Mini normal 1823 dead thread

[mhsmith0]

On a more serious note, my d1 reads are pretty consistently worse than random; where I tend to shine is late game after flips. I feel like I should almost go into d2 and actively reverse my reads sometimes; lord knows my early reads have been exactly opposite of correct often enough

[mastin2]

That actually is a valid strategy, mhsmith.

[mhsmith0]

I'm just bad at knowing when to do it or not lol. Of course I'm also consistently bad at separating bad town from wolves, with recent game long tunnels on ploben and ranger being particularly notable recent examples

[Transcend]

Yeah i game long tunneled ranger to my demise as well. Shame cause she's a good player, i just always fos her.

[mhsmith0]

In my case I happened to be in what was possibly her worst town game ever. Even more amusingly, it partially overlapped w a game where she was scum and I was town reading her lol.

[mastin2]

That's the thing about being in multiple games with a player:
Your view on the player is gonna be tainted, and there's nothing you can do.

Aside from not playing multiple games that is.
(Of course, it can happen even when you're only playing one game if you also happen to be

moderating

a game. )

[mhsmith0]

I just think it was funny I was wrong on her in both games at the same time. Though in each I was slowly starting to come around to the possibility I might have just been wrong, and then villagers got bored and decided to end the game (which is a super annoying thing that happens to me way too often in my town games )

[mastin2]

Being wrong in both is easily remedied: reverse the read in both.

Don't worry about reasons if the game's still ongoing.
Trust me, you'll look worse if you lie than if you just make an unexplained reversal.

[mhsmith0]

oh i totally know. one ended well before the other, which gave me doubt in the second. It was just a game where she hard led a ridiculous lynch on a super obvious townie D1 for super sketchy reasons (I subbed in D2, if I'd been there D1 I'd have put a stop to it I think), had a ridiculous case on another likely townie, went crazy OMGUS on me (for bizarre reasons including the worst meta read on me I'd ever seen), and soft defended a likely wolf (who was in fact a wolf). It was one of those things where I was like, this can't POSSIBLY be town... right? (it was town)

[mastin2]

Helpful hint:
If you EVER,
And I do mean, EVER,
Think, "This can't possibly be town, right?"
100% of the time:
It's town.

[mhsmith0]

Wolf or bad town: separating the two is something I'd bad at

[mastin2]

The key isn't to look at actions.
Scum do town stuff a lot, and only rarely do scum stuff.
Town to scum stuff all the time, and only a fraction of the time can you see them do townposting that makes you think they are assuredly town.

Actions, in short, are useless: they're first-level play, so to speak.

Mafia is, at its core, a game of psychology. It is not a game with mathematical answers. You can game setups by using math, sure: crunch the numbers, find the probabilities, figure out which claims are more likely, and whatnot, but that only applies to PR claims when they pop up. So, the ability to use hard-defined limits in a game is incredibly-limited. It has its place, but usually is not what you need.

What you need is to look behind the action. What is the player going through? If the player is compromised in some fashion, their play is going to be erratic. This applies regardless of the three types: emotional, physical, or mental. If someone is mentally compromised, what that basically means is that they are barely functioning. If someone is physically compromised, it means that something in real-life is preventing them from being able to give something the same level of critical thought that they normally would. If someone is emotionally compromised, they are in a state where regardless of their alignment they are going to have some severe mood swings.

Now, there's an art to reading those things. First is to check sitewide activity: are those things influencing everywhere, or just one place? Now, this is NOT a check to see if they're lying. Nobody ever lies about being compromised and if you so much as think as much you're probably a worse scumbag than any of the scum players. This is a check to see how their compromised state affects them elsewhere. If, across all games, you see the exact same pattern emerging, then the chances are, the compromised state cannot be read as alignment-indicative. If, across all games, you see the same pattern, but there are little oddities here and there, reading it MAY be possible, but is an advanced-level skill. If, across all games, you see vastly different responses, then this is not necessarily a sign that you can read their compromised state...but what it DOES tell you, is this vital piece of information:
How they are compromised IS in fact influenced by the situation at hand. This is not necessarily alignment-indicative; two town games can have vastly different circumstances which lead to different effects. Same for two scum games. A town game might look identical to a scum game as well if the circumstances within that game are similar enough.

But, while not alignment-indicative, it tells you that you can prod and poke the player in question and figure out what lies beneath, even in their compromised state, and that you can find useful info there. This is where checking other games stops being useful (you can't exactly meta from ongoing games anyway), but if you've gotten this far, they've served their purpose: they tell you what to look for.

Now that you know what the player has gone through, the next step is to look at how it has influenced them in the current game with the current circumstances. Read not what they are doing, but why they are doing it: is the action born of a scum player pushing a clear agenda, or is the action scattered, without a clear, defined pattern? Scum can obfuscate stupidity all they want, but when they do so, they still are pushing for a specific cause, a specific reason. Town, on the other hand, when erratic...will not have a clear idea of what they are aiming for.

Furthermore, there's a difference between town contradictions and scum contradictions, and contradictions that are just the player not remembering. Town contradictions spawn from poor memory: they push for something, forget about it, and then later, push something else which contradicts what they said before. Scum contradictions spawn from a changed agenda. They push for something, and then, when it is convenient for them to push for something else, they start pushing there instead. This difference is hard to pick up, but vital. Then there are contradictions that exist purely because the passage of time is a harsh mistress. In these cases, the only alignment-indicative things are hard facts which contradict things. "I investigated this player N2"-->"I got no result N2" would be an example (albeit unlikely and extreme) of a scum contradiction.

