Newbie 1953 | Zooborns IV | Game Over

[Leucosticte]

(Was that a username bias vote?)

VOTE: Micc

[Leucosticte]

(Was that a username bias vote?)

VOTE: Micc

Yes, it was.

How about your vote on me? Username bias or something else?

(1) Originally, policy vote for being unclear about the reason, but now mostly just (2) "If I'm town, then from my perspective there's a better than random chance that anyone voting for me right off the bat is scum"

[Leucosticte]

Early scumpings on chemist

I think farren's post was funny (but not ai)

Leu, couple of questions:
1. How much (forum) mafia experience do u have?
2. What do u think of the fact that me and chemist have voted for u as well?

1. Zero
2. Kinda sus; I assume the more organized group on D1, that acts with more unity of purpose, is probably scum, but it could also just be an attempt to get the ball rolling rather than have 1 vote for this guy, 1 vote for that guy, etc. which ends up making the whole thing susceptible to manipulation by whoever shows up at the last minute

Oh wait, this is a "majority lynches" thing rather than plurality, huh? Interesting. And so, twilight begins as soon as someone gets 5 votes; is that how this goes?

[Leucosticte]

Any other kind of mafia experience?

Yeah its majority lynches; twighlight is between when someone gets lynched and the mod locks the thread

I've played Secret Hitler and Werewolv.es. With the latter, the way it is works is, night is at 8 PM UTC, and whoever has the plurality of votes at that point gets lynched, or if it's a tie vote or the plurality of votes is for "No Lynch" then there's no lynch.

So how does this work? As soon as it hits 5 votes, then it's a done deal, regardless of what time it is?

[Leucosticte]

Are you saying that Micc (2/8 random chance of being scum from your perspective) is more likely to be scum than mmiscrazy12 (also 2/8 random chance of being scum from your perspective)? I'm curious why you think that.

I don't know how to quantify the odds, but my theory is, the guy who I know is voting to lynch village is more sus than the guy who, for all I know, could be voting to lynch village or scum.

It's like, let's suppose a guy calls 911 and says, "I was cleaning my gun and tripped and fell and shot my wife in the head." He could be totally innocent of criminal intent, but who would you suspect is more likely to be a murderer, that guy or the guy next door who didn't call 911 with a story like that?

The guy next door could be a murderer and maybe just hasn't been caught, but we know right off the bat the guy who did call 911 with that story is suspicious.

In this situation, from my perspective, the suspicious behavior is having voted to lynch a townie. There could be an innocent explanation, but maybe not. It would be less suspicious if the vote had been cast for someone I

didn't

know was town. There would be another possible explanation (e.g. "maybe the person he's voting for is scum") that doesn't exist in this case.

[Leucosticte]

Yeah, basically.

Today it's five to lynch, whoever gets five votes first is lynched
We have ten days to sort out who we're going to put five votes on, if no one hits 5 votes before deadline there wont be a lynch

I *strongly* recommend we dont let that happen

In the small Werewolves community I belong to, they would say, "But if we lynch with no intel, we're more likely to lynch a townie than a scum, and we'll be shortening the game, so that we'll have less time to gather intel, and all it'll take is a few mislynches to make us lose!" and "If we randomly start voting for someone, he might feel forced to reveal his role, and if he's a townie with a power role, that means the scum will try to kill him!"

My way of looking at it is, if you're lucky enough that you start out by randomly voting for scum, he'll probably have to claim he's vanilla so that he doesn't get counterclaimed. Either way, if they claim to be vanilla, just go ahead and lynch them, because you need to start getting vanillas out of the game anyway so that scum have fewer places to hide. As you eliminate more and more vanillas, your odds of randomly lynching a scum who's hiding in that pool increase, and once you do lynch one of them, that lengthens the game, giving you more more margin of error in case a mislynch happens.

