Open 804: Popcorn Mafia Redux [Game Over!]

[Dunnstral]

Also, I recognized this flaw in myself during Death Curse -- I have a bias towards townreading replacement players for at least one dayphase. I do wonder what could have possibly made me come to this conclusion.

And with that data now before me, I'll float my interim solve here: unwnd, HUB, Dunn, Wheme.

I want to see what other have to say about this.

PEDIT: Oh jeez that's a hell of a list if I'm right, two buddies in town and one in null.

I shouldn't be on this list with the rest of these names

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I should in fact further prove my point by saying that I am /very/ interested in unwnd and Dunn's response to my current solve. I mean, beyond the obvious, I already know how they feel about their own inclusion. Also Imperium's.

[Happy Unbirthday Boon]

I didn't ask for your reads Mush, I saw your reads, I was asking for an updated list from Cakez

[MUSHSHAGANA]

You commented on my reads, and how they were different from yours. The entire post in which you did that was phrased as if trying to open a dialogue. I am simply shutting that down.

[Happy Unbirthday Boon]

lol ok

[SirCakez]

Hmm two people who never let themselves lose arguments getting into an argument? I could get popcorn for that.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Hmm two people who never let themselves lose arguments getting into an argument? I could get popcorn for that.

Making a note of this for the post-game. For now, don't bother getting popcorn. It'll be a waste and everyone will be sad.

Popcorn will be much more useful after I shoot.

[ScrewTheTells]

Welcome, HUB.

What I'm curious about is if you are capable of finding the flip side, the town parts in the people you scumread.

But that's like the basics of mafia. There's not much to say other than I just try my hardest to do that. I didn't play all this mafia while running only on confirmation bias lol.

Also, I recognized this flaw in myself during Death Curse -- I have a bias towards townreading replacement players for at least one dayphase. I do wonder what could have possibly made me come to this conclusion.

And with that data now before me, I'll float my interim solve here: unwnd, HUB, Dunn, Wheme.

I want to see what other have to say about this.

PEDIT: Oh jeez that's a hell of a list if I'm right, two buddies in town and one in null.

Regarding townreading replacements: yeah probably because lurking is anti-town, so when the slot gets a burst of activity it negates that. I think it

should

negate it some, but only a bit. That's just in general. Specifically for HUB, I'm gonna see where their position ends up after they fully catch up and go from there. Giving them feedback as they catch up seems like leaking too much info to potential scum. But I suppose that's why you're telling them you're not giving them any info.

For your solve, I don't know why you don't include not_mafia there, especially with Wheme on the list. I'd shoot Not_mafia before Wheme for sure. To me they're going for a similar playstyle, one is just a lot more extreme. The parts that Wheme does offer seems a lot more believable as someone actually trying, while Not_mafia is clearly not trying.

For Unwnd I agree. Today's posts shifted unwnd more towards scum. I don't understand the mentality of posts like these, for example

Cause I think independently and if your gun is pointed at me, I'd rather die on my feet than on my knees.

If you're town, you won't die when you get shot. We're not at elim-or-lose, so you won't lose either. Instead, you should be happy that those idiots finally get to see how you will shoot the true scum. Doesn't make sense to act hopeless and make it sound like it's the end of the world. I understand that we don't want a misfire in the first place but I just don't understand why someone would word it like "I'd rather die X than Y". If it were me I'd be saying "this is objectively lowering our chances of victory, shoot this other guy instead", but my own death wouldn't really be the focus here since I literally can't die right now, I can only lose. (by misfiring after I get the gun.) Making it sound like you're a martyr for free thought just seems weird in this situation.

Also I'll just note that unwnd never answered my question directed to them in post 1548. The question itself has depreciated in its usefulness since then, so I don't really care, just pointing it out another thing that contributes to my read of unwnd.

[Dunnstral]

I should in fact further prove my point by saying that I am /very/ interested in unwnd and Dunn's response to my current solve. I mean, beyond the obvious, I already know how they feel about their own inclusion. Also Imperium's.

