Mafiascum.net

I'd like to talk about Frogster.

I think Frogster's play was very townish D2, and towards the start of D4. I also, however, think that Frogster's play was scummy D3, and want to go over why.

The discussion D3 became mostly dominated by discussion of Gamma's question #1593. I didn't initially see the question as scummy – I thought Gamma was playing in a scumsided way, but intentionally thought it was by mistake rather than intentional – and tried to dissuade Gamma from asking the question (first by ignoring it, then refusing to answer in #1622 after Gamma presses me in #1618, )

#1608 – Frogster is apparently sure that scum left Italiano alive due to a rolecop report on Tayl0r. That's a bizarre conclusion to draw given that Tayl0r had already softclaimed a power role (specifically, one that was somehow connected to a Friendly Neighbour Neighbour and knew that its action had failed, which narrows things down to about three possibilities among Normal roles). Normally, when a player comes to an excessively complex conclusion when the evidence supports a much simpler conclusion, that player has hidden information and/or is lying, so that leans towards Frogster as scum. I'm not convinced that this is a scumtell for Frogster specifically, though, given that he seems to have something of a complexity addiction.

(As a side note, flipped town Italiano makes a case for Frogster as scum in #1614.)

#1633 – I was wondering at this time if there was some connection between Frogster and Gamma, i.e. that the question that Gamma was asking had somehow caused Frogster to suspect me (this wasn't all that surprising, because seemingly anything I did caused Frogster to suspect me). So I decided to check whether Frogster had a strong town read on Gamma (and thus was willing to sheep a townread who was attacking a scumread). Frogster stated a null-leaning-town read on Gamma (whilst impugning my motivations behind asking the question), so if he's following Gamma, it isn't because of a townread. (This is what I meant by "I was just trying to rule out a possibility, but haven't been able to conclude anything from this. It might make more sense later in the game." in #1635.)

#1640/#1641 – Frogster explicitly calls me out for stalling in response to Gamma's question. I am stalling, and have explained why. Frogster assumes that Gamma will reveal something that will reveal me as scum. So he's attempting to follow Gamma in putting pressure on me. It wouldn't surprise me if Gamma had asked Frogster for help pushing me in the scum PT.

#1646, #1647, #1648 – I assume that Gamma received Walter's Friendly Neighbour PM N1 (I'm wrong in this assumption, incidentally), because I still have a townread on Gamma and it's the only way I can rationalize his behaviour. I try to dissuade Gamma from asking the question, giving enough detail as to why I think answering would be harmful for town. Gamma pushes me very hard for failing to answer in #1648, despite this (we subsequently learn that this is because Gamma is scum rolefishing). In between, #1647, Frogster posts "Hmm..". Why? This feels oft to me, it's like he's trying to shade me despite not having enough information. At this point, I decide that I can no longer rationalize Gamma's behaviour and he might well be scum.

#1664 – Frogster indirectly defends Gamma. He would later list the possibilities in question in #1871. One of the listed possibilities is "motion tracker" which isn't a real role; Motion Detector would be unlikely to make Gamma think "maybe Walter is a Friendly Neighbour targeting CFJ", and Tracker is the actual explanation. The other listed possibility is "watcher", and Watcher would gain the same information as Tracker. The thing is, it takes quite a leap to go from "Gamma has tracked Walter to me" to "Gamma wants to know if I received a Friendly Neighbour PM from Walter". I didn't make this connection at all until Gamma stated it (and once I did, realised that it implied Gamma was scum, as a townie wouldn't use that reasoning). So how did , who is less familiar with Normal mechanics than I am, make that connection? It would be a much easier connection to make if you were already aware (e.g. via scum PT) of what Gamma's motivations for his actions were.

#1710 – Gamma pretty much screws up unrecoverably. At this point, there's almost no doubt in my mind (other than the usual paranoia of "maybe everything I'm thinking is wrong") that Gamma is scum; the only real question is whether I can get enough votes on him without outing the fact that I'm a power role.

Frogster doesn't post for a while after this, but is apparently V/LA so that's null. When he does, though:

In post 1756, Frogsterking wrote:I think we all need to drink some tea and calm down.

In post 1760, Frogsterking wrote:Yes I would 100% recommend not hammering Gamma.

In post 1761, Frogsterking wrote:Hammer outside of Gamma today, and figure out a way to confirm/deny his role.

In post 1768, Frogsterking wrote:He's a tracker so confirm him somehow.

That looks a like a Mafioso panicking because his buddy has been caught. It doesn't look like someone with a null or nulltown read on Gamma.

