Mini 2167: Illicit Substances Mafia (Game Over!)

[Something_Smart]

Really dont like this actual push on morph now, it seems like its here as a distraction in that it seems self evidently not viable

Just because it's not viable doesn't mean that it's no more than a distraction.

(whee triple negatives)

[PlusJOYED]

Greetings fellow friends and users of the drugs

slow claps steps out of the shadows
Heh.... not bad, kid. Not bad at all. Your meme, I mean it's not bad. A good first attempt. It's pretty dank.... I can tell it's got some thought behind it.... lots of quotable material.....
But memeing isn't all sunshine and rainbows , kid. You're skilled.... that much I can tell. But do you have what it takes to be a memester? To join those esteemed meme ranks? To call yourself a member of the Ruseman Corps? Memeing takes talent, that much is true. But more than hat it takes heart. The world-class Memesters - I mean the big guys, like Johnny Hammersticks and Billy Kahuna - they're out there day and night, burning midnight meme-oil, working tirelessly to craft the next big meme.
And you know what, kid? 99 times out of a hundred, that new meme fails. Someone dismisses it as bait, or says it's "tryhard", or ignores it as they copy/paste the latest shitpost copypasta dreamt up by those sorry excuses for cut-rate memers over at Reddit. The Meme Game is rough, kid, and I don't mean the one you just lost : ). It's a rough business, and for every artisan meme you craft in your meme bakery, some cocksucker at 9gag has a picture of a duck or some shit that a million different Johnny No-Names will attach a million different captions to. Chin up, kid. Don't get all mopey on me. You've got skill. You got talent. You just need to show your drive.
See you on the boards.......

Here in my garage, just bought this new lamborghini here. It’s fun to drive up here in the Illicit Substances Hills. But you know what I like more than drugs? Morph votes In fact, I’m a lot more proud of two new Morph votes that I had to get installed to hold twelve thousand new deathtunnels on Morph. It’s like what i say, “the more you Morph vote, the more you Morph.”

VOTE: Morph

what the fuck

[Remilia Scarlet]

Just because it's not viable doesn't mean that it's no more than a distraction.

Go on

(I'll accept that maybe I just don't see the world the same way April sees the world)

[Remilia Scarlet]

what the fuck

why that to this vote and not the one before?

[Remilia Scarlet]

eh i guess i transposed the two in my head

[zMuffinMan]

also, other than the fact that it pretty much always takes me time to warm up in a game and it's not like i have a history of reading you correctly D1 (i think? it's been a while and not something that i prioritise remembering), i think it's kind of silly that you're applying this burden of familiarity (from years ago) in only one direction and ignoring the fact that logically the same should apply to your read on me

i may or may not have started writing this thought like 15 or 20 mins ago before i got distracted by work

[Something_Smart]

Go on

(I'll accept that maybe I just don't see the world the same way April sees the world)

Beyond a doubt, this is true.

My point was just that the wagon can produce useful information in the form of reactions, and I'm sure that April knew that when he made the vote because he's already mentioned multiple times that he doesn't want to try to execute morph today.

[PlusJOYED]

i think 420 is just scum who doesn't care and is meming

[PlusJOYED]

i also wanna point out that muffin's post have been townier lately with solve mindset but idk if it means they aren't scum

[morph the cat]

also, other than the fact that it pretty much always takes me time to warm up in a game and it's not like i have a history of reading you correctly D1 (i think? it's been a while and not something that i prioritise remembering), i think it's kind of silly that you're applying this burden of familiarity (from years ago) in only one direction and ignoring the fact that logically the same should apply to your read on me

i may or may not have started writing this thought like 15 or 20 mins ago before i got distracted by work

You probably will believe how many footnotes I've appended to my read.

You have misread me before on Day 1. Kagami's neuroscience game was a good example. And in fact you were still calling me maybe scum on Day 2, also. I was never your priority, though. And it seemed like at least initially you had concerns because I wanted to give scum-Nati some more time to show up. I happened to have my vote on Nati's partner. I eventually moved to your preferred lynch.

[Remilia Scarlet]

he's already mentioned multiple times that he doesn't want to try to execute morph today.

I get what you're saying.
I also think it's just as likely to cloud the gamestate, especially since I think 420 is just basically trolling.
I'm not voting morph.

[Remilia Scarlet]

i think it's kind of silly that you're applying this burden of familiarity

fuck if this isn't why you're town

i'm never going to use meta again but touhou 2 you were being so utterly obtuse about this exact thing

alas i could not convince anyone to vote you

[Secret Tunnel]

Bork I’m concerned there seems to be two separate meta circles townreading amongst themselves.

