Newbie 1806 - The Ffery Garden: GAME OVER!

[PersephoneSidekick]

Good morning everybody. VOTE: Ginseng Tea because the health benefits are overrated.

[PersephoneSidekick]

VOTE: Ciara for blaming personal problems on my name -_-

I think you're supposed to say that it's L-2 now?

[PersephoneSidekick]

I always thought that scum hated RVS because its hard for them to "act" RVS'y or something along those lines. You just get more suss by the minute WM. I've got my eyes on you.

I'm curious what exactly is making you suspicious of him. Is it all the talk about it being good to get out of RVS? Anything else?

I honestly don't understand why you think staying in RVS is a good thing. We have to scumhunt eventually. Do you have a picture of what actively scumhunting in RVS looks like? Are there tells you look for? Does anybody else other than WM look scummy to you?

[PersephoneSidekick]

Okay, it's three in the morning and I can't sleep and I'm bored. I keep feeling like there's nothing to go on or say yet, but it's been 3 days so we need to start making progress soon. So I read through everything again looking for reads. Here's what I got:

Why Mafia: probably town, mostly because of lack of defensiveness. I see mind annoyance instead of actual worry. I realize that's just tone and I haven't compared with previous games. (That seems so daunting tbh.) It's not a very strong read, but it's my only actively positive one so it's worth sharing.

MH: I'm a little bit suspicious of him. He's been super helpful as an IC and given lots of good information but other than the original argument with Ciara, he hasn't actually been

using

the techniques he's been explaining. I almost feel like the slow progress itself implicates him somewhat, though I realize that's an abdication of responsibility on my part.

Ciara depends on how I read MH: If he's town I'm inclined to trust his judgement that her tone is off. If he's scum then I doubt he'd so directly single out his partner for (even negative) attention so soon. So I'm going to say that there's a good chance that one of them is scum, but not both.

Fykus is my biggest scum read. Not just because he's advocating for longer RVS, which is plausible disagreement / confusion. It's the point of view he spoke that opinion from. He didn't say that RVS was good for town or bad for scum, he said that scum "hated RVS" because it was "hard for them" etc. His first thought was about the feelings of scum, which I suppose could be useful if brought around to motives of action, but he kept the focus on feelings. I feel like he was saying "I am frustrated with this RVS as scum." It's not a definite obviously, not from those few words, but I feel like Scum!Fykus is more likely to say that.

I should probably try to guess which of Ciara or MH is his scumbuddy while I'm wildly speculating but it's beyond me at this time of night. Maybe tomorrow if I have time. Anyway, moving on to the rest.

PestoSwami is my last significant read. He's asked a lot of questions about the forum interface and I feel really mean for judging that but it's just that he's done nothing else, and if he has time for technical questions he has time for substantive questions too surely? I mean we all need to contribute more, myself included and there are people who have contributed basically nothing. But he's taking the trouble to write a lot of posts but still nothing. So mildly scummy.

Radiant Cowbells I have no idea. I read a couple other games with him in them so I know that he basically always sounds and plays like that. I need way more substantive decisions because I get anything from him. Ginseng and Cankles give me nothing and that's everybody.

Okay this didn't amount to much but it's something. It's certainly more than the random vote I had on Ginseng before so VOTE: Fykus is probably the best place to put my vote for now. This post is probably a sleep deprived mess that I will be embarrassed of in the morning, so feel free to ask clarifying questions or whatever. I'd love to hear people's input, especially the more experienced people. There are a lot of you so you can't

all

be mafia.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I basically have the same reads as you. Just be careful of your Ciara read. It could be the classic "This is something scum wouldn't do, so let's do it!"

I fell like mh is experienced enough to be more subtle than that?

also

VOTE: fykus

I mean I approve but why? Do you agree with my reading of "scum hate RVS" as an POV tell?

Ciara was my townread. I have another townread.

I think Cankles could use more votes.

For pressure to post or some other reason? I do agree we need to get people talking more.

I really like the post from pers, it comes off as genuine to me so you're my first town read. woo woo.

Ciara was my townread. I have another townread.

I think Cankles could use more votes.

ok. pls dont be scum this game

VOTE: cankles

also sorry for not being active, will endeavor to do so this weekend though now I've got my foot in the door.

I'm glad you like my post. Do you have a different narrative to give me about what you were thinking when you wrote 39?

[PersephoneSidekick]

And since y'all insist we vote on someone,

VOTE: Fykus

Of course I voted for the biggest wagon. I'm about to get lynched. I'm not sure how that makes me scum? A lynch has to happen in order for us to gain some sort of info. Go ahead and lynch me if you want, but you'll be losing a townie.

I think these posts are mostly just lack of understanding of how the game works, which could be either alignment. This is not useful ignorance for scum to pretend to have because it makes him a target. But it's ignorance that scum could have.

Cankles, if you are town, please listen to what people are telling you. Read the articles mh linked to at the beginning. If you're town,

help us.

Because if you treat day 1 as useless then you just make day 2 into another day 1 with fewer people. I realize it probably sucks to be a target this early. But you win with town whether you survive or not. If you think you're going to be lynched, then it is

all the more important

for you to do and say useful things while you're alive. Otherwise, you're just being an easy mislynch or a burden if you survive.

If you're scum, please continue to remain ignorant and suspicious looking. :p

[PersephoneSidekick]

I mean I approve but why? Do you agree with my reading of "scum hate RVS" as an POV tell?

Not especially, actually (I suspect that tell is null in general, and don't know fykus well enough to evaluate him in particular on it).

I'd say that wrt his "scum hate RVS" bit, it was scummier of him to awkwardly shade WhyMafia out of theory discussion, and then to go back and say "it's just a theory", and then to say "well you're always scummy" (which is a very strange thing to be thinking about for the first person you start to cast shade on - if WM is always scummy, then him looking kinda scummy isn't really indicative, which means that he's essentially just pushing a read he doesn't actually believe in, and doesn't seem to be doing it in a "well it's RVS let me randomly shit post and push people and see what happens" manner).

His TR on you was also fairly lazy, though that's a more minor issue IMO.

Yeah, the "it's just a theory" thing rubbed me the wrong way too, though I didn't think it was suspicious because I know people irl that say stuff like that all the time when people disagree with them. You say you don't know him that well but have you played with him before? Does he not use that sort of evasion as town?

The "well you're always scummy" thing I see somewhat more. It's practically saying "yeah, you're always a nice solid mislynch candidate" or something in the context he's using it. And yes it was not lost on me that he town read me right after I accused him while not actually responding to the accusation. I almost made a post saying that I'm not so easily bought. So I still think he's being scummy even if the original tell I was using is null.

Speaking of which... May I ask you if "I suspect that tell is null in general" is the sort of thing you're allowed to lie about if you're a scum IC?

[PersephoneSidekick]

Welcome WhaleBarnicle! Thanks for for all the delicious text!

Re your question: I posted something about Cankles right before your question so maybe you hadn't read that and it's my answer. But otherwise, I suppose I feel frustrated about Cankles. I kind of

hope

he's scum, but I don't feel like I have evidence he is. (I feel like I'm being really mean to him right now and I'm sorry.) I definitely think it's worth putting him under scrutiny though. Let him stew in L-1 for a few days until he gives us something to work with one way or another. But I really don't think that even aggressive unwillingness to be helpful is necessarily scum indicative in a newbie game, at least not this early. If he's still acting like this in a week then I'd totally be up for lynching him.

Re Fykus: That seems to be our biggest read difference so I'd like to talk about it a bit more. Why is town!Fykus more likely to townread me? Why is town!Fykus more likely to have a problem with Cankles? He only started voting him after he put him in L-1 in the most easily attackable way possible. If Cankles is town then that would be a great opportunity for an easy mislynch. If Cankles is scum I guess Fykus seems like an unlikely partner though, unless it's some kind of flamboyant distancing attempt.

Also, I would like to declare that Peri is a perfectly acceptable nickname and everybody is this thread is welcome to use it if they want.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Well first off I'd like to say to everyone hello, and thanks to Ffery for so quickly letting me join in on this game! This is my first time playing on this site, but I've played a few times with friends at parties. Those were always in person and with alcohol so from what I can tell of reading some other completed games they were pretty different. I'll start by just going through what I generally think of each person, and I'll hopefully have some questions for each person to respond to if they want. I'll wrap it up with just some general impressions about the game so far at the end. I had a lot to catch up on, so I may have lost some details, but fortunately it's still pretty early on so I'll be all eagle eyes from here on out.

