Newbie 2051: Iceland! - End!

[fferyllt]

Vote Count 3-11

Hvítserkur is a 15 meter high basalt stack formation along the eastern shore of the Vatnsnes peninsula, in northwest Iceland. Give it a squint. Can you see a great dragon, drinking from the sea?

Prism

(1): floo

floo

(1): Prism

Not Voting

(3): flow trap, Spartan117, quiet

With 5 alive, it takes 3 to eliminate.

Deadline: February 9, Midnight US Eastern Time.

Countdown: (expired on 2021-02-09 21:00:00)

Mod Notes:

-

[Prism]

just realize i used opaque twice instead of transparent w/r/t flow trap's read on floo

you get what i mean

[quiet]

shit, the one time floo is on and I go have an early week crisis. it's like a midweek crisis, just it happens on a monday instead of on a wednesday when these things are supposed to occur; which is also like a midlife crisis, with all the same existential dread, but none of the buying of cars.

Lots of activity. Maybe something to pull out of this! sorry for missing today.

[quiet]

Interesting that both people who scumread me (Prism, quiet) and me think the most likely scum other from Prism/floo is Spartan. Does this make Spartan more likely to be scum if multiple town FoS him and his Mafia partner is correspondingly taking steps to bus him?

I'm sorry, is this a Elim Spartian Tonight proposal? Is that what I'm hearing here?

[quiet]

I told myself I wouldn't read this till tmmrw morning, but apparently some stuff happened, and now I have to know exactly what.

[quiet]

These posts by Prism which are like "remember I'm town!" give off the air of self-confident, even arrogant town. This post is willfully ignorant of the fact that scum can easily get all their flipped townreads correct. I recently realized that I don't remember so many of these kinds of posts on D1. He transitioned from a helpful diplomat and voice of experience on D1 to parading himself as the town savior who was getting stressed and annoyed. @quiet, do you agree? I see it as a pretended attitude change, which created an unfriendly environment (even without Prism pushing me).

I don't think I explicitly agree with this. Prism has been doing stressed out prism things pretty much all game, escalating as the game got more tense.
I also know that prism is perfectly capable of playing cool as a cucumber if necessary; mind you, the scumgames I reviewed from them most recently are from like 2018+with a considerably stronger field than me, so stuff could conceivably have changed. Prism, as any alignment, cares really deeply about this game, but I didn't see any examples of pages of anxiety posting in the scum games I reviewed, and convincing me of prism!Scum means convincing me that all that shit about the moderator was BS; maybe it was, but I'm still struggling to see it.

The NK for sure benefits Prism here; that's likely your best argument, as is your terrible positioning in regards to Spartian if you are trying to win as scum with him as your partner (but maybe this is counterbussing or some other wild stuff, and good lord if you are scum here tmmrw is going to be hell on me).

and this response is so unbelievably bad, I should not try and think at 3am. Sorry. I committted to deal with you in good faith, and I'm not showing up for that,

[quiet]

It's my fault for failed time management. My reading strategy would be to see every flip + the EoD votes. First I had to comment on the what I read about the flip, then I was responding to old posts while reading some of the newest posts. You're probably thinking "come on!" and I'd think the same in your position.

What is prism partner equity?

flow trap is a guttowny player to me. The type of guttown read that I'm more confident about than a guttown read for high effort players, which I've talked about before. It's my gut though, I can't tell everything from it. I could go deep into introspection if I wanted, but it's not worth the time for just a gutread anyway.

I wanted to know your position on {flow trap, spartian}, unrelated to your belief about who would make a better partner for Prism, so therefore not including partner equity in your assessment of the other two. You gave me that, so ty!

I feel the same guttowny way on the slot, frankly.

[quiet]

Spoiler:

To elaborate on 2073, Prism D2 feels like he wants players to townread him, then he will get the scum and solve the game. He should realize that the better way to be townread is to first get the scum. It does not matter if the push is controversial or not, or he himself becomes controversial. Once he gets a red flip, he will be unanimously townread.

