Mafiascum.net

In post 103, Dum wrote:Town Reads:

1-navigatorv. As of right now, everything they have done looks extremely townie to me, especially with the reads they have been posting (Wich i mostly agree with).

In post 258, navigatorv wrote:Sounds like everybody's been having a hell of a last few days, myself included.
I think I've got my emotions more under control though, so apologies for the emotional instability I showed to a few of you.

Since no one's really posted anything, I guess now's probably a decent time for me to post my reads from everyone. I'm re-reading everyone's posts as I write this, so this is probably gonna be long since I'll comment on everything that jumps out at me.

Now, from the top based on the order we were initially listed in:

orctin

Spoiler:

To start, he had the opportunity to hammer Micc and chose not to. There are a few reasons he might choose to do this, both town and scum:
-First is his stated reasoning, he wanted to give Micc a chance to defend himself and also didn't want day one to end early, obviously a townplay.

Could have been scum hunting for a power role.

-Second, he and Micc could be scum and he was trying to keep his buddy alive in a way that didn't look suspicious. Now that Micc isn't in everyone's headlights, he feels safer bussing him.
-Third, he didn't want to look suspicious by hammering without anything decisive, something which applies to both scum and town.

It would have been E-1 not a hammer.

There are more possibilities, but those three seem the most likely.
The next thing I noticed was his defense of Salsa, which was admittedly pretty weak (93 assuming I'm formatting that right?). As I have my suspicions about Salsa's slot, that feels a little suspect, but nothing extreme.

It was an observation of what a person's good at not a defence, he did this for everybody and they were all weak if you consider them defences.

Next was Dum's trap, which, once again, shows very little about orctin and more about the main two the trap involved. One thing I'm curious about is what he meant by a "better vote choice". Saying it that way seems less like he's voting based on who I thinks is the most scummy and more like he's focusing on which wagons have formed. It might just be me reading too much into it, but I couldn't help but notice that.
The last thing he did before he stopped posting for a few days was inform Dum that he was considering casting his vote on him. As Jackson noted, expressing intent to vote without actually doing so does little to apply pressure to anyone, so I'm not sure if this was a genuine intimidation tactic or something meant to seem town-aligned without actually advancing the game forward.

There's a difference between intent to vote and considering changing your vote.

Then there's his break, which could be lurking with an excuse or could be genuine. As someone with plenty of irl shit going on though, I'm inclined to believe him, cause lying about stuff like that just for an advantage in a game is really not cool.

Overall impression: Mixed. He's done a number of things that might suggest scum activity, but nothing concrete.

Fizz Raab

Spoiler:

Mentioned having previous experience but not much, and that she screwed up somehow in her last game.
One odd thing to me is her reasoning for voting Micc was due to the same reason I did, him throwing a vote out for no reason. What makes it odd is that she waited until nearly two full days after his post to find this suspicious. It's important to note that this was after both I and Salsa had voted for him, which tells me that she was waiting for a bandwagon to form before placing her vote.
When HEM commented on her post being overexplained, she reacted very strongly to it. Admittedly the reasoning for voting her was very weak, so I can understand some of her reaction, though it does feel a little much.

Glad we agreed on this.

Her back and forth with HEM continued for some time and when he asked her what she thought was a scum move, she basically described his playing style yet didn't vote for him implying either that she still found Micc more suspicious or that who she votes for doesn't truly matter to her.

Could have been a fake reasoning. This was pointing out.

Her next post was a solid two days later and only came after James had voiced that she was one of the top individual suspects, though he didn't vote her. Again her reaction was very heated despite the fact that most of the attention from that post hadn't even been directed at her specifically. She then turned the heat towards HEM for his one-line spams, which, while that could be a scum tactic (see my analysis on him for more on that), by itself isn't really indicative of anything. She cited catching a scum in her last game for using the same tactic (I'd presume this has nothing to do with her screw up, but as I don't find looking at meta that doesn't directly involve the current game fun, I have no way to say for sure), which feels like she's confusing correlation with causation.

Overall impression: Feeling scummy. While there's a chance that being relatively new can explain some of her odd behavior, so much of it together with no real town indicators is making me feel kind of suspicious.