In order:

PersephoneSidekick (Peri):

This is probably my biggest townread right now. Back in post 15 Peri warned about us putting someone at L-2 quickly. From a scum perspective this doesn't make sense since if we accidentally caused a quick mislynch without realizing it, we'd be down two people going into day 2 with very little information to go off of. If she were scum WITH Ciara (the person who was at L-2), then this seems like it would be a pretty forward defense and would get sniffed out pretty quickly if either one of them ended up flopping up scum. Then, what also struck me as town was in post 44. All of the questions that were asked were decent probing types of questions I thought. I personally didn't feel like there was really a lot of misguiding or suggestion in them.

My biggest concern for you is that you're almost too towny? I haven't really seen a lot wrong with the way you are playing, which ironically is almost concerning. Because of that, even though you are my biggest town read right now, don't sit to comfortably there cause I still have my eyes on you. For now though, I don't mind.

Questions for you: What do you feel about Cankles (The player, not the actual...disease? condition? weird fat storage thing?...)?

RadiantCowbells (RadCow):

At first I really liked your writing style cause I thought it was funny to read, but as more time has gone on I think I'm honestly just having a hard time getting in your head about what you are thinking because of it. Is this deliberate, or is this just how your talk on forums? I'm still a lot a bit confused by his whole "I have three townreads...jk I only had one townread...btw I'm totally town right guys?" Kind of posts (56, 67, and 85 in particular). I feel like saying you had three townreads, and then only saying you had one all along is just so stupidly scum that it can't possibly actually be scum. I know this is such terrible reasoning, but I feel like his posts are just not how a scum would act. I know when I've played before, scum would always try to be much slyer about things (which admittedly didn't always go so slyly for them), and this just doesn't seem like RadCow at all. That being said, I'm not ruling out the possibility of him being scum either. I think that with two scum it would make sense for one to be the talker and one to be the lurker. He could very well fit in that role. He posts without ever really saying much, and always seems to be leaving half his thoughts out. One thing I will say though is that his role DID get replaced out, and if it's someone new trying to play I feel like they would be more likely to stick around if they had a "fun" role like being mafia. Nothing really substantial, just something to keep in the back of your minds I guess.

Questions or you: Nothing in particular, but I would appreciate it if you could type up something like this where you go through each player. That might not be everyone's style and all, but even a few sentences all in one place would be nice. Unless...you're worried about tripping up and getting caught with something?

King Cankles (Cankles):

So far, one of my bigger contenders for scum spots. Let's see here...post 29 he suggests that we have a nolynch Day 1. How does this benefit literally anyone other than scum? If there's no lynch on Day 1, then it's entirely possible and probable that mafia would just kill off someone that was quiet/non provacative the first night and avoid pretty much all detection. It gives us pretty much no new information, and just set's us behind one person. Now, a mislynch on D1 would set us behind an extra person too, but at least we'd have some pretty valuable information to get out the deal. He lays dormant again until post 73 which is quite a ways down after getting prodded. He says that he doesn't have much to say since its only day 1. At least his story is consistent, but I find it fundamentally flawed to think that nothing important has transpired during the first day. Hiding from that fact and not taking an active position in figuring it out is either cowardly, or scummy at best.

After this, people finally start realizing just how little Cankles has really contributed to this, and I think that I really appeciate RadCow and Peri for point this out. Fykus went along with this little train too iirc, and what Cnakles said was just too little in terms of a justification. He still dodged a lot of questions, still really refused to take up much of an opinion about anything, and only promised to post more tomorrow (after he can consult his more experienced scum buddy for advice on what to say?... ). Too little too late, and if votes is what is going to have to get you to talk, then I would really really love to hear you sing. VOTE: Cankles. That's also L-1 for anybody playing along at home.

Question for you: Idk literally anything you feel like talking about by this point. Try really hard, there must be SOMETHING that's happened on day 1 that you have thought was interesting or suspicious. Do you even suspect anybody by this point? Even dropping some slight reads would be really nice.

WhaleBarnicle:

Scum. Plain and simple there really. In fact, VOTE: WhaleBarnicle.

PestoSwami (Salami):

I have a bit of a hard time reading this guy as well. I get that we are all new here and all, but it seems almost like he asks questions to meet his "posting quota" or something like that and also doesn't really tackle into any real situations. This could be someone new just really overwhelmed, or a scum feigning a dumb card. I'd see him as a potential lurker scum if that second one is the case, but obviously this is a bit more circumstantial than for Cankles who has admitted to playing this game in some form before (which is why I place my vote on Cankles and not Salami). I'd like to her more from you more.

Question for you: How did you hear about this website? What experience do you have with the game, and how can we trust you saying that? A general reads list would be nice too, just do not vote for Cankles right away without stating an intent to do so, I still want to hear if he comes up with anything good.

I'm starting to get tired of typing by this point so these may get a bit shorter/lazy over time. If you want more details, I can provide them upon request.

WhyMafia (?Maf):

My read on him is actually slight scum. He's been a bit more active than some of my other scum reads though, so I'd put him in that active mafia role a little bit more. Now that being said, active mafia I would still expect to stand a bit more off into the corner, but will pipe up every now and again to say something. The catch is in that something, and I feel like whenever they would say something, it would always be at an arms distance so as to not give out free ammunition that can be used against them later. Check back at ?Maf's posts, and I don't feel like very many of them are actually saying anything either. He either pushes off his opinions as "just theory" which gives him deniability, or says that his reads are the same as someone else's, which also provides room for doubt should something not turn his way in the future. He blames it on a scummy tone that he just naturally has, but even that is putting his bad behavior on something that is "outside of his realm of control". I see it as him just saying, "Sorry if I seem scummy guys, it's just who I am! Take it or leave it I guess..." This is my biggest scum read other than Cankles. If I could double vote for them both I would, but for now I'm not sure enough to really vote for him and the opportunity is perfect to place some pressure on my other big scum read.

Question for you: What do you think of me?

Fykus (Fykus, sorry you don't a cool nickname, your name is short enough already!):

I'm gonna be honest you're another offender of the whole post without saying anything important thing, but I like that you have a townread on Peri, I like that you see soemthing wrong with Cankles, and I like how you responded to being in L-1. Neutral to town from you, but I would really like to see more.

Question: What do you think of a ?Maf and Cankles team?

Cira24 (Cira) and MHSmith0 (MHS)

:

I'm putting you guys together because I have a general town read for you as it stands. I think a lot of that stuff at the beginning was mostly theatrics, and everything else was mostly town just looking for scum and coming up empty both ways. Cira has been a bit quiet as of late, but I think he said at some point it was IRL stuff getting in the way so that's fine as long as he makes up for it. Also, MHS has just been probing pretty well I think from what I can tell.

Questions for both of you: Analyze this post and tell me what you think.


Well everyone, read, think, read again, think, post, let's get this done.

Okay, preliminary read of Whale based on this post: Intro promises more than it delivers because he runs out of steam. That is one of the several ways it looks spontaneous and unedited which I see as towny. In reading me, actually looks for whether I'm faking activity / manipulating people instead of just townreading me for being prolific. The "almost too towny" WIFOM (I will take this as a compliment) looks like the good kind of paranoia. This could be setup to mislynch me later but I think it's just

carefulness

. Carefulness is good. RadCow read is pretty wishy washy but tbf I can't make heads or tails of that slot either. I continue to think that Cankles is a somewhat lazy scumread and that's the worst part of this post for me. OTOH I'm not sad to see him at L-1 at all. After this point things start to lose steam. Salami part says the obvious but the obvious is all there really is to say. ?Maf part makes a pretty solid case based on lack of responsibility. It changes my read of WM a bit tbh. And the rest is really short; see above.

So yeah, I think it's a towny post on the whole. If he

is

scum I think he's probably partnered with MHS or Cira. The trail off gives a great excuse to not have anything to say about them.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Bleh is there some way to collapse those long quotes that I'm missing?

