Newbie 2025 | Lilies | Game Over

[ItalianoVD]

It's Monday. I would like to hear more of ItalianoVD's thoughts on current events.

You know you don’t have to keep prompting me to post my thoughts. I will and do.

Maybe it's all in my head but I feel like you've been much less active this game than last.

Not alignment indicative of course because real life stuff comes up and is more important. But I keep forgetting that you're even in the game.

Fair enough. Like I said things have cleared up so I should be able to be more active, less so on the weekends. Ask me anything.

[Redados]

Fair enough. Like I said things have cleared up so I should be able to be more active, less so on the weekends. Ask me anything.

I'm frustrated with myself that I can't get any sort of read on you.

What are your thoughts on Fredrick A Campbell?

[Frogsterking]

Since you guys seemed to like my last source I'll link another one I thought was helpful:

https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/fo ... University


This is a collection of 24 articles that in my opinion range from moderately low to very high in level of expertise. In addition to the varying levels of expertise the information is qualitative in nature as opposed to quantitative so it's unlike the other source I shared. This source was useful for things like understanding different terminology, understanding differences between metas and medias of mafia, and understanding what kind of high level strategies exist for both sides.

Ahem.

LO, it was told that there would be Two and Seven, and the Two were to be friends only to The Adversary (cursed be his name), and the Seven were to withstand their predations. "For one night, and all of ye may die", so it is written.
And it was foretold that the Seven WOULD NOT KNOW the Two, and that they might only withstand their siege by counting out those among them, and proclaiming one to be of the Two.
And I TELL YOU, we are in this time, and the Two ARE among us. We cannot know their faces nor their natures, yea, they do stalk among us like SHADOWS. And there is but one way to DRAW FORTH the TRUTH: ye must VOTE on who ye believe belong to the Two.
And NOW do I cast my vote down: yea, though it is surely mistaken, it will elicit reaction, whereby one might get information. And I pick one of the OLD and WISE among us, I tell you THEIR EXPERIENCE will guide us to the light! And they bear the face of a frog, one of those Unclean Spirits of The Adversary -- so I do not have a shame to feel, should they be truly ajudged guilty by us.
Praise be to the Moderator!

And two...

Let us understand the nature of the world in which we exist: there are seven Innocents, and two Murderers. There is no escape: this place is a grave. Whether we are disentombed before we suffocate is a matter of our actions: we can only work together to reopen that gate to the world of life when we can trust our backs to remain unsullied by knives, our necks to resist the garrote.
The Murderers, we shall see, are symbols of that Final Death. And the Innocents symbolize that there is no life too pure for the Reaper.
Among us, cloaked in darkness such that we can only hear our own voices (the fire of Plato gone out, snuffed by an anti-Prometheus), we have those who are new to this, but no more innocent than others, for change is feared and fear has only a few reactions -- one of which is fighting, violence. And we have those who are old, and are intended to guide us, for they have been in this pit before, and we may all very well return, perhaps together, perhaps apart. It is in their interests to teach us the Ways by which they have survived, for we all are innocent at times and murderers at others.
But they have goals of their own, and they may be vicious or kind, pure or caked in filth: we cannot know. The darkness, it is absolute. We can only find them by their voices, grasp tightly, and threaten them, accusatory, outraged, and see how they respond: for truth comes out of conflict, as only conflict can dissolve lies.

And finally...

It seemed smartest to vote on one of the experienced players. They're more likely to understand what happens in the RVS, and they're going to react, or fail to react, accordingly. There's three, and I have one vote. So I picked Frogsterking because he has "king" in the name.
This has a somewhat higher chance of being someone who flusters easily, because royal titles in usernames tend to correspond with nerdy people or people who think highly of themselves. That's not a perfect correlation, just a recurring theme I've noticed in my, uh, 19 years online. This point is basically a game of chance and I didn't bother researching anyone this game for meta, so that seemed like the best way to maximize chances of getting information.

This daystart makes sense to me. Mush is demonstrating abilities like range of vocabulary, flexibility, ability to think from multiple perspectives. Seems like someone who wants to have a significant voice within the village and is willing to take on pressure/attention from other players. Struck me as a strong D1 player who sometimes had trouble later in the game which Mush self-confirmed. It makes me believe it will be easier to attempt to read Mush later in the game as opposed to earlier.