Salsabil Faria and JamesTheNames

Spoiler:

Since they share the same slot, I'll be covering both together since I feel like their similarities can tell us more about their role than an individual analysis.
Salsa's initial post was a simple vote with little valid reasoning behind it, nothing really suspect their since we were still in the RVS stage. She later swapped to Micc for finding his argument too much of a stretch (either scum trying to add to a wagon that might actually keep momentum or a townie who felt that was scum-indicative).
She posted a reply to one of my counterarguments to Micc that was simply her giving me "town points". Seems like she was trying to appear to be contributing (and possibly pocket me/help strengthen her own vote) without actually doing so in any meaningful capacity.
When Jackson pointed this out, she responded with some sarcasm (that feels very passive aggressive to me) before proceeding to her counterargument, which, while petty, isn't necessarily AI on its own.

75 was passive aggressive, its a response in kind.

Micc asked her what her response to one of my posts that seemed to vindicate him somewhat was, but got no response as she quit shortly after. She did admit to having exams so it's entirely possible that those were simply taking up too much time or it could be that she wasn't able to keep up with the pressure of her role and needed to hand it off. Since she's no longer here we can only speculate, but again, I'd like to believe that most people wouldn't make up irl issues to avoid losing a game.
That brings us to James who immediately began with a gut feeling read list and then did his best to stop the fight between HEM and myself. These actions could be town but could just as easily be scum pretending to be town.
He then posted a much longer analysis that I don't entirely understand certain points of:
-His read on orctin lists a number of posts that should've affected orctin's reads supposedly, but upon examining them myself I don't really see how they conflict with what orctin posted.

Dum's 50 is doing what Micc did, with less justification. Also considering it was rather early in the game, he should have also been bothered by more "RVS" votes, if we has truly bothered by Micc's.

-His read on Dum has him begin with saying he understood the reason for Dum's gambit, but then he got confused as to why he voted for Micc during it (despite voting for Micc literally being the key point of the trap, without which it wouldn't have worked in any capacity).

Dum listed 3 possibilities for what Micc is doing, basically, he is just being helpful, he is leading town, or he is pretending to be useful. Dum then goes on to say, that he thinks the first option,

just being helpful

is the most likely, then procedes to vote for him. If this makes a dot of sense to you I emplore you to explain it, thank you.

-His read on Jackson feels like a "why are you targeting my slot?" post that would only work if Jackson hadn't already explained their reasoning as to why they didn't vote Dum instead.

Jackson had 2 main suspicious all game, Dum, and my slot. When you pressure somebody and nothing comes out of it, be it they are afk, lurking, ignoring your posts, it makes completely sense to fall back onto your other suspicious slot. Instead of actually impacting the game with their vote, they opted to leave it on a player who wasn't responding or posting. They have gone on a lot about how expressing intent to vote has no impact, this is the same thing, but potentially worse. If they had any actual level of suspicion for Dum, they would have opted to apply pressure onto Dum. especially considering they're at least somewhat experienced, after the added pressure onto Dum and his responses, Jackson could have easily gone "You know what, Dum isn't actually scummy" or "You know what, Dum is actually really scummy". Why did they not do this? To distance themselves from Dum, to pretend to have an impact. They push everyone else to vote and apply pressure, so they can sit back and not get any suspicions around them. Also if it was a revenge vote for voting my slot, I wouldn't have voted Dum first.

-Asked NinjaStore to post more despite NinjaStore literally being camping for most of the game thus far which I don't get, especially with how many others have gone long periods without saying anything.
After this Jackson pointed out a very important detail (that he made no comment about them voting for his slot) which he responded to by more or less dodging the question and asking why Jackson hadn't voted for me or Dum instead. He then proceeded to vote for them which doesn't seem like it was based on actual logic and more like a revenge vote since he couldn't convince them to target someone else.

I did respond to this. 189

Their feud continued for some time, but eventually James stopped responding (not sure if it was due to being unable to counterargue or simply feeling like things were going nowhere, both seem entirely possible).
Fizz Raab then took issue with his read on her and HEM (which I went into detail on in her analysis), but he managed to shut down her argument using some fairly decent logic (though there is some issue with HEM's posting, it's not quite as simple as Fizz made it out to be).