[PersephoneSidekick]

and a / in front of the second spoiler

Spoiler: Got it, thanks!

yeah you could spoiler tag it. im not sure how to embed the code but its like [ spoiler= ] quote here [ spoiler ] without the spaces

[PersephoneSidekick]

Cankles, you're now at L-1, and despite the fact that you very clearly don't want to produce content on day one, you now have to do so if you want to not get lynched. People have been doing stuff, tell us what you think of what people have been doing. This is a newbie game, and I feel a bit bad that (regardless of your alignment) you're getting wagoned for basically not doing anything (it's kind of a shitty experience to have that happen), but if you're not going to play the game, then you're going to be forced to claim which is bad regardless of your alignment. If you're town, this is especially unfair to your teammates, who are forced to try and figure out your alignment despite you giving them absolutely no tools through which to do so.

Was your warning a prediction or a threat? That is, are you in favor of lynching Cankles if he continues to be recalcitrant and if so then after how long a wait? Can you give me your thoughts on policy lynching in general and lurker lynching in specific?

[PersephoneSidekick]

Also, have fun at camp, WhyMafia!

[PersephoneSidekick]

Was your warning a prediction or a threat? That is, are you in favor of lynching Cankles if he continues to be recalcitrant and if so then after how long a wait? Can you give me your thoughts on policy lynching in general and lurker lynching in specific?

As a general rule, I dislike policy/lurker lynching. Lurker lynching can be acceptable when:

1) You have solid town reads on most of the board and you're basically POE'ing someone as lurkerscum (as an example, in newbie 1779, the last game RC and I were together, this was a good chunk of how I arrived at lemon being scum [which was correct btw] )

2) The game is SO slow and unproductive (or, alternatively, so spammy and/or toxic) that policy lynching is the only thing that seems like it could save the gamestate.

As far as it applying to cankles, I'd absolutely hammer there before end of day phase if I don't get anything useful from him or find any better ideas. But, especially in a newbie game, I'd hope that he chooses to provide actual content in lieu of claiming or getting hammered, because if he's town, a day 1 where we just lynch a town member who isn't doing anything is a pretty unproductive day overall, and very lean in terms of developing meaningful interactions (obv if he's scum, then it's much less of an issue).

Okay yeah I'd probably hammer too if we were running out of time without much else. Probably even ask for a claim when there were still a few days left so we would have time to respond if he did claim. I'm glad we're on the same page here.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Prod dodge. I've been really busy with doctor's appointments and really tired. (I'm going to be fine, but that's all I'm willing to share.) I may or may not be able to post later tonight either. I will if I can. I will definitely post sometime tomorrow.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Prod dodge. I've been really busy with doctor's appointments and really tired. (I'm going to be fine, but that's all I'm willing to share.) I may or may not be able to post later tonight either. I will if I can. I will definitely post sometime tomorrow.

I said I'd post to day but every time I try to catch up I just can't think straight enough to have any reading comprehension.

Can I V/LA till "when I feel better?" I think it will be any day now. I'm really excited about how things are starting to move faster and I want to participate. Sorry everybody.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Okay, I have some time and some energy now so I'm going to catch up on the thread now. Comments to follow.

[PersephoneSidekick]

My case on Fykus as it currently stands:

Town reading me in 88 for a post where I scum read him, without addressing my actual complaints. It looks like appeasement to me.

Tunneling about Cankles seems like an attempt at an easy mislynch. Previous accusation of WhyMafia is similar, 60 and 62 especially. Also 43 shows lack of responsibility. The early stuff would not be very persuasive because they were barely out of RVS, but they suggest a pattern with the Cankles stuff.

As for potential scumpartners: Somewhat suspicious of Ciara for 174, not really a scummy post in itself but it frames the Fykus wagon as being primarily about WhyMafia and directs attention away from the better argument about Cankles. It's kind of a stealth defense of Fykus. Otherwise probably RC or Pesto for halfhearted attacks. If I didn't townread Whale so hard I might consider him too.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Okay, so I really think Cankles is town. Mostly this is because the tone of his despair suggests indignation to me, a feeling that all this negative attention is "undeserved." I don't expect this to be terribly convincing to anybody else but assuming for the same of argument that Cankles is town, what can we learn from his wagon.

Ciara: Voted in RVS page one (5) and never removed. She doesn't even really talk about why much. This is either lazy or suspicious, not sure which.

RadiantCowbells: Votes for basically lurking on 81 and asks for more votes in 87. Doesn't respond to requests for justification or to the main argument about Cankles once it breaks out. Removes vote at height of that argument, again without much explanation. If Cankles actually is mafia I think he is his partner. It's like "distancing, distancing, whoa that's too much distancing!" Otherwise I'm mostly confused. I'm not sure the town or scum motivation for that pattern. As town maybe just not explaining himself clearly. If scum then backdown is to look good when the lynch starts to seem unlikely again? Or too likely? Yeah I'm confused.

Fykus: Votes immediately on RC's request. Starts pushing very hard after Cankles starts acting anti-town and puts him at L-1. First part looks like a responsibility dodge; second part looks like opportunism. Yeah, still scummy.

WhaleBarnacle: Votes as part of 143 analysis, putting him at L-1 for a while. I disagree with the analysis but the post itself looks like earnest and ambitious scumhunting.

Ciara, can you tell me why you're still voting for Cankles? RadiantCowbells, can you tell me why you stopped?

[PersephoneSidekick]

I'd like to hear everybody's opinions on mh's recent burst of posts trying to revive the game. This whole game mh's tone has been very teachy as IC and he's been super helpful in that capacity. He's given a lot of pep talks. But that's different than driving the game and could make good cover for not doing so. None of his posts actually seem that scummy to me though. But like, if he's town, why is this day so slow? I feel like he could make more happen if he was actually trying to. If he is scum then 248 is a really epic example of WIFOM.

I really really want mh to be town so I can work with him more closely to push things forward. I think he probably is town and just not omnipotent at making progress despite all his experience, especially not in the face of a very obstructive player like Cankles. I just don't like the "probably" because mh as scum could be very very dangerous with the current social dynamic.

Mh, why do

you

think the game is so slow right now, and do

you

think it's a problem?

[PersephoneSidekick]

am town

??

[PersephoneSidekick]

Okay, I get that weekends are pretty slow around here, but this is kind of extreme. We're running out of time, but I'm not sure what else to do until we hear from the people who've been quiet. And maybe Miles will have something to add on read through? But like, we have

three days

, which is not much at the pace of this game, especially since there's a major American holiday on one of them. We can't count on just picking somebody on the last day because what if they claim and we have to start over?

[PersephoneSidekick]

I feel like I'm missing something here. Is RC famous for guessing right about scum without being about to explain why or something?

[PersephoneSidekick]

Spoiler: Miles's opening post

Hey y'all.

Apparently, a few years ago, I played here before, using my current email address to register. This account was flagged as an alt, so please forgive my delayed introduction.

I briefly read up on this game when I saw it advertised in the Newbie Queue. My findings from that aren't alignment-indicative, but I was reading the game anticipating I would replace into a bored vanilla town slot (as my past experience has shown that replace-outs in newbie mafia games tend to be players without special roles or abilities who discover they don't actually enjoy the main educated guessing game).

I only made it through about three pages, but in that time, I noticed these things. My apologies if the material covered here is outdated -- I will try to finish catching up by the end of the evening.

[*] Fykus's reasoning for voting for WhyMafia didn't sit well with me. In post #26 he passes it off as the vote being "his shtick." This isn't a good reason in and of itself, but it's acceptable in this context because it's still during the early stage of the game when people are doing whatever they want to stir up conversation; but once the conversation begins to shift out of the "RVS" stage, Fykus finds a reason to stay on WhyMafia that doesn't logically follow. He disagrees with WhyMafia's contention in post #36 that the RVS stage favors mafia, and says, specifically:

I always thought that scum hated RVS because its hard for them to "act" RVS'y or something along those lines.

You just

get more suss

by the minute WM.

I've got my eyes on you.

