Open 840 - Guardians of the Fortress [Game Over]

[RH9]

Okay the more I read RH9's read post the more I feel like I'm reading a different game from him.

1032 felt off to me due to his astounding confidence on his reads.

"Astounding confidence"??

I'm not even super interested in making a giant case about him because it's kind of pointless. This is why I'm saying people need to look at actual actions in the game and who is trying to effectively solve. Motive is the guiding light here.

You have both presented scum and town cases across games. Like I mentioned to tanner, I kinda planned on doing a hard sort of the two of you once the wall flipped. Or, if at any point we started leaning towards the keep flipping first sitting down to do an if x then y post based on how the keep flipped. (but he asked me for my thoughts right now)

Pre flips I am leaning you>imaginality but it is not a hard read. You are looking pretty unpartnered with Ari here, so my if x then y post would probably say that an ari scum flip = town baltar. Don't think that a Pav scum flip would sway my reads in the Gate tho

"I am leaning"

"not a hard read"

"would probably say"

In what world is this astounding confidence? If you're town, are you sure

you

haven't locked yourself into a narrative of Luke-scum and you're reading everything you're seeing through that lens?

Oh dear! Thanks, implosion! I just realised that I was confbiased on Lukewarm. Maybe, I have been in the wrong, this entire time. I am so grateful that you are here.

[implosion]

The rest of RH9's stated reasoning for his Luke scumread in that post is that he is "strangely into meta and theory" which I have no reason to tie to alignment (I'd consider myself to be strangely interested in meta and theory, generally), and 125, which is just kind of a weird angle to pin a read on and RH9 is acting like it's a slam dunk reason. RH9's argument (he can correct me if I'm wrong) is this: the best way to explain my being swapped with Pavowski is that Lukewarm has a personal motivation beyond simply winning this mafia game to win his minigame personally, and because of that personal motivation he made the swap that gives him personally the single biggest chance of winning his game.

If I'm interpreting this correctly there are many, many issues with this.

1) Why, if Luke's motivation is to win his game, would he not swap himself to Wall? If you think he's scum he'd be able to do this whether or not I'm town. And Wall is the easiest minigame for scum to win.

2) Why are you assuming that Luke's personal motivation would dominate the mafia's reasons for picking who to swap? There are three mafia members and the others probably would not entertain a swap that is specifically engineered for that reason.

3) If this is actually Luke's personal motivation, why wouldn't he just not say anything about it, and instead go to Wall (immediately or eventually)? Why would he, as scum who really wants to win his game, choose to go to Keep and then stay in Keep?

4) Drilling in a bit more to that, why are you assuming that scum-Luke would be truthful about his motivations at all? It's like, taking at face value all of Luke's talk about his reasons for his early move and his desire to win, but then refusing to take anything else he says at face value. It's very selective, very arbitrary.

5) Why is this the best way to explain the swap, rather than just one theory among many possible theories? Wouldn't it make plenty of sense as well if I'm town and Pav is scum, and we were swapped because scum just only had a couple choices? Or if I'm scum and Pav is town and vice versa?

[implosion]

Oh dear! Thanks, implosion! I just realised that I was confbiased on Lukewarm. Maybe, I have been in the wrong, this entire time. I am so grateful that you are here.

If you're town, my point is not to say "You're wrong, and it's obvious you're wrong"; my point is that you did this to me, and that I don't know why you have so much confidence.

[implosion]

While I'm at it, here's a summary of why I personally think Luke is town.

1) his early play around Keep. If we do take his motivation at face value then this is a strange thing for him to do as scum; beyond that I think the insta-jump first mover thing, and the tone of 28, reads very much as town who isn't really afraid what is thought of him rather than as scum. 169 is very early for scum to willingly say something like this - while, sure, actions speak louder than words, I think town is much more likely to unpromptedly say "Yeah I'm happy to just vote for someone else in Keep" early in the game. I think this is evidenced by the previous run of the setup I played where iirc town were doing this and the scum we sent to the keep, we put there very much with the idea of having him be voted for and I don't think he ever tried to hide that.

2) Reasons I gave in 901 - these points were literally me going to the previous page and looking at posts and finding things I think I could justify as very +town. I feel like I could go through Luke's ISO with a fine-tooth comb and find many dozens of posts that would be really hard for anyone but very experienced scum to fake.

3) Like I mentioned, and to elaborate again, I think his repeated talk of "selfishly" wanting things (both his instajump to keep and his saying he wants keep to flip later) is just foreign to how at least I personally think about the game as scum. Both of these ideas are basically things that would help Luke-town selfishly win his own minigame at the expense of other minigames - this means in order to make those posts, he would have to both (1) think "okay, if i were town i would be selfish here and want to win my own game more than I'd care about the game as a whole, so I'd do this" and (2) actually

self-sacrifice

- if he is scum then him going to the Keep makes it

harder

for him to win his game. Him resolving his game after the other two gives the town more information to work with and should therefore also make his game easier for town to win. If he is actually the kind of player who is selfish in this way (which, like I said to RH9, I don't think would be safe to assume if he's scum, but etc) then he'd literally have every incentive not to do these things if he is in fact scum.

