Newbie 1806 - The Ffery Garden: GAME OVER!

[WhemeStar]

RC: Read Ciara/Wheme's ISO
Tell me with a straight face that it's towny

Persephone is obv town.
Gamesolved
Team is either Canckles/Miles (more unlikely) or Wheme/Miles/Cancklss
Way more convinced on wheme

Go read some games of mine please

I can even link you my first and only scum game which was painful

Self meta is easily changeable, especially if you have

one

scum game
Invalid try again

Lmao

[RadiantCowbells]

this push on wheme is roflcakes

[WhemeStar]

this push on wheme is roflcakes

So do you think I'm town

[PersephoneSidekick]

If I remember correctly I played horribly and lurked hard that game then made excuses for my inactivity, I'm surprised I didn't get lynched that game

You did make several posts, but not much game solving (which you claimed you didn't do in town games either). Now you're talking more but still not game solving. Most of the substantive things you've said have been defending yourself. Use some of the energy to make a squidding reads list already.

[Miles Edgeworth]

While you're here, Persephone: what do I need to do to convince you to vote WhaleBarnicle with me?

[Miles Edgeworth]

I guess I should start by actually voting for WhaleBarnicle.

VOTE: WhaleBarnicle

[WhemeStar]

Why whalebarnicle

Also whalebarnicle is there a way to spoiler your posts or make more posts but not as big. I hate wall posts

[Miles Edgeworth]

Why whalebarnicle

Also whalebarnicle is there a way to spoiler your posts or make more posts but not as big. I hate wall posts

I don't believe that a townie would back off of his wagon like WB backed off of Cankles in day 1. At no point in day 1 was Cankles safe from being lynched, yet WB wants us to believe that he couldn't get a Cankles lynch?

Look at the Fykus lynch. Look how little effort it took our two known non-Fykus townies (mhsmith and RadiantCowbells) to get on board. Knowing how easily the town piled up on Fykus late, it's not true that WB couldn't have pushed his desired lynch.

Then we get to day 2, and WB has decided to push on the confirmed townie's punching bag of choice, WhyMafia, and dropped his Cankles case completely. It doesn't make any sense as town. It makes

great

sense as mafia though: scum!WB wouldn't want to be tied to hypothetical town!Cankles's lynch and obviously wouldn't want to lynch scum!Cankles, and this low-profile drift toward another popular wagon is an excellent way for scum!WB to slide into LYLO with very little negative attention to his name.


The other reason isn't as concrete, but it resonates with me, so maybe it will with y'all as well. The two wagons that have emerged so far today are WM and you, Whemestar, and I quite frankly haven't seen any significant pushing from anyone outside of RC pushing WM. Several posters have expressed their opinions, forcefully even, but there's been very little in the way of meaningful argument and dialogue. It's been a lot of tilting at windmills, with no real cases making any traction -- just a lot of gut reads and muh feels and shit. This is the kind of environment scum loves and the kind of wagons that they thrive on: inert, apathetic voting pile-ups driven by one outspoken townie giving a shit.

Even if you aren't necessarily convinced by my argument enough to believe WB is scum, you should at least see the value in forcing the mafia to react to a new perspective on the game. This inertia favors them, so forcing them to take a stand on WB will draw more potentially incriminating posts out of them and break us out of this game stall.

[RadiantCowbells]

The game is only stalled in the sense that I'm letting you get your thoughts out before I slit Whymafia's throat and tie him up with bricks and throw him into the river.

[RadiantCowbells]

So as to the last line: yes.

For the record, I have not personally been convinced by anything that you've said, which is why I'm still just waiting to give Persephone Whymafia's bulletproof vest with a fish in it, but I applaud that you're actually doing stuff.

[Miles Edgeworth]

The game is only stalled in the sense that I'm letting you get your thoughts out before I slit Whymafia's throat and tie him up with bricks and throw him into the river.

It's far more than that, although I appreciate you waiting for my direction.

You know where you're going, so of course you feel like the game isn't stalled. But there's so little investigative work being done right now, and the initial flurry of vote pile-ups on WhyMafia and then Whemestar subsided without a lot of dialogue to show for it. How many people have expressed uncertainty about where they want to go with the lynch? It's a recurring sentiment today.