Emphases mine. "Get more suss" means "get more suspicious," and implies that Fykus already found WhyMafia suspicious. In other words, Fykus is trying to pass off his initial "RVS" style vote on WM as a serious suspicion.
Furthermore, the reasoning Fykus supplies in voting for WM doesn't prove his premise. A person's belief on whether a certain stage of the game favors town or mafia isn't indicative of anything about that person's alignment in a particular game. It's not clear from context whether there's a consensus on this site about whether or not the claim "RVS favors town" or "RVS favors scum" is the correct claim, but it doesn't matter: the worst this can mean for WM is that his belief is

incorrect

. This does

not

make him suspicious in and of itself.

Fykus: Why did you really vote WhyMafia in post #26? ("shtick") Why do you claim that WM "got more suspicious" in post #36?

[*] I liked RadiantCowbells's post #58 entering into the thread, and I liked PersephoneSidekick's post #69. Both were strong entries that showed clarity of thought and touched on what I perceived to be the more important events that had occurred in the thread to that point, and notably both players were not skittish about challenging our IC's play. All three of those factors left me with a favorable impression of both players.

Jumps in fast overinterpreting early posts before he's done reading. Exited town or nervous scum? I'd think that scum would tend to post more carefully and methodically but given he's a newbie in a slot I would already mildly suspicious of, I think we can't discount the "crap I need to contribute fast to be townread" interpretation. I'll put him somewhere in the middle of my reads for now.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Your reference to the God-Emperor tells me we'll get along just fine.

Since you're here RC, I want to talk to you about your suspicion of WhyMafia, because the progression of events around your post #91, when you first expressed suspicion of Fykus, leads me to think that:
- Fykus may be scum
- Fykus and WhyMafia aren't on the same team

Which then makes me fail to understand your suspicion of WhyMafia (which, in fairness, isn't exactly well-explained in your ISO).

Fykus made his early comments about WhyMafia (which I mentioned a minute ago) and parked his vote on WM for a bit. He moved to King Cankles fairly abruptly right before you said you suspected him. I'm assuming that abrupt move was the reason you suspected him? (If it's not, why did you suspect him?)
It strikes me that this sequence does make Fykus suspicious, since he doesn't seem to care about his allegedly serious WM vote very much, but in a way that makes WhyMafia an unlikely partner. I don't see why Fykus would choose to park on a partner during the random voting stage when he could have gone anywhere else. It makes life more difficult for him if, for whatever reason, WM becomes a lead wagon.

I'll concede I'm missing some relevant thread information, and your suspicion of WM comes up after the point where I stopped reading, but from the sequence I

did

get to read, it seems like Fykus, not WM, is the suspicious party from that interaction. What am I missing?

What do you think of the possibility that the two of them put on a preplanned show to "prove" they weren't linked, as a precaution for if one of them was caught? It's kind of extreme but maybe it got out of control? I don't want to lynch WhyMafia today but if we lynch Fykus and he flips scum, I wouldn't necessarily see him as confirmed town.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I really want to hear from Ciara soon.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Spoiler: Miles's opening post

Hey y'all.

Apparently, a few years ago, I played here before, using my current email address to register. This account was flagged as an alt, so please forgive my delayed introduction.

I briefly read up on this game when I saw it advertised in the Newbie Queue. My findings from that aren't alignment-indicative, but I was reading the game anticipating I would replace into a bored vanilla town slot (as my past experience has shown that replace-outs in newbie mafia games tend to be players without special roles or abilities who discover they don't actually enjoy the main educated guessing game).

I only made it through about three pages, but in that time, I noticed these things. My apologies if the material covered here is outdated -- I will try to finish catching up by the end of the evening.

[*] Fykus's reasoning for voting for WhyMafia didn't sit well with me. In post #26 he passes it off as the vote being "his shtick." This isn't a good reason in and of itself, but it's acceptable in this context because it's still during the early stage of the game when people are doing whatever they want to stir up conversation; but once the conversation begins to shift out of the "RVS" stage, Fykus finds a reason to stay on WhyMafia that doesn't logically follow. He disagrees with WhyMafia's contention in post #36 that the RVS stage favors mafia, and says, specifically:

I always thought that scum hated RVS because its hard for them to "act" RVS'y or something along those lines.

You just

get more suss

by the minute WM.

I've got my eyes on you.

Emphases mine. "Get more suss" means "get more suspicious," and implies that Fykus already found WhyMafia suspicious. In other words, Fykus is trying to pass off his initial "RVS" style vote on WM as a serious suspicion.
Furthermore, the reasoning Fykus supplies in voting for WM doesn't prove his premise. A person's belief on whether a certain stage of the game favors town or mafia isn't indicative of anything about that person's alignment in a particular game. It's not clear from context whether there's a consensus on this site about whether or not the claim "RVS favors town" or "RVS favors scum" is the correct claim, but it doesn't matter: the worst this can mean for WM is that his belief is

incorrect

. This does

not

make him suspicious in and of itself.

Fykus: Why did you really vote WhyMafia in post #26? ("shtick") Why do you claim that WM "got more suspicious" in post #36?

[*] I liked RadiantCowbells's post #58 entering into the thread, and I liked PersephoneSidekick's post #69. Both were strong entries that showed clarity of thought and touched on what I perceived to be the more important events that had occurred in the thread to that point, and notably both players were not skittish about challenging our IC's play. All three of those factors left me with a favorable impression of both players.

Jumps in fast overinterpreting early posts before he's done reading. Exited town or nervous scum? I'd think that scum would tend to post more carefully and methodically but given he's a newbie in a slot I would already mildly suspicious of, I think we can't discount the "crap I need to contribute fast to be townread" interpretation. I'll put him somewhere in the middle of my reads for now.

Nonsense. What have I "overinterpreted"? (what does that even mean?)

Why did you feel the need to share your null read with the class?

It's not a pure null; it has factors for and against. I shared because I was curious about other people's thoughts and I'm bored and want to analyze things. And to hear your response; your defensiveness has been noted, especially given that your most likely scum motivation for that post is defensive.

As for what I mean by "overinterpreted," Fykus was being loose with reasoning at a time when there was little information. I agree that Fykus is scummy and that the things you point out are part of my argument, but you're putting a lot of faith in your reads of the early game before even reading the (probably more useful) later stuff.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Your reference to the God-Emperor tells me we'll get along just fine.

Since you're here RC, I want to talk to you about your suspicion of WhyMafia, because the progression of events around your post #91, when you first expressed suspicion of Fykus, leads me to think that:
- Fykus may be scum
- Fykus and WhyMafia aren't on the same team

Which then makes me fail to understand your suspicion of WhyMafia (which, in fairness, isn't exactly well-explained in your ISO).

Fykus made his early comments about WhyMafia (which I mentioned a minute ago) and parked his vote on WM for a bit. He moved to King Cankles fairly abruptly right before you said you suspected him. I'm assuming that abrupt move was the reason you suspected him? (If it's not, why did you suspect him?)
It strikes me that this sequence does make Fykus suspicious, since he doesn't seem to care about his allegedly serious WM vote very much, but in a way that makes WhyMafia an unlikely partner. I don't see why Fykus would choose to park on a partner during the random voting stage when he could have gone anywhere else. It makes life more difficult for him if, for whatever reason, WM becomes a lead wagon.

I'll concede I'm missing some relevant thread information, and your suspicion of WM comes up after the point where I stopped reading, but from the sequence I

did

get to read, it seems like Fykus, not WM, is the suspicious party from that interaction. What am I missing?

What do you think of the possibility that the two of them put on a preplanned show to "prove" they weren't linked, as a precaution for if one of them was caught? It's kind of extreme but maybe it got out of control? I don't want to lynch WhyMafia today but if we lynch Fykus and he flips scum, I wouldn't necessarily see him as confirmed town.

I can't discount the possibility. If you're asking me to do that, though, we won't get anywhere. Possibilities are numerous.

I consider it more likely that mafia!Fykus wouldn't pursue the voting strategy on mafia!WhyMafia that he did, because it increases the likelihood of mafia!Fykus getting stuck in undesirable voting patterns in the event of something unpredictable happening (like townies suddenly finding WhyMafia suspicious), without building town credit for mafia!Fykus in the event that mafia!WhyMafia is caught. There is no plausible reason to believe that Fykus is town if WhyMafia is mafia based off of Fykus's behavior under discussion here.