Overall impression: Scum-leaning. There are a few more town indicators for this slot than for Fizz Raab, but there's still quite a bit fishy that I can't quite believe is town activity for the time being.

Dum

Spoiler:

He was the first to defend Micc and accused at least one of the 3 voters (myself, Salsa, and NinjaStore) of being scum. He also claimed that the person he voted on hadn't posted still but didn't change his vote until I pointed it out. Honestly, that feels like a genuine mistake and not AI (not important, only pointing this out in case someone thinks I'm ignoring this for whatever reason).
The next notable post was his analysis which defended me, but put focus on Micc and HEM for his "not so townie" (the closest he had to scum) reads. Despite putting Micc there, he proceeded to defend him to some extent, but then proceeded to vote for him as part of a trap. My guess would be that he didn't actually believe most of the scum related things he said about Micc and was more trying to distance himself to help his gambit work out better.

Almost like it's what my post was alluding to.

After orctin voted for Micc, he sprung his trap and accused orctin of being scum trying to hammer someone. A few problems with that being Micc pointing out that it wasn't actually a hammer before Dum posted, that the gambit relied on the victim to not pay attention to the actual votes, and that the victim in this case was orctin, who could've hammered Micc earlier but chose not to. Even assuming orctin did fall for the trap, these things allowed him to keep his cool and pretty easily shoot down Dum's accusations.
After I voted for Dum based on my conversation with Jackson, he didn't take it well and, similar to Salsa, wrote a rather passive aggressive response, though he calmed down fairly quickly after I explained myself.
He really hasn't posted anything here since which I do find somewhat odd given that I'm pretty sure I've seen his name pop up as posting in other games.

Overall impression: Mixed. I initially believed him to be town, then found his actions suspicious, then began believing he was scum, but having gone back and reread his posts along with other people's impressions of him, I've found that I can't really get a good grasp on what's scum/poor town behavior, what's newbie jitters, and what I'm just looking too hard at. Overall I'd say there's the slightest scum lean, but nothing extreme enough to tip the scales.

NinjaStore

Spoiler:

Claimed he found Micc suspicious but wouldn't vote him because not enough discussion had happened and greatly disliked the implication that we should just vote completely at random and hope we get it.
After coming back from his camping trip, he said he found Dum's gambit to be scummy and wondered why Micc waited to bring up the vote count until after someone voted.
Shortly after, he posted a short analysis pointing the FoS at Dum, Micc, and me, before voting for me on top of it. His analysis isn't entirely unwarranted, I'll admit I've said some things that could very easily be construed as scumplay. Obviously any attempt to defend myself with excuses such as inexperience or emotional issues will probably just seem like me grasping at straws, but one defense that I feel is valid is that fact that certain posts are linked to but summarized in a way that discourages following the link without providing proper context (the most egregious in my eyes is probably the one that linked to post 137 which makes it seem like I voted Dum for no reason despite "complimenting" his trap and then brought up not being afraid to be lynched completely unprompted, both of which are blatantly untrue if you paid attention to the full post in-context.
He has yet to respond to my response so analysis has to end there.

Overall impression: Town-leaning. Overall, despite voting for me, I don't actually think NS is scum trying to turn things on me. Based on what he's said and done, I get the feeling that he's town who picked up on a false lead and then let confirmation bias do the rest. There are a few slight scum behaviors (taking things out of context, use of buzzwords like "defensive", etc.) but these feel less like intentional scumplay and more like unintentionally aggressive townplay.

While I'm here, I feel like it's important to discuss my initial response to the accusations. I'll admit, I acted rashly on account of me not expecting NS to find me the most suspicious. Having been dealing with some irl stuff, I let my head get the best of me and likely made myself look more suspicious in the process. Obviously there's nothing I can really do to change that. What I can do though is put my money where my mouth is. I have a proposition that I'd like to make. I understand if you don't want to risk potentially falling into a mafia trap, so I'll stay silent on it if you'd prefer not to hear it, but if you're willing to hear me out, I'd gladly share, even if the consensus turns out to be a "no".

