseness into account, the other two can be explained from a town perspective (as well as from a scum perspective obviously!).

I disagree on a couple of points in your list [comments in red]:

Kappy ISO:

First 14 posts are just screwing around and prolonging RVS

Yes, but it fits in the loose profile

65 - theory

I don't think his ISO is overly concentrated on theory, so I don't have a problem with this one.

103 - "No strong reads atm," but gives a bare reads list anyway. Scum have incentive to do this because lists are generally seen as towny. As scum I've advised buddies who were in trouble to just put up a reads list, and it frequently works.

I find reads lists more of stylistic thing than anything else (I almost never give them).

181 - reads list with some reasoning. Only thing slightly controversial was putting me in town. Most people are in null. Two scum reads are safe: several people were suspicious of sick, species wasn't very active.

Actually I don't think this read list is that safe really. The wagon of sickofit was already dissipating, with both me and you off the wagon. It's not that strange that he has a lot of null's early in Day 1. I think even that scum would be more likely to balance it more to get an even distribution.

192 - "Looked it up myself. it's true!" and sheeping on karnos is bad. I asked him what he had looked up, and he said he had just verified the one quote I gave. If he were really scum hunting he should have checked several games, searching for variants of lurk and hide. Chumba did just that, saying in 204 "I was searching for lurking and hiding in his iso." Chumba's slot went up a notch for that.

I think how much time someone puts into research is more a personality thing than alignment. Ok, maybe town is naturally a little more likely to put in more effort. (Though it look like a really good opportunity for scum to jump in and take some credit for finding the pattern here (assuming Karnos is town).

201 - unwillingness to change read after karnos makes a good response

Ehh, he said he would check it and then unvote if true? He did change his read afterwards.

235 and 236 - still trying to push me v. sick when, from my POV at least, that's over.

I don't see this as pushing you vs sick, just pushing sick. Actually the fact that he goes after sick here again makes me think he is more likely town, because he's actively going in the opposite direction from the rest.

Also, a number of people have expressed an opinion on him, so the flip would be informative.

This always really bothers me, when people try to suggest a lynch and add that it also gives a lot of information. What if kappy flips town, what do we know then?

So, how do you come up with a town read?

Summing up, I don't have a super strong town read on kappy, but I feel (gut) that he is more likely to be town. I don't feel like he has been trying to push a scum agenda. He hasn't really been trying to look town I feel.

I guess it's kind of silly that I spent most of my time right now defending someone else. I don't think I'd get any wagons rolling that I'd like to see though. (And still figuring out who I'd like the most to be lynched.)

I think that kappy has been playing somewhat "loose". However, I think it fits more town-loose than it does scum loose at this point.

Any particular things you can point to that illustrate this? Because I don't see it. Even if it's a gut read, what statements are giving you that feeling?

Well, I tried to find something, but I kind of failed I'm afraid. If anything, I think the first couple of posts are really all over the place, without really much care. I think as scum he would tread a little more careful. Also, he hasn't been too concerned so far with defending himself. Or trying to get himself buddied up with someone (maybe percivul somewhat). In general I feel he has been doing more or less his own thing so far. That said, I can be totally wrong, and I'll re-evaluate my read later on. One thing I should for sure do at some point is read/skim through the games he has played so far on this site. Maybe that'll give me a better idea.

And I think that if I would think of Kappy as super strong experienced player, I might scum read him for that

Yeah, but look at the difference between what he's doing and what Sick (another inexperienced player) is doing.
Sick's case on Persy wasn't good, but it was original. He made it himself and he was going to defend it. He was invested in it. He knew he was right. Kappy, on the other hand, is throwing points out. Once he's made them, he forgets them and moves on to the next one. He has no investment in his cases.
One of these is a town player who believes they're telling the truth. One of these is a scum player who just wants to look town by having a case.

Well, kappy was already on sick before the karnos switch, so in that sense there was some investment. Also, nobody was really pushing sick at that point anymore either. Well, to me sick's push on percivul sounds over the top. I feel he is overselling his "original" case quite a bit. Of course that is part style, but it also makes it look like he has done more than he actually did.

Anyway, kappy might want to take over his own defense.

I have no idea what you're saying. Please try again with more explanation and fewer typos.

[MechaGoomba]

EBWOP: Oh what the fuck was that. Just ignore the quoted bits.

[MechaGoomba]

I don't agree with that analysis though as stated in my previous posts.

Most of your previous posts were complaining because you didn't see an explanation, and also because you believed Persy was dodging the question. But the gap between 124 where the question was raised and 165 where the answer was provided is not actually that large. There's a much bigger gap between the start of the game and 138 where Sick explained his contradiction, yet you're not pushing him.

angry that people are supposedly just following whatever Persivul is saying as truth

If that's a good interpretation, Sick, then I have to say I don't see your point. If we don't accept Persy's explanation because you're reading him as scummy, then we can't accept your explanation for your contradiction either because there are still people reading you as scummy.


Sick and Persy are in the same boat: they are being pushed for a small, relatively meaningless mistake because, while they attempted to explain it, their explanation wasn't quite clear enough for the people pushing them to see. Both of them exhibit the same patterns: "what, no, I already explained it, I'm not going to repeat myself" and, when pushed farther, "you aren't even reading, are you?" Neither of them are complaining that their explanation wasn't good enough, that it ought to have been more convincing. They believe that anyone who saw their reasoning would have to see, would have to realize what they truly meant.
Their indignation is not about being unable to appear town. It is that people are refusing to see the reasons they are (from their viewpoint) clearly town.
Both Sick and Persy's reactions are clearly town to me. Persy is experienced enough that he could be faking it, but I doubt it.

[MechaGoomba]

OK you see that post at the top of the page? Go read it. If you've already read it, reread it. Then make a coherent response to it.

[MechaGoomba]

disagreement with Sick's analysis

Um, I thought you meant you disagreed with Persy's analysis. I mean, if you disagree with Sick's analysis that Persy is scum, then, well, why are you voting for Persy?

I CLEARLY said I didn't think his "answer" in post 165 was a logical one compared to Chumba's question in post 162 and explained why by lining the two up

Yes, in 272 you said that. Then, in 300 I explained that you had misunderstood what he was saying. If you have reasons you don't like that explanation, I'd like to hear them.

Creating confusion is never a townie thing to do. I don't care how frustrated you are with the situation.
[...]
What if Persivul simply chose to explain to Shady in a way that Shady could understand? Wouldn't that help dissipate the confusion?

[sarcasm] Your 316 created confusion by having ambiguity over whether it was Sick or Persy that you disagreed with. After you saw that I was confused, rather than clarify, you took a cheap shot at me by claiming that I was not reading. Therefore, you are mafia. [/sarcasm]

Communication is a two way street. Both the speaker and the listener bear blame when miscommunication happens. To blame the listener ("you're not reading") when you're the speaker and blame the speaker ("creating confusion") when you're the listener is untenable.
And regardless of who's to blame, miscommunication is

not alignment indicative

.

EBWOP:

But of course, I don't expect you to read my n00b posts. You're too good for that.

[sincerity] Please, just take a step back. Go do something else, stop thinking about this game, come back with a fresh perspective later. You're angry, you're confbiasing hard, and you're not getting anywhere. [/sincerity]

[MechaGoomba]

AAAGH.
Please mentally replace "EBWOP" with "Preview Edit."

[MechaGoomba]

OK. Your argument against me is that I'm not proactively acting townie enough.
Scum has as much - possibly more - motivation to appear townie.
So, your point on me is NAI.

... Persivul, that is quite possibly the WIFOMest argument I've ever heard anyone make.


Saru, for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I tend to react poorly when I get the impression that people are dismissing me, and because of that, I crossed a line.
I still don't agree with your Persivul read, but I see your reasoning. I hope we'll be able to discuss this again once there's more information: as it is now, everything I have to say has been said.

[MechaGoomba]

Not townie, or even anti-townie, is not always the same as scummy.

I'm parsing this as "I made a mistake". Is that the correct interpretation?

[MechaGoomba]

Karnos: If you have as many scumreads as you have townreads, you need more townreads, because there aren't that many scum in the game. There are always more town than there are scum.

After RVS, I find it's hard for me to maintain a high post count. It seems like there is no reason to post much, besides answering people's questions and posting reads.

1) Please don't self-meta.
2) You've posted multiple readslists, so I assume you have scumreads. Why aren't you pushing them?
You've answered questions, yes. Why not be proactive, ask some for a change?
Be proactive, not reactive. Town has to be proactive; everyone has to do their part to find scum. Scum can afford to be reactive because they only need to survive.

[MechaGoomba]

What were you hoping to accomplish with this post?

People have been trying to pressure Kappy into doing things for a while, and it hasn't been working. I was hoping an alternate method might work better.

I remembered reading him as very open towny, so I looked through some of his games where he was town and his play here doesn't look anything like it.

I sorta agree with your analysis, but when I open the spoiler I drown in words and colors and argh why. Please, for the love of god, don't wall like that and especially don't do post-by-post. It's really hard to read and often can intimidate people into agreeing.

[MechaGoomba]

Will reevaluate Karnos & Kappy later.

[MechaGoomba]

On rereading, one thing that jumped out at me was that, when Kappy was wagoned, he became less active.

Karnos's 359 mentions that Kappy was much more active on Wednesday. However, he then says that Kappy had more of a wagon then than he does now. This is wrong. Check GreyICE's ISO for the votecounts; the maximum wagon Kappy reached Wednesday was 3 players, and it disintegrated quickly. For most of the past few days, Kappy has had 4-5 players on his wagon.

Now, I personally feel that that's more likely to come from apathetic town, but I went and looked at his first newbie game and he did the exact same thing there. Do with that what you will.

[MechaGoomba]

Kappy:

1) Please don't self-meta.

Karnos is not looking good at all. To be perfectly honest, I'd be voting him right now if Kappy was answering questions and/or being proactive.

[MechaGoomba]

Later that same day, he starting playing a bit more seriously, the majority of his wagon vanished, and for a time he was only being voted by a single player

The actual ordering is "later that day, his wagon vanished, and then he started playing more seriously." ISO him; everything above 77 is pure fluff with only, what, 2-3 game-relevant one-liners? But then, after 77, he puts out 2 separate readslists. While the second one does come after Persivul and Karnos's vote, he wasn't under particularly serious pressure at the time, and now, when the pressure ramps up, he's inactive.

