Newbie 2025 | Lilies | Game Over

[Casey]

I think I did enough outside the theory lessons since I lead the initial pushes on both your current scum reads.

Looking forward to it.

[Frogsterking]

Frogsterking, why do you seem the most obsessed over what everyone thinks of the nightkill.

In the mafia format I have almost all of my experience in (livechat, roughly 5-20 minute days and 1-5 minute nights on average) I relied extensively on analyzing night kills to complement behavioral reads.

Part of the reason that method was useful to me was I understood how players of different levels approached their night choices in that format.

Things are different when players get a couple days to make their choice instead of a couple minutes and I'm not sure how much of what I know carries over to this format and I'm trying to learn quickly.

[LavarManos]

Ok, I suppose I will ignore Casey's scumread on me then. I do think I have shown attempts to solve.

[Redados]

Ok, I suppose I will ignore Casey's scumread on me then. I do think I have shown attempts to solve.

I'm not even sure if ignore is the best word to use. Acknowledge it, take it on the chin, and carry on!

[Fredrick A Campbell]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels uncomfortable with the dynamics of Shelly, Redados and Italiano. Redados has, at least, modified his play after having been called out to something that could be considered more pro-town, but Shelly is hyper-focused on Redados and Italiano is hyper-focused on Shelly. This doesn't help anyone else make any decisions at all, and might very well end up with two mis-eliminations to satisfy the paranoia of these three so we can actually get down to business.

I have no intent of listing reads quite yet, but this is not good play for town from Shelly and Italiano. I think they should back up and focus attention on other people altogether for a while. Especially Italiano, who hasn't so much as sniffed in the direction of other players, as far as I can tell.

Now then...



Shelly, if town "tunnels" someone, scum don't need to say much to come across as town that's just late to the party. "Yeah, I'm honestly here on this wagon. I have nothing to add, everyone else has made my arguments for me. I think it's the right idea." Scum shouldn't be allowed to direct the conversation either, but if town gets stuck on "YES WE HAVE THE ANSWERS" scum doesn't need to do anything except not rock the boat too much.



Frogster, you have a dependent chain of events for "scum forcing interactions" being a good idea, whether you recognize the chain or not.
First, town has to town read most of town.
Second, town has to mostly not town read at least one scum.
Third, town has to be mostly coordinating rather than throwing suspicion at or questioning each other.
Only if all three things are true does scum have to try to steer the ship, so to speak. I'd like to point out that we can't get reads on enough of the players to fulfill the first chainlink yet, and we are ALL bickering too much for the third link to be fulfilled.

Letting scum force interaction at this stage is a TERRIBLE idea.

I'm really not a fan of how you're spinning my desire to be able to get reads on the majority of players. It's making something that's fairly pro-town into a vehicle for highly pro-scum play, and that is just not a good look at all on you, particularly with how town read I seem to be.

I've mentioned before: I tend to jump the gun, and I am aware of that tendency. So I'm just going to ask if anyone else feels like my words and intent might be getting twisted for hidden motives here. Because I have that feeling, I feel it in my bones, and I don't like it at all.

VOTE: Frogsterking

I always feel more comfortable having voted, and this feels like the right place to rest my vote for the time being.



I also want to bring up that MagikHorse has made himself one of my favorites with just the recently-passed flurry of posts. These are direct, cutting posts that aren't over-determined or stuck on irrelevancies. Good stuff for town, though I have yet to feel comfortable giving reads out.



And last for now, notes on why I'm avoiding giving a player overview or a reads list for so long.

Remember how I mentioned pattern-matching before?

I'm seeing patterns in all of the active users. Some I'm curious about, some I just plain don't like, all of them I want to avoid drawing too much attention to until I have reached a conclusion about the patterns I'm seeing.

If you've posted more than 6 times, I'm considering you in some way. I won't tell you how or for what until I'm good and ready, because that would give away the patterns and make it too easy to disrupt the picture I'm building. I'm going to sit on these and see what comes of my approach before I try giving reads. So you'll all have to wait a little while longer.

I think your dependency chain is an accurate example of the possible late game scenarios I'm visualizing in which town can still win in case there is little aid from prs. I would describe your dependency chain as a win condition following good early town play. I'd imagine you can see how a chain like that is unrealistic on D1 as you pointed out, but could materialize later in a 3-way or 5-way lylo situation as a result of a good D1.

I'm interested in hearing your conclusions about the player patterns and the reads list later and I agree they will be more impactful given some time. I believe this is another benefit of using the full 10 days.

I assure you there was no deliberate attempt to spin what you were saying and my motivation for paraphrasing was to express what I thought you were saying so you could confirm (or in this case deny) that there was a mutual understanding.