1895 @quiet What do you mean Prism is reining himself back in? On D3 he is more stridently insistent that he is town and hell-bent on the 99.9999...% sure read (oops, esotericzoomer!) than even D2. One or two "I'm restraining myself" posts are meaningless and glib. He will still have a dictator mentality. Here's a question to ask Prism, have any of your former confident scumreads been wrong?

1896 if you do not try to convince other players because you have been wrong too much in the past, you will become only the lapdog of whoever you townread. You will have had firsthand experience of this after this game regardless of the winner. You have room to be wrong in Mafia, and there are no real-life consequences if you mess up. Learning how to argue your reads will only improve your read accuracy: don't run away.

Hey Prism, if I wanted one answer. I want to know why you kept insisting on me to claim, what was your thought process?

1908: 1872 was obviously low effort. I only needed low effort to make a point about your logic. The fact that you're "IDK" when you're scumreading me tells something about how legitimate your scumread is, when you cannot find a plausible scumpartner for me. In fact, you are trying not to offend any one of the two quiet/flow trap who you need to vote you, and instead you shift the blame to Spartan who conveniently won't vote me anyway unless to quickhammer.

According to you I am counting on three-way LYLO. If that was so and I was scum, I would be keeping silent almost entirely, trying to out the Doctor, and focusing exclusively on you. Instead, I am doubly confirming you as town and not outing the Doctor. Plus, If I flipped red, I would have already confirmed flow and quiet as town from prior interactions on D1 & D2, and I would be again confirming both as town from D3.

mmm this is a post I can work with. Ty floo.


I'm too tired to be smart about this rn, but two worlds:




floo is scum, is making a wifom-y play that is mostly targeting me probably looking to tmmrw vs trying a last ditch effort to win tonight which I am not smart enough to understand the utility of

I got absolutely rolled by Prism and every single goddamn thing has been theater (I have to acknowledge this is a possibility, but I struggle so damn hard to credit it)


Prism, the thing that has made me by far most uncomfortable today is that I cannot fathom for the damn life of me why today plays out the way it did when floo is scum, but I can understand it from you; scum you is targeting floo here, killing Fairy to keep a smart voice away to keep them from catching on/fucking up the vibe today,

I've read some of your scumgames. you don't post quite like this. you don't act exactly like this. you're quite good at it, but this isn't how you post. but maybe you are just incredibly better than me.

I just can't seem to get away from the feeling that you are going so exceptionally far if you are scum here.
and i'm not sure anyone else can get away from TRing you too. I hate this part.


but in either of my two shitty paranoid worlds, you are both pushing spartian. and part of me wants to just shirk responsibility for this by voting them out today; but that's a bunch of bs, and not a real solution, and ultimately

yep I just feel like i'm going to lose the game tmmrw, because I don't know enough to sort spartian, I can't understand why floo plays like this, and I cant let go of my stupid confbias read on Prism.

my worst post yet. yep. i'm going to sleep, and am going to try to just be better in every way in the morning. If you want to watch my confidence and reads and intelegence slowly fall apart over the course of 20 minutes, read the above text; otherwise, skip it.

[flow trap]

This is actually pretty curious to me.

As I've stated it's easier to read people who interact with you, and I was also weary of a pocket attempt how they read me barely affects thing.

The second part lines up decently with your play this game but I'm curious as to the first-you haven't really been as eager to jump into direct interactions or discuss other slots directly with people. What are the type of interactions you're referring to here/how have you used those to inform your reads?

This was to Salsabil after you voted her if you need the context.

Any & it makes them stand out more

[flow trap]

Do you have any issue with my claim order/see why I prefer that?

I just don't think it makes much of a difference if Spartan potentially picks his cc by going second, but it makes a whole lot of difference if you/quiet wind up CCing.