Been near the top of my potential scum list for some time, and the last few interactions with him just gave me a bad vibe. Maybe this vote will just serve as an empty gesture, compared to the existing wagons, but I feel my prior vote is no longer serving a useful purpose.

Something about this just feels really terrible.
He admits nobody else is going for me, but doesn't actually push me in any way. Town generally aren't that content with being the only one on their scumread.
He fails to actually give any explanation for why he's changing his vote now, of all times. Top of the scumlist, yes, so why not switch to me earlier? Because he didn't have an undefined "bad vibe" then.
And, of course, this vote just coincidentally happens to be placed right after I've finished discussing why I'm unsure that Kappy's scum and I might switch to voting him.

VOTE: karnos
I'm feeling pretty confident in this.

[MechaGoomba]

45 53 65 71 - not shiny examples of awesome town posting, but they were legitimate serious posts, as opposed to the random silly posting style kappy was using prior.

In order: "this is RVS", "to be funny", some sort of nonsensical WIFOM argument, and a no-explanation one-liner.
You are under the impression that Kappy was posting these things

in order to remove the wagon on him

.
He posted 2 consecutive readslists after the wagon had already evaporated. Why would these useless one-liners be better tools at

removing a developing wagon

than readslists, which multiple people have mentioned scum often use to deflect suspicion?

Care to guess how many game relevant posts you have made up to that point? A big fat ZERO.

This is the worst ad hominem argument I have ever seen anyone make.
Are you somehow under the impression I'm attacking Kappy for having silly posts? Your claim is "[Kappy] was only acting town long enough to break away from a wagon."
I am refuting this claim by showing that he acted more town after the wagon was gone than while it was there.
How the FUCK is my early-game activity level relevant to this?

I didn't switch to you earlier for obvious reasons I'd be happy to reveal later.

If you can reveal it later, you ought to be able to reveal it now. Waiting to reveal something you already know means either you're reaction testing or you're scum and you need time to make up an excuse. I doubt you're reaction testing.


karnos: Consider the following: You think I am scum and want me to be lynched. Most other players think I am town. You are not in serious danger of being lynched soon, since there are only 3 votes on you.
You have said that you are voting me for reasons other than the "scumslip", and don't consider OMGUS a scumtell. You have other reasons for voting me. Yet

every post you have made

attacking me is about either the perceived scumslip or my "OMGUS".
Why not discuss those "other reasons"? Why are you so focused on the things other people are criticizing, rather than the things you find most compelling?

Even when you try to push me as scum, you're defensive of your reasoning rather than actually aggressive towards me. Not town behavior.

[MechaGoomba]

If you don't consider my read of you in 359 to be an attack, is that tacit admittance that everything I read into your ISO is true?

That readwall was terrible and your read on me was even more so. Discounting the IIOA (which we shouldn't be; we should be looking carefully at it, thinking "does this have a purpose besides padding wordcount"), all you have to say is "I don't like reaction tests", "not digging through typos is scummy", and "not rewriting a post for someone who didn't read it is scummy."

If that's the best stuff you can come up with for an attack, why are you bothering with me? Your segment of that readwall on me is twice as big as anyone else's and has about half as much content as some.
You had an actual reason for voting Kappy, even if it was wrong: what convinced you to unvote? If you wanted to stand out from the crowd you could've gone after Mizzy.
Why are you even bothering? What's so important about me that you drop everything over these tiny quibbles?

What is your motivation?

I don't have to attempt to make him look more shady, his whole ISO is doing that for me.

My whole ISO is terrible? Then why aren't you putting in the tiny bit of effort required to get one single incriminating quote from it?
The scummier you claim I am, the less of an excuse you have for refusing to put in the effort to support it, and the more it shows that your read is not remotely as strong as you claim it is.

[MechaGoomba]

His ISO is completely bare of real townish posts

, and

all I see are these mild scum indications

.

They don't mean much individually

, but

his reactions

and

lack of counter evidence

is enough for me.

"

He isn't towny

,

he's scummy

,

no I can't quote posts to prove it

,

he's reacting in a scummy way

, and

he hasn't disproven anything I've said

."
That's not an argument, that's just you stating your opinion. I mean, if you had said "I have a gut read of you as scum but it's not strong", I would've been fine. But you're pretending like your read is much bigger and much stronger than it actually is. You throw a read out there, don't try to push it, and then when you're called on it overstate everything massively, it makes me wonder how you came up with it in the first place.

Would you prefer some meta analysis, where I take some out of context quote from one of Mecha's other games to try to prove he is scum in this one?

You know that thing where scum complain about how you caught them for the wrong reasons? This reads like that to me.
Most town players, they're going to be more frustrated that they're being scumread than that the people scumreading them are using meta tells.

It's still just dumb filler, followed by a clarifying dumb filler post.

Admit when you're proven wrong, will you? If dumb filler was lynch-worthy, you'd have no excuse to not be voting Kappy.

[MechaGoomba]

Saru, while for the most part I agree with your meta analysis, the "worried about lurkers" thing came up before, and Karnos responded in post 198. Not sure if you've seen it or not, but better safe than sorry.

[MechaGoomba]

@Mech would you say you're very tunnely as town?

My current town playstyle has two states I flipflop between: tunneling someone really really hard and going back through recent posts to rework all my reads. I wish I could do both at once more often.

I'm not going to keep banging my head into the wall to make a point, if you want to lynch me go ahead. As long as the scum who started this wagon on me get lynch in the following days, I'll consider it a fair trade.

This is seriously worrying me because on the one hand, it looks like genuine town frustration, but on the other hand, Karnos has shown no such frustration previously, and having this whole frustrated self-sacrificing attitude pop up just as he's about to be lynched is a bit too convienient. It does feel fake, but I'm worried I'm confbiasing.

to make some big point about communication is critical and

trying to throw blame around is unacceptable

Yes, exactly! And then immediately after I said miscommunication isn't scummy. Which, taken together, means people shouldn't be throwing accusations of scumminess around based on who holds the blame for miscommunication. Which is what a lot of people voting Persivul were doing.


NOTE: Karnos is currently at

L-2

.

[MechaGoomba]

You apparently gave up in 475, resigned yourself to being lynched. Why not explain yourself then? Why wait until now, if you had this explanation ready all the time and just kept it secret for *reasons*?

If the only reason you were voting Persivul was to pressure him enough that you could read him, why not unvote after the big Persivul vs. Saru argument? You never followed up your vote. You never pushed Persivul. What could your one unsupported vote give in terms of pressure that a giant pagelong argument couldn't?

When you voted Persivul, you made the decision to focus on pressuring him over pushing your scumreads. When you chose not to vote me, even after you put me as a top scumread, you reaffirmed that. You scumread a lot of things I said between 247 and 399, and none of them convinced you to vote me.
So then, what reason could you have to go back on that decision to pressure Persivul and vote me? I didn't suddenly become hyperscummy right before 399. The only good reason would be you realized you were no longer able to pressure Persivul, right?
Then, if you saw you weren't pressuring him with a vote on him, why would you still believe you'd be able to pressure him even after unvoting? Your rationale for not explaining in 410 doesn't hold water.


It seems really clear that this is just mafia flailing in a last-ditch attempt not to get lynched. If I'm wrong, I apologize, but by this point I seriously doubt it.

[MechaGoomba]

You apparently gave up in 475, resigned yourself to being lynched. Why not explain yourself then? Why wait until now, if you had this explanation ready all the time and just kept it secret for *reasons*?

You tell me: what is the scum motivation in waiting?

If I do get lynched, I'll have a chance in twilight to share anything else that needs to be shared.

If the only reason you were voting Persivul was to pressure him enough that you could read him, why not unvote after the big Persivul vs. Saru argument? You never followed up your vote. You never pushed Persivul. What could your one unsupported vote give in terms of pressure that a giant pagelong argument couldn't?

I don't *have* an argument. Persivul was playing as town should, IMO. 295 was my lame attempt to push him a little. Could I make up some absolute BS, and try to use that to attack him a little more? Maybe, if I tried, but I didn't want to get myself miss-lynched bad enough for that. In retrospect the whole thing was a poor play. Maybe I should have gone all in on the attack, but I felt my slot was already viewed as scummy by several players and I couldn't risk a full gambit like that.

When you voted Persivul, you made the decision to focus on pressuring him over pushing your scumreads. When you chose not to vote me, even after you put me as a top scumread, you reaffirmed that. You scumread a lot of things I said between 247 and 399, and none of them convinced you to vote me.
So then, what reason could you have to go back on that decision to pressure Persivul and vote me? I didn't suddenly become hyperscummy right before 399. The only good reason would be you realized you were no longer able to pressure Persivul, right?

Reads evolve, and sometimes not pushing a suspected scum can lead to more valuable information than you would ever get by pushing it. I feared that I wouldn't be able to read persivul as scum unless he was pushed, but that doesn't apply to all players. Any scum reads are rather flimsy at this point, and giving you more rope to hang yourself seemed like a better plan at the time. I don't like to do this, but since everyone wants to use meta against me I guess it's fair to bring up: in my previous games, I hated posting read lists. I know my reads are flimsy, and posting them in the thread for all to read just gives a lot of information away that I really don't want scum to have.

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 8#p7866218

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 9#p7780459

Those were my first two games, both as town BTW. I've gotten a lot of pushback from this line of thinking, I get the impression that I am viewed as scum because I don't share reads, so I decided to go the other route this game and shared a nearly full read list (minus persivul for obvious reasons- if I revealed that I read him as town, my vote on him would seem incongruous and I wouldn't be applying any pressure). Suffice to say, I am now wishing I just stuck with my previous strategy of keeping my reads close except when I was willing to vote, as sharing my reads as I have somehow just made me look worse and gave some free information away to scum.

Anyway, long story short: I won't always vote a scummy player immediately, or even tell them I see them as scummy, because to me that is essentially saying "hey, if you want to fool me into thinking you are town, quit doing X Y and Z". Just plain bad strategy IMO.

Then, if you saw you weren't pressuring him with a vote on him, why would you still believe you'd be able to pressure him even after unvoting? Your rationale for not explaining in 410 doesn't hold water.