I suspect there is an issue with communication rather than underlying ideas about the game because I agree with most of the points you've been making. I suspect the issue is a linguistic one and we are based on different definitions of what letting scum force plays or interactions means. In my mind "forcing an interaction" or "forcing a play" is usually a bad move for the side doing it because it implies the play was unnatural or awkwardly timed (hence it had to be forced in) and will be generally less effective. A "forcing interaction" that is dominant and controls the choices the other side has available is not what I was suggesting we want to allow others to be doing.

The tunneling trio you pointed out is a solid example of what I'm referring to about forcing an interaction (not a forcing interaction.) If the scum team decides to play that way that's fine with me but if it's the town doing that then there will be problems not only today but in the endgame as well.

I believe that Redados, Shelly and Italiano will be receptive to moving forward and focusing on other players. I also believe that the incoming replacements are more likely to be an asset than a liability.

What did you mean by "The tunneling trio you pointed out is a solid example of what I'm referring to about forcing an interaction (not a forcing interaction.)"

[Frogsterking]

Spoiler:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels uncomfortable with the dynamics of Shelly, Redados and Italiano. Redados has, at least, modified his play after having been called out to something that could be considered more pro-town, but Shelly is hyper-focused on Redados and Italiano is hyper-focused on Shelly. This doesn't help anyone else make any decisions at all, and might very well end up with two mis-eliminations to satisfy the paranoia of these three so we can actually get down to business.

I have no intent of listing reads quite yet, but this is not good play for town from Shelly and Italiano. I think they should back up and focus attention on other people altogether for a while. Especially Italiano, who hasn't so much as sniffed in the direction of other players, as far as I can tell.

Now then...



Shelly, if town "tunnels" someone, scum don't need to say much to come across as town that's just late to the party. "Yeah, I'm honestly here on this wagon. I have nothing to add, everyone else has made my arguments for me. I think it's the right idea." Scum shouldn't be allowed to direct the conversation either, but if town gets stuck on "YES WE HAVE THE ANSWERS" scum doesn't need to do anything except not rock the boat too much.



Frogster, you have a dependent chain of events for "scum forcing interactions" being a good idea, whether you recognize the chain or not.
First, town has to town read most of town.
Second, town has to mostly not town read at least one scum.
Third, town has to be mostly coordinating rather than throwing suspicion at or questioning each other.
Only if all three things are true does scum have to try to steer the ship, so to speak. I'd like to point out that we can't get reads on enough of the players to fulfill the first chainlink yet, and we are ALL bickering too much for the third link to be fulfilled.

Letting scum force interaction at this stage is a TERRIBLE idea.

I'm really not a fan of how you're spinning my desire to be able to get reads on the majority of players. It's making something that's fairly pro-town into a vehicle for highly pro-scum play, and that is just not a good look at all on you, particularly with how town read I seem to be.

I've mentioned before: I tend to jump the gun, and I am aware of that tendency. So I'm just going to ask if anyone else feels like my words and intent might be getting twisted for hidden motives here. Because I have that feeling, I feel it in my bones, and I don't like it at all.

VOTE: Frogsterking

I always feel more comfortable having voted, and this feels like the right place to rest my vote for the time being.



I also want to bring up that MagikHorse has made himself one of my favorites with just the recently-passed flurry of posts. These are direct, cutting posts that aren't over-determined or stuck on irrelevancies. Good stuff for town, though I have yet to feel comfortable giving reads out.



And last for now, notes on why I'm avoiding giving a player overview or a reads list for so long.

Remember how I mentioned pattern-matching before?

I'm seeing patterns in all of the active users. Some I'm curious about, some I just plain don't like, all of them I want to avoid drawing too much attention to until I have reached a conclusion about the patterns I'm seeing.

If you've posted more than 6 times, I'm considering you in some way. I won't tell you how or for what until I'm good and ready, because that would give away the patterns and make it too easy to disrupt the picture I'm building. I'm going to sit on these and see what comes of my approach before I try giving reads. So you'll all have to wait a little while longer.

I think your dependency chain is an accurate example of the possible late game scenarios I'm visualizing in which town can still win in case there is little aid from prs. I would describe your dependency chain as a win condition following good early town play. I'd imagine you can see how a chain like that is unrealistic on D1 as you pointed out, but could materialize later in a 3-way or 5-way lylo situation as a result of a good D1.

I'm interested in hearing your conclusions about the player patterns and the reads list later and I agree they will be more impactful given some time. I believe this is another benefit of using the full 10 days.

I assure you there was no deliberate attempt to spin what you were saying and my motivation for paraphrasing was to express what I thought you were saying so you could confirm (or in this case deny) that there was a mutual understanding.

I suspect there is an issue with communication rather than underlying ideas about the game because I agree with most of the points you've been making. I suspect the issue is a linguistic one and we are based on different definitions of what letting scum force plays or interactions means. In my mind "forcing an interaction" or "forcing a play" is usually a bad move for the side doing it because it implies the play was unnatural or awkwardly timed (hence it had to be forced in) and will be generally less effective. A "forcing interaction" that is dominant and controls the choices the other side has available is not what I was suggesting we want to allow others to be doing.

