Newbie 1863 Dead Topic

[mhsmith0]

Welcome to Newbie 1863 Dead Thread!

If you're reading this, you're dead or an observer. Thanks for playing/watching!

[mhsmith0]

Welcome Cedrick!

[mhsmith0]

Welcome DirtyDishSoap!

[mhsmith0]

welcome thegoldenparadox!

[mhsmith0]

wrt deadline extension request, I'll basically just repost here (for the curious) what I'd said in a previous newbie dead thread:

Subject: Newbie 1827 dead topic

wrt the deadline extension request, I'll put more detailed thoughts down here in dead thread:

1) I generally meet reasonable extension requests from players who sub in and want/need time to catch up (I think 72 hours from the replacement is around the max I'll push the deadline back to). Given that players who sub into games are doing a service to everyone else, i consider this to be entirely reasonable and appropriate.

2) I generally DO NOT meet other extension requests barring truly extraordinary circumstances, and "people are being fairly inactive" or "too much time has been wasted on thor vs derpy" really doesn't fit (neither does "taiho was inactive, hit replacement range, then came back" for that matter). Scum have a right to be relatively inactive, either as an intentional strategy or as just part of what it's like to play scum. By allowing extensions for standardish inactivity (especially when there's >24 hours until deadline), I deny scum that option and deny town the consequences for being inactive themselves.

Overall this board is 30 pages on day 2, and every slot but one has nearly 30 posts if not more (and that one has been replaced). Were this an obnoxiously inactive board, where a stack of people were JUST BARELY keeping to activity requirements constantly, and we were at like page 9 on day 2, and nothing was ever happening... then yeah I'd consider an extension. As it is, though... not really. I generally prefer to avoid changing deadlines (other than for replacements), and I don't consider this to be a situation meriting an exception.

[mhsmith0]

Welcome James Brafin!

[James Brafin]

Hey! I'd just like to say to all those who die after me: I told you so.

[mhsmith0]

Fwiw I’d recommend trying to think through a few things:

1) why did you get lynched, in terms of what others failed to see in your iso
2) why did you get lynched, in terms of things you could have done better
3) related: how many scum were on you, and what about the game state supoorts that read (default norm is one btw. If it’s 0 there’s usually a reason for it, if there’s 2 there’s usually a reason for it)
4) who you think is scum/town and why you think that

Dead thread in a newbie game is a good opportunity for reflection and trying to think through what’s happening and why it’s happening. Usually I give out a modpeek if a player sometime day two if the dead players can agree on who they want peeked... maybe start thinking about whose alignment/role you’d find most interesting or productive to be revealed.

[mhsmith0]

I’ll also note that, at the end of the day, your lynch was essentially unopposed, as no one really took the lead on trying to save you or really selling an alternative. That sort of dull thread environment is proscum.

See
https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?ti ... vironments
Group as a whole wasn’t active
Somewhat cooperative board, but with just one bandwagon, never really forced everyone to take a position wrt the wagon since it was just gonna happen
It’s really hard to say that ANYONE truly was subject to much scrutiny on the wagon, and it’s kind of hard to see where exactly town ought to go as a consequence day 2.

[James Brafin]

Fwiw I’d recommend trying to think through a few things:

1) why did you get lynched, in terms of what others failed to see in your iso
2) why did you get lynched, in terms of things you could have done better
3) related: how many scum were on you, and what about the game state supoorts that read (default norm is one btw. If it’s 0 there’s usually a reason for it, if there’s 2 there’s usually a reason for it)
4) who you think is scum/town and why you think that

Dead thread in a newbie game is a good opportunity for reflection and trying to think through what’s happening and why it’s happening. Usually I give out a modpeek if a player sometime day two if the dead players can agree on who they want peeked... maybe start thinking about whose alignment/role you’d find most interesting or productive to be revealed.

That's super helpful, thanks!
If you don't mind, I'm going to put that stuff here, so maybe as some people pop in we can generate some discussion.

1) Firstly, the ABN stuff no one seemed to quite grasp what I was getting at. Second, I think there was a skimming of wall posts and so people were missing important details, like the whole chainsaw argument thing.
2) A. The wall posts and my formatting. Which the former is understandable, but the latter is stupid. This is the first time I've EVER got complained at for formatting on site, and the fact that THAT is what got my wagon rolling is super frustrating. B. My push on Thor. On one hand, I can see in retrospect how it was stupid. On the other hand, How the HECK does something that blatantly scummy come from scum? C. My inability to disengage, at least in part, seems to have influenced my lynch. THat is something I've picked up from playing in a hydra with my brother and need to get out of the habit of.
3) I think that both scum were on me for sure. A) I was easy lynchbait. B) I provided no info to town on the flip C) Frankly, I think scum is within NK15, Teacher, Flicker, or Oxy. None of them have made me super comfortable with their posts.
4) Again, scum is within NK15, Teacher, Flicker, or Oxy for me.
NK: He used my bad play to develop a bull case and then deathtunneled. If he flips town I'm going to die of shock.
Teacher: He seems to have an issue with commiting to any real wagon until the last second. That stresses me out, and his reads have been super-wishy-washy too, without a good reason.
Flicker: Her read is more of a scum

lean

, seeing as she had a pretty good defense. I'm not happy at all about her apparent buddying still, but I'm willing to let it slide for now.
Oxy: Half the time he pings me, half the time he doesn't. It's super weird. And that hammer though, without reasoning -- that pings me a bit as well. Also mare of a lean, but I'm going to keep my eye on him.

Town: Thor because scum doesn't defend against town like that. Nauci becasue she's tried really hard to scumhunt it feels like.

I'd like to see a peek on either Meji or Irrelephant, honestly. While I'd love to get that confirmation that NK is scum, I've seen it said that it's better to use an investigative on your null reads, and those are def. my null reads.

[mhsmith0]

3) I think that both scum were on me for sure.

A) I was easy lynchbait

. B) I provided no info to town on the flip

So without spoiling anything, I'll say that these are contradictory reasonings (providing no info to town can be useful for scum... but the key question is whether scum needed to vote on you to make that low information lynch happen).

As a general rule, the easier the lynchbait is (i.e. the likelier it is that the lynch will go through regardless of what scum do), the likelier it is for scum to be OFF wagon. Scum generally aren't on runaway lynch wagons without particular reasons to be on them. Said reasons can include:
1) A partner is off wagon and scum don't want to be off wagon
2) Scum want to pile on the runaway lynch wagon to mess with VCA (there's a natural tendency to look for scum pairings of people not voting together, so people will vote together JUST to avoid that sort of thing sometimes)
3) To save a scum (either because it's the counterwagon or because scum are nervous that a chaotic gamestate where the lynch is in doubt can swing a wagon to a not yet pressured scum)
4) To avoid pushing someone in particular (usually someone they feel is a PR and will shoot that night)
5) Because they're totally out of ideas on who to push so they just get kinda lazy and push the easy wagon
etc

But IN GENERAL, the easier a mislynch is, the likelier it is that scum will be off it. This may or may not apply here, but in general there need to be a reason for scum to pile onto a particular lynch wagon... and then part of what you do as a villager is figure out whether any of those reasons seem to apply.


Some supporting notes

Postgame commentary from the one newbie game I randed wolf (subbed in d2, shot the cop n2, swept d3)

Subject: Newbie 1714 (Game Over)

It is fundamentally incumbent upon town to push players hard and do their best to sort them ON DAY ONE (or day two at the latest). Before possible mislynches, before tvt fights clog up the thread, etc. Force the wolves to show their insincerity early, because the later you let things drag on, the easier it is for them to blend in and manipulate others into taking the heat for mislynches.

As another note, I INTENTIONALLY made sure that I was on the D2 vandit lynch. I read vandit as a wolf before I subbed in (I thought I was probably his buddy but wasn't sure, there were a few possibilities), so it was really easy to roll with that read since it already existed as a sincere read of the board. It was a righteous-feeling mislynch, and I 100% wanted to make sure I was on that wagon. I had no problem justifying my presence there, and indeed I was super uncomfortable about the possibility I might have to jusitfy not being on it (also, I've read wagons before as righteous vs skeezy, and been correct, most notably at http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 7#p7909237 (in fact, the D1 clumsy lynch there was ALL TOWN).

Subject: Newbie 1714 (Game Over)

Also: knowing that day one wagons were t / t makes it far likelier that at least one wolf was off both wagons. (Likelier one than two though). As of that moment in time (3 on each, 3 off), in fact both wolves were off both town wagons.

That sort of evidence is super hard to parse out, but I think that in a world where it was known sick was town on d2, beebpy/me/rask would have been a good place to push. Otoh, vandit looked pretty Wolfy, and it would have been super hard to not lynch him d2. I even thought coming in I was replacing as his buddy lol.

Spoiled dead thread from the most recent newbie game I modded (talking about scum!creature here)
Subject: Newbie 1845 Spoiled Dead Topic

Wow, didn’t expect LUV to flip green at all

I’m having a really hard time sorting creature. He hasn’t done anything,

but vote analysis leans town

.

Creature's voting record

Day 1: Lazy L-1 vote on v/v wagon
Day 2: Stayed completely out of a nearly inevitable mislynch wagon

Both of those are wolf-indicative not town-indicative

I forget if there's anything that happened during day 1 before the eod wagons that'd make it better i guess.

Subject: Newbie 1845 Spoiled Dead Topic

I really want to vote Creature because of his play, but he hasn't been on the two town lynches so far.. I'll do some rereading this weekend but I'm really busy right now, sorry guys.

Being off a mislynch wagon is not town-indicative
Being off a mislynch wagon is not town-indicative
Being off a mislynch wagon is not town-indicative
Being off a mislynch wagon is not town-indicative
Being off a mislynch wagon is not town-indicative
Being off a mislynch wagon is not town-indicative
Being off a mislynch wagon is not town-indicative
Being off a mislynch wagon is not town-indicative
Being off a mislynch wagon is not town-indicative

Also casting a day 1 vote for the day 2 mislynch and then not following it up on day 2 is SUPER wolf-indicative

Day 5 of a 13/4 scum sweep (I was one head of juggernaut hydra, I was talking about Mulch, who was one head of GPC hydra, we were wolves together and won it on d5)
https://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/th ... ost1836360

Huh, eyeballing vc data, GPC has never been on a lynch wagon. Probably not a positive for them there fwiw.

Actually, making that point (which was really bad for GPC) and then swinging it around to townreading them anyway for other stuff was kind of fun.
(bonus points: in final 9, we were the only two living players to be off the day 1 mislynch wagon. If we were both town, then wolves mass piled onto the d1 absentee lynch (and almost all of the d1 counterwagons were on people who'd since flipped town) for no particularly good reason other than maybe fucking with VCA... which is vaguely possible but super super unlikely. Fortunatley no one pressed the poitn )

[James Brafin]

Man, I've learned more in that one post than from thirteen pages of playing! :p
That makes sense though, why lynch as scum when you can get town to do it?

While I'm still confident in NK scum, that just threw all of my other reads for a loop.

[mhsmith0]

Also, in case it's helpful, I'll copy in my standard IC post (2 parts). Somewhat out of date on a few items but imo broadly helpful

IC POST #1

**note: the following post is PRE WRITTEN, BEFORE I GOT MY ROLE PM. It has ZERO bearing on my alignment**

Hello, everyone, I’m mhsmith0, your friendly (with 7/9 odds of that actually being true) neighborhood Inexperience-Challenged (IC)! As an IC, I am bound by the guidelines shown in Being a Good IC. If you’re new to the site, there are a number of things you’ll need to know:

Spoiler: How to Vote

As noted (probably) in the mod’s OP (Original Post), you vote either by bolding someone’s name or using vote tags, which look like:

Code: Select all

[v]Player Name[/v]

While we’re at it: don’t self-vote. Self-voting can sometimes be appropriate behavior for mafia; it is virtually never appropriate behavior for town. Do not do it.