Your list seems fine to me... it's generally people I've vocally expressed either wanting dead or ok with being dead

Just, I shouldn't be on the list along with the rest of them, it makes very little sense

[WhemeStar]

Mush shoot HUB to settle this!

[Happy Unbirthday Boon]

Mush shoot HUB to settle this!

This is still town

[unwnd]

Well first off

STT, I did respond to you. At some point you're mincing words and I don't see your personal gain. I have nothing further to speak about this, and for whatever purpose this is oh-so-important to you has honestly failed me. I've talked about peta almost willingly and I've said how I would hesitate killing him. What more do you possibly want? Secondly-- I looked into Duchess a bit more. At some point it seems like her death was already acknowledged by the team, and I found the re-read to be pretty lackluster. What you have right now is scum anticipating a next move, because right now making any further adjustment is just going to give town more to latch onto. Scum are trying to isolate you MUSH into a blind faith shot and I get your [frustration] and insistence.

What does that say though? It says to me I'm probably wrong somewhere and I've been thinking about where that is.

[unwnd]

I hate thinking that way though. Just to further my own talking point. I wanna confbias because it's comfortable and needing to think about shit annoys me. I am capricious in my true nature and the game does not see what goes on in my head. If you want to pick apart my brain however, I will entertain it.

[ScrewTheTells]

Ugh you're right unwnd, your response is right there. I don't know how I missed it, I've looked for it on like 3 different occasions. I looked for it before I made the previous post saying you didn't reply to it, and made that post because I missed it.

I basically agree with the content of your response there.

I think this is the 2nd time you've mentioned the thing about "even if petapan is scum, your play is bad because it makes him uncooperative". How does this work? I don't understand because you can never trust scum to cooperate with you anyway, it's not like if we are nice to them they give us more chances to win. I don't understand this reasoning from a town perspective.

Well for Peta's sake I am not willing to believe he is dead-to-rights scum, therefore your response to me takes out the exclusivity of the read. It's not that I think Tammycho should be nicer to peta, rather I think that scum get tilted by the same effect as town, and a tilted scum either just dies on his laurels or he goes even more aggro and starts getting trivial. I want to give peta the chance to prove he is not scum, because I do not believe that Tammycho's argument is enough right now.

[Dunnstral]

does unwnd also have hub and wheme in their solve?

[Imperium]

Glorified something something so we don’t get prodded. Hope nacho will post something real, but I’m in a conference all weekend, so maybe I post later.

Some quick and dirty thoughts.

HUB’s posting is pretty scumtastic, was hoping if that slot was town, he would clear that up but nah feel good about keeping that solve,

I’m leaning towards thinking nacho was right on an unwnd town read. I liked some of his posts the other night, especially the post where he told you guys to kiss his ass, those types of posts are my weakness though but I liked it,

Still don’t see Dunnstral scum either,

Okay boop boop see you next driveby

[Imperium]

unwnd, HUB, Dunn, Wheme

:horrified expression:

We're farther off from one another than I thought.

[Imperium]

My scum read of Imperium hasn't changed much, but now they've also tied their fate with petapan's. If Petapan flips town I'm certain imperium is scum. If Imperium flips scum I think petapan is confirmed town. After failing on their wagon on Cakez and this slot, Imperium probably sees a last opportunity to win with misfire before town kills one of their scumbuddies and makes things a lot harder. The turn on to petapan is too hyped right now. They made all this noise about a smoking gun but it's funny that they delayed the big premiere. Maybe this is a psychological trick to get us more hyped than we should be. Priming us for the argument. I dunno, I can't wait to see the actual substance. Right now it's just "trust me, petapan is scum because meta". I trust meta but I don't trust Imperium, that's the problem.