The tunneling trio you pointed out is a solid example of what I'm referring to about forcing an interaction (not a forcing interaction.) If the scum team decides to play that way that's fine with me but if it's the town doing that then there will be problems not only today but in the endgame as well.

I believe that Redados, Shelly and Italiano will be receptive to moving forward and focusing on other players. I also believe that the incoming replacements are more likely to be an asset than a liability.

What did you mean by "The tunneling trio you pointed out is a solid example of what I'm referring to about forcing an interaction (not a forcing interaction.)"

(added spoiler so others don't have to scroll past the original quotes)

I meant that the trio of Redados, Italiano and shellyc came in with preconceived feelings about each other and were skewing the discussion toward their point of view.

I was contrasting the early actions of these three with some type of play where one or more players are able to dominate the game, force the other players to respond to them or limit the actions of the other players in some way. I didn't feel like this was what they were doing because I felt like I could read their discussion and then respond to it as I chose.

I remember at this point in time I thought (incorrectly) the conflict between Mush and I was that Mush interpreted my statements about letting mafia force plays and make mistakes as allowing other players to dominate the game, and I was attempting to clarify my point of view in ways I thought might make sense to her.

[Fredrick A Campbell]

That actually lines up pretty well with what I have observed thus far.

UNVOTE:

[Frogsterking]

Here's my take on Mush's more substantial reads toward the end of D1 not including shelly. Redados was null to her, Lavar was briefly mentioned but was her strongest townread (which was the second most important thing I learned going over this.) Mush was a fan of Van's push onto MagikHorse which I think helped improve her opinion of that slot substantially.

I believe I overestimated her end of day suspicion against me as well which is causing me to rethink my interpretation of events.

I'm now neutral reading both Lavar and Italiano.

UNVOTE: Lavar

I might be referencing 452 at some point while writing this post so I'm putting it in the spoiler below.

Spoiler:

Now, play explanation!

If I pressure someone and don’t tell them my reads, my pressure is increased tremendously. The default assumption is I have a scumread. It is also that that player has a TELL that I am reading off of and do not want them to be aware of and get rid of. If it’s true, the reason to play this way is obvious. If it’s untrue, it implies that there is a scumtell that is exceptionally strong and I’m putting the screws on. I am going to make you crack. The whole town will scumread you. Just you wait. This leads to town players floundering and scum players rapid fire trying to change their play styles to blindly avoid a scumread.

Sometimes, they actually do start to scumtell. Sometimes. Even if they don’t, the rapid, apparently /pointless/ playstyle changes provide information to town: this person is more concerned with how they look than finding player alignments, and that’s a scum playstyle.

If I then interact positively with that player, relief occurs. “Ah, I’m safe, I must be town read.” Town and scum react differently to these, more so even than to the initial pressure. Scum wants to get buddy buddy a bit more than town: town gets more wary or dismissive of me where scum wants to avoid the pressure and scrutiny and try to, even if not necessarily buddy me, certainly to play a more accommodating and cooperative game when it comes to me.

The longer I wait to share my reads, the more the pressure builds for both of these. Scum don’t feel safe until I sort them as town, town flounders and becomes defeated as hope of getting pressure off goes down. These aren’t universal, there is crossover, but they’re important information.

Another thing: STRONG baseless pushes tilt the play field. Everyone has to react to me and my target. We get a ton of associative information based on this, because town and scum have different world views when under fire: town sees baseless pushes, scum sees “oh damn I am scum telling and I don’t know about it”, or better still, “my partner is scum telling and is a weak link in the chain, I need to eliminate them as fast as possible”.

The best part of this is that it keeps working even when I tell you all about it. Because there is always the chance that I see scumtells that I am keeping under my hat until I’m good and ready to share them.

This is not necessarily pro town play, but it is exceptionally effective in Day 1, when information is nonexistent or open to interpretation. On later days, it loses effectiveness, creating noise where actual data exists. I imagine more experienced players would be less prone to it, also, though highly critical or anxious players may never be resistant to the style.

That is what has been going on. Read back through and tell me how many associative information with Frederick weren’t intermediated by my gigantic push, just by way of example! Ultimately, I believe more discussion and information came from this playstyle than would have otherwise been seen.

Italiano:

I got the most out of doing this on Italiano because I did not really remember what Mush had said about Italiano. Mush seemed fine with Italiano about midway through the day, weakly townreading him. Around post #300 though Mush's opinion of Italiano went sharply downhill and deteriorated rapidly throughout the day.

In the spoiler I have posts 257, 268, 304, 310, 312, 319, 386 and 495.

Spoiler:

Italiano is interesting. I think I agree: town. Weakly, but still. The pressure was because I wasn't sure, and there's a difference between stubborn town and doubt-seeding scum. But when I cornered and squeezed, he deflated, despite no real pressure aside from mine. And no one's following my lead, so there's very little reason to do that for scum.