[Remilia Scarlet]

I feel pretty good about all three of you/Morph/zMuffin right now

maybe they get to be the ones who are fucking wrong

[morph the cat]

Bork I’m concerned there seems to be two separate meta circles townreading amongst themselves.

What's the concern?

[April Ludgate]

he's already mentioned multiple times that he doesn't want to try to execute morph today.

I get what you're saying.
I also think it's just as likely to cloud the gamestate, especially since I think 420 is just basically trolling.
I'm not voting morph.

It only clouds if we don’t work through it, which i believe we already have.

[notscience]

I don’t think it’s likely an entire group like that drew scum together.

And I don’t think it’s likely scum lies solely in the outliers from said groups either.

[Secret Tunnel]

I don’t think it’s likely an entire group like that drew scum together.

And I don’t think it’s likely scum lies solely in the outliers from said groups either.

[morph the cat]

I don’t think it’s likely an entire group like that drew scum together.

And I don’t think it’s likely scum lies solely in the outliers from said groups either.

That's a good point. I wondered if that was the direction you were thinking.

You and Bell seem to be in both meta circles, at least to a degree.

That or I don't know what the boundaries of the other meta circle are.

Do you have thoughts about what's out of kilter? Do you think both meta circles are getting something wrong?

[Nachomamma8]

Thank you to all who shared this survey with me - these are my responses. I know I'M cluttering the thread by doing this shit, but if you want to respond to specific points, please do so in your PT or via PM instead of in thread.

1) What is your personal relationship with drugs?

When I was around 12/13, I spent a lot of time at my best friend's house, where we lived kitty corner from the main drug dealer in town. Drugs were easily accessible when I was younger and it was something that most people around me did, so I just sort of got sucked into them. I smoked a fair amount of weed, did a decent amount of ecstasy when I was younger. Smoked a lot of weed, dabbled in hallucinogens when I was older. I don't do anything now - I am obligated to drug test my employees as part of my work and so it feels too slimy to have to fire someone for a positive drug result when I myself am doing shit.

I enjoyed drugs because of the different perspectives they offer; hallucinogens especially were absolutely fucking insane and this drug trip in particular laid out a lot of my fears in front of me in a way where I experienced the "what's the worst that could happen?" scenarios in a way that felt incredibly, incredibly weird while on the outside I was just a guy doing crazy shit.

2) What is one thing that you wish you could do or one thing that you'd do more often with lowered inhibitions?

This has changed a lot since managing people, but sometimes usually the thing that I have trouble doing is being a bit more confrontational when necessary in the moment. It usually ISN'T necessary, but sometimes you need to dig your heels and tell people to fuck off and I'm always hesitant to take that step because it usually just burns bridges.

3) What is one thing that you regret?

I've done a number of very shitty things in my lifetime, but I am also of the perspective that I wouldn't be the person I am today without the mistakes I made in the past, so if "regret" is equivalent to "things that I did that I would take back if I could" there's not a lot of regret in my life. I did once tell an ex-girlfriend that I hated her hair (and didn't so much as attempt to conceal my disdain because I wasn't thinking) and I saw her face drop and definitely would take that one back if I could.

4) What is one thing that you are irrationally afraid of?

When I was younger, it was tornadoes. We lived close to a fire station and there would always be an earsplitting alarm coupled with stepmom freaking the fuck out tripled with the wind itself - I'd always run the the closet and chant "wind wind, ease down. please do not destroy our town." until it went away. Then, one fateful day, my mom forced me outside when all that shit was happening and it was underwhelming and that took a huge amount of the edge off. Then, it was heights. Not like a crippling fear, but thanks to toxic masculinity, my friends badgered me to ride the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point and that was that. Now my irrational fear is centered around just standing still; getting trapped doing the same shit day in and day out without growing or changing or moving or finding something new.

5) What is one bad thing that happened to you that made you a better person?

I was homeless for a very very brief period of time, and by "homeless" I mean that my mom and I slept in her very nice car for a couple of weeks with a bunch of our possessions stuffed in her back seat. That was the first time that I really got a glimpse behind the curtain, so to speak: that was the moment when I realized maybe we WERE poor and I think was the spark that taught me appreciation for things that I wouldn't have otherwise.

6) What is something that empowers you/pumps you up?

Music. Music all fucking day. I love songs from a majority of genres - I love the feeling when you discover a new song and you listen to it over and over, I love the moment when you rediscover an old song you used to listen to that defined a portion of your life, I love the moment when an artist that you're listening to has a stellar fucking lyric that you connect with, I love the moment when you hear a song you've loved for a long time in person and you

see

the emotions on the artist's face when they sing it, I love the feeling when an entire room belts out a group song, etc etc. Music fucking owns.