What issue do you take with my case on WhaleBarnicle, RC?

[RadiantCowbells]

It's predicated on the assumption that you know what people could/would do in certain situations. Something I feel important to understand in terms of mafia play is that most of the time you don't know why people do things.
Most of what people do is not done for any obvious scum/town motivation or often any motivation at all, it's just what they happened to do at the time. Even players like me who rigorously plan out (moreso as scum but) games from top to bottom.

You have created one narrative by which Barnicle is scum who did certain things. There are also plenty of narratives by which he is town and did the same thing.

[RadiantCowbells]

Even your case for why Cankles is town is somewhat (and use this choice of words with a grain of salt) arrogant to me in the sense that you're claiming to understand what scum would do in certain situations. Maybe the other scum was just too weak a player and too scared to get anything else done. Maybe they didn't understand that they should do something about it. Maybe they were already on the wagon cuz Cankles doesn't matter, they matter. I am very, very, very slow to draw conclusions about the gamestate based on theorycrafting about what people 'should' do as either alignment.

[Miles Edgeworth]

It's predicated on the assumption that you know what people could/would do in certain situations. Something I feel important to understand in terms of mafia play is that most of the time you don't know why people do things.
Most of what people do is not done for any obvious scum/town motivation or often any motivation at all, it's just what they happened to do at the time. Even players like me who rigorously plan out (moreso as scum but) games from top to bottom.

You have created one narrative by which Barnicle is scum who did certain things. There are also plenty of narratives by which he is town and did the same thing.

Not "knowing." Predicting what they should do, if they are rational actors who have a certain set of objectives in mind to win the game.

Obviously people are imperfectly rational and simply have an x% fail rate at doing the rational thing. All that means is that sometimes you will make a logical read by correctly following the rules of logic and applying them to your suspect's behavior and nonetheless be incorrect. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't pursue aforesaid logical reads.

Tell me then, if you don't practice a method like mine, what method

do

you practice? Because with all due respect to Your Towniness, that method has been very opaque this game, at least from my seat.

[Miles Edgeworth]

Of course my positions look arrogant, hah. I'm not offended in the slightest. If I'm not highly confident in my own reads, why the hell should anybody listen to me?
I figure you should understand that extremely well, given your own pushes. Salesmanship is a part of the game no matter who you are. Maybe it looks dirtier when you see cases purporting to be entirely from logic, and salesmanship, in the same post, but if I believe logic leads to the truth, and salesmanship is the key to persuasion, what choice do I have?

I could have enumerated the countless "buts" for WB's post. "But maybe WB is new and didn't know how to press his case." "But maybe WB just couldn't get online and push his case in the critical window where he had a chance." So on and so forth. You know what that does? It creates a waffling wall of crap nobody reads or pays any heed to.

Fact is, that all could be true. I don't care. If WB did act optimally then there's a great chance he is scum. I'm going to respect that he acted optimally, or at least force an explanation out of him for why not.

[RadiantCowbells]

Tell me then, if you don't practice a method like mine, what method do you practice? Because with all due respect to Your Towniness, that method has been very opaque this game, at least from my seat.

This is a hard question to answer.

[Miles Edgeworth]

Tell me then, if you don't practice a method like mine, what method do you practice? Because with all due respect to Your Towniness, that method has been very opaque this game, at least from my seat.

This is a hard question to answer.

Well I doubt you're one to naysay without a reason. We've got ample time, so take it, and answer when you know how to put it. This conversation's probably as important as the actual game, even though it's not directly relevant since your alignment is no longer in doubt. And it's not like this gaggle of ducklings has been lighting up the thread anyway...

[PersephoneSidekick]

Spoiler: Miles's accusation of Whale

Why whalebarnicle

Also whalebarnicle is there a way to spoiler your posts or make more posts but not as big. I hate wall posts

I don't believe that a townie would back off of his wagon like WB backed off of Cankles in day 1. At no point in day 1 was Cankles safe from being lynched, yet WB wants us to believe that he couldn't get a Cankles lynch?