Frogsterking's paper is based on a corpus of actual Mafiascum games, and the conclusions are statistical in nature. Some are very strong, and are far more likely to be strong for newer players. The chance of two of the SEs being scum is roughly 8%, and replacements are more statistically likely for scum-sided players (0.33 vs 0.35). That's a powerful, powerful tool for helping direct attention. Scum would have little reason to introduce that to town except purely for towncred -- hence a conditional read based on future action. It's only worth the towncred if the scum player believes it removes all real pressure or that they can keep a consistent game. Frogster smells like he could be consistent enough to play scum on this, but again, it's a conditional read.



Now that I'm feeling well-set enough, I will share some of the reasons for the Frederick debacle.

Firstly, he had (and has) nothing to offer in terms of sortable information. His play is minimal, bland and utterly ignorable. I want to squeeze that until it pops, because I hate players that do little to no /playing/. They're worse than lurkers, because people can give them a townread without even realizing why. This was why I voted him at first: not for a scumread, but for a basically zero-information playstyle. Only pressure is going to drag anything out of that.

And then, all hell broke loose.

Every third player had something to say on the matter, and no one offered a coherent defense of Frederick! Shelly didn't like my playstyle surrounding my vote of Frederick, but otherwise had no real reason to offer that might make me back off. ItalianoVD was appalled by language that I didn't use, and found my vote suspect. His defense was aggressive but ultimately /without substance/. Everyone else made some murmurs about my failure to explain my vote, and the game suddenly became a LOT more information rich.

The less explanation I gave, the more infuriated players got -- and the more flailing Frederick's activity became, culminating in /pointlessly/ quoting a contentious post I made near the beginning of the game -- page four, I believe. This was incredibly good information for town, whether you agree with how I got it or not. In future games, I might have to rely more on near-baseless strong pushes with lots of "My reasons are mysterious and I am all knowing" mystique to stir the pot. It was insightful, it was effective, and it was a hell of a lot of fun.

Oh yeah. And I'm keeping my vote on Frederick because I do indeed scumread him. Bland play, bland posts, calling this all so very boring, misleading garbage (that ridiculous math post), and muffled flailing when pressured hard enough for long enough. He has no town vibes, his play is so unremarkable it's anti-town, and his sum total contributions are /all/ outright anti-town. For the special sauce, since scum slots are slightly more likely to replace out statistically, he's slightly more suspicious than our non-replacing players.

So my vote stays on Frederick.

Rocknil's reaction puts him at a tentative scumread for me, just saying. Practically everyone in the game has had a strong, sustained push on them at some point aside from Van, myself, and MagikHorse. Van, MagikHorse and I have gotten /shoves/, at least.

This was barely a hard poke, and "ah, ah, scum is attacking me" is the immediate reaction.

I was talking about some stink, but that's a big one right there for me. Could be pure new player and impossible to sort with, but I'm gonna go with new scum to be safe and maybe get him playing.



Redados, I'm not sharing my read on you yet, but... presuming you are town, how likely do you think it is that ItalianoVD is scum buddying up to you? Genuine question. Oh, and do show your work, too, explain why and how you come to your conclusion!

Also interested in the flip-side answer from ItalianoVD, who, I will remind people, I weakly townread.

I think ItalianoVD is probably town, but as time wears on and I consider his posts more and more, that read gets weaker. I don't think I'll scumread him today barring exceptional, spectacular behavior (sidenote that my bar for exceptional and spectacular isn't just different in height from that of others, it's probably at a different angle altogether), but I have Concerns. Capital C.

No, these Concerns will not be aided if I air them out. In fact, they'll become More Concerning instead.

Here, a practical experiment: consider motivations from a scum mindset, reread Italiano's post history so far, and think hard about what falls out.
It isn't a fun thought, is it? Concerning. Like I said. Hopefully you can also see how making Italiano AWARE of those Concerns would be bad for sorting him long-term.

But town motivations win out here. For now.

Right now, I like Frederick (seemingly blatantly unaware of the gamestate until cornered about it???) and Rocknil (inactive AND hyper-defensive about it is a bad look) for scum. My backup is, well, not saying, but I have a solid three people I'd vote for so far, put it that way. There's only a couple people I wouldn't be caught dead voting for so far, but I'm leaving that alone till we start to finalize our Day 1 elimination.

Yes, I intend to fully explain almost everything I've been doing for Day 1 near the end of the day, in case I get eliminated. The remainder are either pointless to explain (e.g. stylistic things, blatantly obvious things) or would undo a lot of the work I've done by revealing them that early.



Speaking of, we should start to talk about that Day 1 elimination in serious terms. Like, laying elimination pools on the table and trying to find where the overlap lies, if we can put together enough votes on someone to try and run the clock down a ways or if we need to try and push for a policy elimination, etc. (This also creates lots of opportunity for reactions to sort people by.)