Part of what I'm saying is that Fykus's voting pattern is already suspicious and it involved a quick switch away from WM. I think it's just an opportunistic switch between two different townies, but if RC has evidence against WM, I'm not comfortable using his association with Fykus as a disproof. I really wish mh or somebody would tell me if RC is as good as he thinks he is.

[PersephoneSidekick]

So the context of all of this is that I'm trying to formulate a list of people I'm willing to lynch to avoid a no lynch if we're running out of time. I don't scumread WM but I don't townread him either. I'm trying to evaluate possibilities to decide what to do if this wagon gains momentum and the Fykus wagon falters. Right now I'm digging in, but I'm open to arguments.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Okay, look Miles. Have you finished reading the thread yet? Because in your first post you said you hadn't yet. Most of my complaints about you are based on you jumping headlong into this argument without reading most of the available evidence. If you haven't read the thread can you do that now before we continue this conversation? If you have read it, can you tell me at what point in this argument you finished? And what your thoughts are on the rest of the thread, like the Cankles argument and all that?

In the meantime, why do you object to my sharing my initial thoughts on a new person before I have a definite reading? I'm part of a team; other people will help me catch scum better if I share my thoughts. Maybe I have a null read because there are arguments both ways. But maybe some of the arguments are better than others; I need people to tell me that. I'm new and half my ideas are probably stupid. Also reactions are useful. Information is good.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Anyway, I'm going to be really busy for basically the rest of the night, but I'll try to find time to check in every now and then in case something important is happening.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Whale, as I understand it your argument for scum!Cankles is primarily about inconsistencies, right? The first part of your essay seems to be accusations of lying about his other server mafia experience in order to win a theory argument. So you're basically saying that he started advocating no-lynch in bad faith and made up stuff about other servers to cover for himself? I'm not quite seeing this. Can you tell a more detailed story about what scum!Cankles would be thinking when telling these lies?

As for the part about post 124, I think you're taking it out of context. It comes right on the heels of 105, which is an even more anti-town post, but together they fit a theme of giving in to social pressure. The "inconsistency" exists because Cankles saw the rest of town screaming at him to change his playstyle and he overcompensated and simplistically parroted that advice. It was a surrender not a slip.

About Fykus, it's not just or primarily about the appeasement. Please look at his voting pattern again and tell me it doesn't look opportunistic. He switches whenever there's blood in the water.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Question for team Cankles in general: why is he so much more suspicious than Ciara? Is scum more likely to be loudly belligerently unhelpful or quietly unhelpful? I ask this because I would totally compromise on lynching her if you won't budge about Fykus. I think she's his most likely partner anyway.

I don't know. Maybe there's no time for this and it's Fykus or Cankles or nobody at this point because there's no time to coordinate? If so, that's kind of depressing.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Bleh, I have to go to bed now. I should be able to check in sometime tomorrow afternoon and stay on till the deadline. I hope that's enough.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Okay, it looks like the Fykus lynch is probably happening, which is good. I'll try to check in every half hour in case something important happens at the last minute.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Sorry for not posting anything yesterday; I had a bad health day. I'll try to post some later today.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I'm still trying and failing to understand the WhyMafia thing. I'm honestly way more suspicious of Wheme. I'm tempted to sheep RC because I don't trust my judgement anymore, like I thought Fykus was just so obviously scum I don't even know.

Wheme, can you tell me

why

you thought RC was scum instantly on arrival?

[PersephoneSidekick]

I liked Wheme's predecessor but his vote onto me was awful and transitioning from that into lets sheep RC was really, really terrible
Miles's predecessor was terrible. I townread his play on the whole but I'm concerned that there's some intellectual dishonesty going on wrt how he's approaching the Whymafia slot.
I'm not absolutely sure and that read is heavily contingent on a flip from Whymafia but it feels like somethin scum might do to avoid having to pressure their buddy.
Also just like in general him focusing on me as Whymafia's buddy in the way that he has makes a ton of sense because scum usually care more about people focusing on one of them.

Can you elaborate on the part about Miles's approach to the WhyMafia slot? Or PestoSwami's if that's who you mean; I can't actually tell grammatically.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I kind of have no idea what's going on anymore but whatever here's my reads list.

RC: Confirmed town. Moving on.

Whale: Was towny yesterday; keeping up the same attitudes and activities now. Almost too towny really :p

Cankles: No data since yesterday, default to my previous townread. Reactions to wagon yesterday were town despair not scum despair.

Miles: I don't know if he has a scummy tone or a towny tone, but he sure has a Tone. I wish this wasn't his first game so I could know if he always talks like this. Analysis looks good but he kind of looks like he's showing off? Works out to slightly scummy I think. Really wish I had meta.

WM: RC's opinion counts for something. Tone looks increasingly bad to me but that's probably me being impressionable so I'll just fold it into RC. Other than that, no evidence really. Scummier than most other people I guess.

Wheme: Flippant votes, opportunism and no content. Not even doing that good a job trying to look busy. Trollish self vote. And like all of Ciara's very few semi-contentful posts were scummy too. Seriously, lynch this slot.

VOTE: WhemeStar That's L-1, at least until he takes off his stupid self-vote.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I'm really not not sure what to make of the banter between Wheme and WM association wise. It's weird for scum versus scum but it's kind of weird for anybody? Okay lets think about all possibilities.

Both scum: WM unconvincingly accuses Wheme thinking that it will appear to clear Wheme after he gets lynched and flips scum. Wheme halfheartedly appears to fight back for appearances. It's plausible at this point that Scum!WM would feel already caught and might be primarily focused on protecting his partner with weird WIFOM shenanigans. With Wheme already under suspicion too, the situation is sort of desperate. I can see it, but it's still weird.

WM scum, Wheme town: WM cornered, and Wheme looks like good divert target because he's playing so unhelpfully. Wheme responses continue previous playstyle. This is plausible but depressing because it means we have even more ineffective townies than we realized. WM's partner would probably be Miles in this scenario, because if you look at ISO he kind of defends WM a lot.

Wheme scum, WM town: WM is real frustration and honest reaction to Wheme's scummy posts. Wheme tries to flippantly shrug off pressure. This feels like the most solid possibility. Partner could still be Miles, but only by POE. I wouldn't want to rule out Cankles for example; he's hardly cleared.

Both town: Real frustration on both sides, but then who the hells is scum? Miles + Cankles?

Conclusion: So a lot of what this is telling me is to take Miles more seriously as a candidate, because there are a lot of scenarios for him. I still think that the priors are highest for Wheme, so I'm keeping my vote there for now.

RC, who do you think WM's partner is?

[PersephoneSidekick]

I kind of have no idea what's going on anymore but whatever here's my reads list.

RC: Confirmed town. Moving on.

Whale: Was towny yesterday; keeping up the same attitudes and activities now. Almost too towny really :p

Cankles: No data since yesterday, default to my previous townread. Reactions to wagon yesterday were town despair not scum despair.

Miles: I don't know if he has a scummy tone or a towny tone, but he sure has a Tone. I wish this wasn't his first game so I could know if he always talks like this. Analysis looks good but he kind of looks like he's showing off? Works out to slightly scummy I think. Really wish I had meta.

WM: RC's opinion counts for something. Tone looks increasingly bad to me but that's probably me being impressionable so I'll just fold it into RC. Other than that, no evidence really. Scummier than most other people I guess.

Wheme: Flippant votes, opportunism and no content. Not even doing that good a job trying to look busy. Trollish self vote. And like all of Ciara's very few semi-contentful posts were scummy too. Seriously, lynch this slot.

VOTE: WhemeStar That's L-1, at least until he takes off his stupid self-vote.

How am I opportunistic

I'm talking mostly about the badly justified WM vote coming right in the middle of RC's wagon on him. Can you explain your reasoning for that? Also the out of nowhere RC vote at the beginning. Again, explain? Because it looks like you don't care much who you lynch.

[PersephoneSidekick]

WM's partner would probably be Miles in this scenario, because if you look at ISO he kind of defends WM a lot.

I find in newbie games scum tend to try to avoid talking about their partner

I suppose that makes sense psychologically; I haven't read enough games to know one way or another. Who would you think WM's partner would be instead?

