Newbie 1714 (Game Over)

[Zyf]

why are you here jae

[JaeReed]

I was reading along since the start because it's Ranger's IC game. I thought you looked pretty town btw.

[Raskolnikov]

JaeReed!!!!!!

[Raskolnikov]

We should play again some time Jae. I'll buddy you as scum OR town

Also I'm sorry ranger because I know you get NK'd a TON especially n1 so it felt really mean for me to plan it even pregame and to confirm it when you weren't scumreading me that much but I really felt I had to in order to win here. Like even from a stress or sanity perspective I'd have been doublechecking and think over "what would ranger think about this" for everything I do d2/d3 instead of having more freedom and being a bit relaxed, because I was completely in full-panic mode from when I got the rolepm all the way throughout day 1. I think when people express paranoia even if it's minor it's really scary to those if its accurate, so though from your pov it didn't seem like anything it made me think it would turn into a full scumread after the sad flip (and the flip of whoever was chosen to be NK'd instead of you).

[Zyf]

I get why experienced players make alts now
;-;

[mhsmith0]

I was reading along since the start because it's Ranger's IC game. I thought you looked pretty town btw.

"This newbie is particularly hard. I guess that means Rask x mh?"


I still need to work on my skills in inventing fake cases so that next time you'll think it's easy and just be wrong about what the answer is

[Ranger]

I'm gonna go by the order the player died in. (Which means the scum will have to wait until last. I figure it's fair, considering you, yknow, actually won the game, so are the players who going forward probably don't need the advice as much. :P)

sad:

If I had advice for you, I think where the game took a wrong turn for you was in 53. You came across as inconsistent and weirdly defensive. In that situation, as town, it would probably have been best to either push much harder on the wagon, or entirely let the wagon go and see how it developed on its own. For 90, I think that you might have gotten better responses if your approach was more actively engaged rather than passive.

To walk through what I mean, this is what you did:

Beeboy once posted a Ranger-style list, with me at the bottom. She is, however, not fosing me anymore. Worth an explanation.
I am trying to get a meta on Ranger. Is this kind of list what he always use, his explanations before hand, etc...
Also, shouldnt ICs have a special post "hey,Im your IC which stands for inexperience-challenged......"

This is what I would have done:

beeboy, is there a reason you use a Ranger-style list?
You listed me at the bottom before, but now, you're not fosing me anymore. What caused the change?

Ranger, do you always use this kind of list?
Is there a reason you haven't given a post about ICing yet?
What do others think? Is this explanation normal for her?

It's the exact same information, but it's presented in a manner which is far more engaging. It might not instantly get you townread, but it'd most likely help stop the risk of getting mislynched.

I don't really have much beyond that to give you, regrettably. I know it's partially my fault, but you were mislynched really early into the day phase, and sometimes, that's just bad luck of the draw, and there's not much that could have been done to fix it.

Speaking of which...

My play:

One of the consequences of my chosen style of playing, and my early death, combined with the short D1, is that I never really got to explain where I was really coming from. The closest I got to giving reads was 91, but it was too early in the game for me to really have much strength in them. I also felt a little bit of a conflict: I could see Vandit was not playing optimally, and I could see sad was not playing optimally, but I was scumreading them both, so my instincts as an IC (to teach them to be better) were in direct conflict with my instincts as a player (to lynch them).

As a result, I didn't really do anything of note.

[Ranger]

Vandit:

I think the most critical lesson to tell you is that this is not Town of Salem. This is not EpicMafia. Discard all your knowledge of how the game works on those sites, and you will do much better in the forum environment. I say this after speaking to many players from those sites, who mostly say the same thing. The behaviors of those two sites are behaviors which on this site are heavily discouraged.

In this game, mafia is a team game, and if a player is acting self-centered, they're not only acting anti-town, but usually going to be seen as scum. While it may be true that being survivalistic is something both alignments display, it's more commonly a trait shown by the mafia, because the loss of a single town player isn't nearly as damaging as the loss of a single mafia member.

For further advice, I'd say that your early posting had a little bit of a forced tone to it, with things like the double-smileys. You actually had a good point in 138, but it was lost on everyone mostly because of that tone. I'm not sure how, exactly, I can coach you on your tone. Mostly, I would recommend speaking in the simplest terms, not using the buzzwords of the sites you come from. From that post, the way I'd most likely have worded it would be:

Know what? I'm gonna vote: Rask.
I don't think Sickofit is scum anymore. His reads come across as fearless and natural.
As for Rask, when you look at what Rask has posted...all of it is weak. Furthermore, when there were actually votes on him, he was afraid. Both indicate mafia.

I think another issue you had was in your hyper-aggression: your posts felt very openly hostile towards everyone. This I told you about while I was alive, and I still stand by it: regardless of whether you thought you were being abrasive, others saw your attacks and it didn't sit well with them (as shown by your lynch having three out of four members be town), so I'd encourage revisiting that level of intensity.