I'm not looking for quick elimination, I'm not even looking for votes to start moving. (Truth be told, I like the vote spread right about where it is for the moment.) I am looking for who the most players can willingly sacrifice in the game, who they will fight tooth and nail to keep out of the vote, etc. This creates groundwork to avoid no-elimination and helps us build better reads. Just in case anyone has doubts about my intentions.

To that end: I'm enthusiastic right this minute about Frederick or rocknil, and no one else. Most players I could place a compromise vote on, but I'm not willing to step there today: we still have days left before the deadline if I'm not mistaken.

Oh, and for the record, it doesn't usually hurt anything to point out that someone is doing SOMETHING you find scummy. But one has to be wary of pointing at the exact thing and describing in exhaustive detail WHAT it is and WHY it is.

Me saying Italiano's play is Concerning to me by itself does little damage to figuring out if that's just how he is or if it's a scumtell. But if I explain what it is and why, it can easily become coaching the scum players in not being scumread by me.

And no, telling them this stuff I'm saying right now doesn't help them either. (It took me a while to come to that conclusion.) They're already trying to be town. Whatever they see in their own posts that is "scummy" is unlikely to be what I see. Sudden changes that are almost entirely NAI by themselves can be a whole world of meaning all on their own. And no change at all says something too.

I would quite like ItalianoVD to weigh in on an elimination pool for today.

My answer has changed, Frogster.

Initially, it was Italiano. As I said... I have Concerns.

Right now, it’s Shelly. I was weakly, weakly townreading Shelly. This last outburst has made me a lot less certain, and IF it wasn’t sacrificing the vote, I’d gladly see her flip more than anyone else. (But my primary targets I want to save for the vote, she’s like ... number four on my current list.)

Shelly, Rocknil and Frederick have filled my top 3. My former third place player isn't even worth listing right now.

Shelly, my argument when you said scum would be on your wagon should have made it obvious that at this very late stage with this little engagement, attempting to avoid this is basically anti Town. If not you, then no one, and I won't accept that, and if you won't either... Well, I simply don't understand why you are trying to avoid it instead of maximizing information for Day 2. The more effort we put into this pointless discussion, the less we can put into arranging for reads for later.

Given you were content to end the day early on your own elimination with a self vote, this is even more inconsistent and senseless.

I'll be legitimately surprised if you're town at this stage. It seems nigh impossible.

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.

In my opinion the Mush kill benefited Italiano the most next to Frederick obviously. I'll touch on what Mush said about Rocknil a little bit later, but in my interpretation Mush viewed Rocknil as more of a policy lynch with a scumlean and had more substantial concerns about Italiano. I can't imagine a world where Italiano is expecting to win a lylo as scum with Mush alive unless he is expecting to persuade a townie to lynch Mush which seems unlikely. This definitely was a tick in the scum direction for Italiano for me because in my opinion Mush had to die at some point as far as Italiano's win condition is concerned. Consider 386 and 460, it seems as though shelly's erratic play drew all of Mush's attention away from Italiano which was why we did not hear about him more from Mush by the end of the day.

Mush's sentiment toward him was also something he was clearly aware of, because they both acknowledged it to each other in 496, 498 and 499.

Italiano is also keenly aware he could night kill Mush to remove a key threat without being overtly blamed for it as evidenced by his response to me in post 627.

Frogster:

In my mind I was Mush's second-strongest townread next to Lavar. It's difficult to say how much town credit putting shelly at e-1 followed by her town flip cost me in Mush's eyes. It's clear though that she (correctly) considered me town before and after the fact albeit with heavy suspicion. If she was also correct about Lavar's alignment that would make her an instant must kill overnight, if she was only right about me then it would depend more so on what the mafia were planning.

I noticed that the post #s are linked in the top of each quote so I chose not to include the #s for these and just pasted Mush's statements I reviewed in the spoilers below.

Spoiler:

I'm going to post my first public read: I think Frogsterking is town. If he isn't town, he's unreadable. I think his playstyle edges a bit toward anti-town overall, he's focused on game-solving over scum-hunting, but scum has no reason to give town a weapon like that paper. Arguably against their win condition to do so.

I'll note this read is conditional: his anti-town behavior is consistently game-solving (which comes from a town direction) and his towniness is based on a single event that gives away a lot of cover for lurker scum. It's a strong town read, but it isn't unbreakable.

Italiano is interesting. I think I agree: town. Weakly, but still. The pressure was because I wasn't sure, and there's a difference between stubborn town and doubt-seeding scum. But when I cornered and squeezed, he deflated, despite no real pressure aside from mine. And no one's following my lead, so there's very little reason to do that for scum.



Frogsterking's paper is based on a corpus of actual Mafiascum games, and the conclusions are statistical in nature. Some are very strong, and are far more likely to be strong for newer players. The chance of two of the SEs being scum is roughly 8%, and replacements are more statistically likely for scum-sided players (0.33 vs 0.35). That's a powerful, powerful tool for helping direct attention. Scum would have little reason to introduce that to town except purely for towncred -- hence a conditional read based on future action. It's only worth the towncred if the scum player believes it removes all real pressure or that they can keep a consistent game. Frogster smells like he could be consistent enough to play scum on this, but again, it's a conditional read.