Nope, if I'm being honest it's smart having me go first

[Prism]

Prism, the thing that has made me by far most uncomfortable today is that

I cannot fathom for the damn life of me why today plays out the way it did when floo is scum

, but I can understand it from you; scum you is targeting floo here, killing Fairy to keep a smart voice away to keep them from catching on/fucking up the vibe today

[/quote]It feels like a core assumption you're making here is that scumteams simply don't randomly fall apart, everything is controlled and operating smoothly at least partly how they planned it. This is not correct. Scum teams fall apart all the time under pressure, and suddenly the wheels fall off the wagon.

It is easy now to look at how disastrous this Day 3 has been for a floo/Spartan team and say "Why on earth would they pick this?", but this was not information available to them overnight. Me pushing floo was expected, but I don't think flow trap coming out swinging, me forcing the 1v1 2 days in and removing flow trap as a voting option entirely by voting early, and most importantly Spartan getting completely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content being put out by the other 3, is so easily predictable. Spartan has noticeably had real life get in the way, which sucks, but unfortunately you have to be here to throw wrenches in things or risk getting left behind.

floo opted to not even remotely try for 4+ days of the game until it was clear that Spartan would do nothing and 3 way was almost certainly lost. Suddenly, it became worth it to mount a defense in Elo. This wasn't just bad/apathetic play as town, or him not having the time, it was clearly intentional. He would show up just to say something

to his cc

and then dip for another 24 hours.

[flow trap]

It feels like a core assumption you're making here is that scumteams simply don't randomly fall apart, everything is controlled and operating smoothly at least partly how they planned it. This is not correct.

I agree not everything goes to plan

Source: Literally all of my scum games minus 1 or 2

[Prism]

For the tonal stuff, it is useful to go back to one of the floo quotes you're responding to.

also at this point you are just teasing me, i'm going to have so many emotions if the mod interactions are a play.

like I know it's totally in bounds, but god.

I mean, given the concrete reads I've given this game and the concrete flips, what do you think?

I can go through the history behind me/ffery if someone wants but that's not really the concern here imo.

These posts by Prism which are like "remember I'm town!" give off the air of self-confident, even arrogant town.

This post is willfully ignorant of the fact that scum can easily get all their flipped townreads correct. I recently realized that I don't remember so many of these kinds of posts on D1. He transitioned from a helpful diplomat and voice of experience on D1 to parading himself as the town savior who was getting stressed and annoyed. @quiet, do you agree? I see it as a pretended attitude change, which created an unfriendly environment (even without Prism pushing me).

If you revisit the conversation above, my point wasn't that I was town because my reads were right. My point was that you had focused almost entirely on the tonal/emotional side of my play without tracking the quality/legitimacy of my reads and progressions.

ie. If my emotions can be faked, there's another half of the game that you can use to help solve with.

You shifting gears to that is exactly what I don't want as scum-I want you hook line and sinker on the tone-but here I think it would help and more importantly, I wanted to see you work through it because going "They just feel so town!" as scum is easy, and I don't want you to get away with it that easily. When you didn't really tackle that side of it, I got progressively more antsy, but this isn't a side of the game as refined in your toolset yet, and it's important that I understand and work around that.

[Prism]

It is incredibly difficult for me to tackle the "What if literally everything is theater?" angle without a more specific criticism.

You've brought up me talking with with fferyllt a few times now, so maybe it is worth explaining the history here.

The most important game in understanding me as a town player is Dystopia!, which fferyllt modded.

This game was the first one where my absolute obsession with winning came out. I spent day after day after day constantly pouring back through the ISOs of every single player, asking questions, demanding explanations, etc. I was a universal TR, all of the town let me unilaterally pick the vote, and I tunneled one player (Elbirn) who just refused to engage with the game. I singlehandedly blew two miselims, and we lost. I was devastated. This game has haunted me for years. This was the game that drove me to swap my style around completely to accommodate others.

There were entire pages of me talking to myself, alone, while ffery would post thing like this: "Everyone but Prism has been prodded. "

Where I saw a town I catastrophically failed and shut out by being too demanding, others like Regfan and fferyllt, saw a strong town player that simply needed a bit more help.