But they can't get past the idea, "OMG, there's x townies, but only y scum, so that means it would be bad to lynch randomly, since we'd be more likely to lynch a townie" and "We need to give the cop an opportunity to do his work without getting forced to claim before he's found any useful intel." Later, they're more willing to take a chance, under the assumption that maybe the cop is dead if a few days have passed and he still hasn't claimed.

As someone who hasn't drunk the Kool-Aid of that particular community, I'm just kinda curious what your perspective is.

[Leucosticte]

Leucosticte: why did you specifically vote for Micc over skitter? Your logic applies to both equally.

The one who votes first to lynch the innocent maybe has more initiative and therefore is more dangerous. Any time you want to dismantle some organization, you want to focus on taking out the leader, because after that, it may just fall apart.

[Leucosticte]

I'm also glad to see the effort because my take is that town players are incentivized to make reads and mafia players are not. This leads me to believe you are more likely to be town than someone like chemist who hasn't expressed any reads or shown signs of trying to make reads.

Could also be an indication he's vanilla; a lot of times vanillas take a lackadaisical attitude because they're like, "Whatever, I have nothing to go on, I have no special powers, I'm probably going to be suspected this whole game of being scum unless the cop clears me, and it doesn't even hurt the town much if I get eliminated because that just thins out the group of potential suspects." Meanwhile the cop just naturally wants to take charge because he's like, "I'm going to be the one running the show anyway once I start gathering intel, so I might as well take command now, especially given how important I am (too important to just leave it to someone else, such as scum, to try to take charge, and possibly convince everyone to lynch me)."

Since you try to take charge right away, it makes me think, "Okay, maybe he's the cop" but on the other hand you could also be scum (since they often behave in a cop-like way, wanting to lead the herd as well), so what I'll do is just leave my vote where it is for now and see what info I can gain by watching which way the votes pile up.

On the other hand, a lot of times, like you say, the people who don't say a lot end up being scum, and at any rate I view vanillas as expendable pawns, and don't necessarily want to pressure a cop into claiming on D1, so on second thought, I'll just go ahead and switch my vote over.

UNVOTE: Micc
VOTE: Chemist1422

[Leucosticte]

welp since the other SEs are doing it I might as well

I found this line scummy

It's not inherently that you didnt really have reads at post 10, but rather because of this like ... appeal to authority that indicates that instead of *trying* to form ur own reads you were just going to sheep other people

Eh maybe that's more similar to what micv said than i thought before, idk

Also the tone is weird

On the other hand, sometimes townies will think, "If I jump on the bandwagon, then no one can single me out and try to say that I'm more scummy than the rest; I can always just say, 'Well everyone else was voting the same way, so why don't you lynch them, especially since they were first on the bandwagon and all I did was follow'"

[Leucosticte]

In other words, townies might think, "In the interests of not getting mislynched, I need to act in ways that aren't suspicious, such as by jumping on bandwagons rather than taking some stance that no one else is taking, which might be hard to defend by myself (especially since, if people point out why that stance is defensible, others might ask, 'Well then why didn't you take that stance too?' If I go with the bandwagon, then everyone else on that bandwagon has to stick up for me if I'm accused, or else they would be sus too by the same reasoning that I would be sus. So, there's safety in numbers."

[Leucosticte]

why are town specifically more likely to think this than scum?

why are you seemingly defending me while voting me?

The "follow the leader; seek safety in numbers" attitude I'm describing, I consider typical of vanillas. The strategy I'm pursuing right now is to lynch vanilla-seeming players (who could either be real vanillas or scum acting like vanillas; either way, it thins out the potential prime suspects).

Then again, like I was saying earlier, scum can also act like a townie cop; but the potential downside of targeting players with cop behavior is greater. If you lynch a townie cop, not only do you lose that PR, but a scum could then claim that role and not be CC'ed.

[Leucosticte]

If we lynch a PR, they will flip as the PR. If scum want to try to claim a unique role after that role's been lynched, we should cheer them on. And then lynch them.