Now that I'm feeling well-set enough, I will share some of the reasons for the Frederick debacle.

Firstly, he had (and has) nothing to offer in terms of sortable information. His play is minimal, bland and utterly ignorable. I want to squeeze that until it pops, because I hate players that do little to no /playing/. They're worse than lurkers, because people can give them a townread without even realizing why. This was why I voted him at first: not for a scumread, but for a basically zero-information playstyle. Only pressure is going to drag anything out of that.

And then, all hell broke loose.

Every third player had something to say on the matter, and no one offered a coherent defense of Frederick! Shelly didn't like my playstyle surrounding my vote of Frederick, but otherwise had no real reason to offer that might make me back off. ItalianoVD was appalled by language that I didn't use, and found my vote suspect. His defense was aggressive but ultimately /without substance/. Everyone else made some murmurs about my failure to explain my vote, and the game suddenly became a LOT more information rich.

The less explanation I gave, the more infuriated players got -- and the more flailing Frederick's activity became, culminating in /pointlessly/ quoting a contentious post I made near the beginning of the game -- page four, I believe. This was incredibly good information for town, whether you agree with how I got it or not. In future games, I might have to rely more on near-baseless strong pushes with lots of "My reasons are mysterious and I am all knowing" mystique to stir the pot. It was insightful, it was effective, and it was a hell of a lot of fun.

Oh yeah. And I'm keeping my vote on Frederick because I do indeed scumread him. Bland play, bland posts, calling this all so very boring, misleading garbage (that ridiculous math post), and muffled flailing when pressured hard enough for long enough. He has no town vibes, his play is so unremarkable it's anti-town, and his sum total contributions are /all/ outright anti-town. For the special sauce, since scum slots are slightly more likely to replace out statistically, he's slightly more suspicious than our non-replacing players.

So my vote stays on Frederick.

Different kind of gamesolving, MagikHorse: solving "Mafia" as a class of games. Game-theoretical perfect play, that sort of thing. I'm exaggerating a bit, but it's in line with that kind of thinking.

With regards to ItalianoVD, he questions why other players would change their mind more than why they had their mind set somewhere in the first place. He questioned why I had MY mind set on something, but he was using it as a wedge-driving element for arguing his case WRT the Shelly read. (Trying to say I was doing the same thing he was, essentially, either making me a hypocrite or forcing me to justify his play. The differences between our play didn't seem to matter.) He doesn't seem to quite understand people changing their mind or conceding an argument, which makes his own play in that area sort of NAI.



Frederick, who does not have a pattern of behavior other than van? Everyone else has a MARKED pattern. I can basically guess how any other player will react at this stage to certain theoretical events. In your case, it will probably be to be bland and non-committal, the way you have been from jump.

Rock, van and Frogster are all missing in action — again. Concerning.

Two of them just seem to DO this.

But! But. Frogsterking, where are you?

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.

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.

Last minute baseless speculation:

Consider a Frogster and Frederick scumteam. They play off of each other constantly, they reinforce each other; even Frogster’s criticism seems anticipated and expected.

If Shelly flips green... consider the value of a Frogster and Frederick scumteam and compare it with how their interactions and play have been.

Also, my survival or death has no bearing on this baseless speculation whether you want it to or not, to prevent Town from getting suckered into a wildly off base round of game solving nonsense. Even if scum actually use worried about this, don’t read into it. Follow my earlier play if I die tonight.

I think if scum were planning to cross against me in a lylo scenario they would need to think twice about leaving Mush alive. Mush said they would watch me closely 437 and had varying reasons for suspicion 495 550 which I don't find very threatening because I believe Mush watched everyone closely and was suspicious of everyone. She seemed to read me as town in an offbeat or anti-town way all the way from 258 to 550 with reasons for concern, as opposed to other players she either did not read or read as scum, also with reasons for concern. I think her end of day comments were motivated by paranoia that no one would consider lynching me even if it ever became obvious.

MagikHorse:

Mush did not speak a lot about MagikHorse and he seemed to be in the middle of Mush's priority of elimination. It seemed Mush mainly had concerns about Magik not doing much and the things he did do looked artificial.

Spoiler:

MagikHorse, can I get your opinion of Italiano's play? My take is: emotionally charged reasoning presenting with logical face. His play is also centered on himself -- which manifests as Always Right (unwillingness to concede lost points, unwillingness to cooperate with other players, etc), and deeply entrenched reads (taking subjective view as objective truth).

Point of note: he seems to expect other players to also have self-centered play -- he distrusts other people changing their reads or conceding arguments, for instance. So this may not be AI, but I'm not necessarily interested in alignment sorting him based on the playstyle that /I/ see.