Spoiler: The Setup

…

Spoiler: Basic Lynch Mechanics and Role Claiming

When a majority of living players vote for the same slot, that person is lynched. On day one, the fifth player to vote for someone is what is known as the “hammer” vote. If you are the third or fourth voter, it is common and courteous to make this very explicitly clear (L-2, L-1 notation after your vote, preferably in bold and/or large letters).
If there are four votes on someone and you intend to be the fifth, you should state hammer intent. This gives the player you want to hammer a chance to make a final defense and potentially role claim. DO NOT hammer someone without giving them a chance to defend themselves and if necessary role claim.
If you are a vanilla townie, this is appropriate behavior because someone who seems suspicious or “off” may simply be a town PR (power role), and because it is considered highly suspicious behavior and may get you lynched the next day.
If you are a town PR, this is appropriate behavior because you may end up hammering the OTHER town PR, and because hammering without caring for a claim is often a signal that YOU are a town PR, and because it is considered highly suspicious behavior and may get you into a situation where you are forced to claim your role the next day.
If you are a mafia, this is appropriate behavior because it is considered highly suspicious behavior and may get you lynched the next day.
If you are a vanilla townie who is up against hammer intent on you, DO NOT FAKE CLAIM. It is common for the actual town PR(s) to counter claim you, and that will allow the mafia the ability to kill the town PR at night. Defend yourself, but if you have to claim a role, do not lie.
If you are mafia who is up against hammer intent on you, do whatever you think will advance your win condition. This may be self-defense, or fake claiming a town power role, or may simply be claiming vanilla townie. Use your judgement about what will help your team the most.
For the town, lynching each day is essential, with very specific exceptions. Do not ever no lynch on day 1.

Spoiler: MYLO and LYLO

The mafia will win when they equal or outnumber the town. This means that, for the mafia to win, they must at some point reach what is known as MYLO (mislynch and lose) or LYLO (lynch correctly or lose).
MYLO happens when the town only outnumbers the mafia by 2 during a day phase, and LYLO happens when the town only outnumbers the mafia by 1 during a day phase. This can happen as early as day 3 given two mislynches and one or two successful night kills.
In MYLO/LYLO, the mafia have the ability to win by quick-hammering a town that has votes on them. As a consequence, it is important to have all of the relevant information you can get as town. For starters, during MYLO/LYLO there is typically a mass claim of power roles if any still survive. This helps ensure that there is a cleared town member, or if there are countering claims, it helps to narrow down who might or might not be mafia. If you are in MYLO/LYLO, and it is possible or outright known (based on flipped roles) that at least one town PR still exists, DO NOT VOTE before the mass claim happens.

Spoiler: Random Voting Stage (RVS)

On MafiaScum, games typically begin with what is known as RVS. Because town has not information about who is or is not mafia, while mafia know everyone’s alignment (though not roles), games typically begin with voting and questioning other people. RVS usually starts with silly-looking votes for silly-looking reasons, but it is through these votes and the reactions to them that we can start to determine who seems likeliest to be mafia.

Spoiler: Scum-Hunting

Scum-hunting is hard! But even harder than scum-hunting is fake scum-hunting. If all town-aligned players invest into the game, and are truly trying to figure out who is and is not mafia, then it becomes massively harder for mafia players to blend in and either actively drive mislynches or sit back and watch town destroy itself; moreover, their insincere attempts to pretend to be trying to sort and solve players’ alignments stands out starkly against a town that is collectively engaged in sincere, energetic and aggressive attempts to find the mafia. If most to all town-aligned players are inactive, or lazy, or just choose to let someone else do the work, then it becomes much harder for town to win. Moreover, it’s simply a much more fun game when everyone is active and engaged.

Spoiler: More on Matrix6

…

[mhsmith0]

IC POST #2

**note: the following post is PRE WRITTEN, BEFORE I GOT MY ROLE PM. It has ZERO bearing on my alignment**

Since this is a newbie game, I figured I'd share some resources that I myself have found VERY useful (shamelessly copied/paraphrased from other sources, with a few of my own thoughts and examples mixed in as well). I'll be hiding them under spoiler tags, so feel free to ignore if you aren't really interested. This is 100% OPTIONAL, but I found it extraordinarily useful in improving my game. You may or may not.

Note that some of these are actually useful advice for scum (shown in big red font). I make no apologies for this; the point of this game is to have a learning experience, which includes for the scum team. Moreover, ALL of you will be on scum teams if you keep playing this game. Doing so well is another part of developing your game.

Spoiler: Voting Analysis

Vote analysis is…vital
Nothing written in thread is as crucial as the names put in red and the reasons offered to justify those lynch votes. They are the best guide to player motive and thus to player alignment. And so it is the core of your scumhunting.

Vote analysis is huge in scope...
...because it encompasses everything from the micro-level of analysing individual votes to the macro-level of analysing voting patterns within and across multiple game days.

Spoiler: Micro vote analysis

Understanding how a scum’s motives and a townie’s motives differentiate their respective voting behaviours

So scum vote for townies right? Well, yeah…often enough, but that doesn’t get you very far. Firstly scum vote for other scum far more often than might be initially assumed, but your biggest problem is that townies vote for other townies…a lot!
So how does a townie tell the difference?
Well if each townie is bringing their best game then they should be intellectually invested in their lynch vote. They want that player killed. Consequently, they want to influence and persuade their fellow townies and drive their preferred lynch. In short, it matters to a townie who specifically is lynched that game day.
A townie might initially throw a vote or two around to see what happens, but essentially a townie lynch vote ought to be righteous

in the moment of being cast

.
Simultaneously a townie will be continuously reviewing their reads and triaging their suspects (everyone else in the game). They are genuinely searching for the best vote. That means if they change their vote…that process is righteous too.
…
Well preferably they [scum] want a townie lynched, but more than that

they want to blend in

. Ideally they also want someone else set up to take most of the heat for mislynches.
…
So…scum voting is therefore a part of their elongated active lurk – look busy, but don’t help. They want to surf along on the edge of your consciousness and low in your triage of suspects. Meanwhile townies throw suspicion at each other over misconstrued nothings.
…
So whether on or off the current leading mislynch, a scum in this mode is relatively passive and their lynch vote rationales underwhelming.
Also fake scumhunting is hard! It’s difficult to both contrive some reason to vote someone and then plausibly ‘sell' that contrivance. It is much easier to window-dress plagiarised arguments or just try and slip a token 'scumhunt' into thread without fanfare.
…
If a scum does try some fake scumhunting it will lack righteousness. It will smell feeble. You will struggle to see how or why this vapour is vote-worthy relative to alternative issues present in the thread. Knowing this some scum players might try and fake passion for their vote to disguise the deficit in intellectual integrity underpinning it. Then you are looking for a disproportionate level of zeal and/or confidence. A scum in this mode is not necessarily harder to spot, but can be harder to lynch since they can impress weaker-minded townies. They can shamelessly segue from one terrible vote underpinned by garbage to another and not miss a beat. Scum also tend to gravitate to this mode the closer they are to the win.

In summary

: If all is well for them, scum are just trying to find a quiet spot for their vote where they hope to avoid any scrutiny for their choice and its rationale and/or where they retain the maximum level of freedom to redeploy it if that suits their aims.
Either way,

it is a truism that a scum-advantageous town environment is one where it is an accepted norm for most lynch-votes to be cast for reasons other than the quality and history of the lynch target’s own voting choices

.
For example, scum might vote on people for alleged anti-town behaviours that usually amount to their (townie) lynch target saying/doing something daft about roles or mechanics. Or it might be some alleged incongruity woven from the target tripping over themselves in their mis-communication of something or other. Maybe even some misspeak that gets twisted into an alleged scumslip. All of this is normally absolute garbage! The reality is that most clumsy in-thread behaviour and expression labelled as anti-town is (regrettably) town-indicative. Typically, scum are more calculating and careful in what they say and how they say it.
…
The point is you want to parse out the difference between the player who really believes this guff is vote-worthy and the player who can hardly believe his luck that townies seem to believe this guff is vote-worthy.

Spoiler: Macro vote analysis

By definition, this is analysis in hindsight. It is looking into the past with fresh eyes based on the new information from death alignment reveal. Also by definition the further into the past you look the better the information you have because you have more death reveals on players active that game day.
This is why d1 in particular is gold-dust to any town. If you cannot spot all the pro-scum vote choice shenanigans I have listed above while d1 is happening you can

go back and re-read it

on subsequent days and spot those shenanigans in retrospect!
This approach is useful at any time, but really comes into its own on d3 and beyond.
Incidentally this is why townies should work really hard to get the maximum amount of data from the maximum number of players into thread on d1. As they play d1, they should be thinking about d3 when they and their team-mates will re-read d1 (and d2) both chronologically and after filtering by author to get an intensive re-read on their top suspects’ vote choices and behaviour on those days.
Only the very best mafia think of d1 in the same way whilst they play d1. More likely they have sort of drifted through d1 taking the high-odds easy mislynch with a minimum of effort. They often get away with that laziness during d1, but they can be exposed for it on d3 by a vigilant town!

So what types of Vote Analysis are there?

There are two broad types:
(i) Analysis within game days; and
(ii) Analysis between game days

(i) Chronological vote analysis within game days

What I will term type (i) vote analysis looks into the chronology of how votes came down and the fluctuations of different lynch trains rising and falling within a given game day. … Then colour it (red & blue) with known death reveals (and yourself in blue too is my habit
[

SMITH NOTE: I recommend that you do NOT follow TWC’s habit here; avoid coloring yourself in unless you’ve actually been confirmed as town mechanically, since this will ensure that the work you do is useful for other townies, as if they have to bother uncoloring you for anything they do with your analysis it’s a needless hassle

]
). Next sub-divide it into key phases. Finally try and spot ‘events’ or transitions of potential significance.

Catching scum with type (i) analysis

You are looking for any signs of scum tactics – for example, trying to save a scumbuddy under a lynch threat. This is rarer than you might imagine even amongst relatively unsophisticated 3-man scum teams, but more likely when a team is down to two.

Spotting fellow townies with type (i) analysis

However type (i) vote analysis can also help you pick up on town-indicative conduct. I will give an example hypothetically at first. Let’s say the clear mid-point d1 lynch vote leader, Player Z, is now known (through subsequent death reveal) to be a townie. Later in d1, Player X drives hard an alternative lynch on Player Y who is lynched that day and flips town.

Odds are that Player X is likely town too. Why?

Because what scum motive would Player X have to so prominently drive a mislynch on townie Y and get his hands dirty when sitting tight and doing nothing would have provided him with a townie death anyway?
…

Be careful - narratives like this are bewitching. Nothing about Player X is definitive based on this alone. You must re-read at the micro level too and cross-verify for righteousness.

(ii) Vote analysis between game days

What I will term type (ii) vote analysis looks at lynch counts at ‘snap-shot’ moments in time and works on presumptions about how scum will want to place their votes in relation to one another. Overwhelmingly, these snap-shots are the final lynch counts of each game day. After all, it is the votes at game day end which really count. It can be useful to take other snap shots at game day mid-points, but for now I will just focus on end of game day.
Place these end of game day snapshots side-by-side, with known alignments in red and blue and look for signs of scum ‘parking’ their votes tactically. Places that – at the time - seemed nice quiet spots for scum to hide out but which in retrospect stick out when you layer in alignments from death reveal.
Health Warning!
Note my use of the word presumptions. Not absolutes. Be careful - narratives woven from these presumptions can be bewitching. You always also have to synthesise your macro analysis with micro analysis of your suspect’s vote choices and reasoning.

Spoiler: D1 scumhunting

...Seriously, I want you all to write down your personal list of behaviours in-thread that on d1 you consider scum-indicative and which town-indicative
...
Once you have your lists, now I want you to try a new approach to the game. You are going to catch a mafia d1! Instead of believing this myth that d1 is always a crap-shoot and mafia will likely get a townie lynched that day believe something akin to the opposite.