It's psychological. If I vote you and say I think you are scum, and later switch to another person saying something like "well I am even more sure they are scum", it doesn't fully take you off the hook- you might wonder if I will go back to voting you, or if I will vote you after the other person is lynched, etc. It might release some pressure having the vote moved off, but you still know there is a player who wants to lynch you, even if he isn't voting you currently.

And TBH, I really think the above would be completely obvious, but you don't see it because you are blindly pushing your case on me.

At this point there's pretty much nothing karnos could say or do that would make him look more town.
Let's not waste time if we don't have to: if Karnos claims, we want to have the time to deal with it properly.

[MechaGoomba]

OH GOD WHY DOES THE QUICK REPLY BOX DO THAT

No one knows. Glad it's not just me though.

[MechaGoomba]

MechaGoomba: The chance of me claiming before L-1 and intent to hammer is 0%. If someone decides to rush and quick-hammer before claiming, the loss is on them, not me.

What I meant was "we want to reach L-1 with intent early enough that if/when you claim we have the opportunity to actually check for CCs, find another good lynch, etc. rather than rushing to find a compromise and avoid no lynch."


If you flip scum I'd have to take a serious look at Kappy. I'm getting conflicting reads on your interactions, and a lot of it really bothers me, especially since you voted Kappy for a good chunk of the game but basically did nothing with it. He was also doing his best to ignore you until the wagon on you got really big and then he used flimsy reasoning to hop on.

[MechaGoomba]

In other words, if he's scum, he didn't just hop onto the wagon opportunistically. He was intending a fake a reaction test all along from the beginning.

I'm entirely unsure why you think this?
Yes, many of his actions would make sense if he was reaction testing. This is because, if he was reaction testing, he never actually scumread Persy. Therefore, it's understandable that he wasn't pushing his read, jumped off the wagon when he got a chance, etc., because he wasn't scumreading Persy in the first place.
The problem is, if he's scum, then there's also the large possiblity that he never scumread Persy because he knew Persy was town. Two different reasons for having a fake read are indistinguishable from the outside.
I don't believe there's any possibility he's scum who is reaction testing; I think he's scum who faked a read, got called out, and made an outrageous lie to hide it.

[MechaGoomba]

The key thing here is:

Karnos admits to faking a read.

He's just saying he did it for town purposes, as a reaction test. But he is still claiming it was fake. He just claims the motivation was town, not scum.
So I suppose the question has to be: If he was reaction testing, why did he leave out Persivul in his readslist?
Wouldn't any answer to that question be just as good an answer if he was scum?

He did say it was "obvious" why he was leaving "someone" out. I'm assuming he is not thinking here that he is "obviously" reaction testing.

Yeah, that doesn't make much sense in the unlikely hypothetical where karnos is town either.

[MechaGoomba]

If you are pushing that the third option happened, then why did he omit the Persivul read rather than make something up?

If he was town, why would he have omitted the Persivul read rather than make something up?
Let me guess: because making something up would be lying to the town. Oh wait, he was doing that already!

Unless I'm seriously misinterpreting, your argument is that karnos is town because, if he were scum, he'd have been

even more deceptive

when he was

lying to the town about his reads

, so, because

he lied about his reads in a less deceptive way

, he must be town.
Suffice it to say I don't remotely see your point.

[MechaGoomba]

If he were scum that simply wanted to mislynch Persivul, he could have come up with something to push him.

If he were town that wanted to pressure Persivul, he could have come up with something to push him. As a matter of fact, he'd want to come up with a push more as town than as scum.

You need a push to pressure properly. A naked vote that's never referenced again isn't pressure.
If you just want a mislynch, on the other hand, you don't need to push; it doesn't really matter who gets lynched as long as they aren't mafia.

[MechaGoomba]

Mecha, what's your read on Wingback again?

My read on Wingback is currently medium-strength town, but it may change dependent on karnos's flip.

[MechaGoomba]

@Mecha: How and when did you get to that townread? And elaborate more please on that flip-thing.

My townread on Wingback is based on the fact that he's replacing Sick, and I trust Persivul's assessment of Sick given no strong evidence to the contrary.
The flip thing is basically that if karnos flips scum I'll be extremely displeased with the people that jumped in to say "But karnos's ridiculous gambit means he could potentially be town! Let's ignore all the scummy stuff he ever did in favor of that slim possibility!", and Wingback is decidedly one of those people.


Also, I feel like I should remind people: the gambit karnos is claiming to have pulled is not remotely a reaction test. Look at how I was dealing with Chumba if you want an example of a proper reaction test.
Differences: I applied actual pressure, I finished the assessment quickly rather than letting it drag on, I explained what I was doing as soon as I finished testing, I

didn't lie

(I was actually scumreading Chumba at the time, just changed my read after the reaction), and I was doing it during the early stages of the game where it would actually be useful (because once the early stages are over, discussion is much better at getting information than reaction testing).

[MechaGoomba]

I voted a player who I was currently reading as town

EXACTLY MY POINT!

I think we can reasonably assume that voting someone means that you think they're scum!
What's next, "I only said they were acting scummy, not that I thought they were scum; I actually believed they were town acting scummy the whole time"?
"I said I wanted them to be lynched, but I never said that I actually scumread them; I just didn't want them in the game"?

This is blatant semantics and I will have no part of it. TOWN DO NOT VOTE THEIR TOWNREADS. End of discussion.

[MechaGoomba]

If Karnos flips town, I think you or Masquerade would make good partners for somehow knowing he is town.

So if they're scum if Karnos is scum and also if Karnos is town, wouldn't that just make them scum?
I get what you're going for; the whole "let's oppose the inevitable wagon to get towncred when they flip town" thing is rather common.
However, I'd be more inclined to look in other places (not going to say it right now to avoid tipping people off, expect me to return to this during twilight or D2).

[MechaGoomba]

Also: 562 : LAMIST.

Okay, if it was warning L-3 or L-2, I could see that. If it was warning L-1 soon after a vote count, maybe. But marking L-1 when vote counts are sparse and multiple people are rereading rather than following along? Really?

Of course, by saying this I might just push him to quickhammer me. I honestly hope I am wrong, I hope an actual town player is on my side here, but knowing I might get lynched in the near future I'd rather out this theory now rather than wait.

Even when about to be lynched, when you have your last chance to contribute to town, you're still so cautious!
You're not saying "These people are the scum, lynch them tomorrow." You're saying "OK, you asked for reads? Here are reads."
Above all, that's what I really don't like. When you have a chance to contribute, you equivocate, but you are willing to reiterate your flimsy defences as much as you need to.

Scum rarely push back against one of the only people defending them when almost everyone else is against them. They'd be ecstatic about having an ally.

Do you believe Karnos would expect that your defense would be able to get the lynch off of him? If yes, why? If no, then why would he care whether you defended him or not?

@GreyICE: Apparently the votecounter registered Mathblade's vote for karnos as for Wingback because they capitalized the first letter?

[MechaGoomba]

I'm still his last hope [...]

Last hope to survive, maybe, but not last hope to win. His last hope to win is his teammates, and, as scum, he'd want to be throwing around as much WIFOM and confusion as possible in order to provide a smokescreen for the remaining scum.

[MechaGoomba]

He voted a fucking town read who the hell does that as town? Like what?

This. So much this.

If we had quicklynched karnos after 499 I wouldn't have batted an eye.
I mean, "I voted the guy I was townreading as a reaction test" is up there with "Yeah I fakeclaimed a cop guilty, but I was really sure the guy was mafia."

People - a lot of people - were scumreading karnos even before 499, and now nobody's bothering to mention anything but it.
Even if you believe karnos's explanation for that ridiculous gambit, he is still scummy for a multitude of other reasons! But you have people that are actually using the ridiculous gambit as a reason to townread him.

I understand that a lot of people, replacing in, are getting overwhelmed by this argument. I get it. There's not actually much of use in the last few pages.
The pre-499 part of karnos's ISO is probably the most important thing to look at, actually. 499 is important, but it's just the clincher at the end of a long string of scumminess.

[MechaGoomba]

WTF dude. Being at L-1 doesn't grant super-cop capability to detect all the scum. [...] I don't know who is definite scum, best I can give are my reads and opinions. [...] I'm not going to insist on a lynch of someone I am not 100% sure about. [...] I can't tell you who is absolutely scum because I don't know.

"You're still being too cautious and this doesn't fit your townplay." "But how can I know for certain anyone is 100% sure to be scum!"
You're kind of proving my point there. If you really needed someone to be 100% scum, you'd never vote for anyone ever, because everything leaves some uncertainty. Even cops have godfathers to deal with.
If you knew the people you were voting for were 100% town on account of being scum yourself, on the other hand ...

In 300 you indicated that deception, voting, & reaction testing is all kosher and well known town strategy.

Look at how I was dealing with Chumba if you want an example of a proper reaction test.
Differences: I applied actual pressure, I finished the assessment quickly rather than letting it drag on, I explained what I was doing as soon as I finished testing, I

didn't lie

(I was actually scumreading Chumba at the time, just changed my read after the reaction), and I was doing it during the early stages of the game where it would actually be useful (because once the early stages are over, discussion is much better at getting information than reaction testing).

Most of that applies to Persivul as well.

It's obvious what I missed, and I'm sorry to out you, but you are obviously a mason. There is no other way you could spew so much contrary BS without being scum-read by more players than me.

You see that there are a bunch of people that seem to be buddying me, ignoring my "contradictory BS" and pushing my wagons. Their goal seems to be to get you lynched, and since (assuming you're town) you know you're town, this would be a mislynch.
Why would you ever assume "they're masons" and not "they're scum"?

PS: I'm not a mason.

[MechaGoomba]

@Mecha -- Assuming Karnos is scum, who do you think is scum with him?

I have the entire nightphase to figure such things out and so really don't want to waste time with preflip associatives, but if I absolutely had to pick someone, I'd go with either Kappy or maybe Dierfire.

Also, I find it really strange that karnos has been going "you're scummy and terrible and we should lynch you for all these blatant contradictions" and such, and then as soon as MathBlade shows up and starts 1) voting for him and 2) not looking super town, karnos suddenly hypertownreads me with a flimsy mason explanation and then tries to get me to jump onto MathBlade. Not really seeing the read progression there.

[MechaGoomba]

Although, if I am actually wrong about MechaGoomba, I'd be voting him right back.

PS: I'm not a mason.

If I didn't think you were a mason [I'd say you were scum.]

