Mini 2063 - Rapier Upick Shuffle [Game Over]

[mbaki]

VOTE: JohnnyEnglish

Johnny is probably town

[Reality Check]

VOTE: JohnnyEnglish

Johnny is probably town

ok?

[Varsoon]

Scum's who's got to make themselves seem 'sortable'. As town, I'm fine to just play and not manufacture 'sortable' rhetoric.

[mbaki]

projecting town is an important part of being town

[Varsoon]

Given no one's voting me at all and just trying to scum-paint me, I think I'm doin' fine enough.
I think more important parts of being town is being able to lead lynches onto scum, even if people don't believe you're locktown at all.
Yeah, if I wanted to draw the scum night kill, I'd probably try to amp myself into an unassailable position, but I'm not really looking to do that.

[mbaki]

I will vote you if you want

[Varsoon]

Nah, you should probably vote for scum instead.
I'm good with scum voting for me, though.
Definitely not because I'm a wagon sensor or anything like that.

[Fractured]

Take me down to the paradise city
Where the grass is green ...
And the walls are so big if

Humpty Dumpty

fell off there wouldn't be remains to be found.

I miss the good old walls, haven't seen one of these in a while.

Spoiler: Implosion's "Michael Scott" Case

A computer is me!!!

Order of business number one: Michael Scott. The biggest thing that feels off is the way he's responded to pressure. His responses remind me sort of distinctly of how I probably used to respond to pressure most of the times in games where I was moderately engaged as scum. His refutations are *purely* in the realm of logic. And that's kind of the problem; they feel disengaged from actually refuting the actual things people are seeing in him. In general his posting is almost obsessed with casing. He seems to categorically refuse to acknowledge as valid any reads that are not backed up by casework; see 691, 693, to lesser degrees 730, 766. I think that's a scum-ish pattern (unless he acts this way d1 in town games consistently) bc... not quite sure honestly. It's hard to explain exactly why I think that pattern is off.

I'm confident he's going to absolutely hate this case on him if he's town.

There's other things I don't like. GL mentioned 688 and I'd add the post after it. As town I don't think it's *actually* especially natural to have the progression of "I ISO'd X and have a strong townread" -> "I'm going to ask everyone that voted them about reasons as a first priority". I think this is because town will only really have this type of reaction if the person in question is being wagoned, or is a centralizing figure in the game; Fractured isn't really either of these, there were just a couple stray votes (iirc). The same thing applies to 693 because I think town's first reaction to getting a townread on someone is usually not *actually* to actively search for reasons they're wrong. It's to either call them town and then ignore them for a bit (because they don't need to focus on them), or to explain why they're town to people who they want to change the mind of... essentially for some reason this just feels like a disingenuous attempt to look like he's solving with people.

The activity point is actually really funny, because he admits his activity pattern has been bad (despite me not having explained why I thought it was bad) and then proceeds to do exactly the thing that I think is bad. I don't think low activity is scummy; the pattern I'm actually criticizing is that of popping into the thread for a period of time (maybe a few minutes, maybe a couple hours) and then disappearing for a longer stretch. I think someone recently (maybe it was rc?) mentioned that this kind of pattern is scummy, and I immediately realized "shit, i do this as scum a lot". It demonstrates very directly that someone wants to appear engaged in a game, but it is a lot more psychologically demanding as scum to muster up engagement throughout a day than it is to muster up engagement for a short burst of activity and then just let what happens happen. It's entirely possible that this isn't a real point but after responding to my activity point, he popped into the thread and posted very actively for like 3 hours, then didn't post for 12 hours, made one post, then didn't post for 24ish hours, then here we are now. The big thing here is having now had multiple days of sort of near-complete disengagement with the thread, despite being very engaged on certain other days. That to me doesn't jive as likely with "i'm town but am busy on some days" as it does with "i'm scum and am giving bursts of activity when I feel like I need to to be townread".

Actually typing this I'm curious if standard deviation of number of posts each day correlates with alignment well. Obviously there can be real life explanations (I for instance have one that I've given several times).

As for his other reaction to (GL's) pressure, we see 861:

this is a tremendously bad post, for the record

1 - everybody knows faking townreads as scum is easy. It also feels like unnatural/forced reasoning - "they're not playing how in this specific manner I would expect scum to play, therefore they're town"
2 - there was definite need to, because several people were scumreading them and voting them. like you're giving them town credit for doing something that either alignment would want to do to look town.

I have to think a townie - especially players of Auro/volxen caliber - would see that a scum!Fractured could fake this level of content so far and would have more paranoia than a "strong townread" after an ISO skim. this feels like a fabricated townread because they already decided previously that they didn't want to scumread Fractured slot

"They *could* do this as scum, hence you can't townread them for it!"

You ignore that:
1. It's an early AF townread which is obviously subject to re-evaluation.
2. Picking stances in this way is how I begin the game usually.
3. They townread virtually everyone in that RVS interaction IIRC and not just me, saying I townread them just for townreading me is disingenuous.

GL already gave a response to this but I have more to say.

First, tonally, this feels meh.

Second, like GL said, it's a strawman in a scummy way. It's ignoring the actual brunt of GL's read, which is a bad thing to pair with him constantly asking people for their reasons for reads. GL's point 1 was that it's forced reasoning that is easy to give as scum; michael scott saying "it's subject to re-evaluation" is not only a non-sequitur to GL's point here, but it's an extremely scummily defensive non-sequitur. He's accused of making up reasoning, and says "well, i might reconsider it later". I think it's clear why that just feels bad.

Point 2 I find less interesting.