I'm sure I could come up with more specifics but eh.

[RH9]

The rest of RH9's stated reasoning for his Luke scumread in that post is that he is "strangely into meta and theory" which I have no reason to tie to alignment (I'd consider myself to be strangely interested in meta and theory, generally), and 125, which is just kind of a weird angle to pin a read on and RH9 is acting like it's a slam dunk reason. RH9's argument (he can correct me if I'm wrong) is this: the best way to explain my being swapped with Pavowski is that Lukewarm has a personal motivation beyond simply winning this mafia game to win his minigame personally, and because of that personal motivation he made the swap that gives him personally the single biggest chance of winning his game.

If I'm interpreting this correctly there are many, many issues with this.

1) Why, if Luke's motivation is to win his game, would he not swap himself to Wall? If you think he's scum he'd be able to do this whether or not I'm town. And Wall is the easiest minigame for scum to win.

I did not know that Wall was the easiest. Thanks for telling me! I did not consider it because I thought that Lukewarm wanted to win in the Keep, and that he swapped you because then he would become the most TRed and win the Keep by tricking the others. I guess that I have been cofbiased so much that I didn't consider that scum!Lukewarm might have just swapped himself to the Wall.

2) Why are you assuming that Luke's personal motivation would dominate the mafia's reasons for picking who to swap? There are three mafia members and the others probably would not entertain a swap that is specifically engineered for that reason.

Because I thought that Lukewarm could have convinced the other scum to follow along.

3) If this is actually Luke's personal motivation, why wouldn't he just not say anything about it, and instead go to Wall (immediately or eventually)? Why would he, as scum who really wants to win his game, choose to go to Keep and then stay in Keep?

Similar to my answer for 1. I was too confbiased to think that if scum!Lukewarm wanted to win, he could have just chose to go to the Wall.

4) Drilling in a bit more to that, why are you assuming that scum-Luke would be truthful about his motivations at all? It's like, taking at face value all of Luke's talk about his reasons for his early move and his desire to win, but then refusing to take anything else he says at face value. It's very selective, very arbitrary.

I thought that maybe he wanted to appear transparent. Maybe, my confbias was that horrible. I didn't realise that I did such horrible things to Lukewarm. If he is upset by it, I apologise sincerely for it.

5) Why is this the best way to explain the swap, rather than just one theory among many possible theories? Wouldn't it make plenty of sense as well if I'm town and Pav is scum, and we were swapped because scum just only had a couple choices? Or if I'm scum and Pav is town and vice versa?

Well, if you are scum, you certainly got me. As for Pavowski, if he was scum, then I'm not sure what to feel. In hindsight, your alternative theories make sense and I am appalled at how confbiased that I was.

[implosion]

Just noticed:

Go offsite for one day and come back to almost 10 unread pages, wee. Gonna try to catch up, but is there anything in particular to focus on?

Focus on me and RH9. We're the ones in your game, after all.

Regarding Wall: nQ disappearing is a bit unfortunate of course. The only reason that it's worrying from an alignment perspective is because if he is scum then all he needs to do is coast while I drive my currently-incorrect read into the ground. But I really don't see anything from RH9 that makes me feel like I'm wrong right now. His reads post has lots of reasoning I disagree with, which is fine/not really alignment indicative, but it's also just coming at the game from a very peculiar angle if he's town. Sure, as town you don't really get to pick who you get reads on first, but having null reads on both people in the room with you is awfully convenient as scum in a regular 3p eLo like Wall, since it sets you up to align with whoever you can get to flip on the other person. There's nothing in his posting thus far that I feel would be especially complicated to fake as scum - it's clear he put a lot of work into his analysis, but that can be done as either alignment.

I feel like he's the kind of slot that in a regular game I'd want to read in principle based on how he votes and how his opinions develop, what wagons he's on and not and how they flip, etc. Of course that luxury doesn't exist here and it feels like the content he has so far is sort of mostly opaque from a perspective of reading his alignment in isolation.

[implosion]

-snip-

If you're annoyed at me asking if you're confbiased (at least, I'm 99% sure you're being sarcastic in the snipped post, but if I'm wrong then do let me know), then I'm sorry for frustrating you. I don't want to close avenues for dialogue and I can see how it's frustrating being told to magically stop having opinions that you've spent time justifying. I was frustrated when you directed 1204 at me as though I've never considered that I could be wrong about a read, when I've spent the game questioning and re-questioning my reads, and I've been reflecting that frustration toward you.

If you don't want to engage with me directly about Luke, then that's fine; we can just engage with others about him.

[implosion]

And as a last point before I head to bed: we're down to 7 and a half days in deadline. If we're giving Tanner discretion over which game resolves first, he should pick sooner rather than later.