Here is one of the articles I linked to at the beginning of this post:
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/th ... tichora%29

Here is another one:
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/th ... erchief%29

These articles describe an alternative strategy for scum that involves becoming the influential player that is townread and directs the attention of the other players. I describe it as alternative because I believe strong scum players will usually try to play somewhere in the middle of status so they don't get lynched early and have some input but it still makes sense they're alive after multiple night kills. Based on Mush's reaction to my suggestion town let scum make plays it appears to me that Mush is hyper-vigilant of the alternative game plan of taking control early. If Mush is scum this is the approach she is choosing to take this game and it seems like she drew an enormous amount of attention to it by continuing her interaction with me. This is a big reason why I not only believe she might be town but that she's a poor D1 lynch and will be easier to understand later.

Yeah. (ignoring last game) this game Shelly has been pretty active and pushing. I don't necessarily agree with her pushes because she reaallly does not like being scumread. I am still scumreading her.

(using last game) I don't agree with Shelly's constant pushing because she was doing that last game; she kept yelling at MiniMegabyte for "scumslipping" (Mini was town). I think it's not helpful to latch onto small things and use them to justify a scumread. Sometimes you have a feeling you can't justify, but I think it's disingenuous to pull weak justification for your scumread. In retrospect, I may have done that with my initial scumread of Shelly, so I'm revising my scumread from a justified one to a gut one.

(ignoring last game) ItalianoVD has not been super active but he's posted enough. He's given reads and had conversations with people. I don't really have a handle on his alignment yet.

(using last game) something someone else said about how Italiano's playstyle might make him look scummier than he is resonates with me. I spent a lot of last game oscillating back and forth whether Italiano was scum or town and my impression is that he could hide it well enough if he were scum. It makes me scared to townread him or scumread him, although I'm townreading him now. I do feel like he was more active and off-the-cuff last game, but I haven't gone back and really ISOd and compared, which I will do at some point.

Hmm..

That was off the cuff so I'm curious to hear your reaction.

My reaction is that it's a conscientious and cooperative response. NAI and pro-town.

The point being really that if it ever comes to a question of whether or not shelly will bus on D1 the answer is that she will.

I'm fond of bussing. I guess I am. So you are saying that I may be scum with Redados / Fredrick / rocknil?

Yes. I believe you could be scum with anyone.

Yes. You are my scumread. I would like the town to lim you. If you are scum, you can keep voting yourself. If you are town, you should unvote.

There was no pressure on you. You had two votes: one from me (which has been there since very early) and one from Fredrick A Campbell, who is in the lynchpool of several players. That's nothing!!! You were not looking like the likely lim! And then you roleflipped for no reason way too early and voted for yourself. Voting for yourself and rushing the lim is anti-town behavior. We still have 48 hours to lim. And again I want to stress that you were NOT the likely lim.

Ok Mush literally said "Is anyone against shelly lim" so I assume I was the lim target. i roleclaimed so y'all didn't need to worry about flipping me.

I have no interest in flipping rocknil, really. Why would flipping a lurker get us any reads?

I concede that part of my voting was to check for reactions. I will unvote now. UNVOTE: shellyc

(added bold)

How did u know mush was town?

I didn't say Mush was town. I just said i was the target.

I'm curious what others have to say because to me it looks like you reacted the way you did not because of the quantity of votes but because you had some certainty they were coming from a town direction.

That part there.

If there’s more than 12 hours left in the Day, I’d prefer less active players lay their votes down and the active players withhold them to hammer closer to the deadline.

1: maximizing information gathered for Day 1.
2: reduces chances of scumteam forcing a hammer through to deny discussion time to town.

Frogster, what were you thinking putting Shelly at E-1 without saying?

You could have promised to place your vote later or asked to swap vote position with another active player. I strongly dislike that your idea was to just push the vote to the very brink and risk losing the scum hunting and discussion time we’ll need going into Day 2. Hell, you could have prevented me from explaining my play today, which is arguably pro-scum — not just anti-town.

That in mind, next post is going to be an explanation of my play. But assuming Shelly flips Town and I survive the night, I am going to make Frogster my new best friend on Day 2. He won’t be able to fart without me reaching for a gas spectrometer and a dictaphone.

(added bold)

I was worried I would not be here today to hammer and I was drunk so I didn't think about the consequences you just described.