It's a busy time at work, which means I work an average of 12-14 hour days + an hour commute every day. I'm playing in a hydra because I don't have time to post consistently, you Carrot Top looking clown. Why would I delay this as either alignment? Why would I promise a big case on peta if I couldn't even write a case on peta? Do you think I have butterflies in my stomach because I'm afraid of you ripping my argument apart?

[Imperium]

Anyways, Mush. For the read on petapan, think of the situation that he's replacing into as scum if the gamestate looks as it did - one missed shot so far, two missed shots needed to win. There are two townies pushing our slot (Sir Cakez, ScrewtheTells) and both have a

strong

scumread on us which means that Lotus shooting one of those two and then us is a win. He's pointed out several times that he doesn't want to get into a 1v1 with us as scum, which is very true - so as scum, he likely takes a roundabout route and shades us in an attempt to soften the townread on us.

My BoP read on Peta is not simply the fact that he pushed us - I don't really care that he pushed us. It's HOW he pushed us and WHY he pushed us. This is the post that set me off:

but, like, i had this paranoid flash and flipped everything and started tinfoiling a world where it's an imperium/norfolk team, the way they reacted to the early pressure on norflok, the thing where they kept trying to speak to him realtime, it suddenly reminded me of what i did with midwaybear in my recent scumgame, had an scumbuddy that was lacking in confidence but i didn't want to just throw him under the bus, i made a point of questioning him and interacting with him in real time to try to get him into the game and give him practice explaining himself as scum, while also making people think we weren't teamed. and that's kind of the vibe i started getting from them makin such a deliberate point of wanting a back and forth with him, like they wanted to dance but he had two left feet and couldn't answer him so they just sort of have to scumread him, and that sort orf meshes with them talking about how the people who were pushing him early might be scum, like they might be setting up to call them bussers when he flips

and it also occurred to me that, tactically, OMGUSing cakez is a terrible move in the world where imperium is scum and cakez is town because it gets them nowhere. like, if they're scum their goal here is to endgame and cakez is basically the only one likely to shoot them so they'd have to discourage a cakez shot, at least right now, and from that perspective, the whole read there starts looking very political and ingenuine, and they're one of maybe a couple people in this game i'd expect to be thinking that way about who they call to get shot

First of all, petapan as scum REALLY doesn't want to get into a 1v1 with us because he REALLY doesn't want to be shot. Look at how meek this push on us is - he makes sure to point out that he's tinfoiling, and at the end of his half-case, he posts more about why me might be town. The reasoning itself is also not stuff I think peta cares about if town - I don't see him weaving Tammy's early approach on the Norfolk pushers into the scum-case when he said that it resonated with him in #1049. His other main argument, that our approach to Norfolk was likely to be partners because I might be trying to coach up a new player instead of burying them (like he did in a recent game), also ignores some context. In his game with midwaybear, he had experience with midwaybear as a person - they built up a relationship. Secondly, in the first 48 hours of the game here, Norfolk made 6 posts. Midwaybear made 30. If I have a scumpartner that's genuinely putting in an effort even if that effort reads like hot garbage, yes, I'm willing to hold their hand a bit and do what it takes to get us over the finish line together (even if such a thing is disadvantageous for our chances of winning). But if a scumpartner is playing like ass and pretty obviously going down eventually, then I'm cashing them in for sweet, sweet towncred - especially when this format doesn't punish scum for bussing the first goon.

Separately, there was this - less significant but it still bothered me -

There were people egging that shot on.

...Like who?

You and Imperium.

You because of what you wrote, Imperium because they suddenly brought up nacho's suspicion on rtlotus right when Netflix and Chill was saying they were thinking about shooting

dunn saying what i was thinking here

Before Tammy reiterated my scumread on Lotus before he was shot, I got into Lotus here, here, here, a little bit here, and here. Like, I don't expect peta to pick up on every last detail when reading through the game, but he's a thorough player (contrast with Dunn, who suffers from skim syndrome) - if he was town he doesn't miss that I was bothered by Lotus early game and thus he's not surprised when Tammy reiterates my suspicion when Netflix and Chill state that they're kinda scumreading him. But in doing it as scum, it continues his agenda of sneaking that seed of doubt in someone else's mind; double points since he's appealing to Dunn specifically since he's signal boosting Dunn's argument.

