"Don't look too town as scum"

[Flubbernugget]

The saying goes that if you look too town as scum you'll get lynched in lylo for still being alive.

Except, I don't think I've ever seen scum snow a town and then lose the game in lylo over it.

So, does this actually happen?

[MathBlade]

The saying goes that if you look too town as scum you'll get lynched in lylo for still being alive.

Except, I don't think I've ever seen scum snow a town and then lose the game in lylo over it.

So, does this actually happen?

To me quite often. But I generally work out of it. Not always

[mastina]

The saying goes that if you look too town as scum you'll get lynched in lylo for still being alive. Except, I don't think I've ever seen scum snow a town and then lose the game in lylo over it. So, does this actually happen?

The only reason to not look too town as scum is because the headache it'll give you in all future games.

For instance.

Because I've done literally everything as scum, there's nothing I can't do as scum, meaning anything I could do I could be doing as scum--meaning, regardless of it being a towngame or scumgame. People are suspicious of me because of what I did in that past scumgame where I did that town-looking thing.

Which, honestly, is a silly reason. You should always be playing to win your current game, not your future games, so do your utmost for your current game even if it means towning it up as scum and facing the fallout postgame.

So while there's technically reasons that not being too town as scum could be of use in theory, in practice, if you manage to look town as scum? Good for you! You're doing what you're supposed to be doing.

[the worst]

I think there's merit in checking yourself (don't be like the only person holding the torch if the rest of the game is dead as fuck) but you can ALWAYS outplay still being alive in LyLo

I think I err on the side of criticism of this advice too, Flubber

also I'm pretty sure the moral of this story is to always lynch mastina as soon as possible....

[RadiantCowbells]

You can always reinvent yourself as scum and you always need to be doing stuff that people won't point to recent scum experiences and be like HEY HE DID THAT AS SCUM.

That said I went undefeated as scum in 2018 while only actually trying in one game and pretty much just lurking the rest of them so you can get away with that even.

Rolling scum is like pressing the easy button

[Super Smash Bros. Fan]

I don't see how a scum can look too town. If your behavior resembles that of a townie, regardless of alignment, clearly that's a sign of good play.

There's a better case to make to not look too town if you have a Town power role seeing as you're not trying to gain the attention of scums for a night kill.

[brassherald]

I think there's merit in checking yourself

I believe you meant to continue with "before wrecking yourself."

[Creature]

tbh players get paranoid regardless and sometimes you survive as obvtown because you're prone to paranoia anyway

[mastina]

There's a better case to make to not look too town if you have a Town power role seeing as you're not trying to gain the attention of scums for a night kill.

Yeah that's a terrible idea. If you try to avoid looking town, there's no favorable outcome. If vts look town and PRS don't, scum can find the PRS. If you practice this, it becomes easy for scum to spot PR you. And then the obvious: if you don't look town in a game where the vts (and probably scum, too) look town, who do you think that they're going to lynch?

[the worst]

I don't see how a scum can look too town. If your behavior resembles that of a townie, regardless of alignment, clearly that's a sign of good play.

There's a better case to make to not look too town if you have a Town power role seeing as you're not trying to gain the attention of scums for a night kill.

To an extent it's nice to be kinda nulltown as a town power role. But then you get into a situation where perceptive scum are like "...why is this townie fpsing" and end up just shooting you.

I'd actually argue it's better to be meh-townie only really as a VT who feels that they're playing badly; if you can draw an ill motivated wagon and force people to play their hand to lynch you, you're up. and if you can obvtown under pressure that's cool. and if you look FPSy and eat a night kill to protect power roles + other strong town, that is all gains.

I think there's merit in checking yourself

I believe you meant to continue with "before wrecking yourself."

Nobody else makes me laugh at work so consistently.

[the worst]

this thread reminds me of tchill13's signature

[Elsa Jay]

Just be like me or Bambi and play to your own self-alignment. Worked wonders for me so far.

[the worst]

"Always

Don't

look too

town as

scum"

[Nancy Drew 39]

I know how to play vt and scum, it’s playing PRs that wreck me. :/

[Nancy Drew 39]

It’s worth noting the obvious, that most mislynches happen because of town looking too much like scum, which usually means they’re town lhf.

[Alchemist21]

I think I once got lynched for looking too Town as scum, but iirc it was also a smaller point in a list of other reasons.

[mhsmith0]

Many people have 0 clue what is alignment-indicative or alignment-relevant, which means that most tells are basically =rand

I'd say that "looking town" in a lot of peoples' minds is a function of consistent engagement, making sense, and sounding like an intelligent human being.

None of those things are actually towntells, of course, and in terms of many peoples' metas, are explicit scumtells.