I believe that d1 is the mafia's hardest day. They will leave a legacy of clues on this day specifically that will help you throughout the game.

If things are going badly for a town as they move into d3, d4, d5 there is more and more 'sludge' in thread - townies posting garbage, getting into fights, confirmation bias written large etc etc. The mafia have all sorts of camoflage to mask their insincerity. So you go back to d1 and you read it again through the lens of all that has happened since...

Oh and that's the clue - you are looking for

insincerity

most especially in why they vote for who they vote on. (They may be insincerely voting on a buddy) How do you spot insincerity - their reasons make no sense or their move from one person to a new target 'jars' you cannot see the progression or evolution in their thinking that is characteristic of a clueless townie or their vote is lazy in its level of scrutiny when you know this person as town is diligent and even sometimes insightful.

So mid-d1 I want you to sort by author and re-read each person's opus. Pick your top 2. Vote for one of them and drive that lynch. See what flows from that. Something might happen that will change your mind, but mostly you will stick with it.

Then every day subsequently most especially when you feel lost and frustrated that you haven't a f*cking clue who the mafia are they are so well hidden. Do the same again and re-find the scum. Things that would not have led you to lynch someone on d1 will now stand out as a clue based on what has happened d2 or d3 etc. Always do vote pattern analysis every day
…
Either way, d1 is 'pure'. Insincerity has a sharp relief. Mafia don't have as much townie generated 'sludge' to hide behind. Fake scumhunting is hard. bk as scum team lead was doing a good job, but even then ultimately his solution to getting through d1 was to vote on a buddy. I don't blame him. It's one of my favourites too. It has so much long-term value and a good mafia knows that d1 is tough because he is thinking deeply about what it is to be a mafia.
Bazza did one of those classic summary posts but had implausible and illogical reads on almost everyone. They all jarred with me. That is because he was being insincere. He had to have in-thread positions that might justify him voting on some townie later on while claiming continuity in his thinking.
So catching mafia based on d1 is easy? Well of course not. You have a problem. largely useless townies who don't know how to scumhunt drifting into inactivity or just jumping on a bandwagon since they are so unconfident in their own ability to scumhunt or relying on some lame linear reason to vote for someone or its opposite - something woven out of too much complexity as if mafia were masterminds

Spoiler: Theories about how scum place their votes

The following scum-tendencies are decently reliable since they are based on experiential data and because they are a natural consequence of the micro-level behaviours articulated in part I – that scum are placing their votes tactically and trying as much as possible to fly under the radar.

They provide a way of framing your micro-level vote analysis, but remain only narrative without the it.

So…

a) On the whole, scum teams like to spread out their votes early on in the game because they are trying not to associate themselves with one another.

b) It is very rare for a scum team to have all their final votes on the same player early in the game. This is especially true on d1 and pretty reliable on d2 as well. An exception would be if the whole town (or close to it) is voting on the lynchee.

c) This latter point hints at a variable – how many votes did the lynch ‘winner’ have? The more votes, the more likely it will be that the scum will be willing to accept some bunching. For example 2 out of 6 votes is ok, but not 2 out of 4 votes. That kind of thinking.

d) Less reliably, this potentially implies something about the order in which those votes go on. Votes #1 and #2 are less likely to both be mafia since they cannot know whether there will even be a vote #3. Whereas one amongst votes 1-3 and another at 5 or 6 looks more likely.

e) Another variable that impacts here though is the size of the scum team itself. Point b) is very good guidance against a standard 3-man team. Against a 2-man team it is harder to say since we are only talking 2-0 or 1-1 as options for deployment rather than options of 3-0, 2-1 and 1-1-1. In the latter case 3-0 is very unlikely, but in the former 2-0 is far more plausible.

f) As a related point, you can say that if a scum is lynched relatively early in the game then it is pretty likely that at least one of his team mates was on that lynch for the credibility boost and for the tactical option (not taken) of jumping off if to help save his buddy if that play seemed viable. Again this varies depending upon how many votes were needed to lynch the scum. If it was only 4 votes to 3 then may be all 4 voters are town, but even then I’d say better than 50% odds that one colleague was bussing. Then again this is also better guidance against a standard 3-man scum team. A 2-man team has far more to lose from bussing but also more credibility to gain. Ergo the deciding factor is what kind of scum player are we dealing with here…

g) If a scum is being lynched in a near landslide then his buddy or buddies are very likely to be on the lynch and perhaps prominently so…

h) Throw-away votes that had only an indirect impact on the final lynch outcomes are more likely to be scum votes. In final votes counts on d1 and d2 of 6-3-1 or 5-3-1-1 or similar …I am interested in looking for scum amongst those 1s. Those solo votes were effectively voting on the lynch leader but possibly trying to keep out of the way while it happened. If a townie cannot get their first-choice lynch but have a chance at their second or even third-choice over someone they don’t want lynched at all then they need to act - not sit on the sidelines. This scum tendency can be another by-product of point a) – the desire to avoid bunching…Ergo by the same principle only one of those throw-away solo votes on a given game day is likely to be scum. It is a lot less likely that both the 1s in a 5-3-1-1 are scum.

i) Related to point h)¬ ‘parked’ votes that were tucked away in a reasonably sized pack of votes at one point but have then been left high-and-dry when the tide on that candidate went out…are more likely to be a scum left clinging to a stale vote backed by stale reasons…

Spoiler: Crunkus List of Things to Focus on (irrelevant/joke ones removed)

Playing this game well is easy. You just need to focus on the following short list of things:

1. Identifying moments of townie sincerity.
2. Identifying moments of legitimate scummy insincerity (harder).
3. Communicating your process openly for your fellow teammates to better assess you correctly and therefore reduce the scope of their possible incorrect assessments.
4. Producing situations where moments of sincerity or insincerity bubble out either by design or indirectly.
5. Being persuasive enough to affect the flow of the game in a manner that's best for your team.
6. Encouraging others on your team to do all of these things more effectively.
7. Reviewing the words of revealed scum to look for aberrant patterns of interaction not easily explained another way, individual interactions involving that player which in retrospect seem decidedly odd that may have escaped notice the first time around, and may have escaped notice.
8. Identifying reactions to certain situations that deviate from any reasonably expected townie approach to the same information.
9. Noticing who is doing what and who is not doing what and who is possibly putting more effort into appearing to do what while not really accomplishing what they'd otherwise probably be doing if they weren't scum.
10. Not losing your shit.
11. Identifying when you need to take a step back from a firm position you have, look at how that position may be affecting the way you view other points of data, and taking a comparative and honest look at the other possibilities.
12. Comment on as many different trains of thought as possible and encourage the same from others. Then go beyond commenting, and encourage productive discussion on as many trains of thought as possible.
13. Go back and re-read.
14. Summon additional hours in the day through dark magicks.

15. If you're scum, try to forget that you are scum and that you know what you know whenever possible, unless it is important that you don't...and you're good enough to execute properly. Then attempt to win the game for the town. If you were town, you'd probably botch it up anyway.

16. Go back and look at the voting record and think in terms of moments and what tactical voting might look like or whether it would even be required in that situation. Don't accept common wisdom. Most common wisdom and thinking associated with voting is manure. Manure can be very useful in the right applications, but it stinks and is not something you want outside the correct context.
18. Never assume you cannot be understood. This is the first step toward not being understood. I don't care if you tried already and it didn't appear to make a dent. What do you know about that person's dents? What you've read in thread? Most of it is pointless blather. Keep trying, and try a different way. Maybe they are scum. I don't care. Don't give up, don't feed me that "the town is better off without me" tripe. The town is not better off without you. The town is better off resolving your drama...so resolve it.
19. Read your own posts once in a while several days after you wrote them. Bring a swear jar. You'll be needing it. We're all terrible at this and there's nothing like a bit of temporal distance to give you a big slice of how much. It's good to remember from time to time when you are trying to pick through who is opportunistically trying to get you killed and who may generally have no clue what you were actually trying to communicate.
20. Just because someone is presenting you as saying something you didn't does not mean they are purposely misrepresenting you. See #19. Clarify with more patience than anyone has a right to have.
22. Look for people trying to make a silk purse out of something you suspect from previous experience they know is a sow's ear. Scum love over-justifying what stated fairly and simply is just terrible reasoning.
23. Resist the urge to point out scummy behaviour right away. Give them rope. Caught a contradiction? You aren't in the slightest bit suspicious. Seek clarification and offer positive feedback. Let it crystallize. Then keep in mind that you are probably wrong about this. Also, don't take too long.
24. Don't lie to your teammates, excepting rule 24 and a half.
25. Put thought into your night orders. As GM one thing is clear...a lot of people treat most night orders as after thoughts. As a player who is always town, I notice a lot of people are made to look worse than they need to be the next day because they didn't put much thought into their night orders. Think about all the variables that might be involved in your decision. You likely have days to think about it. It's okay to send the GM a message saying..."thinking, will respond probably tomorrow".

Spoiler: Sample Scum-catch #1 – CTR on Thryfing

This is Thryfing's first post of the game. I want everyone town-aligned in this game to read it and try to tune-in to why I felt certain a scum wrote this

Thryfing wrote: ...

bkbkbk wrote:I wonder why certain players are painting Peanut as foolish or stupid rather than, perhaps, insincere for his enquiries? Surely to say a man is a "moron" is to say that he has honest intent, but lacks the mental capacity to act appropriately?

Ironhammer

If you think Peanut is being insincere for his enquiries, don't you think he should be the one fed to the Vagus instead of people mis-painting him?
......

bkbkbk

How about you or anyone else not voting for him explains how for even a second they believe that Thyrfing sincerely suspects that bk is mafia premised on the reason he cites for voting for bk? His whole post is a: "shit, I suppose I'd better get into thread and post something and dump a vote somewhere before going back into the shadows"...

Anyway, you see nervous scum stumble into the game this way all the time and thus accidentally announce: "Hi, I am scum". First, open up with a bit of an active lurk fake bonhomie thing, then....

Next latch on to some random snippet and twist it into some contrived BS to dump a vote on a townie. Then find some obvious but essentially trivial piece of vague pro-town mechanics to endorse to pretend you are interested in the town's wellbeing...

Oh yes, bk's point about IH's comments on Peanut are well-observed and sound and yet Thryfing manages to distort that into the idea that bk doubts Peanut's sincerity when he says no such thing. What bk is noting is that IH has potentially scumslipped by giving away that he knows for sure that Peanut is sincere since he only accuses him of being idiotic - ergo IH knows Peanut is town because IH is scum...

And all of these things you will find in Thingy's post. IH is likely his pal and maybe one other voting Peanut or finding reasons not to vote for Thyrfing.

...
Thyrfing didn't come into thread to make that one lousy post that ignored a host of things he might talk about and pluck out one quote to attach to a crappy vote to and another pro-town titbit that he randomly elevated above a range of others he might have endorsed or commented on because he is invested in this town's survival. He did it because its expected and he has to do something or other since he is invested in his survival...

Spoiler: Sample Scum-catch #2 – TWC on Harb

So catching up. Still no Harb. That's a shame. Since he may well claim d3 reaper and the sooner that is resolved the better.

Some of this maybe redundant if Harb does claim and is not countered, but I think it gives the full context to my day so far...