And again, this is not a standard that I would hold most people to. This is not a confidence that I feel in most mafia games. As I'm sure you've gathered now, I do have a bit of an ego, and so there aren't many players who are just flat out better than me. Peta is one of them. If Peta is town, then he doesn't bring up these arguments and he doesn't go about pushing them this way.

If Peta is town, then my expectation is that he's looking at the sum of our posting - instead of cherrypicking attacks that sound good and hiding behind "oh this is just a paranoid flash!", he'd be railing on us for not having clear reads, not having the influence on the gun he expected, stuff like that. That's what will help him figure us out but instead he slung mud and slung mud and slung mud. He's too good of a player to let shit like that stand.

[Imperium]

Next, let's talk about both Peta's reaction and Wheme's reaction.

Part of why I bloviated ("flipped the fuck out", as our lovely moderator might say) to the extent that I did was because I wanted to see what scumpartners of peta's that I might bait out, I wanted to sew confusion and chaos within their ranks. On the rare blue moon that I get a scumread like this, I like doing it as loud as possible so that as much information is generated as possible. The other expectation from this is that if it's a worst case scenario and I'm driving town off a cliff with my horrible read on petapan, that there's a reaction that he provides that makes him look townier - think of unwnd's "fuck off" directed towards you when you have the gun and unwnd getting shot loses their scumteam the game, or the numerous times that Cakez has driven us to a mini-meltdown or I have driven Cakez to a mini-meltdown.

So, Wheme's reaction first. If Whemestar is scum and peta/myself are town, then this is Christmas Fucking Day for Wheme, right? If scum get to shoot someone like STT who is hero scumreading me then I get to hero shooting petapan then that's a path to victory even if two scumbutts go down. This doesn't look like scum opening up the best surprise birthday present ever to me:

If you guys are in agreeance with me being in a scumteam please shoot me out of the other possibilities so I can go on a murder spree.

Like do you really think the scumteam is this easy with 4 "lurkers" being in the scumteam?

Why do you think im scum i havent read the case on me

@rlotus i volunteer to get shot

If Peta and me are town when Wheme was scum, I don't think Wheme feels obligated to post; things are going well for him, why possibly throw a wrench into things? I don't expect him to throw shade on my scumteam choices (which was silly because he wants STT and Dunn shot instead of two of my "lurkers"). Unless my peta suspicion was correct, I don't think he wants me to expand on why I think he's scum, but if those two are scum together, then Wheme is trying to defend his scumpartner by engaging me instead.

Next, peta's reaction. I'm a bit peeved that you let him get away with this post so I'll address that next:

this is going to sound fucking terrible but as i was reading yesterday, i thought the way imperium is plying they're going to get vengekilled for sure if they're town, so i decided to gambit and bullshit a scumread on them because if scum buy that i'm hardtunneling them maybe they don't get venged, i figured they wouldn't get shot by rlotus ever but just to be safe i was like "shoot norfolk first every time", that's why i was so insistent on that order that they got on my case hardcore about, it was because i didn't actually want them shot. they came back at me so hard i actually panicked a little and talked myself into think they were scum for a bit but at some point i realized i was being a fucking idiot and tammy is obvtown, but i might as well keep it up for the sake of the gambit (and, honestly, this is terrible to admit but i felt like if i backed down there i might actually get shot). you can see how eventually i stopped attacking them at all and was basically only making arguments in self-defense and even trying to disengage entirely, because i was bluffing my read the whole time but didn't want to keep forcing arguments i didn't actually believe in. (i did get legit pissed at the BoP thing though, sorry, but that felt like it was entirely in relation to my read on them and nothing else). the whole idea was the make sure they don't get venged for the sake of an easy game and that's why i pushed them, i know it's stupid but that was my big brain plan

Is it foolish to say that petapan seems like /exactly/ the sort of person to do something pulsating-universe-brain like that? I mean.... Town /or/ scum, just strikes me like the sort of person to get lost down rabbit holes that way.