By the time I came back to forum mafia in 2020, I had entirely swapped my approach, leading to posts like this one where I describe my goals as a player.

I ran into fferyllt again in illicit substances mafia. We exchanged this sequence of posts:

Now we live in a world where I have to actually content-sort Prism... assuming content arrives.

I really don't see the game as of yet being toxic or very long, and so apathy seems a little pre-mature.

Come shine for me, Prism.

I don't think my 454 comes close to answering your (Bell's) questions without really committing myself to more than I feel in reality.

I do want to challenge the morph townread. Taking a strong scum presence is likely to be extremely important this game-you can't just sit on the backfoot. Ffery might legitimately be excited to get to play with me, but the motivational "Shine!" stuff feels a bit off to me. I definitely started off a bit more confident in Dystopia but the focused, obsessive play came much later. In Midscummer Night's Dream it never really happened at all, though it's hard to separate mine and nancy's effort because we didn't really sign.

I can see why they probably liked my Dystopia play, but honestly that game is more vivid to me because I

singlehandedly lost my team the game

with my intensity.

Do they actually want me to shine or are they just saying it? I don't really know. I think the pressure for content is okay but perhaps overwrought.

Prism, I want to play with that person. You were impressive despite the loss. You went up against scum-Jingle in an anonymous alt, which I wouldn't wish on anyone, and you came that little bit short mostly due to a town that flaked way more than you deserved.

Though modding that game did help me eventually see scum-Jingle in a different anonymous alt in an anon game I played a few weeks later. Mostly because the play was identifiable Jingle as well as scum-Jingle after having a ringside seat for a few weeks.

This exchange, and the expectations ffery seemed to have for me, was a huge part of what threw me into such a gigantic depression, and in the end I shut down entirely and flaked from the game.

Fferyllt realized I really didn't like this, backed off from it and didn't press me so hard the next time we played in Xenoblade (very limited interactions), or when she rolled scum against me in 2181. I really appreciated that. But I know she still thinks it, I know she wants to see me the Dystopia-Prism come out, and in some ways it has. Some things haven't changed. I still get overemotional, obsessive, and can be difficult to keep up with. But there's a very real difference here, which is that I will do

whatever it takes

to help set up the other town players for success.

I don't think ffery looks at my increased willingness to defer or my drive to work with others and thinks it's a bad thing, which is where the joke in 1813 comes in. But Dystopia was a mistake, there are better ways to do things, and I have spent years stewing on that game thinking how I could have gotten more out of Elbirn/Mulch, rather than making the game "Shut up and vote who Prism wants" and blaming them when I get it wrong.

All of that said, this game is not Dystopia, despite the parallels. None of you are Elbirn or Mulch, and the history does not matter. And fundamentally, all that matters is that we win, this is not some grand test of my mafia philosophy, and I don't think ffery would disagree that I've made improvements since 2017.

[quiet]

mmm I feel fine about your mechanics at this point. Forgive my anxiety posting.

I've seen you pull players into 1v1s as town when you are convinced of it. Your progression does make sense to me, as does you pushing at me consistently throughout the game. Problem is, like you said, it's not a part of my game I feel all that good about, and frankly I think you are better at faking the quality of your reads for basically one day than I would be at sussing it out. Still, your main target yesterday was floo, and a Prism driven miselim yesterday would have been rather bad for scumPrism.

A floo wifom attack spartian play is somewhat viable in my head, and you may be correct that I am inappropriately ascribing GTO play to scum.

[Prism]

Okay, glad to hear you've leveled out a bit...of course you waited until AFTER I typed the selfindulgent Wall of Painful Memories. (Kidding, it's okay)

good lord if you are scum here tmmrw is going to be hell on me).

So I wanted to revisit this since it suggests you're still really unsure about flow trap, did you look over me tracking his progressions at all? We've just discussed the limitations here but I both think they're really good and it's a good skill to develop.