[PersephoneSidekick]

I kind of have no idea what's going on anymore but whatever here's my reads list.

RC: Confirmed town. Moving on.

Whale: Was towny yesterday; keeping up the same attitudes and activities now. Almost too towny really :p

Cankles: No data since yesterday, default to my previous townread. Reactions to wagon yesterday were town despair not scum despair.

Miles: I don't know if he has a scummy tone or a towny tone, but he sure has a Tone. I wish this wasn't his first game so I could know if he always talks like this. Analysis looks good but he kind of looks like he's showing off? Works out to slightly scummy I think. Really wish I had meta.

WM: RC's opinion counts for something. Tone looks increasingly bad to me but that's probably me being impressionable so I'll just fold it into RC. Other than that, no evidence really. Scummier than most other people I guess.

Wheme: Flippant votes, opportunism and no content. Not even doing that good a job trying to look busy. Trollish self vote. And like all of Ciara's very few semi-contentful posts were scummy too. Seriously, lynch this slot.

VOTE: WhemeStar That's L-1, at least until he takes off his stupid self-vote.

How am I opportunistic

I'm talking mostly about the badly justified WM vote coming right in the middle of RC's wagon on him. Can you explain your reasoning for that? Also the out of nowhere RC vote at the beginning. Again, explain? Because it looks like you don't care much who you lynch.

I thought that you agreed that WhyMafia was likely scum: why are you pushing people for pushing him?

Sometimes scum accuses scum? Sometimes you can tell when that's happening by how the accusation is done? Am I missing something?

[PersephoneSidekick]

My reasoning for voting RC at the start of the day because I thought RC knew smith was tracker, that's why RC scumread smith at start of day and didnt mention him at end of the day

But why did you think that RC knew that? What posts are you responding to?

[PersephoneSidekick]

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

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

Go read some games of mine please

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

Please do, actually.

[PersephoneSidekick]

https://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=70834

My scumgame I replaced into

I don't have time to read the whole thread but read your iso. What is the key difference I'm supposed to be seeing here? You sound much the same.

[PersephoneSidekick]

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

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

[PersephoneSidekick]

Spoiler: Miles's accusation of Whale

Why whalebarnicle

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

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

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

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

great

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


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

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

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

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

[PersephoneSidekick]

So as to the last line: yes.

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

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

[PersephoneSidekick]

VOTE: Unabombah

sorta think Cankles was scum now

Is this on the basis of 523 or because of reread of Cankles?

[PersephoneSidekick]

My own thoughts on UnaBombaH is that he's kind of sketch, but not really enough to overcome my townread of Cankles.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I don't have a lot to say right now, because I'm kind of on a flowchart that is waiting for Wheme and Whale to post answers to questions they've been asked. People have been talking a lot but from my end it looks like rehashing the same arguments. Maybe I should analyse the tone more when have have some more time tonight, but I really hope there'll be new posts from Wheme and Whale by then. I'm inclined to vote WM if both of them give good answers, but I'm very much not in a hurry. We have over a week to gather more information after all.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I don't have a lot to say right now, because I'm kind of on a flowchart that is waiting for Wheme and Whale to post answers to questions they've been asked. People have been talking a lot but from my end it looks like rehashing the same arguments. Maybe I should analyse the tone more when have have some more time tonight, but I really hope there'll be new posts from Wheme and Whale by then. I'm inclined to vote WM if both of them give good answers, but I'm very much not in a hurry. We have over a week to gather more information after all.

What questions

Mostly, I just want a reads list from you with reasons. And for you to explain your votes in ways that actually make sense. I don't really have to energy to quote every single post in the thread where people are bugging you to be more transparent or explain yourself.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I'm feeling really lost right now. People are changing their votes a lot based on intuitions and arguments I can't really follow half the time. And unlike yesterday, nearly everybody is a suspect now so I have a lot to keep track of.

Everybody looks scummy right now so I have to seriously reevaluate what scummy looks like. Given that I was fundamentally voting Wheme for weird voting patterns, I'd better UNVOTE: Wheme. Everybody else is doing that too, and you can't all be scum.

First thought, Whale really needs to answer Miles's question about giving up the Cankles lynch. I will not lynch anybody until I hear that answer or give up on ever hearing it (in which case I will probably vote for him.)

Second thought, if Una's "favorite suspects" are me and Whale why is he voting WhyMafia? Especially so soon after 586 panicking about the possibility? I can easily see him as playing a dangerous distancing game, hoping to switch to Whale later with all the arguments presented in 585. If Whale is town I actually think Una/Why is pretty likely. Or just Una; it could just be that Una doesn't care much who is lynched out of me, Whale and Why. Which leaves Wheme or Whale as his partner. Since Wheme doesn't make sense as a bussing, it would have to be Una/Miles.

Okay I think this is the first time I followed one of Wheme's sudden vote flips. It actually kind of makes me trust him more. Welp.

Okay, that's decided. If Whale answers accusations to my satisfaction I will join Wheme in trying to push Una. Hopefully we can win over Whale and whichever of Miles and WhyMafia is innocent, even if RC refuses.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I disliked yesterday's lynch and it didn't flip town. Do you really want to try to push through another lynch I don't support?

Okay fine. Ill try to win you over too, and maybe you'll win me over instead. Who are your candidates for Why's partner?

[PersephoneSidekick]

Jesus, who invited all the scared teenagers to the dance?

If you don't trust your own votes then line up and follow mine. I've got a plan, I know what I want, and that's more than any of y'all can say right now.

Whale promised a post tonight and I'm waiting for it. I will follow yours or not contingent on what he says. How is that not a plan? Have you given up on getting a response already or do you truly feel that nothing can dissuade you from lynching him?

[PersephoneSidekick]

Jesus, who invited all the scared teenagers to the dance?

If you don't trust your own votes then line up and follow mine. I've got a plan, I know what I want, and that's more than any of y'all can say right now.

Whale promised a post tonight and I'm waiting for it. I will follow yours or not contingent on what he says. How is that not a plan? Have you given up on getting a response already or do you truly feel that nothing can dissuade you from lynching him?

How many times has this guy told us he'll get to it later?

If he does finally deliver then I'll obviously have to take whatever he says into account. But my case is great and he's had several days to do anything to make me wrong, and he hasn't yet. How much longer am I gonna have to wait on y'all to see where I'm coming from?

I'm giving him the rest of today. If nothing has changed when I check the thread for the first time tomorrow, I'm voting him. Satisfied?

[PersephoneSidekick]

Jesus, who invited all the scared teenagers to the dance?

If you don't trust your own votes then line up and follow mine. I've got a plan, I know what I want, and that's more than any of y'all can say right now.

Whale promised a post tonight and I'm waiting for it. I will follow yours or not contingent on what he says. How is that not a plan? Have you given up on getting a response already or do you truly feel that nothing can dissuade you from lynching him?

How many times has this guy told us he'll get to it later?

If he does finally deliver then I'll obviously have to take whatever he says into account. But my case is great and he's had several days to do anything to make me wrong, and he hasn't yet. How much longer am I gonna have to wait on y'all to see where I'm coming from?

I'm giving him the rest of today. If nothing has changed when I check the thread for the first time tomorrow, I'm voting him. Satisfied?

Maybe.

Suppose something does change and gives you an out to vote for someone besides WB. Who is it and why?

Una, for the reasons I gave in 611. Tldr is that his page 24 is scummy as hell.

[PersephoneSidekick]

People keep using "he" for me in posts and it's very distracting. It's weird; everybody got it right on day 1. Is it the obviously male lion in my avatar?

[PersephoneSidekick]

Okay, you're going to hate me for this Miles but I think the burden of proof is back on you. It's plausible that he took that long to answer, and the responses don't seem unreasonable. I look forward to watching your argument :p

[PersephoneSidekick]

Anyway. Whale, are you up for lynching Una/Cankles with me?

[PersephoneSidekick]

I will never fail to call you a she if you vote with me =]

Wouldn't that count as a out of game transaction :p

[PersephoneSidekick]

Look, you said yourself that Una was Why's most likely scumpartner. Doesn't that still give you a good chance?