Where's that vote, karnos? I'm waiting.
At this point, the only reason I can think of you're not voting me is that you think MathBlade is going to be an easier mislynch.

[MechaGoomba]

I'm a flavor cop.

By this, do you mean you determine the flavor of a player's role PM?

[MechaGoomba]

I was hoping I could figure out whether or not Karnos knew that, since it looked like it might be an inconsistency. No chance of that now.

UNVOTE: karnos pending either counterclaim or lack of such.

[MechaGoomba]

I would like to state for the record that

I do not counterclaim karnos.

[MechaGoomba]

since scum have daytalk

Um, what? The rules say nothing about daytalk. In fact, the Normal Game page specifically says that daytalk can only exist if the rules say so, or if there's an Encryptor.
Does anyone else see this as a scumslip or am I just being paranoid?

Came in with a big splash to get town read but then did nothing.

In fact, his big splash isn't actually that contentful in retrospect. He's mainly just pointing out silly/mildly scummy things people have said, buddying active players a lot (count how many times he said "I like you" instead of "this looks town" or "I agree with this"), and complaining about how the karnos wagon hasn't built up to a lynch yet.
A whole ton of stuff that looks sort of townie at first glance because it's, theoretically, discussing reads, but the stuff from it is all stuff the non-replacement players have already taken into account and so it's not actually useful in any way. I don't actually get any sense of his reads from it.

VOTE: JohnnyFarrar

[MechaGoomba]

should not give town results [...] has very little protown reason to state their results.

I'd debate that. A Neapolitan is different from a Vanilla Cop in that they get "Vanilla Townie" or "Not Vanilla Townie" instead of just "Vanilla" or "Not Vanilla". In other words, any Vanilla Townie targeted by a Neapolitan can be confirmed as 100% town. That would be extremely valuable during LYLO, and, as long as he doesn't reveal any "Not Vanilla Townie" results unless they claim vanilla, he'll only be making things harder for scum by making them choose between PR hunting and eliminating conftown.

Can't quote it on phone but it's number 4 in post #2

Ah, sorry. Thanks for pointing that out.

I can think of a couple ways this went down

"1) Karnos and Masquerade are scum.
2) Karnos and Masquerade are scum.
3) Karnos and Masquerade are scum."

Why do people think putting numbers on things makes them become correct?

So, every time someone claims a PR, we're going to build a wagon on someone else? Sounds like a great way to out some PR's and get a VT lynched.

You appear to be missing the part where if there was another Neapolitan or even a cop of some sort, karnos would be instalynched.
Do you seriously think that mafia!karnos just happened to guess that this was a setup with no cops at all?

[MechaGoomba]

We've got three days to deadline and your vote is sitting on an unCCed claimed cop. All of the things you're saying are technically true and none of them are enough to justify that.

[MechaGoomba]

is there some hidden ratio here that makes Neapolitan >80% town or something?

I imagine that when making the role list for this game GreyICE didn't flip a coin for every role that could potentially help either scum or town to determine which alignment it would be.
Later in the game, when we have more flips, we can look at the setup and figure out which it would need more: a town Neapolitan or a scum Neapolitan.
We have 0 flips, are incapable of doing that today, and so shouldn't lynch the claimed cop.

@Masquerade: Okay, so you have a bunch of links to games. Are you planning to analyze them at some point?

From my limited look at his games, I'm willing to write Johnny's behavior off as being playstyle for now. Might come back later.

VOTE: MathBlade
Assume we no lynched, karnos died in the night and flipped town Neapolitan. What would be your reads and why?

@MathBlade: GreyICE did miscapitalize your name, but you also capitalized "karnos" when it should be lowercased.

[MechaGoomba]

I would have to look at the champions of the Karnos wagon [as scum suspects].

Town reads would be Mecha and Wingback.

If I'm wrong about both Wingback and Karnos being scum together I'll be poking [Mecha]. Hard.

Explain this please?

I didn't like the bits of the Karnos case quibbley bolted on when I asked him about it upon replacing in.

That would be 459, right?

[MechaGoomba]

Now for the post I quoted. It is the Wingback paragraph that really sold me you were town.

So you were sold that I was town in 601. Makes sense, that explains the shift between 561 and 722. However, that still doesn't explain anything related to the quoted part of 721. Did you not consider me to be a "champion of the karnos wagon"?


On reread, Dierfire is starting to look a bit off to me. One thing I've noticed is that he over-explains everything. Lots of his posts seem to be packed full of information in order to hide the fact that his actual reads are extremely uncontroversial.
Take 228 & 229: He townreads Persivul but doesn't actually engage with the arguments of the people suspecting him, puts a lot of effort into a townread on Chumba despite the fact that she wasn't being scumread or doing anything super important at the time, ambivalently doubtcasts on Sick with a side of preflip associative, and then uses a ton of IIOA to say essentially "I don't get Kappy's Sick reads progression".
Nothing risky, nothing that needs to be explained that much, and yet it's a full screenlength of text. I haven't seen any past game where he did this; has anyone played with him enough to say for certain?

[MechaGoomba]

why are you voting on the same wagon with karnos?

Because if I was so convinced he's scum I'd refuse to vote a scumread because of it, I'd be voting him right now.

@MagnaofIllusion:
Suppose you knew that karnos was town; how would this affect your read on Johnny?
You've stated that you think the reason Johnny's wagon fell apart is that there were scum on it; are you willing to say who you think they are?

he's potentially outing town PRs with every result and or making the scum's search for PRs easier by stating which players are Vanilla.

He has no reason to out a "Not VT" result unless they claim VT, and even if he outs every VT result the scum will still have to choose between killing PRs and conftown.

[MechaGoomba]

Karnos should out all "VT" results, but no "Not VT" results unless they contradict claims. The town should not attempt to direct karnos.

Spoiler: Reasoning

Outing a "VT" result gives a confirmed vanilla townie, which is pretty dang great for giving scum headaches over who to kill.
However, outing a "Not VT" result is essentially useless for town and makes it possible for scum to find PRs easily.
Therefore, karnos should be outing "VT" results but not "Not VT" results.
If we tell karnos who to target, then if he doesn't out his result, it'll be obvious that it was "Not VT."
Therefore, we can't tell karnos who to target.

I will say that I consider a lot of this "but how do we deal with karnos" speculation a waste of time. We're close enough to deadline that getting a decent lynch together should be a priority.

UNVOTE: MathBlade
VOTE: JohnnyFarrar
You've made more posts than any other player that replaced in near the same time as you, and yet you have far less actual content than anyone else.
I could write it off as playstyle, but my meta analysis makes it look pretty clear: you do usually have this style of many short posts, but usually you're moving towards something constructive with them. I can't see that here.


PE, @karnos: Don't assume that scummy players can't be power roles. That said, I personally would recommend you target scummier players, because you can townfirm much more easily than scumfirming, and a townfirm is worth more if it's on a widely suspected player (though preferably someone active enough that they'll be able to make use of conftown status). As stated above, please don't say anything about who you're going to target; not only does it potentially out PRs, it opens the door to a whole new world of WIFOM.

[MechaGoomba]

This does not benefit town in any way for this specific PR. If Karnos is scum and targets a scummy player and then Karnos flips scum, we in essence gain nothing except to put any players that Karnos claims were VT under a microscope. However if Karnos flips town then we'd know that those people were townfirms.

I am going to need you to explain to me, in as clear and concise a manner as you can manage, how this is in any way different from a basic cop.
Your reasoning seems to be "karnos could potentially be lying so we can't trust him." This is, in a sense, true. But

anyone

could be lying.
There is no game so airtight that it cannot possibly be false. There is no such thing as 100% trust, and so no investigative results can have 100% accuracy.

Mafia is not a game where you deal in certainty. The fact that you can't be certain someone is town doesn't mean you lynch them. The fact that you can't be certain someone is truthful doesn't mean you disregard them.
Stop worrying about the worst-case scenario. Stop dealing in what-ifs. Ask yourself: Do you have good enough reasoning to justify lynching an unCCed investigative role D1?

If you think you do, feel free to present it in whatever way you find most effective. If not, stop cluttering up the thread.

PS: You're still doing the thing where you townread me and scumread every group I'm in.
Maybe do a reread? If you're getting contradictory results, one of your assumptions is wrong.

PE:

What makes you think there is a jail in this setup?
And furthermore why call it out here? God I wish we would lynch you right now as this is very bad PR hunting IMHO.

How, exactly, does saying "I'd rather be jailed" result in the jailkeeper revealing themselves? Unless you think mafia have a watcher, in which case, 1) what makes you suspect that and 2) that makes scum!karnos really unlikely unless town has an absolute ton of power roles; I would never put Neapolitan and Watcher on the same scumteam.

[MechaGoomba]

Did the claim completely change your read?

Given the fact that I'm not currently voting for karnos, what do you think?

Shadyhood’s attack on the Sick slot was scummy (as I said in my recaps – did you read them?).

You never said that and that never happened. Shady tunneled Persy, defended Sick.

And you are incorrect – I think Johnny’s wagon fell apart because he’s scum not because there was scum on it.

How is a scumwagon more likely than a townwagon to fall apart if not because the scum are influencing it?

So Johnny acquired 4 votes for reasons that hold up well to looking for scum intent in play. Yet the wagon dropped back to 2 votes with no strong opinions of Town oriented play from Johnny.

Which involved people unvoting, so unless scum have some sort of magic make-people-unvote ray, those players would have to be scum for this to be Johnny's scumbuddies helping him out.
Either state a concrete opinion or quit doubtcasting. "I don't understand why this thing happened, therefore scum did it" is terrible reasoning.

No he should out any result. If he is scum then scum is already going to know what he knows.

If I was so convinced karnos was scum I based my entire plan around it I WOULD BE VOTING FOR HIM RIGHT NOW.


You are making me less and less convinced in my Johnny scumread with every post you make accusing him.

[MechaGoomba]

I think karnos is scum but I’m not voting for him because it is stupid to do so given his claim and the game-state.

I don't do that sort of thing. If someone's likely to be scum, vote them. Claims shift people into the "not likely scum" category when they're not CCed, and into the "definitely scum" category when they are.

Johnny acquired 4 votes in a fairly short period of time after karnos’s claim. If Johnny is Town then there is little chance scum are just going to let that wagon fall by the wayside – especially if karnos is scum. Establishing a strong alternate wagon would be important given the pushes by Math and Quib to lynch karnos even with the claim. Yet the wagon which could have been propelled forward by scum instead was allowed to fizzle.