Look at the Fykus lynch. Look how little effort it took our two known non-Fykus townies (mhsmith and RadiantCowbells) to get on board. Knowing how easily the town piled up on Fykus late, it's not true that WB couldn't have pushed his desired lynch.

Then we get to day 2, and WB has decided to push on the confirmed townie's punching bag of choice, WhyMafia, and dropped his Cankles case completely. It doesn't make any sense as town. It makes

great

sense as mafia though: scum!WB wouldn't want to be tied to hypothetical town!Cankles's lynch and obviously wouldn't want to lynch scum!Cankles, and this low-profile drift toward another popular wagon is an excellent way for scum!WB to slide into LYLO with very little negative attention to his name.


The other reason isn't as concrete, but it resonates with me, so maybe it will with y'all as well. The two wagons that have emerged so far today are WM and you, Whemestar, and I quite frankly haven't seen any significant pushing from anyone outside of RC pushing WM. Several posters have expressed their opinions, forcefully even, but there's been very little in the way of meaningful argument and dialogue. It's been a lot of tilting at windmills, with no real cases making any traction -- just a lot of gut reads and muh feels and shit. This is the kind of environment scum loves and the kind of wagons that they thrive on: inert, apathetic voting pile-ups driven by one outspoken townie giving a shit.

Even if you aren't necessarily convinced by my argument enough to believe WB is scum, you should at least see the value in forcing the mafia to react to a new perspective on the game. This inertia favors them, so forcing them to take a stand on WB will draw more potentially incriminating posts out of them and break us out of this game stall.

Ugh, why did you have to make things so complicated when I thought I was figuring stuff out.

Okay, so I count this as legit evidence but I need more to overcome my strong impression of town motivation for his posts in general. I agree that I'd very much like to hear his explanation of those decisions, and will consider voting for him if I sufficiently dislike his answer or especially if he refuses to answer.

[PersephoneSidekick]

So as to the last line: yes.

For the record, I have not personally been convinced by anything that you've said, which is why I'm still just waiting to give Persephone Whymafia's bulletproof vest with a fish in it, but I applaud that you're actually doing stuff.

I'm not as wedded to defending WM as you seem to think I am. I'm open to lynching him if somebody makes a concrete case or if he keeps refusing to provide content.

[RadiantCowbells]

So I'd say it's interplay between 3 things.

1) Experience. Despite my (relatively) short 5 year stint compared to many of the other 'scummers, I have played a shitload of games. On top of that I have a very long and reasonably precise memory and I can remember stuff from games years ago fairly well. There's a lot of times where I have certain 'objective' reads but I'm like 'yeah I have this read but I also have the feeling I've seen this player [not the player specifically but you understand] before and they've been town/scum instead' and I very often put those reads ahead of whatever the rest of my reads say and it's almost universally right. An example of this sort of read was on Fykus in 1770: Water where I said regarding him:

I'd hate to lose to Fykus because like fuck he's so obvscum at first glance but I remember mislynching a LOT of town who played like he is.

Purely a case where experience told me that he was going to be town despite every reason to scumread him, and he ended up being town.

2) Role Reversal / Empathy: The big thing that's mostly unique to me is that when I go along I try to put myself in the position of the people posting, especially when it comes to any AtE stuff, and try to empathize with them and see if it's genuine. I'm good at forcing myself to feel feelings and I can almost universally find the ability to find some common ground with people even when we have very different feelings regarding things when their emotions are genuine. It's been the source of a lot of unpopular correct townreads where I'm like yeah this guy is probably town even when a ton of other people refuse to see it.

An example of this sort of read was in the recently finished 722 modded by Aristophanes, where I instantly caught JasonWazza because of the way he turned back on us when we pushed him:

It is a paraphrase on account of the fact that I cannot directly quote from the hood. I did not change the meaning nor would anyone introduced to the hood disagree. For my part I am near 100% certain that the slot flips scum.
His pushback on us feels incredibly disingenuous, the way he responded in hood felt really disingenuous, it feels like he's just ramping up the aggression to towntell.

No, your opening isn't just forced it's forced in a bad way. Your pushback doesn't feel like someone who legitimately feels we're scum, it feels like someone who is trying to get townread. It feels like a show.