Harb & Pagane were my top 2 yesterday based independently on vote data. But Pagane flipping scum only made me suspect Harb more. The data point I thought relevant from day 1 I have quoted before on d3 and re-quote in my last analysis on d2. I just didn't pursue it yesterday because I did not want to hunt 2 scum at once. I think Harb already guesses what I was thinking. It's basically this section:

thewysecat wrote:
Transition from Point 2 to Point 3:
08:35 GMT:

Pagane

(1) by sjg11 off of Ugluk (2)
17:45 GMT: Unvote (1) by Phatality off of

pelagius

(4)
18:42 GMT:

Pagane

(2) by Phatality off of No vote (0)
20:07 GMT: Unvote (1) by Petunia off of

pelagius

(3)

Point 3 - Pel vote is collapsing as sjg11 leads the way

pelagius

(3): Ugluk,

thewysecat

, shadowfriend1
Ugluk (2): Harb,

Pagane

Pagane

(2): sjg11, Phatality
shadowfriend1 (1):

pelagius

Phatality (1):

Palin

No vote (2): Petunia, Dodgy

Transition from Point 3 to Point 4:
20:13 GMT:

pelagius

(4) by Harb off of Ugluk (1)

The mood had turned against a Pel lynch and sjg11's move also took the Ugluk lynch down to 2 and Pagane up to 2 and this made me think that scum might begin to worry about Pagane. It was at this point that Harb did a - to me- slightly surprising thing in comparing and contrasting Pagane & Pel and concluding that he wanted to vote Pel. Thus boosting that lynch over the Pagane move at what seemed a key moment. It also seemed contrary to all he had done of Pel up to that point.

As I say that may be redundant.

The other relevant data is of course end of d2

thewysecat wrote:
D2 end

Palin

(6): dodgy56,

Pagane

, Petunia, Phatality, shadowfriend1, Ugluk
dodgy56 (1): Harb
Phatality (1):

Palin

Petunia (2): sjg11,

thewysecat

If you make the assumption of not 3 scum votes on Palin, then one scum is outside. I retain a strong town read on sjg11 and so obviously I am finger pointing at Harb in that context. I did not rule out 3 voters on Palin the same way I ruled it out for Pel, but I still felt it a pretty strong data point. Obviously I am now backpeddling on that unless I want to vote sjg11, but I don't.
...

Sample Advice for Scum

Spoiler: Sjg's Advice to Scum Team

Post 1:
Alright guys, I'm here to pass on my wisdom regarding how to play as scum.

Now my normal tactic for new scum players is to lurk. Simple, effective way to win the game.

But this game is slightly different for two reasons that make lurking a less productive strategy:
1. It's a newbie game. Everyone will be a little lost and confused so being lost and confused isn't as strong an excuse as it is normally.
2. It's a newbie game. The main purpose is to improve as players not, necessarily, to win.

So for these reasons I'll suggests a different way of playing the game but, firstly, there's a mindset you need to get into before you start. You have to enter the thread with the desire to find scumtells from players. This will allow you to push lynches on town players and will allow you to effectively fake a town thought process, since you are legitimately hunting for scumtells. There is a small and subtle difference but it'll be almost undetectable in a newbie game.

Moreover it will allow you to lead the town which will give you the opportunity to lead it astray.

Post 2:

As for what a scumtell is, it's simple. A scumtell is something you think a scum would be more likely to do than a town. These can range from simple things like bandwagoning to more complicated cases.

Post 3:

Alright dudes, your resident Sith Lord is back. Let's get to work my minions. (Plays Emperor's tune thingy)

Con, keep up the level of activity and engagement. Good start.

Subotai, start posting when you get here. If you need something to allow you to get started you could discuss the plans con suggested, like character reveals. If you see anything you think looks scummy then point it out. The other players should like you for it.

Now win it for sjg. He's looking forward to being able to mock the town mentors in the AAR.

Post 4:

A good night kill target is someone who is:
1. Unlikely to be protected
2. Can contribute to the town in a positive manner
3. As a bonus, may have a power role.

Post 5:

You've come up with a plan to win the game. That's great. It's always good to have a plan in the back of your mind as scum, particularly in the end game.

But, what's your backup plan? What will you do if the plan goes wrong, as it likely will? You need to prepare an out for when things go wrong or it's probably wise not to try the ploy/play/plan. As scum it's normally better to err on the side of caution.

Spoiler: Behaviors, by TWC

I have made this point elsewhere often and I shall make it here. If all you have is anti-town behaviours then lynch on those if you must but sadly most anti-town behaviours are town indicative. Upto and including - so it turned out - Petunia's d2 behaviours. This - in my opinion - is what Palin was lynched on and was the basis of all the grief Ugluk took. They did something(s) you did not like and were unapologetic about it. Only a ballsy scum does that. They exist, but rarely. Ugluk to be fair might be one of them. But scum live more usually in the null-space. They are in the corner of your eye on the edges of awareness until suddenly you realise...in time? or too late? Lynch on pro-scum indicative behaviours - active lurking, hedging, politicking, weird votes or switches in logic, incongruencies in positions held/advocated and actions taken - things they are doing to stay in the null space. Palin just had a daft idea and didn't care what you thought about it.

Spoiler: On engagement, effort, emotion and tone

Spiff was doing stuff that you just don't see wolves actually do -- claiming a PR with still 24 hours remaining on d1 and openly antagonizing the people pushing him the hardest, rather than just slink away and wait for a shiny object to appear that drags the votes away from him

…

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

…

I don't have time to adequately respond to that post but one thing I can say quickly is that when I'm talking about emotions, I'm specifically excluding anger. It's the easiest emotion to fake and it's one that is often not alignment-indicative even when it is genuine, unless it can be traced to an origin in something distinctly villagery.

Emotions like pride, paranoia, surprise, suspicion, etc, are more difficult to fake. Wolves often fail to even identify spots in which emotion should be present in their posting, and their efforts at actually displaying more complex emotions are often quite clumsy, for example by stating their supposed feelings rather than displaying them.

But in the case of Cron, a lot of what was clearing for him was just the sheer depth and breadth of his reads and interactions. It's just hard to fake that much content so quickly and make it sound good. And few wolves are ever going to stalk other players' online statuses in order to catch lurkers.

Smith Inserts the Relevant Cron Quotes

Well, here we go again. I'm glad there is not 100 pages in the first hour.

Based on post count alone and higher aggression, different tone in his lost, Emberguard is very likely town.

I agree with the ember read but your first post this game does not impress me like it did in Transformers.

If trundle flips mafia, consider ember town.

Cron, one little wolf tell I've picked up on over time is how a lot of them vote for a bro very early. It's long-game cover and anti-spew, but you'd be alarmed at how many wolves vote for a wolf as their very first action in any given game.

I think it's more likely that mafia just gave an easy read (ember acting very differently this game) as a spew than they're both mafia.

And yes I think trundle is mafia.

Cron, one little wolf tell I've picked up on over time is how a lot of them vote for a bro very early. It's long-game cover and anti-spew, but you'd be alarmed at how many wolves vote for a wolf as their very first action in any given game.

I think it's more likely that mafia just gave an easy read (ember acting very differently this game) as a spew than they're both mafia.

And yes I think trundle is mafia.

Off one post?

Yep. Get on my level.

Why trundle is mafia based on 1 post:

1. Relieved there isn't a flood of posts to read yet gives hardly any content.
2. Only gives an easy tone read on ember, easy to fake as mafia.
3. Content is very lacking compared to his town game in transformers
4. Still has yet to respond to me calling him mafia.

Why trundle is mafia based on 1 post:

1. Relieved there isn't a flood of posts to read yet gives hardly any content.
2. Only gives an easy tone read on ember, easy to fake as mafia.
3. Content is very lacking compared to his town game in transformers
4. Still has yet to respond to me calling him mafia.

Reasonable, but I disagree.
1. I'm in Computer Science and there are exams right now. I don't have time for an overly busy game like Transformers. I figured this one would be less busy simply do to what happened last game. This is why I am relieved. Also, do to the fact that there isn't all the much content yet, I did not have much to go off of, but I did give a read which is more than nearly anyone else had done so far.
2. Any town reading another town as town is easy to fake as mafia reading a town as town.
3. What content? It was my first post of the game and I was just checking in.
4. I was offline.

It seems to me that you're just reaction testing me because my post wasn't as long as it was last time. Also, I haven't read the rest of the thread yet, so just give me a second and if anyone else joined bandwagon I'll respond shortly.

I am reaction testing a bit, and you failed miserably.

You've been online in MU for 45 minutes, I saw on main page, so saying you were offline until now is a blatant lie.

Your demeanor is far too calm. Watching you post in dead chat on transformers and post game, the salt levels were off the charts. Yet now in a new game, you're completely mellow and not upset at all with the fact you are being pushed on my multiple people.

I think this post is very well thought out and carefully constructed, but there's no trace of emotion anywhere. You scrubbed your response to make it sound articulate, but you forgot to add any feeling.

Trundle should be a wagon today.

I don't know why you're doubling down on being offline. I saw you online for an extended period of time starting around 10:30 eastern. The reason I remember this is because I was waiting around for your response for 15 minutes and saw you still online during that time.

Ok great, my accusations are nonsense and distracting town. Do you have any other reads outside of ember?

I don't know why you're doubling down on being offline. I saw you online for an extended period of time starting around 10:30 eastern. The reason I remember this is because I was waiting around for your response for 15 minutes and saw you still online during that time.

Ok great, my accusations are nonsense and distracting town. Do you have any other reads outside of ember?

I think Alette's posting is very sketchy, but from last game I just think she always sounds like she is mafia. I have a feeling that most of the mafia have not posted much yet. 3 people have not posted yet, and 4 people are between 1-2 posts. I am very neutral on Revival.

So three mafia within 0-1 post count, 1 mafia higher post count?

I feel like you aren't trying to solve the game. Your reads are alette is scummy but she posts scummy so I dunno and revival is null. Why aren't you creating town lists in your head?

Spoiler: Interactions

Scum have no genuine questions of their brethren, so it is difficult to appear to engage in earnest, and often they don’t even think to try, beyond light banter and distancing votes.

Spoiler: Bad Posting vs Scum Posting

In a lot of games you can see people posting badly, whether it means lurking, saying really stupid things, being intellectually lazy about their engagement, or all sorts of other pretty transparently anti-town behaviors.
And, unfortunately, a lot of the time (though NOT always) really bad posting is done by townies instead of mafia. Sorting between “bad” and “scum” is one of the hardest things to do in the game, but it’s a tremendously important part of your development if you want to get good at scum-hunting.

Consider a few examples:
Example #1
http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post722301

I'm back on but won't be very active until up to 3 hours before EoD because I'm going to an early fireworks event for Bonfire Night.

http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post722309

I'm showcasing my lynchbait status the way a peacock showcases their feathers. I make awful posts day after day, daring you to lynch me.

I fixed your typos.

http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... post722312

Scum is not as demonstratably awful as sociopath.

In that game, both lulz and sociopath were town. Sociopath got mislynched essentially for making a parade of terrible posts (the cited post was just one of many), which is a fairly predictable outcome of that behavior. But it’s notable that she wasn’t actually mafia.

Example #2

DS is a mild scum read for me at this point. Not a huge priority sort but I don't see the obv!town there. MoZ just seems bad rather than obv!wolf to me, and the IMO self-vote continues along that vein. Some of that may simply be me being over-sensitive to that after watching Ranger pull similar shit as town in open 642 (including the shitty self-vote), but I'm starting to come around the idea that shit like that actually does come more often from town, even though it never ever ever should. In this case, it's conceivable that they're scum/SK giving up, but it's also plausible that they're town giving up. I know Ircher (who I think was making those posts) is bugged by being a lynchbait type, so I can reasonably see him getting pissy and pulling a stunt like that out of frustration at being wagoned. Obviously it could be him pulling a scam and faking it, but I just don't see why it's wolf-indicative instead of essentially null. I'd still much rather wagon RachMarie at this point.

@ Rach...