JacksonVirgo

Spoiler:

Was the first to counter the idea of No-Elimination, which it seems that most of the players agreed with.
Spent most of the beginning lurking (makes sense given the sig), then slowly began responding to more and more as time went on.
Was the first to point out Salsa and Dum's potentially scummy traits and started the Salsa bandwagon which didn't pick up steam until James replaced her.

Just going to point out "and Dum's"

I noticed that things started feeling more hostile after they started posting and in my analysis unintentionally started a bit of a confrontation, though in the end we were able to come to a mutual understanding, especially once I started understanding more about their style of play and why they do it.
Not much else of note happened until they began feuding with James which seems to have died rather than settled. There's definitely some hostile vibes in here, but that's starting to seem more like a part of their personality than an actual tell.
I backed up some of their points with what I understood of their playstyle, which they confirmed and further backed me up when HEM viewed my move as scumplay. I can't deny the possibility that this was done to "buddy" up with someone that seemed to share their views, but it doesn't seem very in-character for what I know of their playstyle.

Overall impression: Most likely town. I'll admit, in the beginning I found them very suspicious and didn't like some of their views (there are a few points that still make me raise an eyebrow at too), but overall there's actually been very little beyond gut-feelings and correlation that I've found scummy. I'll admit, there is a chance that they're just really good at manipulating newer players, but as of this point I have no reason to assume that's more likely than them just being town.

Micc

Spoiler:

Boy oh boy, arguably the most controversial player here. Let's get into it.
Right off the bat, he's by far been the most outwardly aggressive player.
He does have a tendency to go into teacher mode which can be helpful at certain times, while others it comes off as condescending.
He's also very much not the type to easily accept any way but his own. I'm not sure if this is just how he is with newbies or if he's this way all the time, but it definitely makes it difficult to side with him if you don't already agree, which I think might be what started his early wagon.
He was the first to question orctin's reads, specifically the one on Salsa and gave a pretty decent defense of his position there.
When Dum tried to pull his gambit, Micc didn't say anything about the vote count until after orctin had voted, but before the trap was fully sprung. It's possible that it's poorly coordinated scumplay, but feels a bit more likely that he was curious about what Dum was doing but couldn't help but call orctin out for a potential (albeit false) hammering.
Since then he's gone quiet despite saying that he was going to catch up.

Overall impression: The wild goose chase. Overall Micc hasn't been the easiest player to deal with. For the reasons I've already outlined, he's somewhat frustrating and near impossible to coordinate with. However, despite my initial reaction to these traits, something tells me that, while definitely acting in a way I view is detrimental to town victory, it doesn't seem like scumplay, just the result of someone whose personality doesn't mesh well with the group. At the risk of putting suspicion onto myself (given that I started the initial wagon), I get the feeling that the scum have noticed this too and have taken advantage of it to get the group to pursue him instead. Honestly the most scummy thing about him has been his lack of presence as of late which I don't know whether that's him lurking or just genuinely distracted by flesh-world problems.

humaneatingmonkey

Spoiler:

Last but certainly not least, we have HEM, the closest thing to a wild card all game. Obviously since dsjstr never posted there's nothing to read there, so I'll only focus on HEM.
One thing that's noticeable about his playstyle is just how little he puts into each post. It could simply be wanting to focus on getting his point across as efficiently as possible, but sometimes it feels like active lurking.
His first vote was for Micc, but if his later post is true, he didn't actually agree that Micc was scum, he was simply joining the most active wagon.
He brought up the idea that having day 1 go as long as possible was the most beneficial thing for town to do, which definitely seems like something legitimately helpful to the newbie townies. Afterwards, he linked to a very long guide to tells which, again, definitely feels more town oriented than scum.
One thing I find fascinating but dangerous is that HEM has a tendency to request more information out of others (such as in post 91 and 92), yet doesn't seem to like when people do the same to him (such as his response to 172 and his complete ignoring of what James said about him in 178).
It also seems like sometimes he votes on a dime, whereas others he needs significant reason to change votes. I wouldn't say this is a bad thing necessarily (for one thing it definitely seems like it would make it harder for scum to manipulate his vote), but definitely adds to his "wild card" vibe and makes me want to know more about the way he thinks.
It's also interesting that, despite saying multiple times that he found me scummy, he's never chosen to vote me and even given me advice on how to behave as town, which could mean any number of things.