That slot flips scum.

3) Hunting for scumtells: Now, for the record, this means something totally different to me than it does to other people. If you go through the wiki's tells none of them mean shit to me. On the other hand, my tells mean very little to other people. I do sort of play on my own wavelength and there's often a level of disconnect between me and other players as a result. Idk.

[Miles Edgeworth]

So I'd say it's interplay between 3 things.

1) Experience. Despite my (relatively) short 5 year stint compared to many of the other 'scummers, I have played a shitload of games. On top of that I have a very long and reasonably precise memory and I can remember stuff from games years ago fairly well. There's a lot of times where I have certain 'objective' reads but I'm like 'yeah I have this read but I also have the feeling I've seen this player [not the player specifically but you understand] before and they've been town/scum instead' and I very often put those reads ahead of whatever the rest of my reads say and it's almost universally right. An example of this sort of read was on Fykus in 1770: Water where I said regarding him:

I'd hate to lose to Fykus because like fuck he's so obvscum at first glance but I remember mislynching a LOT of town who played like he is.

Purely a case where experience told me that he was going to be town despite every reason to scumread him, and he ended up being town.

2) Role Reversal / Empathy: The big thing that's mostly unique to me is that when I go along I try to put myself in the position of the people posting, especially when it comes to any AtE stuff, and try to empathize with them and see if it's genuine. I'm good at forcing myself to feel feelings and I can almost universally find the ability to find some common ground with people even when we have very different feelings regarding things when their emotions are genuine. It's been the source of a lot of unpopular correct townreads where I'm like yeah this guy is probably town even when a ton of other people refuse to see it.

An example of this sort of read was in the recently finished 722 modded by Aristophanes, where I instantly caught JasonWazza because of the way he turned back on us when we pushed him:

It is a paraphrase on account of the fact that I cannot directly quote from the hood. I did not change the meaning nor would anyone introduced to the hood disagree. For my part I am near 100% certain that the slot flips scum.
His pushback on us feels incredibly disingenuous, the way he responded in hood felt really disingenuous, it feels like he's just ramping up the aggression to towntell.

No, your opening isn't just forced it's forced in a bad way. Your pushback doesn't feel like someone who legitimately feels we're scum, it feels like someone who is trying to get townread. It feels like a show.

That slot flips scum.

3) Hunting for scumtells: Now, for the record, this means something totally different to me than it does to other people. If you go through the wiki's tells none of them mean shit to me. On the other hand, my tells mean very little to other people. I do sort of play on my own wavelength and there's often a level of disconnect between me and other players as a result. Idk.

First off, this is awesome content. When we're not in a game together, I'll PM you to develop this conversation further. I doubt I could replicate your methods effectively, but learning how other people tick is the whole point of this game. Getting it spelled out succinctly like this is excellent.

Instead, I want to focus this process toward my suspect, because the circumstances in this game make a clean application of your process more difficult. Let's see if I can't show you where I'm coming from in your own terms, since mine are not sufficing.

You have three criteria that dance together to put on a bandwagon stage show:
- Past experience with the person in question
- Role reversal with the person
- Finding scumtells or not

Scumtells are neither here nor there. I think you can agree that scum don't always proc your scumtells. After all, if they did, the game would be mighty easy, no?
And I wonder... this is WhaleBarnicle's first game on this website, no? Of course that would rule out prior experience between the two of you.

I'm going to need some elaboration on your process of role reversal. If you believe WB is town and find my position thoroughly unconvincing, then you must be leaning on something in your role reversal process to get to that point, since the other two criteria don't apply. Is there something you can point to that WB said which led you to believe he wouldn't say as mafia?

Also, and forgive the implication, but how frequently do you get false positives through your role reversal process? At a glance, it seems like if your primary method of evaluating people you haven't played with before is to, for lack of a better term, project your emotional reaction "in their shoes" so to speak onto their reaction in the thread, that you could easily end up giving them the benefit of the doubt, out of an unconscious desire to be fair to the person with whom you're empathizing.