1) Couldn't you have said that before I badgered you about it? The thing where you're as vague as you can possibly be until called on it is really annoying.
2) That statement assumes that a counterwagon would be needed. If karnos was town, mafia would be gleeful Math and Quib were trying to do their work for them. Given that you said your Johnny read is unaffected by whether or not karnos is scum, that doesn't really make sense.
3) This close to deadline, a fizzling wagon is a benefit for scum. If town ends up scrambling to not No Lynch, mafia can direct it as they please.
4) Insulting the intelligence of those that disagree with you is an easy way to ensure you'll never convince them to agree.


Right now I'm gut-reading Magna as scum, but I'm worried I'm confbiasing and/or blinded by frustration, so I'm not willing to vote him yet.
I'm planning to reread his ISO to find what it is that bugs me; if someone else could look as well to make sure it's not just me, that would be great.

PE:

No one has provided a decent reason why Karnos is town. In a face to face Mafia game in Chicago there was a werewolf cop (Cheetory6) who claimed cop and no one CC'd and so everyone assumed he was town and then coasted to a victory. So yes. If I do not believe cop claims I want them lynched because they can and will fuck with you if you let them.

Just because a bad thing happened once doesn't mean you have to be paranoid about it in every single future case.
How many times have you played in a game where an unCCed cop was town and provided useful results? I'd assume more than one.

[MechaGoomba]

The way Magna is saying "let's not lynch karnos" (correctly) but then building a lot of his reads (more than he admits) around the presumption of scum!karnos strikes me as someone who was blindsided by the claim and is having trouble adjusting their reads to fit with it.
He's making giant posts to justify his reads even though they're pretty commonly held, and if you sort through the posts you find lots of preflip associatives, lots of relatively weak stuff buried in the walls.
It feels like he's already decided who to scumread and now he's just writing the posts for it; sadly, that "fit the evidence to the reads mentality" is also something that pops up in town.

I'm not going to vote him: if I voted everyone who was confbiasing, I'd have to switch my target every post. I will, however, keep an eye on him.

PS: Magna, please make your posts just a bit more concise. As it stands, I can barely interact with your points because they're split up among 50 responses to various quotes.

[MechaGoomba]

I can (partially) explain this now.

Are you able to say, at this time, why you couldn't explain it in 724?

The essence is that Kappy's read changed with frequencies and degrees that should require stronger reasons than what he gave.

I agree with you on this, but my belief is that it stems not from Kappy being scum but from failure in communication. As evidence, consider 202.

I'll admit to having difficulty keeping track of the conversation between MagnaofIllusion and MechaGoomba

That's perfectly fine. I couldn't either.

[MechaGoomba]

I didn't have time to go into a wall into every little instance Masq was scummy.

No. No. Absolutely not.
I know for a fact you are capable of posting without drowning the thread in walls. Even an extremely quick skim of your past games proves that.
Stop complaining that you can't bludgeon people into agreeing with you by throwing words at them until they assume you're right.
Start making arguments that people will be able to read and understand.

That town lean was before Dierfire started doing crazy vote shit.

Explain to me, without walling, without assuming anything is obvious, why moving from L-2 to L-1 could possibly be scum-motivated, as well as why the explanation Dierfire has given is inadequate.

Examine your assumptions. Your argument is built on false premises.

this sloppy mistake shows they didn't really do the work, but rather was just desperate to get out a hit piece on me ASAP before the wagon lost momentum.

I feel that the wagon was losing momentum already. It had stalled hard at L-2 when we were doing the long back-and-forths; the masonspec was what got people voting for you seriously.
I would say that MathBlade's read does look rushed, but that sort of thing is relatively common when people are just replacing in; if I had to guess, I'd say they were doing a really quick reread so they could get caught up and contributing quickly.

I mostly hope that everyone sees math's case on me blows. I offer myself into a 1v1 because of how certain I am that they're scum.

You have 0 votes on you; I think everyone already sees how bad Math's case is. However, I'm not convinced they're scum; it's easy for town to go super tunnely, super wally, and end up hurting the town by burying everything in giant TvT 1v1s. Bad case =/= scum; rushed case =/= scum; stupid case =/= scum, even.

[MechaGoomba]

Mafia is a forums game based on READING. Reading isn’t a hardship.

Mafia is an inherently social game; a game of communication. You can have the best reads in the world, but they're useless if you can't convince others.
This means that every town player should be trying both to put forth their own ideas as clearly as possible and examine the ideas of others. For some people, that means trying to read through a wall where they might just shrug and go on. For some people, this means trying to make their walls just a little bit shorter so others will be more likely to read them.
(Bit hypocritical, I admit, but I never claimed to be perfect.)

The second the Johnny wagon becomes less viable than Math’s I am moving there.

[screams silently]
If Johnny is scum, you just gave scum the perfect signal to start subtly piling onto Math in hopes of flipping the votes of people like you.
If Math is scum, you gave scum the perfect signal that they need to end the day before the leading wagon switches.

So karnos – let’s talk about setting up positions to make it easy to justify later lynches and why this isn’t what you are doing with Johnny here …

If you think Johnny is scum, why are you saying this? Do you expect scum!karnos to lay prior justification for a bus of a teammate that's obviously getting lynched?
If you think Johnny is town, why are you voting him? The Math wagon isn't that far behind -- a lot of the players voting Johnny scumread Math to a lesser extent.

PE:

Why does the wagon on me keep faltering? [...] That shit makes me nervous.

Are you worried that it's the town causing your wagon to falter or the scum? If the town, why are you worried about people townreading you? If the scum, why do you expect that the scum is trying to halt your mislynch?
This reads like you decided to post a townie observation but didn't realize that, if you were town, you'd know for a fact it didn't mean anything.

I flat out cannot think of any reason why town would be worried about the scum causing their wagon to falter, but that's the only way I can interpret these implications.

[MechaGoomba]

the people hopping off for no reason are freaking me out [...] this shit is making me paranoid

You originally said "gut townreads", now you say "no reason"? Well, you were strongly implying "for no reason" in that post, but you didn't say it.
You say "no reason", but nobody does anything without a reason. So what you implied was "no reason they're sharing", meaning they're concealing their reasoning.
You say you're being paranoid, so does that mean "I suspect this but am not sure" or "I know this is wrong but I feel it anyway"? Because the way you're saying it, it's only implied whether or not you believe it.

Implying, equivocating, sowing the seeds of doubt by throwing out vague theories but failing to state a concrete position on who it makes town or scum, and all of this right near deadline where it strongly benefits scum to stall.
If this is what you're willing to put your energy into instead of proper content, I'm more confident than ever in my vote for you.

There's enough here that I need to ask whether there's a good reason for MathBlade, as Mafia, to keep such focus on karnos and avoid the wagon on JohnnyFarrar.

Hmm. Well, MathBlade started making giant posts once the Johnny wagon was picking up speed; before that, their posting was reasonably restrained. Could be a sign of panic?
On the other hand, having the only two players who are under serious suspicion as scumbuddies seems far too convenient.

[MechaGoomba]

People.
We have a single day left. Replacements will not cause an extension; we had something like 5 replacements and deadline only got extended 2 days. 1 replacement won't make a difference to the deadline.
Right now, we've got a couple of players that are getting into giant wall vs. wall slapfights that do nothing to convince anyone of anything. These people need to recalibrate their priorities, because right now they're playing to look smart at the expense of actually helping town.
We then have the players who up to now have been productive, who have good ideas, but aren't posting, quite possibly because of the impenetrable walls.

If the day continues as it has been going, there is almost certainly going to be a no lynch.
Even if a lynch does materialize, I have no confidence it will hit scum. I think Johnny is the most likely to be scum, but I'm not super confident that he is.
If day 2 ends up going down this same road of arrogant posturing and meaningless back-and-forth, we might as well call the game for scum there.

Please try to make this a game where it's worth trying to scumhunt. Don't force people to enter the wall wars if they want to be heard.

[MechaGoomba]

there is no power in the game that could potentially force multiple players to vote a certain wagon.

Force, no. Persuade? Convince? Yes.

Giving up on having your opinion be heard is possibly the worst thing you can do. People may be ignoring you now because they have predetermined you to be scum, but at the very least you should leave them with something to look back on after you (eventually) flip.

[MechaGoomba]

Claiming Neopolitan and crumbing vengeful makes Karnos confirmed scum to me.

It would make him confscum to me

if karnos crumbed vengeful.

I don't believe that, because Occam's Razor suggests that a hypothetical scum!karnos didn't actually crumb a role that would get him instalynched, using wording that is so unspecific I wouldn't accept it as a crumb if he did claim vengeful, only to claim a completely different role later, in a game where scum have daytalk.

469 is content. [...] they are moving towards constructive things.

469 was one of the earliest posts Johnny made. If anything, he's moving away from being constructive.
Regardless of that, I don't think 469 actually was content. It was long, sure, but almost all of it was extremely inoffensive. He townreads Mizzy, Persy, and me while scumreading Chumba, karnos, and kappy; he thinks sick's play is bad, but also that he shouldn't be lynched. Oh, and all of this is based on posts over 10 pages back.
Can you honestly say that anything in that post moved the game forward? Did anyone argue with it? Question it? Use it to back their own theories? No. It stood alone, contributing nothing but words.

[MechaGoomba]

Math apparently wasn't trying to reaction test with that "read your predecessors" remark but, if it was a reaction test, Fire gave the best response possible.

I'd be perfectly fine with Fire rereading MathBlade, given that they're the second most viable wagon; if he decides Johnny doesn't look scummy enough, he'll want to be able to evaluate Math. We do have a deadline extension, so there is some time, though I would really rather not cut it too close.
I don't think Fire should ISO karnos. Yes, he is important to understanding how the day went, but for reads, seeing how others reacted is much more important. ISOing karnos mostly just helps read karnos, and that can wait until night, given that there isn't the will to lynch karnos regardless.

I think mine and Karnos provide the most light into today.

Yours because you're town and also correct about everything; karnos's because he's scum and we should lynch him even though you're not voting him.
You're tunneling karnos so hard that, even after you realize he's unlynchable today, you can't make the game about anything but you vs. him.
What makes Magna a better one off vanity vote than karnos, exactly? I mean, it's pretty clear you still think karnos is the ultrascum.