Hey Frederick, I just thought of a couple of questions for you! Mainly because you replaced in recently and I noticed you had just finished moderating a game.

1) Have you noticed anything telling about lobbies on this site where all of the scum players became among the top 5 most active players in the game on D1?

and

2) Have you noticed anything telling about lobbies on this site where all of the scum players became among the top 5 most townread players in the game on D1?

After going through all that trouble of answering one of you questions, I have got to know what was the point of these questions?

I was curious about the percentage of games where both scum players adopt a power-scum strategy like I described earlier and if there was any statistical or behavioral way to determine what kind of game-state we were in before seeing any flips.

[Frogsterking]

I did a big write up on my thoughts on Magik but I decided to delete it because it looked like BS.

[Frogsterking]

If you guys that are on now (redadados and italiono) want to BW rocknil instead I'll hop on it.

[Frogsterking]

The guy that just replaced in looks town.

[Frogsterking]

If you guys that are on now (redadados and italiono) want to BW rocknil instead I'll hop on it.

Otherwise I can't guarantee I will be back in time to change my vote from shelly.

[Frogsterking]

With several hours left I'd suggest if anyone gets the chance to hammer rock or shelly or put them at e-1 they do it.

[Redados]

I'm curious what others have to say because to me it looks like you reacted the way you did not because of the quantity of votes but because you had some certainty they were coming from a town direction.

This is a SUPER interesting observation that I definitely missed the first time around. This may have been a slip, but I haven't really bought into the idea of townslipping and scumslipping at this point.

If you guys that are on now (redadados and italiono) want to BW rocknil instead I'll hop on it.

I am not willing to do this right now. My scumpool at this point is ShellyC and Rocknil. Shelly because I am scumreading her and Rocknil as a policy lim. I would rather lim Shelly than Rocknil. Shelly is at E-2 and will go to E-1 when I re-vote her at 9pm tonight. If someone else votes for her before then then I'll try to give intent to hammer before doing so.

[ItalianoVD]

Fair enough. Like I said things have cleared up so I should be able to be more active, less so on the weekends. Ask me anything.

I'm frustrated with myself that I can't get any sort of read on you.

What are your thoughts on Fredrick A Campbell?

Fair enough. Like I said things have cleared up so I should be able to be more active, less so on the weekends. Ask me anything.

I'm frustrated with myself that I can't get any sort of read on you.

What are your thoughts on Fredrick A Campbell?

Lol, I don’t think you’re looking hard enough. I believe I’ve touched on everyone in the playerlist, some more than others. I’ve given my thoughts about Frederick in: 220, 298 & 318

Part of playstyle is when I townread someone or when I’m trying to townread someone, I don’t interact with them that much unless I see something that stands out or they ask me things. When I don’t interact, it’s because nothing stands out. That may seem like distancing for people others scumread, but that’s not it. As you saw in last game, I townread Micc and didn’t really interact with him the rest of the day really and I eventually got a case pushed onto me because of it. That may be bad play for some, but it’s worked for me for years.

[ItalianoVD]

Since you guys seemed to like my last source I'll link another one I thought was helpful:

https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/fo ... University


This is a collection of 24 articles that in my opinion range from moderately low to very high in level of expertise. In addition to the varying levels of expertise the information is qualitative in nature as opposed to quantitative so it's unlike the other source I shared. This source was useful for things like understanding different terminology, understanding differences between metas and medias of mafia, and understanding what kind of high level strategies exist for both sides.

I think after the game is over we definitely have to have some intellectual discussions. I’m liking these articles very much. Anything that stimulates the mind for me is cause for celebration.

This daystart makes sense to me. Mush is demonstrating abilities like range of vocabulary, flexibility, ability to think from multiple perspectives. Seems like someone who wants to have a significant voice within the village and is willing to take on pressure/attention from other players. Struck me as a strong D1 player who sometimes had trouble later in the game which Mush self-confirmed. It makes me believe it will be easier to attempt to read Mush later in the game as opposed to earlier.