Why are we giving a pass to MoZ

I just read his ISO

VOTE: MoZ

This is the sort of thing that normally comes with something better than "their ISO sucks". What about their ISO sucks? You seem to not really be able to explain what exactly you're finding voteable.
You talk a bit about it in

@ Nacho
1. The way they are moving their vote around looks like they are looking for a good wagon, not looking for scumz
2. The freaky color vote thing looked like they were trying to appear to be town and trolling, it did not feel genuine the way Nero's trolling does,
3. The way they threw shade on KTS but did not vote for him seems scummy AF

but
1) you aren't addressing the possibility that moving their vote around might be part of a process to look for a good wolf wagon, or for that matter, separating them from anyone else's vote hopping.
2) The "freaky color vote thing" ( http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.ph ... 7#p8421517 ) seems like the epitome of a playstyle thing; calling it AI just seems bizarre;
3) I presume you mean this

...
This totally not troll KTS we're seeing here. He's actually being useful for once, but I fear that is because he is scum.....
~Zanos ~Zanos ~Zanos

but I fail to see how this is AI. It's essentially expressing a mild scum read on the slot; failing to vote for what is presented as a mild scum read (and one that is essentially paranoia-driven) is not in and of itself suspicious

Frankly, none of those seem like particularly good reasons for voting them; to me it seems a lot more like you're going survivalistic and looking for an easy target to try and buy another day off of.

It is a tentative read so far but feel like KTS could be town he is already invested enough to get ticked off at the hyperposters and that means he is genuinely trying to sort shit out.

It is a tentative read so far but feel like Rach could be scum she isn't invested enough to make real reads and just drops off a lazy kts town read and that means she isn't genuinely trying to sort shit out.

VOTE: rachmarie

adding smith to my scum pile as well this pinged my scumdar this vote on me sucks, plus like MoZ she keeps flipping her vote around.

What about the vote sucks? Surely if you find my vote on you to be itself vote-worthy, you can actually explain what about it "sucks". I personally thought it to be a solid vote, mainly for the content (wolf-reading you becuase of the lazy read you made) but I also liked the snarky way I turned around your language relating to KTS. Nothing about it seems off, and it seems like you just want to shade it as somehow being a bad vote without actually doing the work to demonstrate that it's actually a bad vote.
I also don't see your point about vote-hopping (you were my 4th vote, with my 1st being a joke vote on the mod and the 2nd being near-RVS level). Nor do I see how vote-hopping is itself wolf-indicative, unless you think that I'm just lazily bandwagoning (which would be weird considering that I was the first vote on you), or that something else in particular about my vote movement seems wolfy. It seems like you're struggling to make a case on why your pushes make sense, which to me suggests that they're probably just made up.
PS I'm a he. You can see it right there in the box where my user info is.

In that game MoZ (Ircher/BTD hydra) was town, I was also town, and RachMarie was scum (bonus points: DS was also scum). What you can see in the quotes I made was
1) My sarcastic callout of her lazy pocketing read of KTS in my post #620
2) My pushing her on her inability to actually substantiate decent reasons for her reads, and the fact that she was pretty flagrantly pushing on MoZ for essentially being bad (which is largely null) and other null behaviors, in what was a survivalistic push to avoid her own lynch d1.
As it happened, MoZ got mislynched d1 (in a case that boiled down to “they suck”), but Rach was still scum, and she was the one actually being scummy and pushing an agenda, not MoZ. Again, if you look closely you can see the difference between simply being bad and actually being scum.

Spoiler: Scum slips

One of the dumbest things I see in games is when people go looking for “scumslips”, where scum accidentally slip knowledge they shouldn’t have. This is especially true in terms of reads. People can jump on a read that looks like it comes from a scum who knows the person they’re talking about is town, but that’s virtually indistinguishable from town who simply thinks the person they’re talking about is town. A few examples:

Example 1

And why do you wanna pair up with nahdia and get killed during intermission?

^^^^ A LITERAL SCUMSLIP ^^^^

And why do you wanna pair up with nahdia and get killed during intermission?

^^^^ A LITERAL SCUMSLIP ^^^^

Shooting the ic pair is pretty normal in this game.
The actual issue is it's a dumb question that doesn't go anywhere useful.

mhsmith you are apparently very, very bad at reading.
shadow_step has just implied that he knows cerberus is town.
this is something that only scum should know.

Here Parama (scum) pushed shadow (town) on an alleged scumslip. I (also town) correctly pointed out that it was a dumb question that didn’t do anything useful (i.e. it looked like it was just busywork). In a world where townies didn’t chase after that kind of easy/lazy stuff, it would have stood out as scummy by Parama. But since that’s not the case, it was difficult to distinguish her from just being intellectually lazy town in that instance.

Example 2
Under construction

Example 3
Under construction

Spoiler: Perspective slips

So if “scum slips” in terms of “things scum shouldn’t know but do” are generally a waste of time to look for and pursue, what kind of slips are productive to hunt?
The answer is perspective slips. This is when a player says or does something that simply doesn’t make sense from a town perspective. Oftentimes this revolves around empathy and the sudden loss of it in pursuit of an agenda, but there are other examples as well.

Example 1

Well, either I screwed up and scum will quick hammer soon enough or I actually got it right. Guess we'll see.

If you actually are town(which I very much doubt, since that would have to involve either Loopdan!scum or a Manuel-Tweet team), we are going to have Words after this game.

Fwiw this reads like at least a mild perspective slip
1) smith and accountant don't make sense as both town
2) smith made a horrible mistake
Accountant, what am I missing? You say you agree that we're probably not both town, so what exactly did I do that was some kind of big mistake? Or are you just trying to have your cake and eat it too?

Here you can see a decent example of a perspective slip. This was day 3 LYLO in a newbie game, I’d subbed in on a scummy town slot, while Accountant was scum. I’d voted Accountant (not locked votes, but with a majority a scum team not involving him could have potentially quick-hammered, though I’d been keeping an eye on the thread in case of such an outcome), and he basically attacked me for making a supposedly terrible move, despite a game state that, in his own stated view, strongly indicated that we couldn’t reasonably have us both be town.
It just doesn’t hold together as a reasonable town perspective. If he was a townie who thought I was scum, then nothing improper happened, and he might be a bit nervous that he was wrong about me, but overall there’s nothing there to criticize. And if he was a townie who thought I was town (which he expressly said he didn’t, and moreover that was due to the same game-state read that town!smith would have likely been seeing) then being upset made sense (although notably there’s no actual emotion in that point that indicates genuine anger or frustration), but scumreading me didn’t make sense.
So as a townie perspective it was all warped and contradictory. As a scum perspective? There it made sense. A bit of manipulation (maybe I’d unvote), a bit of reminding everyone that I’m still supposedly scum (maybe someone would vote me), and a bit of “townie anger” from being voted in what theoretically could have been a game-ending move.

Example 2

SR just scum-claimed. Now looking for partner.

That sounds utterly ridiculous. How is voting YOU a scum claim?
Is anyone seeing smith as so towny that it would take a wolf to vote him?

@mshsmith What are your reads?

wolf claims

only one was by a wolf tho lol

idc that SR was a villager
thats an appalling perspective slip and i blame no villager for voting that
alette was howling though

This is an interesting counter-example, where there was a perspective slip by a townie (i.e. these are tells, but like any other tell, it’s not close to 100% reliable).
Here, Visor and I were discussing the game after it completed, but the in-game quotes discussed were from 5p LYLO where votes were locked (i.e. only your first vote counts and you CANNOT change your mind, which is a MU-specific mechanic for LYLO). There, SR voted me early in the day phase without very much justification, and then justified it in an incredibly weak/self-defense-y manner AND disregarded the (theoretically) villager-y perspective I’d offered of his vote (i.e. if he was town and I was town, it was game over so it HAD to be a scum claim from my perspective [presuming I was town, which in this case I wasn’t] ). Overall it was a major loss of empathy and was probably a contributing factor in why Zack (also town) eventually hammered him at end of day.

Example 3

Thought there was an hour left for some reason

Is there?
90% caught up

Great
Let me get my laptop and I'll be here to the end

Ok, my cellphone sometimes fails to account for the DST, and the clock on the top was saying 5 minutes until a lynch so I was trying to reach the post minimum as I don't want to be replaced, as I'll actually have more time to dig into the game the next game day, though I would understand if the host decided to do so. Sorry everyone.
Am mostly caught up and have opinions on most players, which I'll try to write really quickly - didn't want to participate not fully informed and ended up reading the whole of my free time today - ask me anything in the meantime.

soah - shows the most care about the game, which is generally townie, and evolution of the reads is always believable. Expecting him to have a wide scumrange, but there are some phrases he would nevr use as scum I think - like the one yesterday where he told me 'I'm an excellent person to listen to imo' is too cheeky to fit with what I vaguely expect his scumgame to be. Too early to start tinfoiling here. Unlikely partner to Titus, RA and possibly Phighter? as I may expect scum!soah to bus there
mhsmith0 - when he's here, I like what he's saying. His tone is hard for me to read in any direction, but his reads have been consistent and isn't afraid to push strongly. Not w/w with RA, not a likely partner with Yellow of the top of my head.
Azure - liking his tunnel on ML/Phi slot - feels townie in seeing a push early on himself and developing a scumread in response. Liking also the fact that he is clearing RA (don't think it's a blatant w/w defense) and didn't self-pres yesterday. My eyes glazed over at least a third of that wall of his, but the amount of effort there is another slight townie point. A bit lower than the other two due to some inconsistencies in posts I'd like to work out in real time tomorrow. Not w/w with Phighter, bopolis, possibly RA?
Yellow - a good tone insofar I can read it, believable suspect progressions, would like her to participate more for me to be able to solidify the read. Not w/w with smith, Phighter

Figured I'd give half a list and not keep you waiting
Thank you for the vote soah

SR - same as Yellow, mostly liking him when he's here, and although I can sympathize with his problems about the game being slower than he's used to, as it was what made me procastrinate catching up the first half of the day and then got swamped with work the latter, but would still expect him to be more around and a felt presence in the thread as town, and he's shown he's capable of logical progressions and a good tone in GoT Mafia. Townie side of null. Not w/w with Phighter
mmmBop - liking the entrance, effort, and the questions he asked while entering. Doesn't feel afraid. Not higher for me seeing the Azure push by ljtrigrl a bit suspect and bop hasn't done anything really amazing yet.
Titus - I may have some issues with her playstyle along the lines of her early argument with soah - I don't think she shows much depth in her reads, which I find easily replicable as scum - she hasn't shown breadth which imo is harder to fake than depth of pushes. She's not lower as I appreciate smith's comment on it being her meta, but would like her to give broader thoughts tomorrow if possible

OK so we actually need to consolidate this shit. Who is willing to vote who, or not willing to vote who. I've stated my preferences; what are everyone else's? I'd like at least one of the Phighter/Titus wagons dissolved and pushed elsewhere at this point, more preference towards dissolving Titus wagon than Phighter.

I'd vote the three I haven't given reads on yet - RA, pisskop and Phi, in that order probably. Self-pres does factor in it as in I will vote anyone not me, but I also believe them to be the scummiest players around - or the least townie. Phi would be maybe at the top if not for the soft and my belief I'll be able to read him accurately tomorrow.

Spider, I think it's pretty weird that you decided to catch up on the whole thread before posting anything when it was this close to EOD.

I don't value my thoughts as much when I'm not fully or at the very least mostly up to date. Last EoD felt awful in that way, I felt mostly lost, and decided not to repeat it this time, which resulted in me cutting my night out short after catching up on the phone most of it. Bad time management on my part, but didn't want to clutter the thread I had no feel on yet.

VOTE: Phighter

Bus!

Explain
I hope you can

Spider, I think it's pretty weird that you decided to catch up on the whole thread before posting anything when it was this close to EOD.

twice in a row too. But do you have meta that this is more his wolf game to do it? Or is he just a lazy player in general? I don't know him well enough to have a tangible opinion there.

I'm vaguely aware of him because of Skype chat, and iirc his job makes it impractical to play any games with phases faster than like 72/24. That's about it.

This is wrong - I feel the most comfortable playing 36/12 and this is my first long game. Combination of the 'I can catch up in a game so slow' mentality and being burned out after modding a monster of a game is what kept me from coming the first half of the day, unexpected work for the latter.

Spider, I think it's pretty weird that you decided to catch up on the whole thread before posting anything when it was this close to EOD.