Accurate? Have I missed anything? Have I misread the playstyle in your eyes?

Second reframe: Shelly is a high information target for elimination, MagikHorse is not. MagikHorse has done far less interacting with the majority of players, more bouncing off of them than pushing anything too hard. Since Frogster’s MagikHorse vote is in part based on scum-interpreted Shelly interactions, I would recommend her over him.

Redados: I haven’t known it to be a problem in past games either, but, IIRC, in my past games people were far less reserved about voting anyone and everyone, with or without explanation. This game is a lot more hesitant late in the day than earlier in the day, which is all kinds of backwards and makes me worry about finding a target that we can push to elimination before end of day.

MagikHorse, your Italiano push was way more focused than its intensity deserved. This was more like a light consistent pressure, with few glances in other directions. The shove that van gave you was strong and information rich, and your response was “nah that’s fair”. Overly agreeable.

I don't believe MagikHorse was very concerned about Mush, though it's hard to say because I had forgotten about Mush's observations about 1) Magik's push on Italiano and 2) Magik's reaction to Van's push. I can imagine a MagikHorse + Lavar team would probably be motivated to kill elsewhere.

Rocknil:

Spoiler:

Van I'm more inclined to give a slight pass. Rocknil has been consistent, patterned in his lack of engagement. I wonder if he'll coast on minimal engagement, ramp it up, or get replaced out.

Van might be one of those "infrequent megapost" types. It feels possible based on what has been seen of his style, and that's a sufficiently valuable style of play. He's target three if Rocknil shapes up though.

Rocknil's reaction puts him at a tentative scumread for me, just saying. Practically everyone in the game has had a strong, sustained push on them at some point aside from Van, myself, and MagikHorse. Van, MagikHorse and I have gotten /shoves/, at least.

This was barely a hard poke, and "ah, ah, scum is attacking me" is the immediate reaction.

I was talking about some stink, but that's a big one right there for me. Could be pure new player and impossible to sort with, but I'm gonna go with new scum to be safe and maybe get him playing.



Redados, I'm not sharing my read on you yet, but... presuming you are town, how likely do you think it is that ItalianoVD is scum buddying up to you? Genuine question. Oh, and do show your work, too, explain why and how you come to your conclusion!

Also interested in the flip-side answer from ItalianoVD, who, I will remind people, I weakly townread.

If we can get one other player to say they'd happily commit to eliminating Rocknil, we can resume the RIP AND TEAR part of scum-hunting, because that makes five.

If all of the players who haven't weighed in can commit to eliminating Frederick, we can also continue without worry. (I would consider Rocknil and Van unreliable enough in terms of activity that I'd want to get Frogster and BOTH of them to agree. Frederick is obviously given a pass here.)

Otherwise, we need to look for a compromise position. I am not looking forward to THAT process, because that's not going to be fun to try and organize. Start considering your next-down-the-line if Frogster or Fred refuse to commit to those two.

I don’t really disagree that rocknil could be a miselimination waiting to happen. My scumread is light and partially for pressure.

He IS, unequivocally, the easiest target to get a wagon on based on stated elimination pools. He also is one of the lowest engagement players and THE lowest information player, and his elimination (regardless of flip) substantially tightens the game state.

We have just over 48 hours to finalize an elimination. The happier people are to vote someone, the easier that wagon is to push.

I will not no-eliminate on Day 1, I will not do it. I will go so far as to say I will self-hammer before I do it. If that’s what is required to get a wagon to elimination, by god I will push myself to the gallows.

Rocknil has a whole lot to recommend removal and very little to back up saving him when you consider Time Constraints, Elimination Pools, and No Damn Engagement. We have three players who aren’t even contributing and not enough overlap to push an elimination any other way.

If Rocknil is a miselimination I will personally own it. But I will not no-eliminate on Day 1 under any circumstances, and only Frederick has nearly as much enthusiasm for his elimination.



Reframing this: Does anyone except Shelly object to a Shelly elimination? Can we get a lock on an elimination wagon and promises that active players will push it to completion no matter their gripes, please? Because otherwise I’m saying that we stick with rocknil because no other player is that slow to respond and lacking in any informational content, and no other player has as many potential happy voters waiting to plonk down on them.

Overall it appears as though Mush could be persuaded to vote someone other than Rocknil, I don't believe Mush FoSed Rocknil any stronger than any of the other players are FoSing Rocknil in this game.

Frederick:

Mush was out for Frederick's blood. If Frederick is on the scumteam they would probably need to kill Mush. I didn't bother reviewing all of the posts where Mush railed on Frederick, here's a summary:

Oh, and for the record, my push on Frederick began as a weak scumread and now is quite strong. It wasn’t baseless in fact, just in appearance. There is no player who I scumread so high as Frederick in this game.

I believe there were several other things I still need to address but I'll have to do that later because that took a lot out of me.

[Casey]

Thank you for doing that effort. How much value do you place on kill analysis?