Even there, you need player psychology: dig into the player's history. Are they someone who works off of memory a lot? Or are they someone who religiously checks their results to ensure accuracy? If the former, then ask yourself: how important was the piece of information to the person giving it? Was it just something that they saw and then wrote off, or was it something absolutely vital to them? This makes the difference between derptown and derpscum: derptown may forget small pieces of information that they wrote off and misremember the details until they check. Derpscum are more likely to forget larger details that were key events in the game.

But even there, you need to be careful. Scum tend to be more meticulous about the details, whereas town are more reckless. The above will catch more reckless scum and help clear more idiotic town, but what you need to be aware of is the other side: if you've got a player whose psychology is meticulous attention to detail, then as scum, their story is going to be flawless, or near-flawless. If that same player has a story that has some issues, then ironically enough, it's more likely for them to be town. What you need there is to look at their presented argument from THEIR point of view: in both cases, they should be presenting something they think is a flawless argument. As scum, because they designed it without any holes, and as town, because they know they are town and therefore they KNOW their argument is real by default. So, when examining the arguments, the one which has a few holes that the player making it won't see is more likely to be town than the one which has no holes.

This, because the scum player's argument isn't made from their perspective. They're making an argument to fool other players, so they are thinking like those other players and trying to present facts in a favorable light to those other players; the town player's argument is made from their perspective, because they are presenting the facts as they know them.

I realize this is complex, and highly circumstantial. Following the above, I'm basically telling you to half of the time side with the flawed argument, and the other half of the time, side with the less-flawed argument. But that's the thing about mafia: it's not universal. There IS no universal procedure. You need to adapt. You need to be able to identify what you're up against, and then from this profile, figure out what the most likely options are.

When it comes to the higher-level players, they do this instinctively. For instance, I've played enough games that I can flash-profile a player just on a few select details. If I have previous game experience with them, I'll have a better profile on them (this is the CORRECT way to use meta, where you're doing it to establish a profile on them rather than as an analytical facts-of-them approach that so many flawed meta users try), but I can do it even without that prior-game experience. What kind of avatar they have, what kind of sig they have, the way they speak, and most importantly, what they say and when.

That tells me what they are, and once I know what they are, I have a fair idea of what they're doing, which is why I'm able to call out players as "town" or "scum" so early-on with seemingly no evidence at all: because in their actions which THEY think are meaningless, I've assigned meaning to.

tl;dr:
Don't use meta to establish facts. "They do this as town, but this as scum." That is wrong. That is thinking of the game in terms of math, in terms of statistics.
Use meta to establish profiles. "They think like this." That's thinking of the game in terms of psychology.

[mastin2]

Some further reading:
this post of mine is focused on me, but it actually covers a lot of the above, and can be turned into some general practices in psychological profiling and reading of players.

To wit,
Town players don't know what's going on, whereas scum players (barring multiball and even then) do.
Town players' actions will generally show some consistent trends, but the most consistent trend of all is how they'll lack clear consistency: they'll have patterns here and there, but for the most part, they'll be prodding around everywhere. This is because

every

town player, universally, has their own method of throwing mud on the wall and seeing what sticks, but they have no idea what will or won't stick.

Scum players' actions will occasionally have inconsistencies, but the most consistent trend will be how they'll lack inconsistency. Some scum players will have wild contradictions here and there, but for the most part, their reads will evolve in a suspiciously-consistent, suspiciously-logical, suspiciously-perfect way, with no leap in logic at all. Of course, player psychology comes into play here. There's a difference between someone like fferyllt giving reads and someone like Titus giving reads and someone like MS Marangal giving reads and Malakittens giving reads and me giving reads and, say, Klingoncelt giving reads. Some are methodical even as town. But this is a helpful general pointer, to look at how smooth the transitions are.

To put it in math terms: Think of reads in term of a graph, on which you're mapping their progression. If you see a dead-straight line in a reads trajectory (as in, you draw a perfect line, and it matches perfectly), it should raise a red flag. If you try to draw a straight line and you see all these points EVERYWHERE that are off the line, it might raise a red flag. (In short, either your line is off, or theirs is.) If you draw a line, and there are small points that diverge up and down from the line, you've got a more natural reads progression, because in real-life, statistics are used in that manner: they'll show general progressions, general trends, a general prediction, but the data for the actual event won't line up perfectly. Just close, with the occasional extreme deviant off of unforeseeable divergences.

Town players, generally, don't think they need allies, so will be more likely to alienate a player; scum players, generally, will be catering to specific town players in order to get their aid. However, town players do seek allies, and scum do alienate players, it's just you need to look at the how and the why: a town player seeking an ally is doing so because they have conviction: "Dude. That player is scum. DUDE. TRUST ME. THAT PLAYER IS SCUM. Jesus, dude, how many times do I have to tell you! Please, help me. That player is scum. Work with me, you idiot." A scum player seeking an ally is doing so because they want to form a long-term plan.