[PersephoneSidekick]

And we couldn't even pull off the lynch by ourselves right now anyway, only up to L-1

Sure but there are other people I can try to convince. RC might be a longshot, but maybe if your win your argument with Miles?

[PersephoneSidekick]

whale if you scumread whymafia vote him please

??

[PersephoneSidekick]

I feel like half of us agree on the most likely scumteam and just can't agree which one is more sure? Honestly, rule out Miles and I'm up for lynching Una and WhyMafia in either order.

[PersephoneSidekick]

OK, many smaller quotes coming soon, I love that people have been posting more.
I don't like the way people read my posts, but that is something I have to live with, I guess.
To me the tables seems more set now, though.

Perses last posts strike me as "panic-y", in the sense that SHE is trying very very hard to start a wagon on me.
And what always pets me the wrong way, is when it happens during the time I'm sleeping.
Which is actually why I always make it a point to place my accusations before going off, and then making it clear for everyone I'm going offline for many hours.
In this specific case I think Perse became more aggressive, and tried to quickly find wheels for her wagon. Not maybe being as hopeful as to get a quick lynch, but definitely would've wanted for me to wake up to a L-1 or something?

Second thought, if Una's "favorite suspects" are me and Whale why is he voting WhyMafia? Especially so soon after 586 panicking about the possibility? I can easily see him as playing a dangerous distancing game, hoping to switch to Whale later with all the arguments presented in 585. If Whale is town I actually think Una/Why is pretty likely. Or just Una; it could just be that Una doesn't care much who is lynched out of me, Whale and Why. Which leaves Wheme or Whale as his partner. Since Wheme doesn't make sense as a bussing, it would have to be Una/Miles.

Because admittedly, I felt a bit lost when RC switched his vote to me, after I myself had become fairly certain WhyMafia was scum and RC had sniffed him out before anyone else.
I trusted RC's judgement, so when he switched his vote for me, I had to do some brain-racking, and come up with my alternative scenarios.
And I feel better after doing that, because now I have a more clear view on why Perse could be scum even if WhyMafia isn't. Whale redeemed himself a lot in my eyes with his comeback posts, going to write him next.

Una, for the reasons I gave in 611. Tldr is that his page 24 is scummy as hell.

So..what reasons did you give? Saying my page 24 is scummy as hell..why?
Because I actually posted and tried to find reasoning in this game?
You gave 0 actual gameplay reasons, saying someones "page is scummy" is the easiest out.
I challenge you to point out actual gameplay pattern I have in your eyes, that drives a scum-wincon.
If you find "my angle", I will try to defend a case, until you do, I can't take your accusations seriously.

Anyway. Whale, are you up for lynching Una/Cankles with me?

Classy. If this wasn't you trying to quickly rally up a wagon, I don't know what is.
It's like you went knocking on doors where you knew someone who has just had his car stolen, offering free bus tickets.

Look, you said yourself that Una was Why's most likely scumpartner. Doesn't that still give you a good chance?

The one part I'm not sure of, is whether this means you might be ready to bus WhyMafia today, to "keep yourself clean".
If RC and I get WhyMafia lynched and he is your scumbuddy, you would still try to wagon me tomorrow.

Because you jumped so hard onto the idea of accusing Whale with a string of really terrible and forced arguments. Probably to defend WhyMafia, because you were afraid that RC was making too much progress.

And yeah, I'm pushing you kind of frantically. I finally feel like I have the beginnings of a clue whats going on and tons of people are online at once and I'm excited to get something done already. I should probably calm down because we have 6 days left. But my health has also been terrible and I'm kind of viscerally scared I won't have a clear enough head to contribute again before deadline.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Wait, I never got around to voting. VOTE: UnaBombaH

[PersephoneSidekick]

Thank you so much, Una! I hope I feel better too :p I really am getting enjoyment out of the game though, especially tonight.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I'd also like to point out one thing: lynching me wouldn't open up the game for Town in any way.
You would lynch a VT, and I doubt my "accomplice" could be anyone except WhyMafia. (?) So we go to D3 wondering how WhyMafia is still alive, and RC still wanting to lynch him.

I don't see a scenario where WhyMafia gets NK'd, the same way I don't see Wheme NK'd EVER.
Those are the two candidates a scum would want to take to LyLo, in the scenario where either or both of them isn't scum.

Think about that before starting another wagon and flailing more.

You're argument is that town!WhyMafia and town!Wheme are the least bad people to mislynch today because they'd probably get lynched tomorrow anyway?

I agree that if we don't lynch WhyMafia today then we probably will tomorrow. RC will vote for him and then either the mafia will quickhammer or his guilt will be proven by the fact that they didn't. Which means that if WhyMafia is innocent we only get one chance basically.

So we are picking whether to lynch a non-WhyMafia person today or tomorrow. If we do it today we have 5 people to guess among. If we do it tomorrow we will have only 4. Since RC is bulletproof, mafia can't help but kill a possible suspect, and everybody has serious accusations against them at this point other than RC.

So even if WhyMafia is innocent, mislynching him is inevitable and it's better if it happens today than tomorrow? Is that the argument?

[PersephoneSidekick]

It looks like everybody is going to bed. They probably have the right idea.

I don't think I'll have much time at all tomorrow, but I'll try to keep up with the thread as best I can. i should have time on tuesday and wednesday, but thursday and friday are sort of tight too. I kind of hope we finish the day before then tbh, but I do have all of saturday potentially free if it comes down to it.

Good night everybody.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Una, your analysis seems fairly plausible, but it's all predicated on you being town. If you are town then you know you're town but nobody else does. You could be sincerely trying to solve the game or sincerely trying to solve the parallel universe in which you're town.

But let's suppose for the sake of argument that you're town, then yeah I agree that WhyMafia is very important for us to lynch today. And if you're scum with WhyMafia then I might as well lynch WhyMafia first. So the thing to decide here is the likelihood of you being scum with somebody else I suppose.

You pushed Whale with Miles pretty hard which would be awfully blatant if you were mafia. I'm not sure why you wouldn't just stand back and watch WhyMafia happen in that case. Maybe you were planning to let RC finally get him tomorrow, I guess. You and Wheme together implies some interesting distancing tactics. With WhyMafia and me innocent your promise to lynch him is conveniently one day too late. Conversely, I'll be interested to see how Wheme responds to my more aggressive pushing of you.

Still, if it is you and Wheme I think we can still totally get you both if we're wrong about WhyMafia. If it's you and Miles...then we'll probably end up with RC choosing between Miles and Wheme and just have to hope she gets it right. But we're in the same boat if we lynch you today probably. And of course I could be wrong about you.

Okay I'm convinced. You get to live one more day.

Intent to hammer WhyMafia sometime tomorrow

unless somebody talks me out of it or makes a big slip or he claims or whatever.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Still, if it is you and Wheme I think we can still totally get you both if we're wrong about WhyMafia. If it's you and Miles...then we'll probably end up with RC choosing between Miles and Wheme and just have to hope she gets it right. But we're in the same boat if we lynch you today probably. And of course I could be wrong about you.

Hey! I don't remember calling you a he.

Okay I feel really stupid now, sorry.

[PersephoneSidekick]

If you flip town I'm going to push for Una, but I think I've made that clear already.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Bleh, I'm really tired today; sorry for not contributing anything yet. I did read the new stuff but nothing immediately jumps out as changing my impression of things. I'm still leaning Una/Miles with more confidence on Una than Miles, but I should really do a more careful reread of yesterday with the knowledge that WhyMafia was town. I'll have a lot of free time saturday so I'll try to reread the whole thing then if I can.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I take it back, I think Persephone is a more reasonable partner than Una for Wheme. I think it's still pretty close, but rereading her progression on Wheme, something isn't right.

I realize my 180 on him looked pretty weird but it was more an epiphany than that anything had changed. I had been suspicious of Wheme for unmotivated vote changes, but then I suddenly understood the intuition of one of his votes and that made me realize he was being opaque rather than arbitrary.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I take it back, I think Persephone is a more reasonable partner than Una for Wheme. I think it's still pretty close, but rereading her progression on Wheme, something isn't right.

I realize my 180 on him looked pretty weird but it was more an epiphany than that anything had changed. I had been suspicious of Wheme for unmotivated vote changes, but then I suddenly understood the intuition of one of his votes and that made me realize he was being opaque rather than arbitrary.