Magna is a better wagon for all of us. [...] Because Johnny seems to be a counter wagon to Karnos

When you say Johnny is a counterwagon to karnos, you mean that scum pushed the Johnny wagon to defend their buddy karnos, right? I mean, given that you're saying Johnny is town in that statement, there's no other way to read that. A wagon on town deliberately built up to counter a lynch on town seems rather pointless.

In other words, you're assuming karnos is scum so you can justify lynching someone who isn't karnos.
Please; get over karnos already. You've already removed your vote; surely you must be able to remove your focus as well, even just a tiny bit?

[MechaGoomba]

I understand the Dierfire suspicion but don't support it. From my read, he's got a very analytical playstyle; such players tend not to do well on day 1.

I'm pretty convinced MathBlade is town. Their behavior w/ regards to karnos, specifically the way their reads center on him even after disengaging, would be extremely difficult for scum to fake.

I'd be willing to go for a Kappy lynch eventually, but not right now. See what he says, to what degree he elaborates under questioning; if we lynch him while he's away, it's a shot in the dark.

I have no idea why Math is even voting Magna. Something about "not reading", "misrepresenting", both of which are code for "not agreeing with me"/"not understanding my reasoning". Not going there without actual arguments.

Johnny's content primarily consists of the one giant post he made full of statements that are 100% correct and 100% unoriginal, as well as a bunch of poking at perceived inconsistencies and bits of karnos discussion. I do see why some call it a lurker lynch, but I disagree. The reason I'm voting him is because he loves saying things that are right but useless and avoids concrete opinions if at all possible. Low posts I can take as being busy; little content to each post I can take as playstyle. But if so large a proportion of the content you make is bland, useless fence-sitting, that's just scummy.\

PE:

Actually, no. No. I'm not going to risk another unvote and end up with apathy and no flip.
VOTE: Johnny

Not a great hammer, but an understandable one ... if it is a hammer. The vote counter can do really strange stuff.

If anyone wants to shoot out an investigation suggestions I will take them into consideration.

You can't play Neapolitan like a normal cop because you can't get a solid guilty result. You can, however, get a solid innocent, so you should be aiming for people where innocents matter: strong, active players who will be able to make use of being conftown, but aren't already universal townreads; if there isn't some suspicion on them, conftowning is much less valuable. Still worth it, but not as valuable. One player that fits that mold is Dierfire; there are others, but he's who I'd pick.

Wining the mafia about your target isn't much use; the only normal role that would care about it would be a rolestopper. However, I'd recommend you not say who plan on targeting until the next day, so that you can choose whether or not to out them if you get "Not VT".

[MechaGoomba]

they have to townfirm [...] If they hit scummy targets and then claim PR then we are back in the same dilemma as today.

If a cop claimed, would you tell them they have to get a guilty result in order to be able to prove they're not lying?
I do believe karnos should be aiming for townfirms, but saying a "Not VT" result means he's lying is just stupid.


Masq's hammer was, as stated, all kinds of bad, and I wouldn't bat an eye if they got lynched over it. However, I personally see no reason to waste time repeating that over and over.
Tomorrow, we go over associatives, what we may have gained from rereading during the night, and then, if Masq doesn't have an incredibly good reason, we force them to claim.

Hmm. Actually, if Masq is VT, they may want to claim now so karnos could consider clearing them? That might be a horrible idea though; I'm insufficiently paranoid to properly evaluate it right now.

[MechaGoomba]

Also, if Johnny flips town, we'll want to consider lynching qubixes for 898. Jumping off the main wagon to a vanity vote as soon as your reasons for voting are questioned (by Saru in 895) is rather obvious in its motivation.

[MechaGoomba]

@Mecha: Wouldn't a scum Johnny flip not implicate me more?

No. If you were bussing, you'd have no reason to jump off the wagon right as the lynch became inevitable. It would waste the towncred gained from bussing.
Hopping on to push the wagon, then having misgivings when it was inevitable so you could get towncred for predicting it?
Also, I really like how you said this before Johnny flipped town. Smacks of foreknowledge; I know I'd never defend myself based on the flip of someone I don't know the alignment of.

How do you go from this –
To this –
In nine whopping posts?

My initial thought was "well that was really anti-town but there are obvious motives for town!Masq to do such a thing." Then I realized a lot of people didn't see the motives until Masq explained them, so it wasn't actually obvious, so I figured "let Masq explain/people push Masq into explaining, then I can analyze and see if the stated motives make sense." Because, well, Masq knows his motives better than I do.

I investigated persivul. No result. Either I got roleblocked, or persivul got jailed.

I get a sense that I'm being setup, like scum have a blocker or something, so they can push for my lynch tomorrow when I don't get a result.

Wow karnos! You successfully predicted that scum had a blocker day 1! How unlikely!

If Karnos had talked to scumbuddies, I'm sure more option would have come up, like commuter or hider or roles like that.

"If karnos was scum he'd have played better because scum have daytalk."
Good lord this is such a WIFOMy defense I'm tempted to just say you're both scum and be done with it.

@karnos: Why did you investigate Persivul rather than Masquerade? Masq had claimed VT; you'd have been able to confirm him either as town or as scum by checking.

[MechaGoomba]

1. I doubt it's a fake claim, because it's so unusual. I think scum making something up would choose something seen more frequently. This is the first I've heard of neapolitan.

2. If he's genuinely neapolitan and scum, I think he would have wanted to give a result in order to get towncred. It's bad for scum to make conftowns, but they can be killed as created, and a no result could be claimed on a later night.

3. I make sense as a target. I started off good and some people are town reading me, but my game went downhill and some are scum reading me. Also, I'm good at defending when pressed. I.e. I'm kind of scummy, but won't be easy to lynch. That's a good target for an investigation.

I agree with points 1 and 3, but I'm not entirely certain about 2. Killing the person conftowned by karnos might work once or twice, but a pattern would be pretty obvious, especially since we're not directing him in-thread.

What exactly did you learn about this game from a game which had a scum neapolitan who was lynched D1?

Oh god how did I miss that.
This is half of why I'm not voting karnos; everyone scumreading him has terrible horrible arguments.

(The other half is that a karnos who fakeclaims Neapolitan, of all roles, is not a karnos who decides to claim that the person pushing his wagon is a mason.)

Unless they are afraid a more common role is already in the game.

I dunno about you, but if I was a cop I would've CCed karnos in the blink of an eye. I have yet to see a game this small with two cop-variants. Cop-variant and watcher-variant, maybe, but definitely nothing more.

PE: Wait wait wait. Masq, you were literally just defending karnos. Why are you attacking him now?

[MechaGoomba]

998 is really bothering me; there's something about it that feels incredibly unnatural. Qubixes vaguely doubtcasts on me, doesn't actually address my point beyond "sounds like a bad plan", then deflects to "lynch within this small group" ... It just doesn't make sense to me. Anyone willing to help me figure it out?

My read for MathBlade is dominated by their frustration over the karnos lynch. If Math is scum, that frustration has to come from somewhere; not only would it be difficult to push a mislynch with such intensity, it wouldn't even be beneficial, because being that angry is a good way to get people to dismiss you. (I ignore the possibility that Math is bussing karnos because that would be incredibly stupid.)
So what, exactly, would scum!Math be so frustrated over? Not having the karnos mislynch wouldn't be a problem; they got a mislynch anyway, and if they wanted to, they could've tried NKing karnos. Doctor would be a possibility, but enough people were still scumreading karnos, I wouldn't be confident in the doctor targeting him.
The best reason I can come up with for scum!Math to be so angry at karnos getting out of suspicion so easily is that one of their scumbuddies didn't. But then you have the question, who was the scumbuddy? I can't think of anyone that fits the bill; they'd have to be under serious suspicion that didn't go away, and it would have to have appeared before Math started raging at karnos not being lynched.

For those reasons, I'm not willing to vote MathBlade yet. I'm going to VOTE: qubixes with the note that I'm also

FOSing Masquerade

.

[MechaGoomba]

What point do you want me to address?

1) Do you scumread me? If yes, are you planning on pushing me any time soon? If no, what was the "if you're scum" part of 998 about?
2) In 998, you said trying to get towncred by pushing to halt an inevitable townie wagon would be "a bad plan." Why is this, and why should I expect that scum!you didn't make a mistake?
3) In 898, you've said your scumread on Johnny was weak; why vote him in the first place, then?
4) In 898, you also said you didn't feel strongly about anyone. Can you point me to any proactive efforts you've made to change that?
5) In 1000, you said you didn't vote Saru because it would've been a waste of time to try to lynch him. Why didn't you apply the same reasoning to Dierfire?

Why would it be stupid for MathBlade to be behaving in that fashion as Mafia?

It would be stupid for Math to behave in that fashion if karnos was mafia, because then the whole lengthy Math tunnel on karnos would be a bus.
If it was an unplanned bus, Math's scumbuddies would have yelled at them in daychat and convinced them to back off long before they did.
If it was a planned bus, karnos would have been resigned to getting lynched and wouldn't have claimed Neapolitan. He'd have gone for something that would get CCed to out PRs.

MathBlade could be simulating frustration

If it was just "Math tunnels karnos and walls", I could see that, but Math was completely focused on scum!karnos even when not pushing him. I don't think they could fake that; scum would either back off completely and focus elsewhere entirely, never back off at all, or find some way to slowly downgrade it to a scumread.
Simulating being so frustrated that you keep someone as your scumread, but pretend not to because you know others won't listen, but some of it leaks out anyway, is too many Yomi levels for me to accept.

[MechaGoomba]

Persivul, do you really believe that it's that important to shoot MathBlade's reasoning down? I mean, I'm all for getting them to stop making giant hypermultipost tunnelwalls, but their arguments are pretty much torn to shreds as it is.

MathBlade, if you give me one solid post accusing Masq, qubixes, or both, that does not involve either karnos (in any way, shape, or form), their conflicts with you, or the vote things at the end of the day (we all know they happened, repeating it won't change anything), I would really appreciate it. As it stands I'm really worried about those two and I would like to get a read on them, but when you're pulling all discussion about them back into the mighty discussion-devouring black hole that is the MathBlade/Karnos Conflict, I just can't.