A town player antagonizing someone is doing so because they don't care. A scum player antagonizing a player is doing so to strategically cut ties to that player: attempt to make their conflict look Town-town, attempt to paint the other player as scum, a self-defense mechanism to not look bad themselves, stuff like that. They are antagonizing a player to intentionally build frustration levels, because frustration levels allow scum to manipulate emotions better.

Looking for who wants to find scum, versus who wants to just lynch a player, is a good helpful pointer to. Town hold interest in lynching scum, specifically, and only scum. Scum hold interest in lynching, period, just as long as it ends the day and gets the game into the night where they hold control. Related, who is trying to look town? Town players shouldn't be trying to look town; they should be trying to find scum. A player trying to look town is trying to avoid the noose, something which has a far more scum-oriented mindset.

You also have to look for who is defending who, and why, and just as importantly: when a player

isn't

being defended. Scum have other scum, who unless they have bad chemistry, will usually hold some reluctance to bus. They'll maybe decide to hard-bus, or even cross-bus eventually, but prior to the decision to bus, they will likely not have decided to go for it. So, if a player is being attacked and has no defenders, or virtually no defenders, there's a fair chance that scum are taking advantage of a town player that is a weak link, or decided to bus a scum player they decided was a weak link. In either case, there's scum on the wagon most likely.

It all boils down, however, to the term I coined:
Situational Awareness.
Above all my other skills, that's my greatest asset.
Knowing the players, knowing the circumstances behind those players (for instance, what games have they recently finished, especially with me?), and knowing the game.

It became instinctive to me, second-nature, but it took me years of playing mafia and thinking along those lines before I had it down.
It also took me a lot of getting familiarity with the current mafiascum playerbase: I knew about 70% of the players I was playing with from recent games, and of the 30%, knew about 40% just from games too old to be entirely reliable.

[mhsmith0]

tldr :p

more seriously I will def. read. just need time to really focus on it

[mastin2]

If you want a practical demonstration of me going through this process, I can do it for one specific player in any completed game, but I have two stipulations for this:
One, the game should be 75 pages or shorter. (Ideally, 50 or so pages, give or take 10, so something like 35-65ish. 75 is my hard-cutoff.) Don't make me read a 200-page game, I'm not gonna especially if I wasn't there.
Two, the player in question should have a one-page iso. Ideally, less than a hundred, but my cutoff is 200. Don't make me read an absurdly-long player.

Mind you, it wouldn't exactly be SHORT, but it'd give you a real-life example. Just link to the game, and give the player you want me to read. (This technique is best applied to only one player, so if there's multiple occupants to a slot, I'm not reading them all, just the one.)

[mhsmith0]

Hmm. I'll try and think of a good example.

[Zyf]

Mafia Psychology: Identifying the difference between scummy town and actual scum

by Mastin2

Spoiler: Part 1

The key isn't to look at actions.
Scum do town stuff a lot, and only rarely do scum stuff.
Town to scum stuff all the time, and only a fraction of the time can you see them do townposting that makes you think they are assuredly town.

Actions, in short, are useless: they're first-level play, so to speak.

Mafia is, at its core, a game of psychology. It is not a game with mathematical answers. You can game setups by using math, sure: crunch the numbers, find the probabilities, figure out which claims are more likely, and whatnot, but that only applies to PR claims when they pop up. So, the ability to use hard-defined limits in a game is incredibly-limited. It has its place, but usually is not what you need.

What you need is to look behind the action. What is the player going through? If the player is compromised in some fashion, their play is going to be erratic. This applies regardless of the three types: emotional, physical, or mental. If someone is mentally compromised, what that basically means is that they are barely functioning. If someone is physically compromised, it means that something in real-life is preventing them from being able to give something the same level of critical thought that they normally would. If someone is emotionally compromised, they are in a state where regardless of their alignment they are going to have some severe mood swings.

Now, there's an art to reading those things. First is to check sitewide activity: are those things influencing everywhere, or just one place? Now, this is NOT a check to see if they're lying. Nobody ever lies about being compromised and if you so much as think as much you're probably a worse scumbag than any of the scum players. This is a check to see how their compromised state affects them elsewhere. If, across all games, you see the exact same pattern emerging, then the chances are, the compromised state cannot be read as alignment-indicative. If, across all games, you see the same pattern, but there are little oddities here and there, reading it MAY be possible, but is an advanced-level skill. If, across all games, you see vastly different responses, then this is not necessarily a sign that you can read their compromised state...but what it DOES tell you, is this vital piece of information:
How they are compromised IS in fact influenced by the situation at hand. This is not necessarily alignment-indicative; two town games can have vastly different circumstances which lead to different effects. Same for two scum games. A town game might look identical to a scum game as well if the circumstances within that game are similar enough.

But, while not alignment-indicative, it tells you that you can prod and poke the player in question and figure out what lies beneath, even in their compromised state, and that you can find useful info there. This is where checking other games stops being useful (you can't exactly meta from ongoing games anyway), but if you've gotten this far, they've served their purpose: they tell you what to look for.

Now that you know what the player has gone through, the next step is to look at how it has influenced them in the current game with the current circumstances. Read not what they are doing, but why they are doing it: is the action born of a scum player pushing a clear agenda, or is the action scattered, without a clear, defined pattern? Scum can obfuscate stupidity all they want, but when they do so, they still are pushing for a specific cause, a specific reason. Town, on the other hand, when erratic...will not have a clear idea of what they are aiming for.