Here is one of the articles I linked to at the beginning of this post:
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/th ... tichora%29

Here is another one:
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/th ... erchief%29

These articles describe an alternative strategy for scum that involves becoming the influential player that is townread and directs the attention of the other players. I describe it as alternative because I believe strong scum players will usually try to play somewhere in the middle of status so they don't get lynched early and have some input but it still makes sense they're alive after multiple night kills. Based on Mush's reaction to my suggestion town let scum make plays it appears to me that Mush is hyper-vigilant of the alternative game plan of taking control early. If Mush is scum this is the approach she is choosing to take this game and it seems like she drew an enormous amount of attention to it by continuing her interaction with me. This is a big reason why I not only believe she might be town but that she's a poor D1 lynch and will be easier to understand later.

I didn't think about that possibility, but it makes sense. I was townreading her because I DON’T think scum would be that bold. Am I interpreting that right?

I'm curious what others have to say because to me it looks like you reacted the way you did not because of the quantity of votes but because you had some certainty they were coming from a town direction.

I didn’t like the self-vote period and I think the reasoning while seemingly noble doesn’t help the town. I didn’t take it the way you did, however, I don’t know how to find those hidden meanings anyway.

I was curious about the percentage of games where both scum players adopt a power-scum strategy like I described earlier and if there was any statistical or behavioral way to determine what kind of game-state we were in before seeing any flips.

This is one of the reasons I didn’t like Mush’s push onto Frederick because he was answering a question you asked. I didn’t see it as him trying to persuade the town to think a certain way or do a certain thing. If he had done it unprompted then I could see Mush’s point.

[LavarManos]

I think Fredrick has been falling under the radar. He does not seem to be doing much and does not seem to be concerned with the upcoming deadline and who he wants to hang. I know I enjoyed his predecessor's posts, but I do not like Fredrick's apathy.
I think I will vote for him or rocknil today. It seems like shellyc is a strong player, so she could potentially be fooling me, but I prefer rationale to paranoia.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Awake and semi active. I have alarms and timers set on every working device, I’ll be here for the last couple of hours or there will be some sort of power outage.

A self vote denies information. I would only use it if there was no consensus nor anything close to one, just enough wagoning and active players to make this work, and if I was willing to play extremely horribly in order to force a scumread on myself from the actives.

Shelly took heat off of Rocknil and Frederick, far from the deadline, where there was a functional near consensus on players who weren’t Shelly, and then DEFENDED HERSELF AS TOWN. This is bad play if you’re trying the noble sacrifice route and since she apparently does this as scum at all ever (it’s a non-obvious scum play that she is aware enough to talk about avoiding doing as town), I distrust it.

Then, having made herself the default elimination target, she continued to defend herself as town... but she was cornered into either playing toward a D1 elimination on herself or into changing her mind dramatically AFTER other players had seen how anti-town a different play would work. So we see compromise play here. “Yes, don’t risk the elimination! But I’m town and it’s a mistake!”

Anti-town townies are less concerned with appearances and figure they have to be pro-town if they’re town, it’s part of how they’re anti-town townies in the first place. Scum will make a compromise play because of their awareness of needing to look like town and — in this case, unwillingness to hurt their wincon as badly as Shelly-as-scum unwittingly has.

Thus I think a Shelly elimination hits scum AND is the least likely elimination to fail when needed. It’s the right move.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Also if Shelly flips scum, I would look at the posts only up to the page after the self-vote for associative reads: I feel like she’s aware of how badly she screwed the pooch on her wincon and her play surrounding the rest of the players changed around that time.

[shellyc]

Shelly took heat off of Rocknil and Frederick, far from the deadline, where there was a functional near consensus on players who weren’t Shelly, and then DEFENDED HERSELF AS TOWN. This is bad play if you’re trying the noble sacrifice route and since she apparently does this as scum at all ever (it’s a non-obvious scum play that she is aware enough to talk about avoiding doing as town), I distrust it.

I defended myself against that horribly incompetent argument against me. Is that wrong?

[shellyc]

Finally awake. Okay I get my elimination is the right move. This may be my last post. I have played sub-par this game, but remember the most important thing: I will flip town.

Final readslist:
Redados - has been townier in recent posts. Stopping my eliminate was a townie thing to do. I also like him noticing Italiano's relative inactiveness.
Mush - Is still a townread. Playstyle explanation was decent, and their mindset seems to be a town one. I am fairly sure in this read.
Italiano - Has been less town to me: I don't get the vibe from last game. They seem more slick and self-conscious to me this game, and I don't know if that's AI. Have been staying out of the limelight.
MagikHorse - Feeling null on this slot, and I don't know if they were attempting to pocket me. Maybe a slight scumlean.
Frogster - Semi lurking, slight townleans for the reason that they put effort in posting huge walls. Not a lot to go off here
Replacement - They said I was town (pocket?), but their overall vibe is giving me townvibes I guess.
Fredrick - I am still expressing a scumread here - they have been apathetic and passive, which I don't like.