@Italiano: I still wanna know who you think is maf.

[Casey]

As far as I was concerned, my vote didn't matter. The person we were going to execute was going to be shellyc and I was convinced by MUSHSHAGANA that it was not a good idea to suggest an alternative execution, which, as it happens I didn't have. Although my scumread on shellyc waned later, I still thought it was not a good idea to make that public, for I had no alternative execution.

What is it with you people and not taking responsibility for your actions?

[Casey]

As far as I was concerned, my vote didn't matter. The person we were going to execute was going to be shellyc and I was convinced by MUSHSHAGANA that it was not a good idea to suggest an alternative execution, which, as it happens I didn't have. Although my scumread on shellyc waned later, I still thought it was not a good idea to make that public, for I had no alternative execution.

As for why I didn't hammer shellyc, I trusted MUSHSHAGANA to do it, as she said she would switch her vote over anytime but wanted to let others put their thoughts out.

What is YOUR thought on everyone’s scumread of you. At the moment the only thing I have on you is not voting and well that’s practically nothing.

Goodposting.

[Casey]

@Italiano I thought you admitting that ego was driving your early push of shellyc was townie. I can sorta relate to that feeling.
One of my fears is being wrong, so sometimes I might vote someone even if I don't strongly believe that they are scum. I need to work on that.
Redados, I just think that you are town because of how eager and natural you sounded. You can think I'm pocketing you, but that is just how I feel
I will look at Frogsterking. He just seemed helpful in general, but I didn't particularly townread him. I think we can do this, and I'm still confident in rocknil being scum. Perhaps with Frogster or Magik Horse. I'm not think Fred is that scummy right now!

Oh look an attempt to solve.

[Casey]

That literally doesn't explain why you find me scummy?

The fact you're asking for an explanation instead of accusing me of being scummy (as though you're more worried that I cheated than if I really know if you're scum or not) is another tick in the scum direction from my point of view.

Not a fan of this.

[Casey]

By don't care I mean I don't care if I have to vote Rocknil or Lavaar, not that I don't care about the outcome of the game! I do want to win and I am town and I think either one of these is the best move.

My opinion of Frog is dropping each time he posts. This "I do want to win and I am town" phrasing is baffling.

[Casey]

VOTE: Frogsterking

Congratulations. You have made me suspicious.

Good vote.

[Casey]

Watergun missed!

I love it.

[Casey]

Pretty certain Frog and Lavar aren't buddies.

I am still townreading Italiano and I still townread you, so I am thinking we can try to find the scumteam in the remaining pool of four players based on how they have interacted. I do not think rocknil is scum with Fredrick because there is no need to open up the day with a vote on his scumbuddy. I also do not like how rocknil chose to ignore my vote on him.

In Day 1, I pushed hard for shellyc. I thought there was something tangible there but I was wrong. I don't blame you for scumreading me. But you are wrong. I am now going over the thread to find the scum team. I have this feeling that I've missed something.

How did that go?

[Casey]

I think Mush was killed to try and frame Frederick.

Has anyone even hypothesized this today?

[Casey]

I think I did enough outside the theory lessons since I lead the initial pushes on both your current scum reads.

Looking forward to it.

The reviews are in and they're not so good.

[Casey]

I think Mush was killed to try and frame Frederick.

Has anyone even hypothesized this today?

Mush was out for Frederick's blood. If Frederick is on the scumteam they would probably need to kill Mush.

Oh look at that.

[Casey]

I'm feeling pretty confident that Redados, Italiano, and Lavar are town.

[Casey]

For the record, I'm all caught up.

[Redados]

What are the pros and cons of a policy lynch? Like I said, I just can't imagine rocknil in a LimLo situation. That sounds awful. I would like to make that not possible by limming him today.

[Frogsterking]

What are the pros and cons of a policy lynch? Like I said, I just can't imagine rocknil in a LimLo situation. That sounds awful. I would like to make that not possible by limming him today.

Off the top of my head:

Pros:
In this game there is a higher chance of hitting scum because I think most players that are active are fairly pro town.

It makes our choice much easier today.

Cons:
May not make our choice any easier if we realize the scum are hiding in the more pro town players.

If we miss we will be in the same situation tomorrow as we are now except scum get a chance to eliminate one more player, so whatever conflict arises may be more in their favor tomorrow than it is today.

[Frogsterking]

Pretty certain Frog and Lavar aren't buddies.

I am still townreading Italiano and I still townread you, so I am thinking we can try to find the scumteam in the remaining pool of four players based on how they have interacted. I do not think rocknil is scum with Fredrick because there is no need to open up the day with a vote on his scumbuddy. I also do not like how rocknil chose to ignore my vote on him.

In Day 1, I pushed hard for shellyc. I thought there was something tangible there but I was wrong. I don't blame you for scumreading me. But you are wrong. I am now going over the thread to find the scum team. I have this feeling that I've missed something.

How did that go?

I can confirm this.