Furthermore, there's a difference between town contradictions and scum contradictions, and contradictions that are just the player not remembering. Town contradictions spawn from poor memory: they push for something, forget about it, and then later, push something else which contradicts what they said before. Scum contradictions spawn from a changed agenda. They push for something, and then, when it is convenient for them to push for something else, they start pushing there instead. This difference is hard to pick up, but vital. Then there are contradictions that exist purely because the passage of time is a harsh mistress. In these cases, the only alignment-indicative things are hard facts which contradict things. "I investigated this player N2"-->"I got no result N2" would be an example (albeit unlikely and extreme) of a scum contradiction.

Even there, you need player psychology: dig into the player's history. Are they someone who works off of memory a lot? Or are they someone who religiously checks their results to ensure accuracy? If the former, then ask yourself: how important was the piece of information to the person giving it? Was it just something that they saw and then wrote off, or was it something absolutely vital to them? This makes the difference between derptown and derpscum: derptown may forget small pieces of information that they wrote off and misremember the details until they check. Derpscum are more likely to forget larger details that were key events in the game.

But even there, you need to be careful. Scum tend to be more meticulous about the details, whereas town are more reckless. The above will catch more reckless scum and help clear more idiotic town, but what you need to be aware of is the other side: if you've got a player whose psychology is meticulous attention to detail, then as scum, their story is going to be flawless, or near-flawless. If that same player has a story that has some issues, then ironically enough, it's more likely for them to be town. What you need there is to look at their presented argument from THEIR point of view: in both cases, they should be presenting something they think is a flawless argument. As scum, because they designed it without any holes, and as town, because they know they are town and therefore they KNOW their argument is real by default. So, when examining the arguments, the one which has a few holes that the player making it won't see is more likely to be town than the one which has no holes.

This, because the scum player's argument isn't made from their perspective. They're making an argument to fool other players, so they are thinking like those other players and trying to present facts in a favorable light to those other players; the town player's argument is made from their perspective, because they are presenting the facts as they know them.

I realize this is complex, and highly circumstantial. Following the above, I'm basically telling you to half of the time side with the flawed argument, and the other half of the time, side with the less-flawed argument. But that's the thing about mafia: it's not universal. There IS no universal procedure. You need to adapt. You need to be able to identify what you're up against, and then from this profile, figure out what the most likely options are.

When it comes to the higher-level players, they do this instinctively. For instance, I've played enough games that I can flash-profile a player just on a few select details. If I have previous game experience with them, I'll have a better profile on them (this is the CORRECT way to use meta, where you're doing it to establish a profile on them rather than as an analytical facts-of-them approach that so many flawed meta users try), but I can do it even without that prior-game experience. What kind of avatar they have, what kind of sig they have, the way they speak, and most importantly, what they say and when.

That tells me what they are, and once I know what they are, I have a fair idea of what they're doing, which is why I'm able to call out players as "town" or "scum" so early-on with seemingly no evidence at all: because in their actions which THEY think are meaningless, I've assigned meaning to.

tl;dr:
Don't use meta to establish facts. "They do this as town, but this as scum." That is wrong. That is thinking of the game in terms of math, in terms of statistics.
Use meta to establish profiles. "They think like this." That's thinking of the game in terms of psychology.

Spoiler: Further Reading

Some further reading:
this post of mine is focused on me, but it actually covers a lot of the above, and can be turned into some general practices in psychological profiling and reading of players.

To wit,
Town players don't know what's going on, whereas scum players (barring multiball and even then) do.
Town players' actions will generally show some consistent trends, but the most consistent trend of all is how they'll lack clear consistency: they'll have patterns here and there, but for the most part, they'll be prodding around everywhere. This is because

every

town player, universally, has their own method of throwing mud on the wall and seeing what sticks, but they have no idea what will or won't stick.

Scum players' actions will occasionally have inconsistencies, but the most consistent trend will be how they'll lack inconsistency. Some scum players will have wild contradictions here and there, but for the most part, their reads will evolve in a suspiciously-consistent, suspiciously-logical, suspiciously-perfect way, with no leap in logic at all. Of course, player psychology comes into play here. There's a difference between someone like fferyllt giving reads and someone like Titus giving reads and someone like MS Marangal giving reads and Malakittens giving reads and me giving reads and, say, Klingoncelt giving reads. Some are methodical even as town. But this is a helpful general pointer, to look at how smooth the transitions are.

To put it in math terms: Think of reads in term of a graph, on which you're mapping their progression. If you see a dead-straight line in a reads trajectory (as in, you draw a perfect line, and it matches perfectly), it should raise a red flag. If you try to draw a straight line and you see all these points EVERYWHERE that are off the line, it might raise a red flag. (In short, either your line is off, or theirs is.) If you draw a line, and there are small points that diverge up and down from the line, you've got a more natural reads progression, because in real-life, statistics are used in that manner: they'll show general progressions, general trends, a general prediction, but the data for the actual event won't line up perfectly. Just close, with the occasional extreme deviant off of unforeseeable divergences.