I don't value my thoughts as much when I'm not fully or at the very least mostly up to date. Last EoD felt awful in that way, I felt mostly lost, and decided not to repeat it this time, which resulted in me cutting my night out short after catching up on the phone most of it. Bad time management on my part, but didn't want to clutter the thread I had no feel on yet.

Your thoughts feel pretty generic, though.

I usually need a strong reason to deviate significantly from the town consensus, and am usually more active in shaping it. Will only have hipstery reads after more realtime/iso-ing.

I wanted to give Phighter another day for the claim
But that unexplained bus post
I'd ask him to claim but pretty sure he would have by now anyway? and not sure I'd believe him anyway unless he also explains the bus post
And I kinda see no town justification there
VOTE: Phighter

(note: this was a hammer on Phi, and on MU hammers automatically lock the game thread and put it immediately to night)

Instead of going into the above in more detail, I’ll just leave it to Soah’s graveyard commentary:

Ignoring for the moment that Spider selectively showed up precisely at the last moment both phases, and that he read the whole thread in radio silence the second time, which in themselves raise all sorts of alarm bells --

he had 40 minutes left in the day to be productive and he spent that time writing out all of his extremely generic and unhelpful thoughts on all of the people that neither he nor anyone else wanted to lynch, before concluding by saying that he'd lynch any of the other people that he hasn't talked about. No villager would ever use his time that way. Every villager in the world would start with the most important topic, which is who he wants to lynch. The stuff about why he thinks I'm a villager would never even get posted at all, because every other possible thing that he could be doing in that moment is plainly far more important than that. Instead, that was what he prioritized first. That entire sequence of posts could not possibly have been more completely inverted from how you would always expect a villager to behave in that situation. And his words and actions with Phighter look like typical bad bussing. He says that Phighter is his top suspect, but that he wants to give another day because of the soft claim. He's having his cake and eating it too. Then he casts the hammer vote when, as a villager, he'd have no reason to want to trim off the last two minutes of day. His actions are only barely plausible from a village perspective and look exactly like what wolves frequently do in those types of situations.

And, finally, Phighter broke consistency with what he'd just posted a little bit earlier in order to discredit the wagon on Spider, which was strongly counter to his own interests at the time. His words weren't chosen in a way to make himself look better if Spider were too get lynched in the spot yet while doing nothing to actually discourage it from happening, which is what you'd expect from a wolf talking about a village wagon in that spot (assuming he bothers to comment on it at all). Instead, his words were chosen to discredit the wagon itself, in order to actually discourage people from voting there. It's similar to when I called him a wolf and he responded by discrediting me.
All in all, he's pretty toast.

Example 4

Sigh.
This 1v1 only tells me uc is a newb.
This is what I was afraid, Thor. If you are scum that was a good play. Congrats.
Uc has all the symtoms of scum here. He is trying to convince luca he is town. If he is town Luca knows this already, and everything Luca and Thor do would look very scummy for him. But he is not telling me what those things are.
Uc if you dont do anythig townie in the next 24 hours Im going to lynch you. Lurking is not an option. For god sake if you are town make ar least one townie post this game.

This was a LYLO (3v2) situation in a newbie game I modded, where UC Voyager had Thor and Luca Blight voting for him, and in the absence of a hammer he would KNOW that Thor/Luca was the scum team if he was a villager. His perspective slip is exactly what Toto called out (there’s also some spew in that he was trying to convince Luca he was town, which is pretty unlikely behavior towards a buddy), and was (one reason) why he needed to get lynched there.

Spoiler: Game review of an EXCELLENT performance by the mafia, by one of the losing town (Sunbae)

I don't mean to fellate the wolf team too much, but being a day or two away and getting to think about this game from a broader perspective and feeling better made me want to come back and say more on this performance. Keeping in mind all this shit is just like, my opinion man, I got this.

Wolfing mishmashes can be broken down into 3 phases: Night Actions, Thread Presence, and Planning. With that in mind, if I ever wanted to show new people what I mean by this I would show them this game.

- The night actions were near perfect. Every single action they made had a positive impact. The people they killed were PRs. The people they peeked/isolated/reflected/redirected/etc all had a positive impact. They isolated dot and negated two angels. I believe they had mor kill himself? They vanillaized the seer. Just a great job of sifting through everything and finding the correct actions to use at the correct time on the correct people. Then you had their angel work in which Gamer was saved d2, roman took shots d3 and was angeled, and bop took shots d4 and was angeled (despite none of them being really outed the night before at all).

- The thread presence by the wolves at various stages was top notch. When it was lynch time they went hard to achieve mislynches. Lord was going nuts about Lissa being saved d1. Chart and all. Visor turned the lynch towards NAC and off of Lord on d2 by posting giant shields and yelling a bunch. Eod3.2 had 5-6 wolves going hard at weatherguy (and if exactly 6-7 villagers hadn't voted together there the game would have been over a day earlier).

When it was organization time, Bop was making charts. Visor was herding ita shots of like 7 villagers and an outed wolf. Lord was showing vote count charts and why that made lissa a wolf. Gamer was shaking peoples lists up. Wolves weren't clearing anyone that didn't need to be clear and presented a poe of mostly villagers for everyone to argue over knowing that as long as the focus was there, they were going to be fine. They also for the most part didn't mind just defending each other and turning convos elsewhere.

When it came to killing time, wolves shot villagers that were posing a problem, outed wolves, or wolves that were about to be an issue to get max credit. Roman came in and blasted jason (who had a great Roman case). Gamer blasted fakegamer to get max value (and beneh prodding him to do it in thread was a nice touch I thought). They were also helping create shot lists that had mostly villagers in it for the first few periods.

As for the lynch, they did an awesome job of creating a thread atmosphere to lynch people without taking any of the heat for it. The tortuga lynch was great work by benneh to set up a false mechanical scenario. Turning the d2 lynch from Lord to NAC vs IAWY was great work by visor. The eod3.2 lynch while unsuccessful also was a great job of benneh, bop, and monte pushing an idea that puts the blame on the villager rather than them if it goes through.

- Then the overall planning phase crushed too. While I touched on the night actions and general in thread approach already, this also includes the way they recognized it was correct to out themselves on day 4 since Bop was getting the most heat and make it more of a leveling game instead of a lynch bop the day vig game. Benneh outed himself despite not being fully outed, monte outed himself as well, and visor used his new villa cred to present the argument to lynch monte instead because the wolf vig wouldnt have outed themselves. The overall gameplan was just top notch.

I don't really post a ton of tl;dr shit in post games very often, but I wanted to give a lot of love to what they accomplished here. I nominated benneh for best wolf performance in the thread, but really everyone played their role great and it was more of a group performance than one person crushing. Dont you dare vote some random v+ team that sweeped over these guys at the end of the year, because that was basically the perfect wolf mishmash performance.

Spoiler: Game review of a poor town performance, by one of the winning mafia (CTR)

So this wasn’t the most successful of towns. Mostly this was because it was insane. It took ill with anyone using logic and rather than letting data drive its conclusions it preferred to invent enticing conclusions and narratives and then make the evidence fit those pet theories. We were in some sort of weird perpetual confirmation bias world. Again it took ill with anyone who objected. Of course, prominent townies will take much of the heat for this, but to be fair there was some mafia skill in fostering and harnessing this town insanity.

My own in-thread persona evolved from this town personality. The plan was always to get dirty enough that I could explain why I was surviving the night, but for the first day and a half – far from allowing the chaos to continue – I battled to try and make the town see sense exactly as I would have done as town. Personally, I feel I was the best townie the town never had. However, each attempt only made me more unpopular. Fairly quickly it became obvious that if I wanted to avoid the town doing something that would actually help it, I should just tell them the truth about what a good idea it was and they’d do the opposite. No one was reading my long posts properly anyway or they didn’t understand them. Thank goodness I wasn’t actually town; I’d have gone mad.

I dislike being mafia. My sympathies are normally with the town. By day 3, I’d officially given up any vestige of sympathy for this one. From my perspective, almost every nuance of this game’s mechanics seemed to elude the majority of this town. I kept telling them the best way to proceed and they just wanted to call me scum for it. I rolled with that.

Here are some things that I recall:
…
The offensive townie roles were therefore an extension of the town’s lynch. The lynch is always what kills a town, but it is also the only way it can win. Anything that is marginalizing the importance of that town weapon is town harmful. Imagine a town with no lynch ability and facing a night kill – it can never win. Therefore a town with a weakened lynch (offence) is a weaker town. It’s as simple as that.
…
Repeatedly this town was unable to interpret what was happening because it was unable to grasp the mechanics. Inexplicably it became entranced by the night game and completely ignored lynch data from the day. Again, the night game is the mafia’s home field advantage – why play us there? Our manipulations in thread to secure a day lynch is where we are vulnerable as we have to respond in real time without the thorough dialogue and planning that characterized our night play. For example, we had a bad day one. Bwlvych and Robert were both implicated in the sjg11 and Zebb momentums and Robert was early on Ironhammer. Only Ironhammer had as bad a day one record and so I had to nudge the town in that direction as the only way to scum up more townies for day two. Even then noob Bwlvych couldn’t resist a bandwagon and voted 6th on Ironhammer – right in the sweetspot. Zebb knew this and at least had enough sanity to base his day two vote on such thinking. We entered day two doubtful we could prevent a Bwlvych lynch and I offered up Palin and then myself as alternatives though the latter took off more than I imagined.

However, any day 2 lynch data was also thrown away. That said, of course, our strategy was premised on (i) Get a plurality or (ii) lynch one to make the other one golden. This was typical of our discipline as a team after an honest appraisal of our day one performance.
…
Oh, and allowing an alleged fellow townie to drive a lynch premised on something he knows to be a lie is

not

acceptable. It is a pure scumtell. I called it. Ignored. Amazing. The town spent the whole game entranced by its own narratives that it had invented and then anything that happened was interpreted through that lens of confirmation bias. Strategic Convergence was pure BS. The VIAP-HPW link the same. Palin’s alleged incongruity the same.
…

Spoiler: Game review of a horrible town performance, by the mod (CTR)

This one is less of an explicit learning opportunity and more just a really interesting summary of a really badly played game. Perhaps the most obvious learning point is that holding people accountable for what they say and do is really important, and that an environment where that doesn’t happen can lead to incredible disasters for town.

Setup: game is modeled after the actual Gunpowder Plot: Town is royalists (almost all Protestant), mafia is the group of four Catholic conspirators (win con to reach parity or kill the king and prince), and there’s a 3p Catholic priest (Father Garnet) who needs to keep Catholics alive to win (and therefore was built to scumside – he can also investigate peoples’ religion every night so he can protect his flock during the day).

Other notes:
On playdip blue is town, green is used for 3p

ASUdevil

replaced

Nimb

d1

Zoomzip

was a town-aligned lyncher whose personal wincon was to find and lynch

Niakan

’s role and subsequently win with the town. His main ability was to jail and torture players; targeting

Niakan

on night 1 removed

Niakan

’s bulletproof (making him susceptible to the night kill)

HPW

was Francis Tresham, who is believed to have been the source of the infamous Mounteagle Letter that betrayed the conspiracy. He needed to deliver the letter to William Parker (by game design this enabled a powerful town ability), and then win with the mafia anyway.

Ok I simply won't hear anyone say anyone other than

Niakan

as MVP. He almost single-handedly won it for the mafia and only

Vindictus

(who led his troops calmly) - and even then very late in the game - worked out what

Niakan

was doing even though he kept telling them in thread what he was doing...

Things of note in the game for me:

d1

Bwlvych

points out that

Nimb

's vote on

Pez

is very 'off'. It is - you lynch him for a good scum catch.

Crunkus

warns that mafia will lynch the lurker of their choice. They do. No one calls

Asudevil

on a shameful volte-face at d1 end to save

jeanphi

. This is a pattern - day after day the mafia take all sorts of positions all day and then vote en masse in a completely shameless way that is completely contradictory to anything they have argued in thread and are never held to account.