Point 3, again as GL has already pointed out, MS's answer here is entirely non-sequitur. I actually have no clue whatsoever where MS got the idea that GL had been saying that he was townreading Fractured for townreading him (hoo boy that sure is a grammatical sentence i just typed out). Making something like that up out of thin air, I think, betrays a mindset.


I want to be clear about one thing though: all of this is sort of just back-justification for all of his posts just feeling really bad at first glance.
VOTE: Michael Scott
For the record, if he wants to respond to the above, he's welcome to; unless there is something interesting in his response, I am probably not going to respond to him, and will rather point out what that thing is to the crowd, so as to not potentially bog the thread.

Please expand on why you think needing people to case their wagons for you is a scum lean? I'm not sure I particularly see the "purely logic based part of it." I definitely see reasoning for this to lean a certain way, but your case didn't particularly sell me on this point and I don't want to put words in your mouth before discussing.

I checked and the votes quoted by Michael Scott here were the third and fourth on the wagon, respectively. How does this affect your read?

getting a parm wagon going will be a struggle. that's how you know it's a good wagon

Or a very bad one.

Doesn't really seem to be the case.
You can keep insisting you're town and 'everyone has figured that out' but it's not true in any sense.

I get the feeling you don't actually think it's cute and you're just trying to discredit me.

Yeah I don't believe you actually find it endearing whatsoever that I'm still pushing you.

Unless you mean 'cute' in a way that belittles and seeks to make my voice less significant, but, oh, man, that sounds a lot like a scum tactic that would be used to suffocate outlying town voices that are right.
Why does my push on you bother you so much?

I don't like this process from Varsoon.

VOTE: JohnnyEnglish

Johnny is probably town

Someone isn't paying attention.

[implosion]

Please expand on why you think needing people to case their wagons for you is a scum lean? I'm not sure I particularly see the "purely logic based part of it." I definitely see reasoning for this to lean a certain way, but your case didn't particularly sell me on this point and I don't want to put words in your mouth before discussing.

I checked and the votes quoted by Michael Scott here were the third and fourth on the wagon, respectively. How does this affect your read?

It's a hard thing to explain what I mean effectively. It boils down to being an easy retort to give as scum that makes it look a lot like he's doing gamesolving type things, but that isn't really the way that most town players consistently operate in the world we live in now. It feels somewhat closer to scum emulating gamesolving than actual gamesolving.

A lot of his play around suspicion on him feels like he's repeatedly going "a-ha, this reason to suspect me is actually invalid!" in a way that doesn't actually meaningfully engage with people, doesn't actually refute the points they were making, doesn't try to sort them. He's asking questions or making statements that don't lead anywhere interesting.

as for the votes being late on the wagon, the point still at least partially stands because when Michael Scott made that post asking me and mbaki to explain our votes, mbaki and one of the other people on the wagon (not me) had unvoted and I'd speculated about voting elsewhere.

To be clear, I don't feel sold on this scumread yet. I feel good enough to push it but I'm definitely not tunneling yet; I still have some reservations but they're nonspecific.

[Varsoon]

People's points are usually completely vacant or "You aren't engaging with other players/playing the game"
And like, yeah, didn't know that totally arbitrary act was what made people town.

[RadiantCowbells]

Or a very bad one.

Funny because my unpopular scumread in dance was Nancy and we all see how that worked out

[Varsoon]

^ To be fair, I think people have actually laid out far more of a case for MS than for me, where I feel my post above is particularly true so
People have just been kind of vacant with their lousy pushes all of D1.

[Fractured]

Or a very bad one.

Funny because my unpopular scumread in dance was Nancy and we all see how that worked out

It's easy to only use points that support your case and ignore ones that refute it.

[RadiantCowbells]

Or a very bad one.

Funny because my unpopular scumread in dance was Nancy and we all see how that worked out

It's easy to only use points that support your case and ignore ones that refute it.

My finished games this year have been pretty fucking spectacular thanks.

[Varsoon]

Radiant's pretty good at that regardless of align, Fractured.
That's just kinda their M.O.

[Varsoon]

Like I def wouldn't take that as a tell.

[Fractured]

Or a very bad one.

Funny because my unpopular scumread in dance was Nancy and we all see how that worked out

It's easy to only use points that support your case and ignore ones that refute it.

My finished games this year have been pretty fucking spectacular thanks.

Noted.
I apologize, then, I pushed a similar wagon earlier this year off of a scum read + resistance tell and was wrong, so I might have been projecting slightly.

[mbaki]

Or a very bad one.

Funny because my unpopular scumread in dance was Nancy and we all see how that worked out

It's easy to only use points that support your case and ignore ones that refute it.

My

finished

games this year have been pretty fucking spectacular thanks.

cheeky comment here

[mbaki]

vote Parm

[RadiantCowbells]

I am not allowed to make implications about my unfinished games.

[JohnnyEnglish]

I don't overly scumread Parm, but I don't think he's the scummiest in the game.

With that said, I think discussion is faltering and this is the critical time for us to have flips.

I don't want to see our adorable little seal throw a tantrum if he remains alive, anyway.

VOTE: Parm

[Brigitte]

Not interested in the parm wagon.

[JohnnyEnglish]

Not interested in the parm wagon.

I'm reluctant too, in fact, but it's high time that we move the game forward.

[Brigitte]

Id rather lynch primary scumreads than compromise on something at this moment in time. I think you are too rushed for flips right now.

[JohnnyEnglish]

Id rather lynch primary scumreads than compromise on something at this moment in time. I think you are too rushed for flips right now.

There's a fine balance between maintaining sufficient game discussion length and needlessly extending day length to the point of apathy.

I think we're coming close to reaching the latter.