Town players, generally, don't think they need allies, so will be more likely to alienate a player; scum players, generally, will be catering to specific town players in order to get their aid. However, town players do seek allies, and scum do alienate players, it's just you need to look at the how and the why: a town player seeking an ally is doing so because they have conviction: "Dude. That player is scum. DUDE. TRUST ME. THAT PLAYER IS SCUM. Jesus, dude, how many times do I have to tell you! Please, help me. That player is scum. Work with me, you idiot." A scum player seeking an ally is doing so because they want to form a long-term plan.

A town player antagonizing someone is doing so because they don't care. A scum player antagonizing a player is doing so to strategically cut ties to that player: attempt to make their conflict look Town-town, attempt to paint the other player as scum, a self-defense mechanism to not look bad themselves, stuff like that. They are antagonizing a player to intentionally build frustration levels, because frustration levels allow scum to manipulate emotions better.

Looking for who wants to find scum, versus who wants to just lynch a player, is a good helpful pointer to. Town hold interest in lynching scum, specifically, and only scum. Scum hold interest in lynching, period, just as long as it ends the day and gets the game into the night where they hold control. Related, who is trying to look town? Town players shouldn't be trying to look town; they should be trying to find scum. A player trying to look town is trying to avoid the noose, something which has a far more scum-oriented mindset.

You also have to look for who is defending who, and why, and just as importantly: when a player

isn't

being defended. Scum have other scum, who unless they have bad chemistry, will usually hold some reluctance to bus. They'll maybe decide to hard-bus, or even cross-bus eventually, but prior to the decision to bus, they will likely not have decided to go for it. So, if a player is being attacked and has no defenders, or virtually no defenders, there's a fair chance that scum are taking advantage of a town player that is a weak link, or decided to bus a scum player they decided was a weak link. In either case, there's scum on the wagon most likely.

It all boils down, however, to the term I coined:
Situational Awareness.
Above all my other skills, that's my greatest asset.
Knowing the players, knowing the circumstances behind those players (for instance, what games have they recently finished, especially with me?), and knowing the game.

It became instinctive to me, second-nature, but it took me years of playing mafia and thinking along those lines before I had it down.
It also took me a lot of getting familiarity with the current mafiascum playerbase: I knew about 70% of the players I was playing with from recent games, and of the 30%, knew about 40% just from games too old to be entirely reliable.

Good read
Will probably bookmark this tbh XD

[mastin2]

I would be somewhat-tempted to make an MD thread after this game's finished, but (1) it'd require some editing first, (2) it'd probably be hyped up since I haven't made an MD article in years, (3) and ultimately be a disappointment, (4) largely because the advice I give there isn't exactly revolutionary or groundbreaking. You can ask pretty much any veteran about this sort of thing, and while they may use different explanations and may not be so verbose, they'll tell you that it's more or less true.

[mhsmith0]

Sure, how about alpaca in open 642? That was a short ISO and one I really struggled to sort. Also that means someone else actually has to read that game
http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=66731
Ps that was seriously an un-fun game to play, though; I can think of a different one if you want.

[mastin2]

No problem.

I am the new sushi and using my spiritual communication I have heard sushi say that BTD6_maker is confirmed scum since he is so smart.
VOTE: BTD6_maker

We start with the RVS. The first thing I notice about it is that Alpaca is making an RVS that is entirely detached from the rest of the game. There are two mindsets at this point: one, Alpaca could be scum, who doesn't know how to make a natural-sounding RVS (thus, makes a random one), or two, Alpaca is town who didn't bother/care to pay attention to the already-existing RVS content.

Now, in my experience, the latter crops up more often than the former: scum who don't know how to act in the RVS usually try to interact with the existing content but make it in an awkward way, rather than be in their own world, because being in their own world risks having them stick out like a sore thumb. As a result, this would instantly make me have a "town?" read, or "townish" read on Alpaca.

63 by Alpaca is, as far as I can tell, a fairly null statement, because it's a statement devoid of any bias: it's commentary, but it's more like theory than actual game talk. That exact post could be found in an MD thread and it wouldn't look a shred different. My impression on Alpaca, come 80, is that Alpaca is a new player: not an alt, not someone with a ton of mafia experience. Someone who has been in a few games (perhaps offsite), but lacks a lot of practical experience. This is among the harder type of players to read, because they're in a state where they're still evolving their play.

Some scummers continue to change their playstyle throughout every game. But the vast majority of scummers settle down into a general style after a while, and reach a point where they plateau in their growth. While there are going to be small changes from game to game, they generally have a certain style to them that you'll see every time. This is not the case for newer players. They are still discovering themselves, so they are prone to change, to shifts, as they are exposed to new things. But getting to the actual post in question:

He also might just be trying to get the game moving since we are only at 4 pages.
To respond to your Kap post IV I see it as a complete null. I honestly think that it is more likely for a scum to quickhammer his buddy in RVS than it is for a townie to take the risk on hitting scum. If somebody quickhammered in RVS no matter what the other person flipped I would consider them scummy and at the very least anti-town, I just generally wouldn't' want them to stay super long in a game since they are either ridiculously impulsive, scum, or just make generally bad moves. That said I don't scum read him for it since I think that post could have come from either scum or town.

This is a read-reinforcer. It does not increase my townread on Alpaca, nor does it decrease the read on Alpaca, however, it is not a net-null post. Rather, it is a post that reinforces my initial weak town callout.