[RH9]

-snip-

If you're annoyed at me asking if you're confbiased (at least, I'm 99% sure you're being sarcastic in the snipped post, but if I'm wrong then do let me know), then I'm sorry for frustrating you. I don't want to close avenues for dialogue and I can see how it's frustrating being told to magically stop having opinions that you've spent time justifying. I was frustrated when you directed 1204 at me as though I've never considered that I could be wrong about a read, when I've spent the game questioning and re-questioning my reads, and I've been reflecting that frustration toward you.

If you don't want to engage with me directly about Luke, then that's fine; we can just engage with others about him.

I wasn't being sarcastic and I am 100% nowhere near annoyed at you. You are one of my favourite people to interact with and I'm sorry that I ever made you felt frustrated. I would love to continue engaging with you directly about Lukewarm because you've been really helpful in widening my perspective and opening my mind.

[RH9]

The only person that I am annoyed at is myself for taking so long to get out of my confbias and upsetting implosion, who is the best for being so patient and understanding.

[Tanner]

(Eight including Prism who is not only modding but is also part of a hydra with Pooky, the hydra being VP Baltar (this bastard game has been planned for decades))

i just wanna comment how i'm reading this game over my 1:30pm breakfast, and this made me laugh for so long that my mom was like "ay yo what the fuck are you laughing at"

ok actual game content from me later

[Tanner]

this argument between implo and rh9 is a lot of words and it gives me a headache, will think about it later, gonna go for a walk while there's still some sun outside

[Pavowski]

Okay, this was a lot and I selfishly skimmed it for my name and it came up a lot. Somebody smarter than me please tell me:

Why would scum!RH go out on a limb to TR me as hard as he's done when he knows I'll flip green?

[VP Baltar]

Tanner's been leaning to voting me to varying degrees most of this game.

Scum psychology alert.

[Pavowski]

I re-read my own question and maybe I'm being stupid or overthinking or both

I mean if scum!RH is bussing scum!Luke to TR me here, that seems like trading a very good scum situation for a very dicey one (sacrificing Luke, who's in a ... not terrible position to win the keep to gain towncred to help scum!RH win the wall, which favors scum anyway).

Am I wrong?

[Tanner]

sup fucks i'm back from my walk, who missed me

for the duration of my walk, i first came up with a psychological case-study reason why baltar is like 99.9% town here, then i came up with a reason why i should hammer him on the next possible occasion, and THEN i came up with a reason why imaginality/aristea is definitely 2/3rds of our scumteam here

aren't you glad you /inned into this game?

[Tanner]

I re-read my own question and maybe I'm being stupid or overthinking or both

I mean if scum!RH is bussing scum!Luke to TR me here, that seems like trading a very good scum situation for a very dicey one (sacrificing Luke, who's in a ... not terrible position to win the keep to gain towncred to help scum!RH win the wall, which favors scum anyway).

Am I wrong?

why are you assuming that rh9 thinks he's actually gonna get listened to wrt the keep?

[VP Baltar]

Ari's hard shift on imaginality is interesting. While I agree with her points to some degree, I'm mildly paranoid about it.

Anyhow, I still say flip imaginality red and then we will have better perspective on the keep. We only need to pick the safest route there to win.

I am rescinding my previous instinct toward Luke for now. Need to consider why scum imaginality would want to put voting power with town!Ari. That would heavily imply a scum!Luke.

[Pavowski]

I re-read my own question and maybe I'm being stupid or overthinking or both

I mean if scum!RH is bussing scum!Luke to TR me here, that seems like trading a very good scum situation for a very dicey one (sacrificing Luke, who's in a ... not terrible position to win the keep to gain towncred to help scum!RH win the wall, which favors scum anyway).

Am I wrong?

why are you assuming that rh9 thinks he's actually gonna get listened to wrt the keep?

That's a fair question I guess, but since it looks by all accounts like Keep will resolve before Wall, we'll have everybody's associatives on the Keep in pocket when the Wall resolves so ... it'll be out there regardless of whether it impacts Keep

[Aristeia]

in a world where imagi is scum

consider why he wants me to be flipped prior to gate resolution

it's not that difficult to figure out.

Have any of you even done meta reading on Imagi?

[VP Baltar]

It kind of sucks that I'm going to be like Obi-wan Kenobi here and fade into the mist after Tanner hammers.

Tanner, any players you want to discuss before I'm gone?

[Tanner]

Tanner, any players you want to discuss before I'm gone?

why have you suddenly gotten this idea in your head that i'm resolving the gate first?

[Aristeia]

and if Tanner actually still thinks I am mafia with Imagi I guess I am happy to vote atp.

[Aristeia]

I am far enough into not really caring to not want to litigate this further.

[VP Baltar]

consider why he wants me to be flipped prior to gate resolution

For sure, I'm considering that. See rescinded read above around Luke.

Why were you so absolutely certain I was scum before that you were carrying water for imaginality?

Why was his desire to flip the keep, a fairly mainstream position, such a revelation for you?