[Prism]

flow trap, I'm taking the lack of questions as meaning you don't really want to dialogue with me on quiet atm or have anything for me re: me/floo. As always, let me know if that changes.

[quiet]

Mafia is hard, I'm never going to be 100%, and that's okay. I'm also trying to not let this game take over my life. I expressly don't think "everything is theater" is all that likely; it's so excessive as a scum tactic, with the exception of how notably I've stated it's the reason I TR you. Someone can yell at me postgame and get me to try and play better if my soulread here is wrong, and maybe point out the mechanics I missed; because fmpov, Prism acted protown day1, got more intense and after tinfoiling my slot a bit, didn't like floo's progression and "careful posting", pushed hard after clearing fairy, wasn't able to get the elim, and followed up with more certainty this morning after going down the NK rabbit hole for a bit. Mixed into that progression are well articulated reads on the field, and a lot of work. I could probably go back and track every single perspective change, but again, I've read some scumgames. The biggest difference between those and this is volume (and to some degree, tone); but those games had MUCH stronger fields than me, with other very strong voices capable of pushing harder than I'm willing to at this point. Still, it is a marked difference.

We have a limited amount of time remaining, and all the meta or progression in the world likely won't change my perspective; Prism, your positioning has been consistent throughout, and I struggle to understand why scum!Prism pokes at me quite as much as you did (even when I explicitly called you out on it), I would have expected scum!Prism to at some point lighten up and townbloc with me. Which ended up happening anyway, but without the lightening up bit.

[quiet]

Spartian being missing up until now is also decently rough.

[flow trap]

flow trap, I'm taking the lack of questions as meaning you don't really want to dialogue with me on quiet atm or have anything for me re: me/floo. As always, let me know if that changes.

Yeah, I'm basically waiting for Floo's response

[flow trap]

If quiet is scum I am actually going to chuck my laptop out a window

Honestly same, especially after SRing them last round

[quiet]

Yep, I've been re-reading both the thread as is and Flow Trap's progression in it. I agree that our chaos god does have some purposiveness behind what they do, consistently.

Purposiveness is such a pretty word. "a cognitive theory of learning postulating that behavioral acts have a goal or purpose that selects and guides the behavioral sequence until the goal or purpose is attained."

As in, it's not all chaos for the sake of chaos. There are clear points of motivation. The PPR read stuff is a good example of this; others include creating 2 parter charts with reads for each, and more recently, the townpings that have been piling up:

Quiet, Spartan, & I are going to claim next round right?

maybe scum thinks they can go hard and pick up some value, maybe scum wants to do some theater, but frankly this reads to me like someone trying to get the town play correct.

@flow trap I'd still like a breakdown of how I got that sweet, sweet TR from you independent of your thoughts on the rest of the field.

[quiet]

There are probably more subtle progression things that I should make a list of.

townSpartian is really leaving me in a tough place rn though if that is indeed the case.

From memory:
Day1: everyone is pretty much fine and rather towny except the chaos god who is a chaos god
Day2: floo push on fairy ----, spatian okay start of day, weird and very visable end of day, kinda null overall, flow trap 2 electric boogaloo more chaos more opaque some weird floo positioning too but more subtle than spartian's loud hail mary
Day3: flow chart shows tf up +++++, spartian does not , floo AtEs with a bit of mechanical arguments at the end that mostly result in me feeling like shit about my ability to play this game but have yet to shift my mind much. I still owe floo a fair shake, I just so don't see it.

[quiet]

mind you, I've always read chaos god as towny by virtue of thinking that scum are trying to act as EV+ as possible, which chaos goding def is not, though there is some utility in it.

@flow trap, what exactly is your scum philosophy? posting style?

[quiet]

(@SPARTAN PLEASE be around tomorrow if you are town/talk more with us, esp. near deadline, really curious where you think I'm going wrong/if you have any reactions to the floo arguments.)

this too