In short, my advice to you would actually be opposite of my advice to sad: tone it down a little. Scale back. There's a difference between engaging a player, and shoving something down their throats. Toxicity, which you had a fair amount of this game whether you'll acknowledge it or not, is not a good trait to have on here.

For

F-oh-ex

, I don't have much I can give you. Your power role play was fairly good: you targeted a decent target, and your results were both in the open (so, easy to find after you died), yet with just a good enough level of obscurity to prevent it from being a neon sign spelling out "I AM A COP WITH AN INNOCENT". I'd have to read the mafia topic to see if they figured out you were a PR and if so why, but even if they did see through it, I don't think your play was such that any scumteam could. It was good.

Play-wise, you already seem like a mature player. Your style is well-suited to this forum for mafia, so I don't have much general advice to give you. Continue playing; you've got a good thing going on. All you really need is time and experience to refine what you've already been doing.

beeboy:

Honestly don't have anything for ya. <3
You did fine. I've read your posts and I don't really think there's anything I would have done differently. Very easily, our roles could have been reversed.

[Ranger]

Blah, other half will have to wait until tomorrow.

Apologies for the delays.

Real-life's been keeping me busy.

[Zyf]

Rip my feedback

[mhsmith0]

It will come, never fear.

[mhsmith0]

One piece of advice that I think is useful... meta. Meta is NOT the end all and be all of scum-hunting, but you CAN sometimes get a feel for how people play using meta. Try and find a completed game or two that someone has finished (my wiki lists them ALL, other than 15-20 minute day turbos that I do on MU), and just skim and get a sense of their playstyle. Some people play very similarly as either alignment, but many don't.

Certain things are highly manipulable (whether people do or don't bus is an easy example), but others are much more difficult. Tone, level of engagement, reaction to pressure, aggression, what kind of questions they ask (or how many), how much thought players put into their reads, whether players are more or less prone to buddying, these are all things that, for at least some players, are difficult to keep constant between their town and wolf games.

Let me give you a single example:
Mini Normal 1775
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... er_sort=Go
this was one of my first few games on the site (at least when it started). It's a game where I grew a LOT over the two and half months I was alive (also I lost at the end because no one listens to the dead townie who accurately pointed at the last wolf ). But I think it's also a game where you could look at that, then look at this, and see a difference. Maybe I'm wrong. But it was a concern that I explicitly stated in mafia chat (which everyone should be looking at, by the way), which means that if nothing else I at least believed it to be the case.

[Raskolnikov]

Rip my feedback

Zyf I think you did fantastic at expressing your thoughts and I know if I was town here I'd still have had you as top townread for all of it. I think communication is so important as town and you already have that down, and like this if you're town people shouldn't have any trouble townreading you or understanding your scumreads.
Only thing is I guess with sick I thought you could've reached more out to him and ask questions, it seemed like you had your mind made up on that from that flip and so weren't as open to reconsidering as otherwise (but to be fair beeboy and other people scumread sick too so idk). I wasn't town so I don't really know what it was like and I can't judge much either. Sad and vandit on the other hand, not really anyones fault.

Oh and the teams, chaining people's alignments together is VERY dangerous unless you're 100% sure, I think it's way safer to just lynch individually scummiest person and re-evaluate next day because of the dangers of calling teams when you aren't certain. The scum (real partner) will be more than happy pushing the false team, and the scumminess of the scum in the two will make the town-one look worse. It's very much in scum interest to hard buddy and defend scummiest person if people start seeing it as a team between the two because even if scum gets lynched first it's likely the town person gets return lynched in 3p. Everyone writing sick off so early into the day also I think felt terrible for him in that position and got him in the defensive/everyone-against-me mentality which people scumread further... flailing and being upset at being in a very bad position can definitely come from town too so it can be good to back off a bit and give some space if someone reacts this way.

[Raskolnikov]

I'm gonna go by the order the player died in. (Which means the scum will have to wait until last. I figure it's fair, considering you, yknow, actually won the game, so are the players who going forward probably don't need the advice as much. :P)

Nooooo! Need... feedback... sustenance. Pls

Uhhh okay maybe mhsmith since he's really good probably doesn't need it as much so maybe give me more instead pls :V (Bwahaha)

[mhsmith0]

Lol so hard at that. I DEMAND THAT YOU LOOK AT ALL OF MY TERRIBLE WOLFING GAMES! BOW BEFORE MY INABILITY TO ESCAPE THE ROPE! (although in fairness, for the most part I've tended to go up against some pretty scary towns and/or people way too familiar w/ my town game when I've been a wolf so *shrugs* - this was literally the first game I've ever played as wolf when no one playing had seen me as town, so that was def. helpful )

[mhsmith0]

btw I think this is now my favorite town read that I've gotten in any game

http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post409599

I think maybe Nacho now understands me a little TOO well

[Zyf]

rip ranger feedback smfh

[mhsmith0]

She will do it. I think she's been a bit busy and/or unwell lately. But it will come.