But, as I was saying earlier - we don't want to actively discuss who is acting like a PR - or, for that matter, who's acting like vanilla. Who's Town, who's scum - that's all that we should be worrying about right now.

Oh, so in this game, if you mislynch, you find out right away? Ah, okay, I've been playing with some different mechanics elsewhere, where you have to have a Gravedigger dig someone up to reveal the role. (However, the Gravedigger often gets NK'ed early in the game, so then you may not find out till the end of the game who was what.)

Wow, that must really be helpful in figuring out more quickly who's scum.

[Leucosticte]

Given that, how does it change your views on bandwagon accountability? Or does it?

I would imagine it increases it quite a bit, because if you have to rely on a Gravedigger, you have all the disadvantages that come with that (such as not knowing whether he's legit, the fact that there's a delay while waiting for him to dig up a grave, the fact that he can only dig up one grave a night, the fact that he can be killed, etc.)

[Leucosticte]

Let's try it this way: why do you view VTs as expendable pawns?

For now I'm going to take back my earlier comment until I get more of a feel for the mechanics of this version of Mafia and how they affect gameplay.

[Leucosticte]

UNVOTE: Chemist1422
VOTE: Mr Oobsy

Mr Oobsy is being quiet.. almost TOO quiet

[Leucosticte]

So: Mr Oobsy goes in the townbucket for now, although we still need to work on that "not willing to vote" business.

If you want people to change, sometimes you gotta provide an incentive, so my vote stays where it is for now.

[Leucosticte]

I’m “keeping my options open” who I think is scummy/not scummy. I’m not going to just automatically assume someone is town-sided or mafia-sided based on 1 person posting a million paragraphs about it.

Regardless I do think if we were to lynch someone, I think Chemist is the only one who truly has acted scummy, not with their original post but with their lack of reasoning afterwards and inactivity even though they’re the most talked about one so far.

my lack of reasoning? it was literally RVS but people for some reason weren't accepting that as a reason

and I haven't been inactive, I'm in the top half of posters so

I'd rather people give some reason, even if it's a made-up or bad reason. It might help get people's creative juices going by giving them something to argue for / against, or serve as a catalyst for their own ideas. If townies say "random vote" then it might encourage scum to say, "Here's my random vote too" when they vote for town.

It also might help from a meta standpoint because people might say, "Hmm, in x% of games I've played where people used username bias as justification for their first vote, they turned out to be [town/scum] and according to this graph, the trajectory is only upward in this trend, although I'm not going to say anything because then scum might adjust their strategy; I'll just note this as my secret reason for voting a certain way right now."

For some reason, I had the same impression too that you'd been kinda quiet, especially for someone with a few votes on him; maybe you're just not very obtrusive. But, what I consider scummier than the guy who's just quietly unobtrusive, is the guy who is mostly quiet except to break into the convo to say a few short words of bad advice like, "Quite frankly I think it's reckless to be lynching people at this point without more information; it's still only Day 4, so we have plenty of time; remember, a loose cannon is worse than no cannon at all"; THOSE are the guys I want to string up before anyone.

I just get this vibe though that Mr Oobsy is more reformable and trainable than other inactives in this game like Dyrenz and Jamelia, though, which is why I'm investing in his training by voting for him; I think it will pay off in the long run. I also think his username is cool; maybe that's really what this comes down to in the final analysis, tbqpf.

I like chemist's username too, even though I'm not aware of anything all that important that happened in 1422

[Leucosticte]

and this is why gtkas should not have a post requirement

On a serious note that post didn't really feel like it said anything that notable? I see a lot of words but not a ton of real solving

What's your theory of the game right now, chemist; what do you think is going on?

[Leucosticte]

and this is why gtkas should not have a post requirement

On a serious note that post didn't really feel like it said anything that notable? I see a lot of words but not a ton of real solving

Do you have something against streams of consciousness and essays lacking in a clear thesis? If so, we're gonna have a problem

[Leucosticte]

In addition to that, I think Leucosticte is just posting fluff and should provide their reads so far.