So you say that you were suspicious of him solely because of him changing his votes without explaining his motivation?

More that, in the absence of him explaining his motivations, I could think of scum motivations but not couldn't think of town ones. But then I could.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Okay, topic of Wheme: Frustratingly unhelpful != scum. The last minute vote that everybody is upset about is relatively consistent with his stated opinions. He, like me, thought the scumteam was Una/Why so he didn't care that much which one was lynched first. I think he declares and votes on reads, without explaining them; this is anti-town but NAI. The actual reads themselves are plausible reads. I see him as very very null and since I actively scumread Una, he's a much safer lynch to me.

I townread Whale and Miles and mildly scumread Miles, so Wheme loses out by a bit. If Una is cleared, then by POE Wheme is guilty with Miles and I'd be willing to vote him. But for now, I'm very worried that lynching Wheme might lose the game.

I'll make a post about Una soon after I finish a short meeting.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Una:

* Focused a lot of attention on trying to figure out whether RC was BP or doctor. 529 in particular feels like interrogating RC over his behavior as BP. Why would town care?

* Jumped aggressively on the wagon against Whale, using really forced arguments like "burying L-1 warning in text wall." He must have been delighted at the thought of lynching the towniest person other than the confirmed.

* Willing to lynch too many different people. "Suspected" me and Whale the most but was happy to go after WhyMafia instead without a fight. And then later turned to Wheme. Changing your mind is not scummy and I'd obviously be a hypocrite to suggest it was, but the switches suggest

not caring about the answer

to me.

* Admitted argument against: Scum with who? Whale and Wheme both have the "wow they're bussing each other a lot" problem, in Whale's case, across multiple people in the slot. It's kind of over the top dramatic so could be a performance but wow it's dangerous. Una and Miles, in contrast, worked together on a questionable lynch awfully blatantly for partners. But, Wheme and Miles have similar bussing problems too, as does Wheme and Whale. Whale and Miles is an interesting possibility associatiationally but they're the towniest individually. I think whoever the team is here, they're not afraid to accuse and vote for each other, maybe to dangerous extremes.

I still think the teams with Una are collectively the most likely.

[PersephoneSidekick]

The more I think about it the more confident I am that Una flips scum. Let's just do this. VOTE: UnaBombaH

[PersephoneSidekick]

*highfive*

Thank's for the quick check in, I was so nervous because your profile said V/LA.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Thanks for modding fferyllt, I loved all the plant flavor. I might reread your iso just for the gardening tips tbh.

[PersephoneSidekick]

*highfive*

Thank's for the quick check in, I was so nervous because your profile said V/LA.

I'd never ditch such a wonderful partner like that, hah. I realized I forgot to mention that we needed a way to check in before we went for it, but we figured it out. Thanks for the dance.


Good God scum is hard even in games that are favorable. Lol

Thank you too; you were a great partner.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Okay, topic of Wheme: Frustratingly unhelpful != scum. The last minute vote that everybody is upset about is relatively consistent with his stated opinions. He, like me, thought the scumteam was Una/Why so he didn't care that much which one was lynched first. I think he declares and votes on reads, without explaining them; this is anti-town but NAI. The actual reads themselves are plausible reads. I see him as very very null and since I actively scumread Una, he's a much safer lynch to me.

I townread Whale and Miles and mildly scumread Miles, so Wheme loses out by a bit. If Una is cleared, then by POE Wheme is guilty with Miles and I'd be willing to vote him. But for now, I'm very worried that lynching Wheme might lose the game.

I'll make a post about Una soon after I finish a short meeting.

I was actually expecting rc to lynch persp based on the slip here.

What'd I do?

[PersephoneSidekick]

Okay, topic of Wheme: Frustratingly unhelpful != scum. The last minute vote that everybody is upset about is relatively consistent with his stated opinions. He, like me, thought the scumteam was Una/Why so he didn't care that much which one was lynched first. I think he declares and votes on reads, without explaining them; this is anti-town but NAI. The actual reads themselves are plausible reads. I see him as very very null and since I actively scumread Una, he's a much safer lynch to me.

I townread Whale and Miles and mildly scumread Miles, so Wheme loses out by a bit. If Una is cleared, then by POE Wheme is guilty with Miles and I'd be willing to vote him. But for now, I'm very worried that lynching Wheme might lose the game.

I'll make a post about Una soon after I finish a short meeting.

I was actually expecting rc to lynch persp based on the slip here.

What'd I do?

You mentioned miles twice in two seperate types of read. It comes off as even if you didn't do it that way, like your been trying to figure out where to slot players and moved stuff around. Usually that kind of thought process doesn't come from a town mindset whose reads come from their honest thoughts. It comes from scum shaping their thoughts based on their perception of consensus.

Wow, I just noticed the typo. It was a mistake but it very plausibly reflected my editing process. That was the hardest part of playing scum for me was that I had to proofread so hard which is really hard when I have a bad health day. I feel like I might have inevitably gotten caught if this went on too much longer just because I was getting so tired.

[PersephoneSidekick]

But yeah, I knew this might be our last chance; I reloaded the page so many times today waiting to see if anybody was going to unvote. I'm still giddy from the adrenaline.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I will say, for what it's worth, that as scum you'll usually get more of a challenge from town. I tried fairly hard to make people care on day one and it just didn't really take. Relatively frustrating experience on my end. Cankles was obviously the most vocal "to hell with trying" voice, but it was a collective thing as much as anything else. Not really sure what I can do in a situation like that.

This is literally my only game ever so I have no basis of comparison. People keep saying it's bad or low effort or whatever so I guess that means my next game will be even more fun? I'm a bit daunted by the idea of playing scum against a more challenging town though; it sounds exhausting.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I will say, for what it's worth, that as scum you'll usually get more of a challenge from town. I tried fairly hard to make people care on day one and it just didn't really take. Relatively frustrating experience on my end. Cankles was obviously the most vocal "to hell with trying" voice, but it was a collective thing as much as anything else. Not really sure what I can do in a situation like that.

This is literally my only game ever so I have no basis of comparison. People keep saying it's bad or low effort or whatever so I guess that means my next game will be even more fun? I'm a bit daunted by the idea of playing scum against a more challenging town though; it sounds exhausting.

It is

But chances are you'll get some town rands soon as well. I personally find town much more rewarding, and not because I'm better at it. Just a more interesting experience.

Yeah I bet all that scumhunting will be more fun when I actually don't know the answers. :p Imaginary town!Persephone was having fun with that early on before I had to start telling her what to do more.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I will say, for what it's worth, that as scum you'll usually get more of a challenge from town. I tried fairly hard to make people care on day one and it just didn't really take. Relatively frustrating experience on my end. Cankles was obviously the most vocal "to hell with trying" voice, but it was a collective thing as much as anything else. Not really sure what I can do in a situation like that.

This is literally my only game ever so I have no basis of comparison. People keep saying it's bad or low effort or whatever so I guess that means my next game will be even more fun? I'm a bit daunted by the idea of playing scum against a more challenging town though; it sounds exhausting.

You played excellently for a first time out!

Do you have a homesite where mafia games are played?

I have only ever played in person before. This is my first forum game.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Also, thank you.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Yeah wow, I'm really glad the game ended before people read that post :/

[PersephoneSidekick]

Speaking of game queues, I'm trying to decide whether to do another newbie game or something else. Given the game was kind of bleh, is it enough for me to consider myself ready, do yall think?

[PersephoneSidekick]

I think I'll try another newbie game first then.

[PersephoneSidekick]

This thread seems to be very dead but also not locked. Are we still waiting for play feedback from mhs etc? I certainly wouldn't mind, but no obligation obviously.

[PersephoneSidekick]

I guess my biggest question is about how I kept getting accused for defending people etc. Since I was almost always going to be lynched

second

I wasn't too worried and saw it as a semi-good thing because I knew I would be vindicated etc. but it did mean I was tanking more suspicion than Miles. Was this a good situation to be in or strive for or should I be more careful of stuff like that in the future as scum? Anybody can answer.

[PersephoneSidekick]

Also thanks for the fast responses everybody.