[mhsmith0]

Fwiw I'm kinda curious what she will have to say about where I can improve. I'm quite happy w my FOX shot, but overall I think I got a bit lucky in that I joined a game where the town ate itself and other than pr hunting I didn't have to do terribly much.

(Note: this is actually a common thing; lots of towns eat themselves. But I still don't feel confident in my ability to actively wolf instead of the more passive showing I put up this time).

[mhsmith0]

@zyf: one thing that may help... WHY did you town read me/rask? What did we do to earn your trust? If you wanna talk through that, it's a first step towards figuring out what went wrong (and then from there, what can be improved).

[Zyf]

@zyf: one thing that may help... WHY did you town read me/rask? What did we do to earn your trust? If you wanna talk through that, it's a first step towards figuring out what went wrong (and then from there, what can be improved).

You was pretty easy, I thought you were cop peek.

Rask...iunno. Tone, I guess? At the end of this game I still had yet to experience scum play myself (now i have), so I may have done some things differently?
It also could have been involuntary poe. Beeboy was just...out of it, and sick...well, you know how scummy he seemed to me.

Tbqh still irked at rask for the twilight troll.

[mhsmith0]

Some notes:

1) wrt FOX peek, board consensus was that it was probably you. It may be ok to think someone else MAY be a cop peek, but you need to be careful w that. Because if you're wrong it can really hurt you.

2) apparently rask has struggled a lot as mafia. So I think part of it was celebratory. It's hard to fight the urge to have some fun w a win; when I (FINALLY) ended my six game losing streak I had to fight pretty hard against bring overly celebratory (and I don't know that I really succeeded, since I'd somehow managed to skate by on a total bs fake cop claim in a large mush mash game).

3) so what about rasks tone gave u that read? If you make a tonal read (and there are people who can do that quite well), then you want to make sure you understand what's driving it and have a solid sense of what kind of tone in what situations is likely to be indicative. For instance, anger is easy to fake. But pride, frustration, boredom, etc. can be harder to fake, and then you need to ask why dies that person have that tone in that situation.

I'm heading out fur now, will be back later.

[mhsmith0]

An example of an accurate tonal read (from an observer of a game I subbed into, who made a day one guess on the four wolves... And was right on three of them)
http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post291785

Cron was working super hard at developing his reads and he had the proper emotional investment in what he was doing. I don't feel like pulling up his posts to cite specific examples, so let's just talk again about the Trundle thing. He soulreads a guy as a wolf based on one post and has four reasons for it, and he's super proud of himself and patting himself on the back for it. Wolves aren't trying that hard to develop quick reads and they tend to struggle to come up with that level of insight and they aren't good at getting the subtle emotions right. And his whole day was full of things like that. Cron has played several wolf games on this site and his posting was bland and forgettable each time.

[Raskolnikov]

@zyf: one thing that may help... WHY did you town read me/rask? What did we do to earn your trust? If you wanna talk through that, it's a first step towards figuring out what went wrong (and then from there, what can be improved).

You was pretty easy, I thought you were cop peek.

Rask...iunno. Tone, I guess? At the end of this game I still had yet to experience scum play myself (now i have), so I may have done some things differently?
It also could have been involuntary poe. Beeboy was just...out of it, and sick...well, you know how scummy he seemed to me.

Tbqh still irked at rask for the twilight troll.

I'm sorry. Mhsmith is right in the why (I was finally glad after being a nervous wreck for 80% of the game and not enjoying any of the previous maf games) but it doesn't really excuse me being a jerk there

I assume the tone was some of the friendliness/buddying? I hope it doesn't have unintended consequences in future if town are being nice to you and you feel extra suspicious of them for it.
But saying it like that makes it sound like I wouldn't treat you that way as town, but I think I would have! I really did like your play here, how you expressed yourself and how I'd still see you as strong town even if I was town here, and it reminded me of when I played with JaeReed when I was town. Even just the activity really drives the game forward and pushing the exchange of information like you do is extremely pro-town. Someone with ranger's experience can have really good game analysis but someone driving discussion like you almost unlocks that; and in a longer day 1 I think you'd have bounced a lot of ideas off her (and got her to talk more) and together have went so much into everything that by the end we'd have had a very developed day full of info+interactions which would make it that much harder for scum to hide in. Activity(getting the whole town talking) and communication/reaching out to people, plus how you express yourself(so people can understand+townread you) are huge parts of townplay you already seem great at, and scumhunting you just need experience but yeah those other things are already impressive.
Uhm so yeah, genuine doesn't always equal town because scum can still have certain genuine emotions and expressions, like mhsmith said.
Of course if it wasn't on this basis you read me, you can ignore everything I just said

[Zyf]

No i think you summarized roughly how I ended up seeing it.