7) How would you define yourself - what hobbies, habits, pursuits make you the person that you are?

I would define myself as someone who can understand and connect with a wide variety of people - my interests are pretty fucking all over the place and I think that I've had the privilege of connecting with a wide range of people in my life - ever since I was young I've always felt like I was straddling two different worlds with home life vs outside the home life and definitely still feel the "connects to many groups, belongs to none" sense that I had when I was a young black kid that talked white.

[morph the cat]

Chapter One:

Well Above The Bell Curve

Spay-half says...

Bell - Remembrance, it all makes sense now. Unless he's already revealed his previous life in other games, I feel like lowering the cloak here is an additional townpoint. I mean, as scum he could have kept that info back and continued to post stuff I was loving and gotten an easy townread.I like his confidence in thinking he can meta scum-zmuffin into the ground, if that's what we have here. (Prior: the easy, almost free-association posting at the start of the game felt really town to both of us. Followed by an insane number of "thinking what we're thinking when we're thinking it" moments. Like more than I've ever run into with an unknown player before. When he gets down into the reasoning behind those moments, we find that reasoning solid and consistent.)

Neuter-half says...

Bell came into the thread spitting fire at S_S early. But instead of trying to keep up with that, we instead see an immediate transition into a townread on midwaybear, for much the same reasons as I did... I hope! 187/193 is quite the jagged swap onto plusjoyed, when we were hinting at/making sounds at it, and then a townish read at S_S. I feel like mafia-bell makes that slide off and onto plusjoyed much less abruptly. 239 is a fairly early townbin of the exact same townbin that we had at that point in time. Calling us an IC is one helluva pocket-attempt if this is a mafia-bell world. Why does bell ever make that joke as mafia, intending to kill us or not? It does nothing but look terrible post-flip. Conclusion: Bell was just shooting the shit and talking about his townread like ffery goes mama bear "I would believe the cop is insane rather than you are mafia" on her townreads sometimes. Several pretty significant townreading-this-slot reasons form the first 50 posts. I'm not gonna bother doing the rest of the Bell ISO because if you don't see it from their first 50 posts, you probably never will. And then I'll cry. And then drown in the puddle that is my tears. And then haunt you by meowing outside your door at 4 AM even though you don't have a cat.

Chapter Two:

Just Grin and Bear It

Spay-half says...

This is primarily a meta dive read and we're not interested in giving him a roadmap of the differences in his town and scum play. Subtracting that stuff out, the things that stand out are the in-the-moment nitpickiness, grabbing at strings and yanking them to see where they go. There's such a touching artless literal-mindedness to his in the moment questions. If this read is wrong, ffery's going to retire again.

Neuter-half says...

Nah why meta if you aren't willing to burn it all down. Midwaybear has a very specific is-mafia tell. And that is that they go out of their way to give reads on the entire field early. Like first 48 hoursish of day one level early. It used to be lots of fluffposting but that arms race ship already sailed out to war. Such a post of spoiler= tags for each player is not present in a single completed town game of his. Guess what isn't in this thread DESPITE calls for people to start dumping reads lists!

Chapter Three:

I Think This Fridge is Borked, Man

Spay-half says...

I have put too much of my own thoughts and stances into the game thread already to get a solid GiF read this time, probably. If a solid GiF read happens, it will be for other reasons, than the usual. So, I'm quite content sorting this slot via Bork. I have Bork as a top tier townread. He shows irritability, trajectory of reads, that weird convergence/divergence that Bork and I do, where we often wind up with similar reads on some players but get there via different data streams. That's all town-bork. The slowness of forming a read on me is also town-bork, but I figure he's long since imported that into his scum repertoire, so it doesn't count to the same degree as other points do. During the confirmation stage and his one later appearance in the thread, GiF was hitting the tonal stuff beautifully but there was no hard analytical edge or squinty eyes in my direction and that would worry me if he weren't sick. On an objective basis, Remilia should have been higher in our first list. Bork's questions, trying to get us to commit on a zmuffin read (something we will do pretty soon!) is also classic borktown, even though I am notorious for holding back some of my reads both because I want them to settle and for strategic reasons, like getting a coveted solid GiF read.

Neuter-half says...