[Miles Edgeworth]

Spoiler: Miles's accusation of Whale

Why whalebarnicle

Also whalebarnicle is there a way to spoiler your posts or make more posts but not as big. I hate wall posts

I don't believe that a townie would back off of his wagon like WB backed off of Cankles in day 1. At no point in day 1 was Cankles safe from being lynched, yet WB wants us to believe that he couldn't get a Cankles lynch?

Look at the Fykus lynch. Look how little effort it took our two known non-Fykus townies (mhsmith and RadiantCowbells) to get on board. Knowing how easily the town piled up on Fykus late, it's not true that WB couldn't have pushed his desired lynch.

Then we get to day 2, and WB has decided to push on the confirmed townie's punching bag of choice, WhyMafia, and dropped his Cankles case completely. It doesn't make any sense as town. It makes

great

sense as mafia though: scum!WB wouldn't want to be tied to hypothetical town!Cankles's lynch and obviously wouldn't want to lynch scum!Cankles, and this low-profile drift toward another popular wagon is an excellent way for scum!WB to slide into LYLO with very little negative attention to his name.


The other reason isn't as concrete, but it resonates with me, so maybe it will with y'all as well. The two wagons that have emerged so far today are WM and you, Whemestar, and I quite frankly haven't seen any significant pushing from anyone outside of RC pushing WM. Several posters have expressed their opinions, forcefully even, but there's been very little in the way of meaningful argument and dialogue. It's been a lot of tilting at windmills, with no real cases making any traction -- just a lot of gut reads and muh feels and shit. This is the kind of environment scum loves and the kind of wagons that they thrive on: inert, apathetic voting pile-ups driven by one outspoken townie giving a shit.

Even if you aren't necessarily convinced by my argument enough to believe WB is scum, you should at least see the value in forcing the mafia to react to a new perspective on the game. This inertia favors them, so forcing them to take a stand on WB will draw more potentially incriminating posts out of them and break us out of this game stall.

Ugh, why did you have to make things so complicated when I thought I was figuring stuff out.

Okay, so I count this as legit evidence but I need more to overcome my strong impression of town motivation for his posts in general. I agree that I'd very much like to hear his explanation of those decisions, and will consider voting for him if I sufficiently dislike his answer or especially if he refuses to answer.

Thanks, but what aspects of the case did you find persuasive, and why do you have such a strong town-motivated impression of WB for me to fight against?

[RadiantCowbells]

Scumtells are neither here nor there. I think you can agree that scum don't always proc your scumtells. After all, if they did, the game would be mighty easy, no?

My scumreads aren't always right but my townreads are almost never wrong.

And I wonder... this is WhaleBarnicle's first game on this website, no? Of course that would rule out prior experience between the two of you.

I don't need experience with him. I have experience in general with enough players that I've seen enough players that were like him and they were, largely, town.

I'm going to need some elaboration on your process of role reversal. If you believe WB is town and find my position thoroughly unconvincing, then you must be leaning on something in your role reversal process to get to that point, since the other two criteria don't apply. Is there something you can point to that WB said which led you to believe he wouldn't say as mafia?

More of just an entirety of his posting and along with that the fact that literally nothing that you have said regarding him gives me any desire to change my mind.

Also, and forgive the implication, but how frequently do you get false positives through your role reversal process? At a glance, it seems like if your primary method of evaluating people you haven't played with before is to, for lack of a better term, project your emotional reaction "in their shoes" so to speak onto their reaction in the thread, that you could easily end up giving them the benefit of the doubt, out of an unconscious desire to be fair to the person with whom you're empathizing.

Trying to fool me via emotional displays is pointless and stupid: I'm fairly sure I am the only person who ever got Frozen Angel lynched in her time on site. Even when I was a relatively young player I fakeclaimed a guilty on a Bro/AP hydra because their display of anger was so shitty and fake. I very rarely get reads from that worth following but when I do they are almost never wrong. This game has none of them, however.

[fferyllt]

Unabombah replaces King Cankles. Please welcome him!

[UnaBombaH]

Hi all, gonna read the whole thread within few hours.
I'll try to take some notes/write up my susp.list, so maybe I'll notice I'm at a different place with my ideas than where you guys are now.

That ought to be helpful, right?