In this case, it's because Alpaca is inexperienced, and this looks like inexperienced town trying to probe the waters, not quite knowing what they are doing. An alternative reading of this would be scum trying to maintain a neutral, arbiter role, however, this is not the vibe I got from Alpaca, both because that is not a strategy many newer scum players take, and because my gut would tell me otherwise.

Ranger I would also love to know how I am being town read for post 28 since that was just an RVS joke and held no real meaning for me. We haven't ever played together either and I have yet to even finish a game on this site so meta clearly isn't a factor.

This is another town indicator, especially in a newer player. Experienced scum know that when a player townreads them, to show "paranoia" at that read, as to cement their position as a townread. But inexperienced players, as scum, are more inclined to not question the townread. A player thinking that there's no reason for them to be so strongly town is a fairly good indicator that player is town, especially when new.

From this point, I can also get an idea of Alpaca's personality: Alpaca is not a loud, active, aggressive player. Alpaca is an inquisitive player, but a fairly passive one. This insight into Alpaca's psyche can shed light on the nature of what Alpaca is doing.

Ranger would you care to elaborate on why you think I'm town for my RVS vote in post 28. Because I am super curious

This, given the profile, is another promising sign for Alpaca being town: Alpaca was being ignored by Ranger. So, Alpaca brought it up again, somewhat more directly. This shows that, even though Alpaca is a fairly passive player, Alpaca is still trying to get answers. Alpaca was following through, and wasn't going to let it slide. A passive scum player, on the other hand, would have been more inclined to not bring the question up again, because it yielded no results and thus, no gain to be had.

This is one long twilight

This is the first post by Alpaca that would have me concerned: Alpaca had given no game content between 121 and the lynch. Alpaca was still voting his RVS target, and had only launched a single inquiry since then, relating to his own player-slot. This selfishness, along with a lack of commentary, would be a red flag.

However, one thing I notice in the iso of Alpaca: across the whole game, including the RVS, Alpaca only voted five times, and the first three were for the same player, indicating Alpaca is not quick to vote, and also indicating that Alpaca held some genuine suspicion of BTD6_maker. Depending on how early that suspicion arose (for instance, was Alpaca's RVS vote truly entirely-random, or did Alpaca see BTD6_maker post and vote him after that with a seemingly-random reason?), that could indicate Alpaca WAS voicing suspicion, just in a low-key, subtle way. This caution with voting implies that Alpaca sees voting as a big thing, meaning it is a meaningful event to him, and he had left it on BTD6_maker.

That casts his D1 in an entirely different, even positive, light. But, I admit, this is a bit of a cheat, using the entire game's iso for knowledge, so back to a post-by-post:

Music is definitely scummier than Mail. Music/RC is extremely uncooperative, characteristic of his scum game in Newbie 1700. He refuses to help Town or even interact with those scumreading him, just as in Newbie 1700.

On the contrary they seem to be heavily interacting with Ranger, but like only Ranger. They townread IV, but aside from scum reading Ranger and their one in the moment vote on you they haven't done much else.

This shows some good analysis of the situation. While there's that same concern about Alpaca not doing much in the department of voting, and also focusing on only a few select players, this is showing some critical thinking. It vaguely supports the analytical town position, though could be seen as cautious arbiter scum.

I'd still say town as a player by this point.

You're just too magic, I am in exams which finish friday so until than I am posting sparingly but this is what I have so far

At this point I am super wary of Ranger. I have never played with her but I have heard that her reads are ususally good so I don't know whether she is scum trying to drive a mislynch or genuienly town who made a mistake. Than there is post 217 which could just be her covering for herself for when IV flipped town.

From what I've seen most of the case on you is meta, which I am not a super fan of since my playstyle changes depending on how I'm feeling at the time. I never got the impression that you were scum however I think that you have spent a ton of time focusing on Ranger and defending yourself, though Ranger was pretty obstinate about it so that might just be it.

I am town leaning Alex and am leaning null on everyone else so far.

Here, Alpaca reveals that he's had some access issues, which would also help to explain the lack of focused content: he's giving what he can, given his circumstances, but he's in no shape to give the game his all. It gives a townread, a scumread, and a thorough analysis of the happenings in the game with a conclusion attached, of thinking the case against a player holds little (if any) merit. At this point, Alpaca is not showing signs of being an arbiter. You could argue that Alpaca is not taking a hard stance, and that is true: Alpaca is not firmly in a camp. However, Alpaca is neither fencesitting nor is Alpaca trying to play peacekeeper. (The two middle-grounds associated with scum.) Alpaca is telling things as he sees them, and trying to make use of them, albeit weakly. This is a strong indicator of a town mindset.

If you're busy with exams then fair enough.
Can you go into any detail on your Alexcellent townread?

He has been asking questions and trying to scumhunt and hasn't done anything that I would see as scummy. He throws down his reads and clears up any issues he has with questions. Although he was on the IV wagon he put in his reasons out in post 124 and post 146 and I think that they were valid, With this I am willing give him my only town lean I am still null on the other people

With this comment about another player, Alpaca is actually giving you an insight into HIS OWN psyche: he sees these traits in Alexcellent as a good thing, and the implication from this is that he himself would be displaying these traits as town. In other words, by telling how he is townreading Alexcellent, he has confirmed my profile on HIM, and how HE goes about things. And this post is actually a fine example of him doing exactly that: he is giving good reasons for the backing of his read, and they are valid enough.