Overall impression: The hardest to read of all. As I said, HEM definitely feels very wild-cardish, which makes him hard to read and even harder to predict. His desire for information yet closed-off nature on top of many of his micro-posts feeling less like contributions and more like keeping up the appearance that he's doing so and his tendency to try to get a reaction out of people could be either signs of scumplay or signs of an aggressive yet calculating townie. The things that have leaned me most to him being townie are his advice which is generally town-victory aligned and that his unpredictability hasn't been used in anyway that seems anti-town, but I acknowledge the possibility that these are simply smart plays.

Apologies for the length, there was just a lot of information to parse through. Hopefully, even if you don't necessarily agree with everything I say, this can help everyone look at things from new angles and maybe understand my thought process a bit.

I have a proposition that I'd like to make. I understand if you don't want to risk potentially falling into a mafia trap, so I'll stay silent on it if you'd prefer not to hear it, but if you're willing to hear me out, I'd gladly share, even if the consensus turns out to be a "no".

In post 277, humaneatingmonkey wrote:

In post 103, Dum wrote:Town Reads:

1-navigatorv. As of right now, everything they have done looks extremely townie to me, especially with the reads they have been posting (Wich i mostly agree with).

I doubt newbscum openly buddies like that without much explanation.

In post 275, humaneatingmonkey wrote:JV, what do you feel about these people?

In post 271, NinjaStore wrote:

Please post more. Why didn't you put Dum on E-2 in 165? Why didn't you vote for Micc after your 44?

I thought it was a dumb question so I didn't bother answering. I probably should have pointed that out at the time. The answer to James' second question should have been obvious. I had already made it pretty clear that I wasn't willing to put anyone at E-2 so early in day 1.

I didn't cast a vote in 165 because I was waiting to see what Micc would have to say and hadn't decided who was scummier between Micc and Dum yet. Casting a vote for one of them at that time anyway would have probably been a good idea in retrospect. I should be more proactive with my voting rather than hanging back. I eventually did put a vote on Micc since he didn't answer.

Bothering to put in all this analysis work in the first place does earn you some town points. It doesn't exonerate you, but I'm switching votes to a higher priority scum read for now.

UNVOTE: navigatorv
VOTE: Micc

In post 285, humaneatingmonkey wrote:Why?

In post 241, NinjaStore wrote:Most likely dum and navigatorv

In post 289, humaneatingmonkey wrote:You said that you agree that this is where we will lie, so I'm interested in who you'd prefer to elim (obviously it's JamesTheNames but I wanna hear what you think about the other people)

In post 66, Micc wrote:

In post 63, humaneatingmonkey wrote:VOTE: Micc

Teach us how to react to pressure, Micc.

I usually like to start by looking at the wagon and trying to understand why people are voting me. Is their case valid or is there some misunderstanding to be cleared up...are they campaigning for my elimination or just expressing their strongest read for the time being...are they arguing in good faith or just looking for a mid-elimination?

Navigatorv and Fizz Rabb seem to be pretty standard cases of Newbie sees aggressive wagoning and their instinct is to call it scum because scum’s goal is to make mis-eliminations. It’s a superficial level of thinking that basically everyone starts with. I’ve tried to explain how my aggressive wagoning can also be positive for Town, and I think they’ll understand with time.

Salsabil Faria could fall into the same category, but don’t have a great feel yet because her posting has been low substance.

You (HEM) presumably spent the 25 minutes between saying hi and voting me reading the game. You could have any number of motivations for the vote, but until you demonstrate a desire to see me eliminated today I’m going to take it as RVS.

Putting everything together, it doesn’t feel like a wagon with any real momentum and I’m satisfied with the extent I’ve justified my actions. My time tomorrow will be best spent working on making reads, but for now it’s well past bed time.

In post 272, NinjaStore wrote:

In post 258, navigatorv wrote:What I can do though is put my money where my mouth is. I have a proposition that I'd like to make. I understand if you don't want to risk potentially falling into a mafia trap, so I'll stay silent on it if you'd prefer not to hear it, but if you're willing to hear me out, I'd gladly share, even if the consensus turns out to be a "no".

I'm curious. Shoot.