After I gave up my Karnos quest, I didn't really know what to do. And Saru (and you IIRC) was right that the thread was a bit of a pain to read.

Hmm. That is fair, and it does give a rather interesting new perspective.

Saru: I'm beginning to reevaluate my qubixes read. From 754 onwards, he does seem to be fitting the general pattern of "apathetic townie"; even when defending himself or pushing you, he seems somehow disengaged. I could mark his conflict with you down as latching on to whatever avenues he can take to contribute; that said, I can't follow the flow of the argument at all, and somehow I feel that there's something in there I'm missing. If you could give a general overview of it from your perspective, that'd be really helpful.
Going to UNVOTE: qubixes for now.

Looking back at Wingback, one thing that really bothers me is Magna's 986. He tries to cast doubt on Masquerade by reinterpreting Wingback's statements to be an attack on Masq, despite the fact that Wing was steadfastly defending Masq throughout day 1. Note that this is after Masq voted Magna using Wingback's death as his reasoning.

[MechaGoomba]

Situationally voting a Town-read who is not Mod Confirmed in some way to prevent a No Lynch is Pro-Town play regardless of the result.

Was that what karnos did? Who do you think Math was talking about if not karnos?

I encourage everyone to read Math’s Day 2 ISO and decide if you believe Math is “poking, pushing and prodding” Quib. I don’t see sign of scum-hunting there.

929 to 954 is pressure on qubixes, but then Math goes back to tunneling karnos.
If you're really claiming Math is scum because they're not putting enough effort into scumhunting, then you

need

to address the question: "Why would scum!Math put so much effort into tunneling on someone that they know is never going to be lynched?"
Tunneling is bad play, to be sure, but it's not scummy, and in volumes like this it gives me a very clear impression of confbiased town.

Do you disagree that the post I quoted was a good snapshot of Wing’s end of Day suspicions? Why are you specifying Masq when Math and Dier are also implicated in that post?

Do not do the implication dance. Yes, you managed to be sufficiently vague that you could hypothetically claim you meant Math or Dier instead of Masq. No, I don't care. Technicalities are not a magic shield against criticism.
You're defending yourself, so clearly you realized I was pushing you as scum. Yet you don't actually seem to care about the main point; you're only picking at details.
You're not saying "No I'm not scum", you're saying "you can't prove I'm scum." And the way you're saying it is not "I'm disproving your fallacious argument" but "wasn't I careful enough? Didn't I leave wiggle room?"
VOTE: MagnaofIllusion


@Saru: 1086 was a very good argument as to why qubixes' scumread of you is wrong. I appreciate that. However, what I was looking for was more, from your perspective, what was the progression of qubixes' read on you? What parts of his argument was he most invested in? When did he start backing off? When did you feel he was putting you under the most pressure?
Having an "inside look" at that sort of thing would be really important to me evaluating his conflict with you, specifically figuring out if it was the primary read he had that he latched onto or something he was pushing in order to avoid not pushing anything. That's the primary thing that would separate "probably apathetic town" from "maybe apathetic scum."

[MechaGoomba]

No that is what Math is accusing Masq of doing – voting for a Townread. Are you not bothering to read for context?

Whoops, my bad. Sue me, Math has been hammering the karnos point into our heads long enough I think it's justified I assumed that is what it was.

[Tunneling] is NAI and you should know that.

Math tunnels karnos = Math focuses on karnos over other players = Math does not focus on non-karnos players = Math does not focus on qubixes = Math doesn't devote a lot of time to pushing qubixes
You scumread Math for not pushing qubixes enough = You scumread Math for tunneling karnos = You scumread Math for something you admit is NAI

Explain, please.

Math flips scum and you are next in line.

Apart from everything else wrong with a me-Math scumteam, if I was scum with Math, there would have been endless scum-PT arguments about karnos, eventually leading to either one of us replacing out, one of us bussing the other, or karnos being NKed. None of those things have happened.

[MechaGoomba]

You were townreading Masq for quite a while. In 809 you said you were convinced Math and Masq couldn't be coaligned (which I disagree with, but that's for later). You've said you still think Math is scum. You only noticed this during a reread, and the primary thing you pointed out was not the buddying but the misstatement of what happened in your game, making it seem like the misstatement made you go back and look at Masq, and it was then that you saw the buddying.

In summary, it looks like you jumped to conclusions by assuming that the error must have been intentional, and ended up confbiasing off of it.

[MechaGoomba]

This is sort of odd to say, but ... with me and Math as scum together, I see where you get that idea from, what posts you're going off of, even though I know it's wrong.
Pers slot, on the other hand? I mean, independent of other reads, I do totally see scumreading him, and there aren't exactly any associatives that would say him and me/Math are definitely not scum together, but there are a couple of people I'd be focusing on a lot more carefully if Pers flipped scum.

[MechaGoomba]

I don't find scum by looking for players that aren't helping town. I find scum by looking for players that aren't trying to help town.
If a player is confbiasing, that's a giant sign that they're town, because confbias is something that appears when you're invested in your theories. Scum don't often do that.
I see pushing someone as a tool, to reveal more information so that you can then look at that player in order to discern their motivation. The direct reaction doesn't matter that much.

There's been a cycle where I push someone or argue with them, then I back off, look at their ISO, and see town motivations behind it. It's happened so often that I either have to ignore my reads of their motivations, or push someone for things that don't deserve being pushed. At this point, I don't know if my method doesn't work or if I'm looking in the wrong places, but something's going horribly wrong.

UNVOTE:
Regardless of Magna's alignment, we'd both be able to poke holes in each other's arguments forever. Outside of gut, I can't read him, and I don't trust my gut.
Expect me to push someone else at some point. I need to do a lot of rethinking first.

[MechaGoomba]

Dierfire is looking really strange to me. I've sort of been dismissing that as playstyle issues for a while, but at this point I have to look back at it.

Originally he was going into a lot of depth, with tons of links in every post, but now he's only doing that sort of thing in a few places. I think it's rather telling what those are; lengthy thing on Mizzy (who is now Masq) in 494, karnos in 558, justification of motion to karnos in 608, and then you end up having remarkably little of that sort of explanation for relatively important things.

In his 804/823 readwall, I find it rather strange that he states all of his townreads explicitly, with relatively little reasoning, but then Math and Johnny (who appear to be his two scumreads at the time) have lengthy complicated explanations that don't ever directly say "this person is scum and why".

[MechaGoomba]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with giving more indepth reasoning on scum reads than on Town reads

If Dierfire really has these giant detailed scumreads why isn't he doing anything with them? You get posts like "Well, Post A, Post B, and Post C are scummy for reasons, but Post D and Post E sort of make me think town. I'll look into this later." But then he doesn't look into it later! Maybe, maybe, he'll ask an offhand question about Post C later, but you can be sure he won't follow up on it. He won't ever say "well, given that, I discount Post C as a scumtell, but doesn't Post F contradict that?"

Detailed reads? Fine. But if the reads are as strong and as detailed as it seems they are, he has no right not to be following up on them.
It looks to me like the explanation - the lengthy, detailed explanation - is something entirely separate from the read. He gives the explanation initially to justify the read, but then he forgets about it even when the read remains. That looks like someone who cares more about having strong, convincing reads than having correct reads, to me. And I don't think I need to say why that's not a town frame of mind.

[MechaGoomba]

I've spent too long being unproductive.
VOTE: Dierfire

@Dierfire: You listed four scumreads in 1153, in order from scummiest to least scummy: Titus, Saru, karnos, and MathBlade.

Why did you focus to such a great degree on Saru, compared to MathBlade, when Math was a scumread of much greater intensity?
You have me and Magna as very strong townreads and MathBlade as a strong scumread. In that case, what do you think of my conflict with Magna over Math?
You've said that you can't read karnos, but are still scumreading him. Were you more confident in your karnos read day 1, when you participated in his wagon?

[MechaGoomba]

I thought that your conflict with MagnaofIllusion over MathBlade was similar to your comments to me about MathBlade; Town players are allowed to disagree.

I'm inherently suspicious when any large conflict, especially one over the current leading wagon, is waved away with "TvT". Not in so many words, but that's the only way I can interpret this.

At the time of 804 I was reading JohnnyFarrar as perhaps slightly suspicious, but as I mentioned, I was working primarily with associative things and meta-things.
[...]
(karnos and Kappy would also be there, although, as I mentioned in 823, karnos is a perpetual punt and Kappy had been absent long enough that I didn't have any further update to that read).

So, listing the four people you scumread currently:
- karnos. Self-admitted "perpetual punt."
- Kappy. Recently replaced; you have no reads on the replacement. Prior to replacement, was lurker.
- MathBlade. In 823, you argue they're scum with Johnny. Since then, you've primarily pushed them by countering the arguments of their defenders without engaging directly.
- Saru. Most of your content targets him, yet you've never voted him.

3 widely scumread players who don't make a strong defense of themselves, who you have excuses for not vigorously pushing, and who you have voted for.
1 widely townread player who has been defending themselves continuously, you have been replying in kind, but you have never voted for them.

My vote stays. Push the person you're voting or vote the person you're pushing, and you'll take the first step to me removing it.

[MechaGoomba]

I felt (and still feel) that MathBlade could be Mafia with karnos. At the time I also felt that JohnnyFarrar would be a good partner for karnos, but that MathBlade would not be Mafia with both karnos and JohnnyFarrar.

OK, I misinterpreted. The point that your read on Math is built on associatives remains, and having it be with someone you admit to not being able to read isn't much better.

MathBlade actually makes an interesting point about Daytalk, although I can't recall any posts that sound like they were written in collaboration.

Here, what Dierfire is doing is essentially asking for examples. By saying "I can't recall any posts", he is putting the onus on MathBlade to dig up posts that support their theory.
I don't like this reaction. A more townie reaction would be "My posts look edited because they were. I make long arguments full of links; if I didn't proofread before posting, they'd be incomprehensible."
The way he reacted, he is asking "Can you prove it?" But he easily could have said "That isn't a scumtell" or even "I don't do that; I don't edit my posts. I don't know where that impression came from."

When town are accused, they respond with a statement. "No, I did not do that." "Yes, I did that, but it is not a scumtell." They are saying "this argument is wrong" because they know it is wrong.
Scum respond with questions. "Can you prove it?" "Do you have specific examples?" They say only "This argument is weak" because they know it is right, even if it is right for the wrong reasons.