That's not all of Alpaca's posting, I apologize, but I should take a quick break here. If you want me to continue, I can, but this is a small taste of what I do all the time.

[mastin2]

307 is a pretty null post for obvious reasons. Off of tone, I'd be inclined to lightly townread it if I assigned an alignment to it at all, but it's definitely not something strong.

VOTE: Ranger
Right now a Ranger lynch looks more viable than a M&M lynch. I don't scumread Ranger as strongly but I do think that a Ranger lynch is beneficial to Town. If Ranger is Town, she can still give all her reads tomorrow and help Town. If she is scum, then perfect.

So I get that a Ranger lynch could be beneficial to town but don't we also want to be prioritizing people who we think are more likely scum than those that are slightly less scum read. Since we should consider each end of day like we lost a townie since we have no confirmation over who was primed in the night and we will only know once scum has set things on fire, even though it seems like we have leeway with possible town lynches we may also want to stick to people who are more scummy.

This shows some concern to the hasty voting of Ranger. While this is a slight reversal of the weariness on Ranger, it is consistent with half of the earlier post: being cautious about the nature of the large bandwagons emerging.

When asked what Alpaca's reads are, the follow-through gives the key:

BTD and M&M seem scummy to me
I town read Touka
null-town on Ranger, Kappy
null on Shotty and Sicko

Alpaca is scumreading BTD6_maker at this point in time, and also not fond of Music & Mail, while having Ranger as lightly town. This is Alpaca, still the cautious player, having some opinions, and prodding away at things. The implication I also pick up from this is that Alpaca is willing to describe any of these reads if he is asked, and is simply not doing so by default because it's not in his nature to speak up that loudly. This reserved, guarded nature, and yet willingness to share key information when asked, shows the mindset of a cautious, yet still inquisitive, player, a mindset that I strongly associate with a town player who is trying to figure the game out. I actually don't see a scum counter-part here at all, aside from how the stances on players (namely, Ranger and M&M) appear as they do.

Also M&M do you always make posts like these since they, in my opinion detract from your overall towniness.

Spoiler:

Autolynching Ranger tomorrow for this.

fuck yourselves.

If we get lynched here I'm not posting anything besides votes on Ranger for the duration of the game.

Stop being bad and vote Touka.

-- Mail

This town is so bad that at this point my main priority is lynching the people who are pissing me off so they don't win if they're scum rather than lynching scum.
VOTE: Drmyshottyszik
This is both.

The wording here is awkward: detracting from overall townness, when reading them as scum? But the insight is good, because it's showing initiative with regards to why Alpaca is reading Music and Mail the way he is.

Trying to lynch Alpaca for not posting when literally no one is providing content is nice.

Alpaca literally has not voted since his one RVS vote. That's pretty terrible. I'm also not sure why his RVS vote was necessarily town; 28 reads pretty awkwardly to me.

In general I don't actually vote until I am sure of somebody, I am not super big on pressure votes, though apparently I have to learn since voting for someone you aren't sure of is considered towny.

Here, Alpaca reaffirms what I had already discovered in my psychological profile of him. (Like I said, I'm generally fairly good at doing this, but I've done it for quite a while.) The way he responds to this is not defensive: he is not saying, "That's not an issue for me." He is giving his beliefs, and the ending comment can be taken in one of two ways: if it is sincere, it shows that Alpaca is recognizing his need to grow as a player because he is still new. If it is sarcastic, then this is a witty barb, though I'd have to check the thread carefully to see who it's aimed at. Regardless of which way you read it though, I don't see any scum in the comment. It is not laced with defensiveness; it is a comment made with a casual nonchalance about the matter.

BTD and M&M seem scummy to me
I town read Touka
null-town on Ranger, Kappy
null on Shotty and Sicko

Why on all of these? In particular your town read of Touka and wolf read of M&M. Also not sure why you're null-town on Ranger, that'd be helpful too.

I shall go through in order
BTD (scum) - I don't like post 57 where he votes his highest town read, I mean how about voting your top scum read? His whole stance on lynching Ranger and how it will be beneficial either way annoys me, If he was pusshing Ranger as scum I wouldn't have a problem but than he says

...a lynch on town Ranger is not too bad...

M&M (scum) - As mentioned above I really don't like some of their posts where they just seem fed up with the game and just say Ranger or nothing. Basically for the beginning of the game they only try and attack Ranger while labelling IV as obvtown and their reasons for that in post 160 I didn't see as giving IV an obvtown status. Later he mentions that he scum reads BTD but doesn't really pursue it and is right back on Ranger and than later mentions he town reads BTD after a re ISO. Than Touka seemingly distracts him from Ranger which is surprising but I don't like that he is scum reading Touka for being Beeboy I mean she is playing on an alt presumably so she can play differently and not get insta scum read for it. Than there is a terrible vote on Shotty and an understandable vote on myself. Overall I am not seeing a town mindset here more of just death tunnelling some of the people who attack him.

Touka (town) - I town read the person who Touka replaced in post 281 and I liked Touka's intro analysis of everything since she actually took the time to read the whole game. I agree mostly with her most recent reads except that I am still on the fence about Smith.