TLDR: if you want to avoid "looking too town" just make shittier-looking posts. Problem solved

[PokerFace]

People usually vote the scumiest before they vote the towniest. As long as all living players are not more town than you, you should be fine faking town as scum. The only time being too town as scum is bad is if you give town too much help. For example...

You are heading toward a prisoners dilemma. The right play is for town to force scum to kill each other. You are scum. For some reason you tell the town the ideal play

Telling the enemy the ideal play when the ideal play is too good, is a bad time to be too town as scum. There's a reason I got the title too useful...

[PokerFace]

Ironically there was a face to face game I played at a convention once where the runner of the panel, myself, and another player were alive in lylo. I had played the game before a lot and obviously the runner of the panel had done the same. We had far more game experience than the final player. The runner of the panel looked at me and asked "Why am I alive right now?" I responded "That's... a good question". The runner then said "If you were mafia, you would have killed me." I came to the same conclusion about him. Since we were both town, we immediately voted the inexperienced player who was indeed mafia. As long as there are scummier players, faking town works. Be careful to keep the scummier players alive, and don't given them enough advice so that they become more town than you

[the worst]

I'd say that "looking town" in a lot of peoples' minds is a function of consistent engagement, making sense, and sounding like an intelligent human being.

None of those things are actually towntells, of course, and in terms of many peoples' metas, are explicit scumtells.

note to self: don't roll scum against mhsmith0
he's already onto you

[Yuchou]

I think there is a need to exactly describe how *too town* we're talking about.

It's fine and good play to get townread as scum, however as the game goes on, if a player was so townread that no one even dared to question his alignment anymore (like, townlocked), and others players that were less townread or even scumread are getting nightkilled, I believe being *too town* as scum is going to backfire.

Everyone not tunneling someone for being a bit erractic will end up looking at you and questioning "so...hmmm, why aren't you dead bro?".

Sure, there's some excuses, like the player in question not being a "threat" to scum, but that only works if the already nightkilled guys were being a "threat" (had presence) or had very different read lists than you.

There are times that someone very town read gets to LyLo even though they are town, so if you're scum you can try to write it off as WIFOM as well, but it's kind of rare and...

I mean, it's

very

suspicious for someone being town read so strongly and early to get to LyLo. You can end up getting lynched only for that reason.

Being town read but not

so much

town read is the best place for scum I would say. Hard to get there though, since it's already a challenge to sound town anyway.

However...I don't think anyone should worry about being too town read as scum, you'll probably end up doing one or two scummy things at minimum.

[Nancy Drew 39]

People usually vote the scumiest before they vote the towniest. As long as all living players are not more town than you, you should be fine faking town as scum. The only time being too town as scum is bad is if you give town too much help. For example...

You are heading toward a prisoners dilemma. The right play is for town to force scum to kill each other. You are scum. For some reason you tell the town the ideal play

Telling the enemy the ideal play when the ideal play is too good, is a bad time to be too town as scum. There's a reason I got the title too useful...

I think it’s a difficult thing for scum to manage - posting like they would as town - with a townie mindset and not play against their wincon. Only the best and most experienced players, have figured out how to correctly navigate this fine line. For most players however, it is beyond their scumrange to be able to successfully pull that off.

[Nancy Drew 39]

I'd say that "looking town" in a lot of peoples' minds is a function of consistent engagement, making sense, and sounding like an intelligent human being.

None of those things are actually towntells, of course, and in terms of many peoples' metas, are explicit scumtells.

note to self: don't roll scum against mhsmith0
he's already onto you

It kind of blows my mind, when scum thinks they can get away with nonsensical WIFOM - most can’t and many horribly over-estimate their ability to successfully pull that off.

[Persivul]

The saying goes that if you look too town as scum you'll get lynched in lylo for still being alive.

Except, I don't think I've ever seen scum snow a town and then lose the game in lylo over it.

So, does this actually happen?

Not really.

In general, the reasoning is that scum don't target the towniest player for a NK, because that's the player who's most likely to be protected.

That doesn't work in open setups that don't have protectives. Still, I can't recall seeing it happen.

If I'm an investigative and a super townie person is still alive D3, I'm checking them N3.

[Persivul]

You can always reinvent yourself as scum and you always need to be doing stuff that people won't point to recent scum experiences and be like HEY HE DID THAT AS SCUM.

That said I went undefeated as scum in 2018 while only actually trying in one game and pretty much just lurking the rest of them so you can get away with that even.

Rolling scum is like pressing the easy button

It's easy to win as scum if you play scummy when town. People will look at meta, say

he always plays that way,

and let it go. And there seems to be a trend toward that.

People like that should be policy lynched, vigged, or investigated.

Unfortunately, towns have gotten away from those things. So, now game developers are making town-sided setups.

Really, towns should just go back to fundamentals, and those fundamentals should be taught in newbies.