Micc --

probably some vanilla townie

, too opinionated to be a PR, or else he's be taking more of a wait-and-see attitude; could also be scum just trying to take on the role of leader though; anyway, doesn't seem to be a liability to town although that question of the math of OMGUS, I want to look into after this game is over; has some opinions and I'll be interested to see how those pan out

skitter30 --

seems okay

, asks questions, provides helpful info; notes at one point, "this is mostly considered a scummy mindset on this site"; hopefully that was just informative about the site's norms rather than implying we should just blindly follow those ways of thinking

Dyrenz --

seems okay

, leaning slightly scum maybe just because stylistically they remind me of someone who was scum last game

Farren --

probably some townie PR who's gonna try to hide for awhile

, doesn't seem like a liability to town really; stylistically, strikes me as playing like one of these more experienced players who may be useful at some point. Seems to ask some reasonable questions, not too antagonistic

Jamelia --

too early to tell

; if I weren't already voting for Mr Oobsy, I might vote for another non-voter today; perhaps Jamelia should start out the discussion tomorrow if they're allowed the luxury/privilege of taking a wait-and-see attitude today; it's only fair

NorwegianboyEE --

mixed feelings

, idk, they said, "The game had barely started and his vote already puts Leucosticte (Who hadn't even talked yet by this point) to L-2", yet I thought the mentality of a lynch mob was to rush to judgment, and that the process of voting would encourage devil's advocates to come out for the other side; if someone had dropped the hammer prematurely, and turned out to be town, that could've been sus and therefore useful info for guiding the next day's discussion; nonetheless, based on the same logic as my OMGUS mathematics earlier with regard to Micc, I have to say that works in his favor from my point of view; if I know I'm town then anyone who supports me automatically seems slightly less sus

Leucosticte --

that dude's pretty cool, I think he's got potential

; he strikes me as one of these turboneets who will be able to give this game the attention it deserves; really I have nothing negative to say about this player at this early juncture based on what has been presented thus far

Chemist1422 --

seems to quibble a lot with tone rather than substance

, should probably knock that off, unless it's in the context of saying, "this seems scummy"

Mr Oobsy --

I thought he was cool at first but then he voted for me without giving any reason

, that ain't cool

Mr Oobsy is probably a town vanilla tbh but in the absence of any major scumtells, I don't have a problem with pushing him overboard if he's going to be a liability; we need the final group of players to be people whose judgment we can rely on

Some people are like, "You shouldn't speculate about town PRs" but we'll just have to see after the game if scum was like, "oh yeah, I took my cue from those speculations and targeted those people" and if I was even right in my speculations; this is a newbie experiment.

[Leucosticte]

Dyrenz -- seems okay, leaning slightly scum maybe just because stylistically they remind me of someone who was scum last game

who do they remind you of ?

Good question, I probably should've put their name so that I'd remember in case anyone asked. It wasn't a game on this site, though.

[Leucosticte]

Chemist

- Looking back on it, probably used initial RVS to bait an unwary scum voter.

I don't support the practice of acting scummy to try to bait scum, if that's what he was doing. It just ends up causing more confusion for town, as we waste time trying to figure out who's more sus, the baiter, or the baited. #LynchAllBaiters

[Leucosticte]

No, and he's said as much multiple times.

Oh, he did? I'll have to scope out the iso. UPDATE: I checked out the iso and didn't see what you're referring to. But I did see Chemist saying a lot of "Why this, why that" deflection stuff early on whenever people pointed the finger at him. He keeps crying out in pain as he strikes.

Plus if he's gonna single me out as the most sus, I should probably return the favor and make him justify it more if he wants my vote shifted elsewhere.