[MechaGoomba]

That she’s can’t actually push people on facts and has reverted to just saying “Yo, youz Scumz” and “Imma baller Town” should reinforce this for people.

Would you mind convincing people to vote your scumreads? Because right now, you're doing the opposite.
Being insulting doesn't make you insightful. All being insulting does is make the more thin-skinned people in the game quit listening to you. And you can very well say that it's their fault for being thin-skinned, but if those people can't stand reading your arguments there's a snowball's chance in hell they're going to support you, no matter how much you berate them about it.
You are not kuriboh. If you would kindly stop pretending to be so that you can start helping the town, that would be grand.

I think this is the launching point of Mecha attempting to generate a counter-wagon to his partner’s.

Oh? Because maybe I misread, but I remember you saying the same thing when I was pushing you.
Tell me, honestly -- is there anyone besides MathBlade who you wouldn't consider a counterwagon? Don't even tell me who they are, just yes or no.

Oh so buddying is yoru super sekrit read technique. Gotcha.

Are you physically capable of responding to someone you think is scum without belittling them?


Magna, you are using empty insults and pointless repetition as a substitute for reasoning. I can't speak for other players, but if you were making actual cases, I'd be much more likely to be convinced.

[MechaGoomba]

[sarcasm]
So, when Math said you were scummy because you acted like scum with daytalk and you said "I can't see any posts that look like they were made by scum with daytalk", you, of course, were referring entirely to posts by other players. You weren't defending yourself, you were

just happening

to mention an interesting point that

just happened

to suggest that you were town.

Because 1218 wasn't a defense, when you made 1220, you weren't hastily revising your point; you were making your defense for the first time! It was

only coincidental

that 1218 had the thing Math scumread you for, and 1220 didn't.
[/sarcasm]

There is a limit to what I will accept based solely on your word. At some point, I have to start using Occam's razor, and "you're scum" is a much simpler explanation.

[MechaGoomba]

I have scumreads on people that logically can't be scum together [...] and that makes me lean towards multiball.
[...]
I don't know yet about Dierfire, Titus. I mean, he could be scum but that conflicts with other reads I have so I want to do a reread first.

Discounting the fact that this definitely isn't multiball (either the scumteams would be different sizes or there'd be a 2:1 town:scum ratio), I find it disturbing that you're considering multiball only insofar as it supports your reads and then dropping it.

[MechaGoomba]

Where do we know there is 3 scum?

For a 13 player game, I assume 3 scum unless there is evidence to the contrary. "OK there was only 1 kill night 1 but doctors exist you can't prove me wrong and my reads don't make sense if it isn't multiball" is not evidence to the contrary by a long shot.
Do you seriously think basic knowledge of how to construct a balanced game is a scumslip? karnos did the same thing you're doing in 382. He was wrong then and you're wrong now.

[MechaGoomba]

Seems to be written from a Karnos is known town perspective.

Claim, no result, noob
Dude is obvtown yo.

You're really reaching.

What I cannot for the life of me understand what you would do is when you have equal clarity around the slot you vote for the claimed Neopolitan instead of shoring up your Dierfire read. What I don't buy is that you in that position would vote a claimed Neapolitan who is a null read over Dierfire who is a null read.

In fact in 683 you said you didn't want to vote Karnos unless there was mod confirmable evidence they were scum or a CC. A CC hasn't been done and if anything the majority opinion is that Karnos is telling the truth.

This is pretty worrying, yeah. I'm a bit confused about Masq's day 1 vanilla claim, though. I mean, scum claiming VT when they know there's a Neapolitan is a really risky play.

[MechaGoomba]

of course I consider a wagon that forms on Town a counter-wagon

OK you're going to need to clarify this because the only way I can read it is that every wagon on town is lead by scum and everyone that is voted but not lynched must be scum, which is stupid.

Mechagoomba cherry-picked single sentances from 1241 in an attempt to say I was not providing content just Ad Homenium.

Nobody is going to pay you for a gold ingot you've shit on. Because yes, there is gold there, gold is worth something, but it is your fucking responsibility to clean off the shit.
I can barely muster the willpower to read your posts because I know for a fact there are so many things I could do that would bring me more enjoyment. The primary reason I haven't replaced out is that I'm convinced the players who aren't you are much more critical to the town's success.

Dwlee/Mecha and maybe Math... Much prefer Mecha.

I'm trying to understand your viewpoint here but it's not really making sense. You look at the way Math's posting, determine it to be scummy. Then, when you read further, you start to get a gut feeling, or something along those lines, that makes you doubt your read? So then you go after me, who you had as a scumread because you thought I made sense as scum with Math.
But then, why not go for Dwlee? You thought originally "Math's scum, so Mecha's probably scum with Math." But "Mecha's scum with Math" depends on "Math's scum." You have no reason to be more sure about me than you are about Math.

[MechaGoomba]

Errgh.

I have been worrying about Titus, and there are parts where Saru is pretty much saying exactly what I'm thinking. But the thing is, "Titus is doing strange, inconsistent things with her suspicions of Math" is definitely true. The problem is that there's really very little to distinguish between "Titus tried to bus Math and is now pulling back from it" and "Titus wants to not get blamed for mislynching Math."
I mean, the whole thing with Dierfire and such is odd, but Math's been doing slapfights with Magna for a while. Same for the thing with karnos; anyone should be able to recognize that Math is going to push scum!karnos if any possibility to do so exists.

I guess part of the problem is that Math is posting a ton of bad things, but they're all bad in a very consistent way with a clear (though flawed) thought process behind them.

Welp, at least there's one thing I'm certain about.
VOTE: Titus

PE: So you bother to explain your townreads as soon as you get connected as scum to them, but you keep doing the same infoless push on your scumreads? And, of course, you mention absolutely nothing about the tiny insignificant detail that

literally everyone else in the game who scumreads me does so because they think I'm scum with MathBlade.

Seriously, if you want to be treated as town then at some point you will need to stop assuming everyone you talk to can telepathically divine your true motives.

Show me one reason you have ever given for scumreading me that doesn't revolve around Math also being scum. Heck, I'll even accept someone else's reasoning that you agree with. But at least make an effort to make your reads consistent.

[MechaGoomba]

kissing up to Magna.

What the actual fuck. Are we reading the same game?
For that matter, "pushing a quicklynch" would apply a lot more to, you know, literally everyone voting Math.

saying that she has terrible logic but is consistent logic as an example

Her logic is terrible but the manner in which it is terrible is consistent. She is terrible in the same ways consistently.

This literally is a scum-claim. “I don’t understand … you can’t suspect me … why aren’t you going for Dwlee instead?”.

Do I have to attach "I am town" to the end of every post for it not to be a scumclaim?
Titus's reads make no sense. Given what she has stated, she ought to be voting someone other than who she is. Her failure to provide any reasoning indicates she is being dishonest.
I made an attempt to get her to talk to me because, especially without the weight of reputation on my side, saying "what Titus is doing makes no sense" is not an argument that's going to be listened to very often. She's exemplary at getting people to follow her with the minimum of explanation, which is as useful for scumplay as it is for townplay.

Already done. When you said it was ok for me to think you were scum with Math but not Persivul

Titus that is fucking stupid. "I see why you think" is not the same thing as "Oh I guess you're right" in any world.
Is it that fucking hard to believe that a player who's universally scumread is going to start self-doubting?
You can't debate that I was defending Math too much. Nobody can debate that. Recognizing my own faults (one of which is tendency to overcommit to an argument) is a virtue.

[MechaGoomba]

Ok I'd like to talk about Kapy just jumping on me when I knew about scum daychat and I also want to talk about Mecha acting awkward around it as if he was asking what others thought before he was jumping.

A mistake does not become scummy just because the person making the mistake accuse you.

Why would Persivul replace out as scum? I kinda see his replace out as frustrated town that just doesn't want to deal anymore..

"Oh god, Titus is here, I can't hide from her, abort abort" seems about as likely as "Oh god, Titus is here, I don't want to deal with her", if not moreso.

Firebringer because of his apathy towards the game. I would imagine that scum!Firebringer would be at-least a

bit

worried about being so inactive in this game while continuing to be active throughout most of the forum in general.

Why would Fire be worried? He's not on anyone's scumlists, and if he popped back in to do whatever (defend a buddy, bus a teammate, grab some towncred) people'd be much more likely to notice him disappearing again.


I'm in that really annoying state where I have a bunch of scumreads (Dwlee, Fire, Titus, Magna) but no fucking idea how to fit them together into scumteams.

PE:

I'm not about to quibble over which of my scumreads gets rope first.

Saru, if you really think this is scummy you're confbiasing hard.

UNVOTE:

[MechaGoomba]

I'm just trying to figure out if town!Mecha realized his error, or if scum!Mecha realized the flaw in his reads.

Town!Mecha never noticed this at all but his read in Titus was flagging for other reasons. Town!Mecha thanks you for putting the nail in the coffin.

Titus/karnos/Masq is my favorite surprisingly plausible scumteam theory that is still definitely not true.

As stated before, I don't really scumread Titus. My read was about half annoyance at not seeing a clear progression of reads and half annoyance at being targeted. Neither of those is really valid.
Dwlee is looking incredibly weird right now. If he reads Math as town, could he not have said something about that before Magna, the primary pusher of the Math wagon, hopped off?
I also feel like Persivul's fall into inactivity was really suspect. It seems like he made one big effort as an attempt to get towncred, then just coasted by on theory discussion.
Magna's been bothering me for reasons I can't articulate, but I'm fairly certain a good portion of that is just that he rubs me the wrong way. I'll have to reread to be certain about him.

VOTE: Dwlee99
What were you doing when Math, your primary townread, was almost lynched? Because that wouldn't involve rereading, just posting.
Give me a hypothetical 3-player scumteam and a 1-sentence explanation of why you read each person in it as scum, please.

PE: Masq, you have made a good case for why Math's reasoning for pushing karnos is bad. You have made it clear that Math is being inconsistent in her positions, that everything she says revolves around karnos being scum, that all other reads are subordinate to it.
You have failed to make a case for why this is Math being scum and not just Math being wrong.
Because I tell you right now, I see no reason for Math to tunnel a universal townread to the point where everyone scumreads Math for it when they could just NK karnos.

[MechaGoomba]

Yeah it's -- I can't even be mad about this. Scum deserved this win.