This isn't criticism, by the way. I do the same thing, and it works out more often than it fails catastrophically -- but see Death Curse and my big-brained Rube Goldberg shit. No, I won't necessarily be pulling something that complex and fragile this go around. Blatantly manipulative, though, oh you betcha. It's practically my signature.

I have thoughts, many thoughts. I am going to separate them into special posts for their targets, so that everyone understands who I am speaking to about what. I wouldn't want anyone answering questions meant for other people.

Yes, it's foolish to assume that petapan would pull off a dumb gambit like that.

If Peta respects us as town players (which he has to in order to pull off a gambit like that), then he pushes us in order to extend our lifespan, fine. If that was his goal, then I don't think he'd go "oh boy I have this paranoid thought on imperium, let me take these potshots" - instead, I think he'd go "I have a secret scumread on Imperium that is very strong and I don't think I'll explain it". His claim that he started scumreading us for a little while through the gambit is bullshit; if that was the case, there would be a tone change as he dug in his heels and attacked us more, and I don't think there's a world where he's afraid going "LOL looks like I accidentally found you as scum, didn't think you were scum initially but this BoP argument against me is garbage" - I can see why he doesn't take that tact as scum (he still needs to crawl out of the 1v1 with us to win), but as town he's afraid of being shot? Can't say I believe it. He also multiple chances to drop and announce the gambit where it would have made sense, but the big one is when I flipped out on him and emphasized the fuck out of how confident I was on him - but, instead, he took a day to complain about the BoP argument before finally going "yep, I was gambiting the whole time sorry guys!!!".

And none of this addresses that no, peta is not dumb enough to pull a stunt like that. Setups with a high # of scum and a small number of mislynches feast on town 1v1's; it's not overly important for one individual to survive until the end, but it is important for gunbearers to be able to sort through the noise and the nonsense and give up on ego reads. There's no way in hell that town peta decides to throw this knuckle-headed wrench into the system and make it that much harder to win; as I've said before and I'll likely say again, he's far too good for that.

[Imperium]

There's also a laundry list of things that bothers me about peta (example, him trying to point into getting into this 1v1 with us making him more likely to be town while what actually happened is him throwing a little bit of shade on us and us going nuclear on him) but the above two posts are the meat of what bothers me about him; if you need more I can provide more, if you need me to get more in depth in meta examples I can do that too but please respect my time - I don't have a lot to work with and outlining experiences in that way takes a lot a lot of time so if I put the effort in putting that together I need you to make the effort reading for context so you understand the point that I'm making.

[Imperium]

I don't understand why you're townreading Not_Mafia?

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I don't understand why you're townreading Not_Mafia?

I'm not. This is the opposite of POE: my interim solve is made of players who are so scummy to me that it overshadows the other slots. NM is first on the list in case of a miss.

If you want to change my mind, the goal you have isn't to try and convince me about your scumreads belonging there, its to try and convince me that your townreads do not belong there. This is a much harder and yet much more valuable sort of information. And you in /particular/ are someone I'm finding useful for this process, because you can dump data big time.

[Imperium]

OK. I don't have much longer but let me talk about why unwnd is town based on your interactions with him today.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

For your solve, I don't know why you don't include not_mafia there, especially with Wheme on the list. I'd shoot Not_mafia before Wheme for sure. To me they're going for a similar playstyle, one is just a lot more extreme. The parts that Wheme does offer seems a lot more believable as someone actually trying, while Not_mafia is clearly not trying.

Wheme is there due to the players he interacts with and the way he does so. I will not explain further, as you have eyes and a working brain. NM is ... just /like/ this.