UNVOTE: Mr Oobsy
VOTE: Chemist1422

[Leucosticte]

I mean, I guess "why" questions can be a legitimate way to try to get responses from people to see if they're scum, but the rest of my post still stands, that I want more justification of why he thinks I'm sus.

[Leucosticte]

Dude it was a page 1 RVS vote and he’s said so repeatedly. He’s not voting you and he’s not pushing for you to be lynched.

You claiming that he’s singled you out as the most suspicious is a gigantic miss representation of what chemist is saying.

Yeah but the fact remains I've gotten this hostile vibe from him and if he has some kind of beef, I'd like to hear it.

[Leucosticte]

Scum will often do a "poor me" schtick, by the way

[Leucosticte]

Ok whatever just mislynch me then and get on with the game

The "poor me" took it to "

yellow scummy alert

" but the "just lynch me already" takes it to "

red scummy alert

"

UNVOTE: Chemist1422
VOTE: Dyrenz

[Leucosticte]

I mean, maaaaybe he could be scum took it as a free vote since it was SO easy to vote for me right then.

Why do you make it easy

[Leucosticte]

I should've repped out as soon as I saw Micc. Told myself I would give it a shot, maybe this time it will be different. Clearly not, he just does not approve of my play style at all. He's why I quit my first attempt at Mafia years ago. He would not let up no matter how badly I tried to help town and prove my innocence and it led to a mislynch. Don't even know how the game ended because it left me so frustrated I quit the site.

Mafia's an intense game, and town usually is slow to catch on to what's going on, and trusting of the wrong people and skeptical of the good people. It's kinda like the mate market that way, in that it's based largely on feelings and manipulation rather than logic. Obviously that makes it frustrating for those who don't thrive in those kinds of conditions.

[Leucosticte]

VOTE: Leocosticte

His Chemist and Dyrenz votes are both yikes.

Don't fall for the poor me routine.. a dude with like 80 games under his belt got snowed by a first-time player in wlf-068 who used that..

[Leucosticte]

Tell me some more about the Friendly Neighbor, since I've never played a game that had that. The Mafia Wiki says, "Friendly Neighbor is nearly impossible to frame as a liar. If you are scum and receive a Friendly Neighbor greeting, you probably are not served by lying and saying you didn't get it."

How easy is it to fakeclaim, though? I mean, I guess if it's nearly impossible to frame, then a fake claim, "Hey, I sent a message but he's falsely claiming he didn't get it" wouldn't be plausible, because scum wouldn't do that. Or would they?

[Leucosticte]

All right, well, I have to think about whom I want to switch my vote to. I assume no one's going to be dropping the hammer on Dyrenz.

[Leucosticte]

I didn't say the PR claim was sus, I based my scumread on the behavioral red flag of "just lynch me already." But it was just a scumread, nothing more.

UNVOTE: Dyrenz

[Leucosticte]

By the way, I think in one or two recent cases when I was casting votes, I thought I was fully caught up with the discussion and somehow missed that, e.g., half a page more of discussion had transpired that I hadn't seen; I'll keep an eye out next time for that.

[Leucosticte]

I didn't see an answer to this question.

I also didn't see any of Chemist's posts where he described you as "most sus" or anything similar. I see the RVS vote and post 203, where he puts you in the "not a town read" category.

Could you please answer?

I think I just made an assumption.

Fixed broken quote tag --P

[Leucosticte]

Time to start consolidating wagons folks. I prefer Leocosticte, would settle for Oobsy, and oppose chemist.

You were wrong about Dyrenz, so why would should anyone think you're right now? From my point of view, you've now falsely accused not just one, but TWO people. What are the odds of a townie doing that by accident?!

VOTE: Micc

[Leucosticte]

Leucosticte: why Micc over me? Both of us are voting you.

If you want it that badly, you can have it; it's fine with me.