HPW

- is wandering around the thread mentioning William Parker, Lord Mounteagle is a loyal Catholic and likely in the game and mentioning this as often as he dare - while also asking for religion reveal to the complete bemusement of his team.

Zander

as far as I can tell never notices. I am not sure he even knows he is William Parker! He certainly never works out the event he is waiting for is the Mounteagle letter. Basic research would show it is likely Tresham who will send it to him.

Zander

might have caught

HPW

just on that

Niakan

equally shamelessly declares that

Bwlvych

is town at day end and thus must be the Prince but votes in a way that in effect votes to lynch

Bwlvych

- is not held to account for this!

d2

Niakan

thinks

ATE

is mafia hence his stunt. He'll explain what he hoped would happen.

Constantine

coughs up 2 full roles for no reason.

ZZ

does his for no real reason. This allows

Niakan

to out himself since he has been tortured he has lost his BP and now he fears night kill so he goes for it and just runs amok. He needs to let the mafia know he is not royal and so they should not kill him. How

ZZ

does not lynch him I will never know. Why

Kian

and

ZZ

would literally vote on anyone but

Niakan

is beyond me.

Niakan

outs a role that is the enemy of the Protestant state. RL he would be killed just for being in England in 1605 and yet suddenly he is Mr Townie for the last 12 hours of the game day even though he admits he is not town! How an un-cced Coke or Cecil is a better lynch than him after lying and then lurking for 48 hours is a mystery.

Constantine

says all this and is almost universally mocked and belittled - this carries on into d3.

n2

Zander

kills

ZZ

in effect.

Niakan

can see

Asudevil

is mafia and investigates him. Finds him Catholic. Will later lie in thread as a signal to

Asudevil

that he is on his team. Whatever

Asudevil

says he totally misses his chance and does say he is Catholic. He can just about fudge he didn't, but....BS

Later on when

Asudevil

then simply accuses

Niakan

of lying and wants to force a dipole,

Niakan

with real feeling tells

Asudevil

he is a moron who deserves to die. He then goes back to role and tap dances to try and save himself and

Asudevil

. Extra-ordinary really.

d3

The most interesting day by miles. Go re-read. The mafia (via

Vindictus

) and

Niakan

are in open-negotiation. The latter is trying to educate the mafia as to what is going on. He basically negotiates the lynch of

Constantine

because he believes the latter is

ZZ

's role given his dogged insistence of

Con

to lynching the Jesuit. In this day, he tells the town that

Vindictus

is scum and then manages to wheel things around to get a townie lynched. This is his way of signalling to the mafia that he knows that

Asudevil

and

Vindictus

are scum but won't lynch them.

Vindictus

works it out eventually. It had also thought

VIAP

was scum (I think it was this day) so tries his claim Garnet stunt. When

VIAP

declines he assumes

VIAP

is town as a mafia would have grabbed the fake claim. He is right about

VIAP

, but he is over-estimating both

VIAP

and the scum team.

n3

Ungraciously in the extreme

Vindictus

decides he doesn't need that wildcard given how shit the town is and tries to kill

Niakan

. Unbelievably,

bkbkbk

deploys his ability that night and thus a townie is killed instead of a mafia nightkilling what is - in effect - one of their own. This is the final nail in the town's coffin

d4

At this point it is all over really.

Niakan

has investigated

Vindictus

and knows he is Catholic. Again he lies to say

Vindi

is Protestant to underscore his signalling to the mafia, but

Asudevil

continues to behave in ways that ought to get him lynched but

Niakan

tap-dances some more and half the town are asleep anyway. If

VIAP

was alone with the 4 mafia he'd lynch himself.

Zander

doesn't play.

WUB

believes

Asudevil

.

Bob

too. Another shameless late switch to kill the person they want in the face of an indifferent town.

I think seriously about calling the game, but decide I have to play on to see if

Niakan

can win since his win is in the mafia's hands if they kill him, but he can also save himself by getting locked in the Tower. Also,

HPW

gets his win n4.

Note how

HPW

's and

Vindictus

's roles interact.

Vindi

is designed to be the assassin leaving

HPW

free to track so that he can try and delvier the letter, but he actually has nothing to track since almost no one but mafia are out and about. I have some fun with that, but it was meant to raise scum suspicions about Tresham. They don't except...

Note that

jeanphi

is a big scaredy cat who flinches at even one vote and becomes convinced that

HPW

is a spy for the way he is voting on

jeanphi

.

Asudevil

joins in.

Vindi

keeps them calm

Asudevil

is being fed results by

HPW

for his fake claim, but messes them up and so stumbles into the needless dipole with his own teammate (in effect) -

Niakan

(see above) The town has such a paucity of resources at that point though that it doesn't matter.

Lots of other stuff that I have no doubt forgotten, but others talking will remind me...

Another piece of Mechanics: The Mounteagle Letter

Obviously

HPW

had to deliver this letter to

zander

/

Clindsey

in order to win. As soon as it was delivered Mounteagle would be vanilla. So the sooner it was delivered the less powerful it would be whereas the later it was delivered the more info there would be but it might all be too late to save the town (as was the case here). Anyway,

Clindsey

got 4 nights of watch/track information. He wasn't believed of course even though he was town confirmed by GM (see below). Not even he noticed this or understood that the trigger event was the Mounteagle letter - I mean, how hard is it to work that out especially after it has jsut been delivered? To me it is clear from his role PM what the trigger event is likely to be. Anyway, this mechanic was meant to simulate the betrayal of the conspiracy as per history.

What was incredibly powerful about it is a GM message confirming that it was delivered into loyalist hands - no one noticed that this confirmed

Clindsey

as town, but then by that stage nothing suprised me about this town or its players - not that the town could win at that point.

Also

Niakan

realised rather late in the day that if he could get himself 'lynched' on d5 he would actually be taken to the Tower of London and thus secure from the mafia night kill! this would mean he couldn't lose as long as the mafia killed

VIAP

or any other loyal subject. This explains why he wanted to be lynched on d5

Overall Game Design

It was actually incredibly simple, but the town managed to completely get the worst of all worlds in the way it thought about the game

This was an incredibly accurate - and if I might say so elegant - portrayal of the Gunpowder Plot right up the Mounteagle letter. As I said, my plan was to educate. I hope some folks learnt something. Ok, I removed Charles I (I am a Colonel of the New Model Army you know and a Leveller at that) plus Gunpowder cannot actually be put on a timer or trip wire in 1605! Also, the plot wasn't..well.. a mafia game but apart from that...

This means if every townie name claimed the mafia would be in big trouble. Even if their role names were plausible minor players lots of folks would be confirmed town as surely in the game - the King, Prince of Wales, Cecil, Mounteagle, Walsh, Bromley - these roles 'had' to be in the game. So to stop this from happening the game was a protect the King game. That was what was designed to prevent the town role revealing. It was essential it kept quiet.

also the mafia were equally bemusing to me. How many times can you tell someone to read their role PMs carefully. Everyone had a fake claim ready for them to use in it. Did any of them notice? Not a bit of it.

Anyway, instead the town did this:
1) On d1 it lynched the Prince and since he was pardoned by the King that narrowed down who the King must be
2) The it blabbed half it's roles on d2 making in incredibly easy for the mafia to locate King James
This meant the town might as well grab the advantages of name claiming since it had thrown away any pretence of actually keeping the King hidden.

bkbkbk

's role gave them one guaranteed protection of a royal. And

Zoomzip

if he worked smartly could save 2 royals 100% guaranteed over the game by 'torturing them'

But instead...

3) The town then for reasons known only to itself thought roles like Cecil or Coke could be scum and lynched practically every townie that ever made a role claim
4) On the flipside the town never forced the mafia to name claim. Even on the final day no one was asking Catesby or Percy to explain who they were.

Circle of Trust

So, I gave the town an incredible asset - a circle of trust. Ok, it could be broken by assassination of Cecil and it was severely restricted in its ability to communicate but it meant that quickly 3 players would be able to establish via some simple codes that they were all town. That is huge. What really happened?

VIAP

tries to lynch Cecil on d2 even though he knows that

ATE

knows that

VIAP

is King because they had already exchanged codes in thread. So the gig is already up if

ATE

is scum but nevermind. Night 2 he sends

ATE

misinformation designed to confuse him and then never sends another PM

Constantine

knows

ATE

is Cecil and thus must be town, but outs both roles and then is found scummy for it or something.

VIAP

, the King is convinced that Waad is scum - as if Cecil writing to the Lt of the Tower is writing to Fawkes or something.

Constantine

as he goes down to die is accusing

ATE

.

I mean on the final day

VIAP

is faced with himself,

Clindsey

who must be Mounteagle and is GM confirmed town,

ATE

who is Cecil and one other. He has a 5 in 6 chance to hit a non-townie and is still voting on a townie (not that it mattered at that point)

Lyncher Role - Bromley and the d2 town suicide

With the very best of intentions this game was unbalanced when

Zoomzip

ignored his VC and did not vote to lynch

Niakan

on d2.

Niakan

was convinced that

Constantine

was the lyncher role given his dogged pursuit on

Niakan

.

Constantine

made one of the biggest blunders to sabotage this town when he outed himself and

ATE

’s roles unnecessarily in response to

Niakan

's d2 lie about finding

ATE

guilty. However, he was absolutely right about

Niakan

d2 and the need to lynch him based on

Niakan

's behaviours. Instead he was patronised and marginalised in thread. And pointing out to him that

Niakan

was independent is more of the same. If one examines what

Niakan

was doing you will see that he was the best scum hunter in the game - problem was he was hunting them so he could 'negotiate' in thread with them and protect them at all costs since they were his 'flock' (more on this later)

The following is what I wrote to

ZZ

after he exploded n2:

*sighs* Oh well, what can I say...there were a couple of infamous incidents of players (allegedly) not playing to their win conditions in Rolan's games I think and so rules at that time began to include a rule of "play to your win conditions" or I will Mod-kill you. These incidents caused some anger amongst GMs and players alike as the games were unbalanced/subverted as a result.

Play to your win conditions is so basic, so fundamental - it is essential to the balance of any game design

Fortunately, these incidents passed and this rule had gone back to the redundancy I always imagined it to be. I thought it redundant here. Seemingly not.

By giving you that win condition I have tried to give you the hard-wired motive to prioritise something potentially town essential to keep

Niakan

in check.

What follows is essentially my GM AAR as the town is surely doomed.

Niakan

is certainly playing to his win conditions and is self-evidently trying to destroy the town as quickly as possible by outing every role he can manage to help the mafia kill royalty. While also outing his role to make sure they don't kill him. Even not prioritsing your 'personal' VC I don't see how it turned into doing the opposite of the other half. How is lynching a double voting townie or Robert Cecil better than killing a confirmed no-town multiple-liar destructive behaviour Jesuit priest?

Niakan

is pulling exactly the same trick he tried in Crunkus's recent game when he comes in at day end to try and make the town his bitch. Creating an environment of panic and confusion after lurking for the rest of the game day. How is that trick still working? Lynch the bastard.

The town knows

Niakan

is not town. Jesuit priests may not have been directly involved in this plot but they are enemies of the state. How likely are his claims that his non-town VCs are actually aligned with town VCs as he claims? If they were town aligned he'd be...town aligned and not be an enemy of the state. You personally know he is lying as he claims more than one priest in the game. Your PM tells you there is only 1. Why is he lying? Not to help the town clearly. How is his previous lie about his cop result therefore a pro-town scum trap? It cannot be. He isn't town and his claimed VCs have nothing to do with such a trick. In fact, quite the contrary since he needs to survive and he has totally exposed himself. So why is he lying?

So irrespective of all this I cannot understand how the town imagines the combination of

Niakan

not being town and his behaviour means he should not be lynched? Incredibly not a single person comments on him not being town and it is my belief that most if not all those living still think he has claimed town. He certainly went back to calling himself loyal when no one noticed. You still put him in Blue for example when he admits to being green.