[Redados]

I said I would put Shelly at E-1 at 9PM CST. It is now 8PM CST and I am now ready to put Shelly at E-1.

E-1: VOTE: ShellyC

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I gotta say I’m consistently surprised how hard I’ve been coming across as town all game long, given I played the mysterious and all knowing style for so long (normally scum play) and my playstyle has been high pressure, sarcastic and abrasive (normally gets spurious scumreads). Only Shelly and Italiano even truly tested that against other players, and they got shot down pretty hard.

They didn’t play off of each other the way I’d expect scum to, but it’s possible we have a low-communication scumteam, that seems like Shelly’s style.

Aside from Shelly and Frogster: everyone explain why I’m town.

Why? Well, I have pocketing concerns. It’s important to note that I’m not particularly vulnerable to pocketing, but that means it’s harder to spot attempts to do it, which denies town information. Trying to rectify that before Day 1 closes.

[Redados]

Mush, I don't have a read on you.

[shellyc]

They didn’t play off of each other the way I’d expect scum to, but it’s possible we have a low-communication scumteam, that seems like Shelly’s style.

I'm pretty fond of daytalk. Last game my scumbuddy got eliminated d1. We couldn't talk much in result.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I’ll also drop a near full reads list. A couple folks are being set at “nope”, as in “not sharing”. This could be because there’s nothing to share, or because I feel like I cannot trust my read and/or their play to remain stable Day 2 onwards.



Fred: High scum probability. Bland and unremarkable, never rocks the boat, agreeable without being enthusiastic, total lack of awareness of the game state. Suggests a player who was hoping to coast and got caught, and now is trying to blend in.

Rocknil: near zero engagement, near zero information, rapid style change under sustained pressure, overdefensive when pressed with far less intensity than any other player, very big scum feel.

Shelly: overconcerned with appearance of her play, nonstop reiteration of being town after she made herself the de facto elimination... you’ve heard it all before, this slot’s play stinks as town and is high quality as scum. The player’s more intelligent and aware of the game than the town play is likely to support, hence scum.

Italiano: former number 3, HIGHLY CONCERNING PLAY. Few to no hard decisions made, but little in the way of changing his mind either. Town, but it’s a hair trigger from dropping to scum. I’m gonna waffle on this player some I think.

Frogster: townie play, but a very psychology-minded player, with statistical analysis partially memorized. There’s the possibility for depth that can cover up scum play. If Shelly comes up green, Frogster’s bad bad E-1 vote and relationship to how Shelly became the de facto target makes me highly suspicious, but also, I don’t think he’d bus that way. He’d be more convincing while leaving more of an escape hatch. Watch the flip, says I.

MagikHorse: Nope.

Lavar: pretty solid townread. I also weakly townread van, so this is consistent. This slot’s been brutalized pretty hard with replacements, but the play that has hit it has been very town-friendly, mildly tentative, and basically to be expected of thoughtful and serious newbie play.

Redados: Nope.

[ItalianoVD]

Aside from Shelly and Frogster: everyone explain why I’m town.

I don’t like your play style. I think it doesn’t help town to never tell your reads I didn’t like your push on Frederick at the time it was happening, then your reaction to me pushing you was less than ideal imo. I especially didn’t like 268. I felt you were playing your own game. You never answered my questions, which I already said was alright, but the fact is you didn’t and even said you weren’t. I don’t know if this is how you play normally or if it’s alignment based.

Most of your actions have been more protown, your posts and certain interactions have been antitown. There’s a reason you aren’t in my no lynchpool, but alternatively I don’t think I wanna eliminate you. Think of yourself as trying to stand up on thin ice with cracks in it.

[ItalianoVD]

Mush, I don't have a read on you.

What are your thoughts then?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Haha! Well, I’m glad our view of each other is mutual. Let’s see how that works out long term, shall we?

[ItalianoVD]

Haha! Well, I’m glad our view of each other is mutual. Let’s see how that works out long term, shall we?

Lol, yeah let’s see.