UNVOTE: Micc
VOTE: Farren

[Leucosticte]

I mean, that's kinda meta. At any rate, I play this game on more than one site, and we just had a game on the other site, wlf-071, where there was a random shooting. https://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Wlf-071

I actually think it might be against the rules of this site if I were to write threads about ongoing games.

[Leucosticte]

What's a death tunnel, exactly?

[Leucosticte]

Also i don’t like how i went from 2 votes to getting lynched while i was sleeping and essentially defenseless. :/

You snooze, you lose

[Leucosticte]

Predicted nightkill= Dyrenz.

I don't get what the point would be of killing Dyrenz.

[Leucosticte]

Leucosticte: still waiting for a response to post 437.

I was just like, "Let me just prove that I'm not scum arbitrarily voting for this other guy instead of you, because voting is more powerful than words; if I give some explanation, that could just be BS, but voting proves my sincerity"

Also, I was just getting exhausted from all the debate and feeling too lazy to go back through what was said and figure out who was more likely to be scum, especially since my vote probably wasn't going to matter anyway; maybe I'll be less lazy today.

[Leucosticte]

VOTE: Mr Oobsy
For hammering that wagon.

Is it bad for someone to be decisive and say, "Let's get this show on the road; we've debated long enough and there are already four votes for this guy, and I think he's guilty too, so let's do this"? (Of course it looks bad if afterward they turn out to be innocent)

In other words, when is it okay to hammer a wagon?

[Leucosticte]

No counterclaim here. I'll have more to say later; kinda distracted right now.

[Leucosticte]

I think all of the poking at stuff Farren did was really towny and that they’ve been genuinely solving a lot

Like what?

[Leucosticte]

What's the exact definition of mechanically cleared, by the way? Would an example be, "this a game with only one scum in it; x flipped as the tracker, and before he died, he said y didn't go anywhere the night that z was killed; since we know x was town, and therefore wouldn't lie, that means mechanically y is cleared"? But x could still lie strategically, even though that's usually not regarded as pro-town, so is anyone ever really mechanically cleared, in the sense that we KNOW they're town?

Like maybe someone could be mechanically cleared from a certain player's perspective (because he has the necessary intel), but not from everyone's perspective?

[Leucosticte]

Best example I can think of - final 3. Players A,B,C. C's scum, A and B are town. C votes for A. If B were scum, he could vote for A as soon as he saw it and clinch a scum victory. He sees the vote, posts something to show he saw the vote - but does not vote. B's mechanically cleared. Yeah, technically, B could be dumb as a rock and not realize the opportunity. Technically, B could be an utter jerk and deliberately want to drag the game out meaninglessly. But A should still treat B as if he was mechanically clear despite those two technical possibilities.

We just had something like this happen in a recent game of Werewolves (just concluded; it's why I'll probably be more active here now). I was a roleblocker, and roleblocked A the same night I was killed. B claimed the next day, "Hey, I got roleblocked by Leu last night, and that's why I couldn't protect Leu from dying, but I'm the doctor." A didn't notice he'd been roleblocked the night before, because he overlooked the message notifying him about it. Otherwise, he would've CC'ed.

[Leucosticte]

Bleh i'm going to be the closest thing to conftown tomorrow, presumably

At least as long as he doesn't flip Rolecop specifically. Varying degrees of truth if he flips Goon or Town - enough to make you a bad choice to lynch either way.

Does this mean we should lynch Chemist for the sake of gathering this info so we know more about skitter's towniness?

VOTE: Chemist1422

[Leucosticte]

I've discovered I can't play this game while also simultaneously playing a real-time game of Werewolves, so I'm just going to focus on this game until it's completed, and not sign up for any other games.

[Leucosticte]

Well you just hammered on chemist so

Oh, I thought he only had three votes.

[Leucosticte]

Well you just hammered on chemist so

Oh, I thought he only had three votes.

He did, it takes 4 to lynch.

Oh, okay. Well, judging by his iso, he probably wasn't going to have much more to say anyway pre-hammer, and at any rate, he can probably get a few more words in during twilight if there are some useful thoughts/insights/perspectives/analyses he wants to offer.