#1770/#1771 – Cognitive dissonance, "[Gamma] should draw either the night kill or the role block", "If he's scum then he will have to continue to make up reports tomorrow which might make it more obvious to lynch him. If he's town then his report will be useful.". Why didn't Frogster just reason "now that Gamma is outed, he will likely be killed, and/or blocked for the rest of the game"?

#1773 – Indirect defence of Gamma, wanting to find a compromise elimination who isn't a power role claim (this is when lots of people are scumreading Gamma).

At this point, Titus replaced in, and hammered Gamma before Frogster next posted. But Frogster was looking awfully connected to Gamma at that point – I had suspected a connection much earlier, before much of the evidence had built up – and so it immediately lead me to suspect Frogster somewhat.

Frogster's play was rather more townish at other points in the game, though, so my read on Frogster is more "conflicted" than "scum". I'd be interested, therefore, if anyone a) thinks Frogster's D3 play is sufficiently scummy to outweigh any other reads on him, and /or b) Frogster's D3 play is easily explainable, and thus I should follow my townread on him from other parts of the game.

@[b}Titus[/b]: On the subject of day 1 wagon VCA, see #939 for a VCA attempt by a now-flipped townie. Its conclusions are different from yours, too.

I'm not necessarily saying your VCA is wrong, but I think it's worth discussing it because you're coming to different conclusions from many other players, and I'm curious as to which of us is wrong.

Post 939 and Italino's 944 have the problem that they are only looking at one VC. Italiano has already partially been proven right by his conclusion that "scum were off the wagon" (Gamma flip) but his context suggests he thought scum were completely off the wagon, which brings us back to you and Looker.

Back to 939 by Taylor. Taylor postulates that Frogster got trapped as a wagon took off. Nos may have been a reluctant bus. She doesn't say why Nos may have been a reluctant bus but geratim wasn't a reluctant bus.

Her VCA could actually answer these questions by looking at the prior VCs. Frogsterking simply is not the type to move his vote frequently despite being moderately active. Nosferatu is not a reluctant busser when he started the wagon back in 1.10.

Nosferatu didn't really start that wagon (at least, he wanted to start a wagon but did so in a way that gave him no choice as to who he voted for). You should probably read #573 and #574 for context.

In post 1979, callforjudgement wrote:Nosferatu didn't really start that wagon (at least, he wanted to start a wagon but did so in a way that gave him no choice as to who he voted for). You should probably read #573 and #574 for context.

Why would scum Nosferatu want to start a new wagon when he could remain comfortably on you?

Also, isn't your whole point today that Nos town wins us the game?

Why isn't geratim scum?

Nos town wins us the game, so I want to be pretty sure that that townread is right (especially as Frogster is questioning it).

My main argument against geraintm as scum is that all he'd have to do at the end of D1 is to stay on the Walter wagon, and the shelly wagon would have been unlikely to go through. He didn't know that the mod was about to turn up and freeze deadline, after all; and the behaviour wouldn't have been suspicious because nobody can be online constantly. It just seems like a really weird situation to bus in.

Even if he was planning to bus, why wouldn't he move earlier, rather than voting Walter, and only moving to shelly after I pointed out that she wasn't posting elsewhere?

In post 1981, callforjudgement wrote:Even if he was planning to bus, why wouldn't he move earlier, rather than voting Walter, and only moving to shelly after I pointed out that she wasn't posting elsewhere?

Solution: It wasn't a planned bus but a forced one. He deadline voted shelley. When the deadline was removed, he unvoted. When you told him shelley avoiding, he revoted.

You have the sequence of events wrong. He voted Walter in #824, at 8:09:51 UTC.
I pointed out that shelly was posting elsewhere in #829, at 12:22:54 UTC; there had been no further votes on either Walter or shelly in the meantime.
geraintm moved to shelly at 12:32:17 UTC.
Then deadline (which was 15:18:30 UTC) was suspended at 12:45:41 UTC, and geraintm unvoted.

Why would geraintm make one deadline vote (on a townie), then move to a different deadline vote (on a scumbuddy)? Walter and shelly had 4 votes each without him, it's not like deadline effects were forcing him onto shelly rather than Walter. In particular, staying on Walter – or moving to shelly – would effectively dictate what deadline votes other players got to make.

Your callout forced his vote. That's my point. You forced his hand. When deadline extension granted, he got off. He did all he could yo save shelley

For what it's worth, I interpreted shelly not paying attention to the game as a reason to townread her, rather than scumread her (if she were paying attention to the game she would have cross-voted regardless of alignment, and she likes playing scum, so I thought she'd be more likely to forget about a towngame than a scumgame). It's hard to see how my callout forced anyone to move; it would always be possible to just not post and pretend to be offline. Most players didn't move in response to my post, after all.