Even if we ignore the meta-book (More like an encyclopedia set) Borkgif has been in a unique spot several times where stirring the shit-pot would have been natural and easy to do. Instead, there's been back-off, re-evaluation, and air-clearing. Remilia truly is the best air freshener scent, sometimes. My reservation initially was that gif was lurking because more of this player list can read him over bork, but irl medical things gonna irl medical. I feel that the level of play has been consistent, and I am content to follow spayhalf to the ends of the earth on her brokread.

This marks the end of our top tier of townreads.

Compilation of the top tier of our reads list. {Bell, Midway, Remilia}

CHAPTER 4:

Do We, Indeed, Know The Muffin Man?

Spay-half says...

I go back and forth with the winds of paranoia, but when the wind inside my head doesn't blow too much from scary directions, I would have already moved him up a tier if I were playing alone and didn't have another head to bounce ideas with. And I'd commit to that "for a while" and a while would become longer and longer because that's fortunately/unfortunately what happens to my zMuffin reads sometimes. When he's scum, I often go from scumread to a subversion to town. I'm generally not super paranoid of him, but my paranoia got triggered here, and it's a bad trip. A really bad trip. Townbinning him forever is not necessarily a good thing. Our mutual sticking point about him is that there's value to scum-zMuffin in sticking a spoke in the wheels of our townbloc-ing, and in throwing us off our stride. I don't remember him doing this to me/us/my-many-hydra-partners before as any alignment and so the rational part of my brain tells me that his rather high level of suspicion of us here is an actual thing town-zMuffin comes to legitimately in this game.

But the scum value is there and can't be swept away. I reread the forest fire game, particularly the part where my hydra was pushing zmuffin's hydra and the rest of the players basically yelled WTF??? That very subtle fan-flame on the town player who got scumread by Regfan was something Nacho could see him doing as either alignment, but knowing scum-zmuffin would see and seize the opportunity, Nacho kept pushing. I was mostly along for the ride. This game is different. The player list is larger, the meta-circle isn't nearly as tight, and there are a smaller proportion of players here that will quickly recognize fferytown. And, zmuffin seems to have more time to play mafia right now. I think he was less present in the forest fire game. I could go on for pages about that game, but I won't In this game, there are also many chewier targets in this player list for scum-zMuffin to go after because of the meta-circle size. Maybe we're being arrogant in seeing our ability to townbloc-build as something that scum-zmuffin might want to shut down, rather than infiltrate. It would have been so easy to infiltrate. Which is probably a strong argument for zmuffin-town playing this way around us. At this point, aside from the moments when paranoia gets the best of me, I am townreading him. Cabd is more focused on the scum value to his play (not surprising given Cabd's own scumgame).

If I were a betting cat, I would bet that I'm going to have at least one more flip-out/read-flip before this read settles down for good.

Neuter-half says..

Muffin is this game's Guy the 3rd. Somebody I really really want to town read me because all of the pieces should be there for them to do so, but instead they kept doubling down on their scum read of me that makes me want them to be mafia just so that my efforts were in vain, not just invisible.
Essentially, maybe I just want sempai to notice me. I guess while nothing muffin is doing ATM is out of his range as mafia, it's also well within his town wheelhouse and I should stop applying what I wish was true to what I think is true.

[April Ludgate]

Both of those are conclusively fence sitting, but more genuine than the other chapters imo.

[Secret Tunnel]

I’m not really in theirs. I think bell and bear universal townreads that somewhat transcend the circles. I have to revisit but I feel like S_S, Alisae, Maria and April are the other circle.

Ours is something like you me remi muffin with bulge on the edge.

I don’t know what’s off kilter. It seems like the reads in and of itself are mirroring each other just in the separate groups

[midwaybear]

Something about that idea seems interesting, but I don't know how I feel about it. Meta circles seem to be based off more from previous experiences than circumstances of this game?
Yeah I guess I'm echoing morph there. I'm not sure about reads mirroring too, and how that is significant.

[morph the cat]

Something about that idea seems interesting, but I don't know how I feel about it. Meta circles seem to be based off more from previous experiences than circumstances of this game?
Yeah I guess I'm echoing morph there. I'm not sure about reads mirroring too, and how that is significant.

It's sort of like that. Players who have played together a lot know a lot about how each other approach the game as different alignments. Even players who have played together a couple times or seen a few games from the sidelines a few times tend to do this, either formally (a la the meta baseline neuter-half did on your prior games), or more informally "eh...this seems really different from how Player A approached a similar situation in that other game". This game is the data. Previous games are a lens that can be used to interpret how and why players are stancing the way they do here.

Meta evolves. Self aware players abuse their meta. Players burn their meta to the ground, and the meta arms race goes on.