[Leucosticte]

I suspect that whoever mafia is, is banking on me having a “noob” mentality and taking out someone who was saying I was partners with Chemist, since at that time they were the only one (besides Skitter) who has been against what I’ve been saying.

You voted for Chemist on Day 1 though, and then Chemist voted for you on Day 2. So, that makes you one of the townier people in the game, votewise.

(Dyrenz was town and voted for you, though. Hmm.)

So from my point of view it's:

Leucosticte:

towniest

skitter30:

second-towniest

Jamelia:

third-towniest

Micc and Farren:

tie for fourth-towniest

[Leucosticte]

Could you please explain why you have people in that order? What makes skitter your top read? What makes Micc and I your worst read?

Well, Mr Oobsy said Skitter didn't follow anyone on Night 1, when there was a kill. But Chemist could've been the killer, so I have to figure out how much weight I want to give that. Skitter didn't vote for Chemist on Day 2, so I have to take that into account as well.

Oh, I just noticed that Jamelia didn't vote for Chemist either on Day 2. Hmm, I need to come up with a weighting system.

E.g.:

__ points for being tracked but not seen visiting anyone on a night when there was a night kill and two scum left in the game
__ points for voting for someone turns out to be

scum

__ points for getting voted by someone who turns out to be

scum

-__ points for voting for someone who turns out to be

town

-__ points for getting voted by someone who turns out to be

town

The points get added up to determine one's overall

towniness

rating.

I have to adjust the points system, though, to reflect the fact that as time goes on,

scum

might have more knowledge about who the PRs or likely PRs are (due to, e.g., rolecopping), and therefore voting on later days to lynch someone who ultimately turns out to be a PR would look particularly bad.

According to this system, I look

scummier

from your perspective (or, if you're

scum

, you still have to pretend you think I look scummier) for voting for you on Day 1, but oh well. If you actually turn out to be

scum

, then I look even

townier

for having voted for you, so there's that tradeoff.

[Leucosticte]

Some might be like "Oh, if you're worried about seeming like

scum

, that means you're

scum

" but the reality is that if you're

town

, and you do something like vote for someone to get lynched who then turns out to be

town

, and then you get lynched the next day because of that, then at this point in the game, potentially your side loses.

[Leucosticte]

VOTE: Leucosticte

After a real brief review of some ISO's, I think this is the direction to go today.

When you get some specifics, those would be appreciated.

[Leucosticte]

skitter30:

second-towniest

For the time being, I stand by this analysis because I consider intel to be stronger evidence than voting patterns, and I consider voting patterns stronger evidence than behavior.

His voting record isn't that great, but that intel tho.

[Leucosticte]

Here's some context for evaluating Leucosticte's frame of mind.

He's just been in a game where a player did not meet a baseline of competent play - that player failed to check his messages from the mod and missed out on an opportunity to counterclaim scum. Being in a situation like that emphasizes the importance of meeting that baseline of competent play.

Yet Leucosticte then hammers.

The dude I was playing with in the other game had 80 games under his belt on that Werewolves platform. (I have 0 games under my belt on this platform.) Even so, he may not have played many games where he was dealing with a roleblocker, since it's not one of the core roles on that platform; and the roleblock message is not particularly obtrusive (it appears along with the notification of the night kill), so he may have just overlooked it. It's not the first time someone missed a roleblock message on there. It sucked and kinda diminished the satisfaction of the ending, but oh well, stuff happens. We'll be more on our guard against that next time.

Also, his move may have contributed to his side losing the game, because it was a piece of key intel. In this case, Chemist was just not being very responsive to people's questioning of him, even when he had votes being cast for him. I don't think waiting was really going to keep him from ultimately getting hammered, although maybe it would've drawn out

scum

to say something in his defense or otherwise try to save him.