Look at d3, geratim takes the same lazy bus too.

What has he done today to solve?

(For reference, Titus is talking about #1758.)

I agree that geraint's generally voting sheepishly/lazily. I'm not sure that that's necessarily scum-indicative, though? Like, I'm not sure what the difference is between town lazily putting a vote on caught scum, and scum lazily putting a vote on caught scum.

One way you can sometimes detect bus votes (as opposed to town-on-scum sheep votes) is when the stated reason is both new, and weaker than the others. I see some of that in 1758's reference to #1749, but don't think it's very strong (and #1749 a bit weird; why would Gamma assume that Walter was a power role a Friendly Neighbour, given the gamestate?).

@: who/what was #1759 referring to, and do you think it implies anything about their alignment?

Also, #1769 makes me think it's not purely a lazy bus. If it is a bus, there was some force put into it.

…and a thought.

Titus, is your townread on Frogster entirely based on #1786? Or are there other components to it?

#578 seems really plausible as a bus, given the circumstance in which the vote was made. That wagon was highly likely to collapse, so scum wouldn't see any real risk in it.

In post 1987, callforjudgement wrote:@Nosferatu: who/what was #1759 referring to, and do you think it implies anything about their alignment?

geraintm idk he's the type i cant read i think i said that before im inclined to say last ones in {geraint, frogster} like i poe'd before

I would like to make a suggestion as to where to go from here.

Based on collective reads, it seems unlikely that either geraintm or Frogster will be considered the towniest out of the unconfirmed players. (I've seen enough scumminess from Frogster that I wouldn't be happy letting him be the designated surviving townie, even though I've seen a lot of towniness too; and I'm not sure enough in my geraintm townread to want to overrule everyone else.) Therefore, I would suggest:

a) Today, we eliminate Frogsterking. I think this flip gives the most information of any; Frogster's reads and indeed reasoning are miles away from those of the typical player, and it would be helpful to know whether they're coming from a town viewpoint or simply just fabricated.
b) Tonight, I use my Alien action on geraintm. If geraintm is scum, this will prevent a nightkill. If geraintm is not scum, then scum will either have to kill and confirm him, or else holster (leaving him unconfirmed but leaving more townies alive).
c) Tonight, Walter randomly targets either Titus or Nosferatu, without making the choice of target public. (This is to guard against the possibility of Titus being Ascetic.)
d) Tomorrow, Nosferatu and Walter stay silent about Walter's night action until Titus has claimed it. If she's a VT, like she claims, then she should know whether Walter targeted her or Nosferatu. If she's Ascetic, she will have to guess and will guess wrong half the time, warning us that my understanding of the setup was wrong.
e1) If someone dies overnight – confirming geraintm as town – we eliminate me, and then we reach an ELo with one confirmed player, Looker and Nosferatu. The confirmed player will have to choose correctly in order to win; but note that we only reach this situation if we're wrong on both geraintm and Frogster (and me).
e2) If nobody dies overnight, we eliminate geraintm. I will attempt to block scum overnight. If I am successful in this, it's a forced win (you eliminate me and the player I blocked, in either order). If I fail, it will reach a 3:1 ending with me and one player unconfirmed; I will probably be eliminated for a town loss, but think this scenario is unlikely to occur (as we will, at that point, have missed three tries to find scum in four players: Frogster, geraintm, my top scumread).

This plan won't work as written if scum kill me or Nosferatu overNight, but I'm sure you'll be able to figure out where to go from there. Just in case, I'll bold this so that there'll be no doubt about my target in that situation:



(As a side note, trusting that I'm town is sufficient for a 100% forced town win, but I don't think this is viable because I don't expect enough players to believe that I'm town. So we'll have to go for the 3-in-4 strategy instead.)

VOTE: Frogsterking

Frog's d3 leaves a lot of qs.
I think that works.
VOTE: frog

I would also be fine with gerain also.

(Mentioned to ensure that anyone who hammers is doing so knowingly, not accidentally.)

ill pass this hammer i will be mia for a lil bit

sorry for not being more active today. I don't have any extra info and there are better players in the game than me who can work things out. im fairly sure this game is going to end in a few days with a forced win for us, no mater what I thought.
I have no objectionwith the plan as laid out

In post 1989, callforjudgement wrote:…and a thought.

Titus, is your townread on Frogster entirely based on #1786? Or are there other components to it?

#578 seems really plausible as a bus, given the circumstance in which the vote was made. That wagon was highly likely to collapse, so scum wouldn't see any real risk in it.

No. Because if you look at 1.13 Frogster got off and then got on again, early on the wagon.

Plus there's Frogster's play today too.