He claims his VC is for a loyal Catholic to live? What are the odds that a Catholic priest distinguishes between loyal and disloyal Catholics? His job is to look after Catholics. That's why he is hiding underground and risking his life literally every day he remains in England. He can therefore win with town or scum, but he needs catholics to live. The mafia killed a loyal catholic n1. He knows that the faction 'richest' in Catholics are the scum so if he can help them win quickly he can win. He tells a lie and disappears for 48 hours (or whatever) which is incredibly anti-town and what does the town do in a protect the King game?

Constantine

outs himself and

ATE

! WTF? He can call

Niakan

a liar without doing any of that. You out to validate

Niakan

(is this absentee somehow more important than the King that you make the King less safe to protect him?). WTF? This allows him to out himself to narrow the search further and keep him safe from the night kill. He then looks around and makes sure he goes after

Kian

who is not outed.

Kian

is outed and lynched. What

Kian

is doing voting on anyone but

Niakan

is beyond me. We have an uncounter-claimed Cecil - how can he possibly be scum?

Kian

goes on about N0 messages when I have repeatedly confirmed no N0 actions.

Everyone's role is historically accurate. If everyone claimed the mafia are screwed unless they can fake a good claim, but of course that is why this is a protect the King game to stop the town doing that. What we have instead is the town partially outing as much as it can without making any reciprocal demands on the mafia. I have literally no idea what the town is doing. It has committed suicide on d2 and I am in despair of them. The inhibitor to

Niakan

playing this way was that he knows someone wants him dead. Someone who is hard-wired to want him dead if he takes liberties.

The mafia now know who the King is. They had 50:50 odds to kill him N2 but missed.

Incredibly to me no one on d2 even mentioned that

Niakan

had admitted to not being town. People kept talking about him being loyalist sided and relating that to

ZZ

's cop result.

Constantine

pointed out he could be Godfather, but the thing was you already knew he was! He got a loyal subject result when he isn't a loyal subject. He admits that - ergo the cop result must be false.

More in a bit

Spoiler: VCA Case Study

Below are a number of quotes I’d made in the mod thread of mini normal 1857, with some editing for clarify as well as additional commentary. For clarity, this was a 10v3 game, where the three scum slots were rb, Raskolnikov (replaced ironstove), and Sesq. Scum won with Rask and Sesq living to endgame.

Subject: Mini 1857 Mod Topic

...

VC 1.34 (FINAL)

rb (7)

: Transcend, drealmerz7, ssbm_Kyouko, Sesq, gerryoat, ironstove, TTTT

-- LYNCH!

gerryoat (1)

: Drone

Lil Uzi Vert (1)

: Titus

Transcend (1)

: shannon

Sesq (1)

: rb

NOT VOTING (2)

: Impoetic, Lil Uzi Vert

With 13 alive it takes 7 to lynch.

Deadline is in (expired on 2016-12-10 12:30:00)

Flip incoming.

scum lynched day 1, subsequently town has been a total mess. WHAT??? BUSSING??? NO WAY

VC 2.20 (FINAL)

Lil Uzi Vert (6)

: TTTT, gerryoat, drealmerz7, Titus, ssbm_Kyouko, Drone

-- LYNCH!

shannon (1)

: Raskolnikov

Drone (1)

: shannon

Titus (1)

: Lil Uzi Vert

NOT VOTING (2)

: Impoetic, Sesq

With 11 alive, it takes 6 to lynch.

Deadline is in (expired on 2016-12-22 01:30:00)

Flip incoming.

doing VCA on a wagon split like this is nearly useless. Generically you MIGHT suspect the off-wagon or non-voters more than the on wagon voters, but the only real question you need to ask was "was this lynch wagon villagery". Because if it felt villagery and righteous, you lynch off wagon, and if it was bullshit, you lynch on wagon. Some here may remember may scum chat discussion in newbie 1714 about how the vandit wagon was inevitably going to be villagery so I explicitly wanted to be ON that wagon as scum becuase it was righteous. I didn't read much this game, but that's how you evaluate this wagon. Just looking at it and drawing "VCA" conclusions without context is terrible (I dunno if anyone did this but it wouldn't surprise me)

VC 3.19 (FINAL)

gerryoat (5)

: TTTT, ssbm_Kyouko, shadonra, Sesq, shannon

-- LYNCH!

ssbm_Kyouko (3)

: Drone, Titus, gerryoat

-- L-2!

Drone (1)

: Raskolnikov

With 9 alive, it takes 5 to lynch.

Deadline is in (expired on 2017-01-03 16:47:00)

Flip incoming.

I, for one, am just SHOCKED that the single voter off of v/v wagons was a wolf

Subject: Mini 1857 Mod Topic

The LUV lynch is basically the vandit lynch all over again. He lied about his role > anti-town > people hyped it up but really it was just a policy lynch.

yeah and, not surprisingly, the people lining up pitchforks the hardest were town, while scum were setting up future pushes / staying out of the way. It's hard to replicate villagery fury at someone who really fucked up what they were up to as scum.

Subject: Mini 1857 Mod Topic

I think it was also ssbm_Kyouko who I noted was closeish on the scum JOAT theory and now they're pushing "strongman confirmed, no roleblocker" which is awkward.

ssbm, with unique knowledge that he's in fact town, really ought to be wondering what the hell rask was doing d3 on a drone wagon going nowhere at EOD. theoretically you could wonder about shannon and the hammer, but in that situation, with time running out and it being (from ssb's POV v/v wagons, scum!shannon has no particular incentive to force a hammer when someone else could do it, and either wagon would be town anyway)

Subject: Mini 1857 Mod Topic

Would scum start a new wagon when there were 3 town wagoning onto a 4th town? I think not.

Yes. Scum could EASILY vote park on a "push" going nowhere. The question is if the wagon ever did anything. If not, congrats, it's >rand scum voter.

Spoiler: On Information Lynches

Here’s what you need to know about “information lynches”. Don’t do them.

I don't know at what point ww became "we must lynch for information!" Instead of "yo we should probably lynch a wolf."

That’s the succinct version. For the expanded version, consider Newbie 1779, where the town IC (mastina) was cheerleading “information” lynches to the detriment of town. Why was "information" lynching so damaging? Consider what actually happened...

The very unsurprising effects of her trying to push an “information” lynch on Alisae (who was town) instead of Chris (who was scum, as well as her top scum read as she’d discussed numerous times), included:
- Wasting an enormous amount of time and energy on what was essentially useless nonsense
- Giving the scum (ThinkBig and ChrisOrmie) an enormous amount of sludge to hide behind, since “who’s the likeliest scum” (a difficult conversation for scum to fake their way through) turned into “what kind of lynch can give us ‘good’ information” (a very easy conversation for scum to fake their way through) – i.e. the “information” lynch environment actively produced LESS information for town to use to solve, since it artificially changed the board environment from “who is scum and why are they scum” (town-positive) to “what kind of pre-existing connections exist between people and how many scum-teams can a particular mislynch eliminate” (scum-positive)
- It also turned a townie (Alisae) very strongly against mastina (which is virtually inevitable; anytime someone tries to spearhead your lynch for bullshit like “information” you’re ALWAYS going to be inclined to think they’re full of shit [true] and that they’re full of shit because they’re mafia [in this case false] ), which helped lead to mastina’s mislynch during the same day phase she was advocating “information” lynching

There are times when you can get away with information lynches, or when they’re actually helpful. They include:
- Explicit claim battle and/or other dipole (such as a cop guilty) (these are unusual but anytime you’re in something where you mechanically KNOW one side MUST be lying, and it’s pre-LYLO, you should almost always lynch inside that set and then take what information you can from it)
- A situation where no one is particularly scummy AND few if any people are especially villager AND you simply HAVE to figure out something that’s mechanically or informationally optimal (note: this almost never happens, and when it does, it’s something where it would probably naturally happen as you near deadline and are just forced to do the best you can, as opposed to actually being an intentional town-positive strategy)

But even there, I would STRONGLY suggest that you proceed with incredible caution before creating or enabling an environment where you’re lynching people for information instead of where you’re lynching people because they’re likely to be scum. Information lynches actively hinder town’s scum-hunting environment and actively reduce accountability for peoples’ vote choices, which is poisonous to town more often than not.

Misc Quotes

http://www.mafiauniverse.com/forums/thr ... ost1020416
Cron – on overly early VCA

The Owner vote is all town. Do with that what you will.

means..... nothing.... this.... early.

do you even have a degree in wagonomics?

From dead thread (on discord) of a massive town stomp, in a game where all of the wolves were basically lurking
Cory - Last Tuesday at 8:18 AM
i ascribe the werewolf philosophy of
1. lynch the wolfy people
2. if the game's not over, buckle in
as opposed to
1. identify the wolfy people
2. lynch ~villagery people for spicy reasons(edited)
the biggest issue for the wolves this game is that pretty much every villager has been villagery at least for a spurt of posting and many for the course of the game
whereas (at least from my perspective. i know other people nailed her) the only wolf i felt was ever remotely villagery was DT, who imo had some good spurts of real time posting

[James Brafin]

No kill? How odd.

@MOD: What is the tactical advantage to a no kill in this situation? I assume it has something to do with the numbers, but I'm not sure.

[mhsmith0]

There are a couple possible explanations for the lack of death

1) Scum no killed
2) Town PR stopped a kill (doctor and jailkeeper can both do this)

Tactically, the benefit of intentionally no killing is that there's a chance that a doctor or jailkeeper will take an action and draw the wrong conclusion. The drawback of intentionally no killing is that there's a substantial risk of either there being two nights without a kill (and jailkeeper in particular gets stronger as the game size shrinks), or of town investigative PRs getting a free hand to get results with no interference at all from scum.

[mhsmith0]

btw let me know if you'd still like that free modpeek. Curious what you're thinking of the events taking place in thread of late

[James Brafin]

Still would, but not sure on who yet... Thinking Meji Fan, Nauci, teacher, or Thor.

[James Brafin]

I know my peek. Can I see Oxy's PM?

[mhsmith0]

Sure. Why Oxy in particular if I can ask? Is he your SR? TR? Null that you want to sort?

[James Brafin]

He's coming across null/town, but it feels like he's coming across with a confidence that seems really odd, and his arguments seem poor. I'm pretty sure we've got scum between him and Thor, and we've got scum between Meji, KN, and Teach. If I can find out which of Thor/Oxy is the scum here, I can start hunting for associative, and if my hunch is correct, I ought to have this game solved before the players actually still alive (hopefully ;p)

[James Brafin]

Fine, point me at what post your awesome reasoning on why Thor is scum is in without resorting to mathemagic is in and I'll reread it

No that is not what I will be doing. What

you

will do

right now

is to

read every single post of the game in detail

. Which you should have already done.

Also, this is so anti-town this is not even funny. Forget Meji, scum is between teach and NK.

[mhsmith0]

Oxy is

Spoiler:

Town

[James Brafin]

Spoiler:

Interesting... That means Thor is probscum, which means teach is prob town (I don't see scum tunneling their buddy so hard) Which means NK is probscum, or I suppose I could be wrong and Meji could be scum. :p That helped a lot a nd very little.
Flicker is most likely town though still in my book. Teacher's play has been less than impressive, so I don't blame her for her scumread.

[mhsmith0]

Fine, point me at what post your awesome reasoning on why Thor is scum is in without resorting to mathemagic is in and I'll reread it

No that is not what I will be doing. What

you

will do

right now

is to

read every single post of the game in detail

. Which you should have already done.

Also, this is so anti-town this is not even funny. Forget Meji, scum is between teach and NK.

Anti-town != scum though

Also NK is a non-CC'd power role, which means that the ONLY world in which he's scum is if there's a doctor/tracker and the doctor is playing ABYSMALLY, since a three-way jk/doc/tracker claim set in this setup means there's ALWAYS a scum in that group (and almost always exactly one scum), which is super useful information for the town to know.