Ranger (nulltown) - I don't like that she held back on explanations earlier but she did say that if it came to a point where she had to explain to save one of her town reads she would be more than willing, but at that point in the game and considering there isn't much posting going on it would have been helpful. Her tunneling of M&M was basically entirely for meta reasons at the beggeing but under pressure M&M seemed much more scummy than they were before. I was honestly surprised that IV flipped town however I can't say for sure say whether its becaue Ranger is scum trying to push mislynched or is she was just wrong and I have a gut feeling it was the latter so until former notice I am null reading with a little side of town here.

Kappy (nulltown) - Not too sure what to think of Kappy since a lot of his posts are not related to anything though in general he seems to be hunting for information to use to identify scum.

Shotty (null-) - He doesn't explain a lot and he doesn't seem to anything that benefits town, a town of fluff. He also jumps around a lot which kind of confuses me like in post 351, and 374 he says he is sucm reading Touka than in post 385 he is all of a sudden town reading Touka. I am leaning more scum in this slot but still nullish for now.

Sicko/Smith (null+) - The 2 slots before Smith were useless so I had him labelled as null and now I am going to need a little more time to read you fully however, right now I agree with a quality amount of what you have written and you asking good questions. I am leaning a town read on you but that is pending further notice.

And here, Alpaca shows that he is willing to follow through on his reads when asked. Each of these show some heavy consideration, some real thought put into them, and you can tell that Alpaca was carefully weighing the players when he made his list earlier. However, this is not the list of someone who has an answer for everything. This is not the list of someone who has a flawless trajectory. This is the list of someone who is working from imperfect things, and making a series of imperfect jumps from one to another.

The following, 505, was an accident...however, it's an accident that shows you where Alpaca was coming from in 503. How do I know? Because I know the forum software and the nature of the multiquote glitch. What Alpaca did, albeit purely by accident, is indirectly prove that he was going through every player, in particular, key players like mhsmith, Ranger, and M&M. Those posts, shown in the quote? All of them are ones Alpaca must have reviewed, and they did in fact come up in Alpaca's earlier wall, so Alpaca by the nature of a forum glitch gained a HUGE proof of innocence.

Says his reads are too valuable too ignore
Uses confbias

This is another case of a good point made by Alpaca. At this stage in the game, Alpaca is taking a little more of an invested role in the game, being more active and aggressive. This is a change which would be cause for some concern, but I'd be more likely to say it's part of his growth as a player. As for an alignment: scum can make good points like this all the time, but for a newer player, I'd say this is not the type of insight I'd expect from scum. It

is

, however, the type of insight I would expect from a town player with Alpaca's psychological profile, one who notices small things like this.

For the other posts on that page, what I've gathered is that Alpaca was under some criticism, even taking heat, for his actions, where it was thought he was maybe just sheeping. This is a key stage in the game. Remember where in the flowchart, I talk about pressuring a player? Here, Alpaca does not panic under pressure. Alpaca does not fight to the bitter end about it, trying to utterly destroy the point. Instead, Alpaca acts reasonably. Alpaca takes the criticism, tries to understand it, and with a slight hint of frustration when the point persists, he more firmly says, basically, "Just because I'm not as vocal doesn't mean I'm not giving points of my own!" He uses this as a chance to reaffirm his stances and show his position, and that's something that would be a GODLY level feat for a newbie-scum player. Heck, most veteran scum players wouldn't be able to do what Alpaca did there, so that's another strong town indicator.

@BTD why do you think that Smith is scum?

I have a dream that someday BTD will answer my question

On the topic of explaining who scum is...

Yeah it sure would be nice if btd ever got around to explaining themselves and their reads...

There is literally 0% chance you haven't seen this, and I would love an answer

I think this post is a fairly good summation of Alpaca's push, also with that hint of frustration at being ignored. Alpaca is trying, at this point, to get information, and is not getting anything. The scum take on things would be that Alpaca is asking a repetitive question to mask not doing anything, but the fact is, Alpaca has been doing things prior to the question, and the question implies something important to Alpaca, especially when factoring in tone.

On a different note...
@alpaca: any thoughts on the game state other than btd's continued inability to actually explain why he says he thinks I'm an arsonist? Other than a quick defense note, you haven't talked about anything else for the past week.

I mean I am having a great time remembering another game I was in and the guy who refused to answer any questions directed to him ended up being scum and also winning since he managed to shake off the people chasing him with fluff posts. But on the other side of things I am liking Shotty as town more except for his thing on coaching. I also like Mafioso in a town way and not in a mafioso way and I am still not seeing the pure scumplay from Alex.

If this post was a standalone, "hey, remember that game?" type post, I'd be inclined to think it was scum.
But here, Alpaca is showing an insight into his past, and

why

that question was so important to him. It says that, yes, he sees BTD6_maker as scummy, and that he's trying, very very hard, to get some progress.

I should probably break this into three or four parts, given the length of Alpaca's iso. Dude gives a lot more in-depth stuff than I was expecting at a first glance.

[mhsmith0]

Welcome gerryoat!

[Transcend]

lol

gerry got cranked

but so did i

[mhsmith0]

Spoiler:

Sonia's hammer there was about as flagrant of a scum hammer as I've ever seen. That one probably doesn't even need to be spoiled.

[gerryoat]

glad to be on the other side now lol