Idk, the hammering probably shouldn't have happened the way it did, but on the other hand, had we waited, it's still technically possible that maybe people would've changed their minds and not lynched him. So, perhaps it ended up being for the best.

As scum, though - Chemist is almost certainly doomed. There's credit to be earned from hammering. And he doesn't have to worry about the possibility of Chemist flipping Town and making himself look **really** bad in the process.

And yet, Mr Oobsy voted Day 1 to hammer a

townie

, and Mr Oobsy turned out to be

town

. I voted Day 2 to hammer a

scum

, so that makes me even

townier

than Mr Oobsy, from a certain perspective. We can argue WIFOM all day about it, but that just goes in circles.

[Leucosticte]

Which is it, Farren; was Chemist already doomed (and therefore hammering him was harmless), or was he not doomed (and therefore I'm

townier

for having put him out of misery when he still could've been saved from the rope)?

[Leucosticte]

I was looking back at the Norwegian vote as well, and Micc immediately votes for them after you, leading to an L-1. I think it’s interesting that Micc/Chemist both voted for Leuco at the beginning. Since we now know that Chemist is maf, it makes sense to me that Micc could be mafia as well (if Chemist was following suit and trying to get a random mislynch going ASAP D1).

Could be, but on the other hand, I often attract some votes on the first day of a game, even if, maybe even

especially

if, I'm

lit

. (Aka

town

; I don't know if you use that word "

lit

" here)

[Leucosticte]

As I see it, Leucosticte was really late to the Day 2 chemist wagon for someone who had been scumreading chemist all of day 1. It reads like he was pushing his partner Day 1 for the town credit, and then when his partner got under read pressure Day 2 he gave every opportunity for another wagon to develop. When it became more clear that chemist was the lynch for the day he made sure to get on the wagon.

I've been in his situation before. Being decisive about whether to bus a partner or not is really hard, and easy to get wrong. I think he got it wrong.

Also, scum reading Farren at this point is just silly.

I'm just now starting to keep some serious notes about this game, because that Werewolves game I was playing distracted me more than I expected.

Anyway, as for my votes. On Day 1, I originally voted for you as an OMGUS, and then switched my vote to Chemist since he was more laconic (as I noted in post #26, I often find that the more laconic guys are

scum

; and it turned out, I was right about Chemist too).

Then in post #48, I cast a pressure vote for Mr Oobsy for being quiet too (since at that point he was being even quieter than Chemist). Since the whole basis for my vote for Chemist was his being quiet, it made sense to switch my vote to the even quieter guy. Then Chemist seemed to be saying a lot of unpersuasive / irrelevant stuff, which made me switch my vote back to him in post #303 because that's a

scummy

behavioral cue and we were still in RVS (so didn't have a lot of intel and votes to go on).

In post #312, I switched my vote to Dyrenz because he had a "just lynch me" attitude, which I've seen in

scum

before as a way of manipulating and dismaying

town

; although I've now seen it from

town

in some games too, so I'm starting to revise my opinion about how much of a

scum

tell that is. Then I unvoted, and switched to Micc in #426 as an OMGUS, then switched to Farren in #436 as another OMGUS. This was RVS, after all.

Then on Day 2, I was wrapped up in that Werewolves game because it was approaching a critical moment in that game, so I just wasn't paying much attention, other than noticing that Chemist was still being apathetic and laconic, so I figured he was either a kinda useless

townie

or

scum

; plus Farren seemed to be saying there could be valuable intel to be gained from flipping Chemist, so I went ahead and cast my vote. Micc, you even seemed kinda relieved to see it happen, and I don't blame you, because that discussion didn't seem like it was going anywhere useful.

I'd be interested to know why

scumreading

Farren is silly. I didn't even say I

scumread

him; I just said that he was tied with you as

fourth-most-townie

. Not everyone's gonna get the blue ribbon in every contest. Just try to act more

towny

today and maybe you'll be higher up on my list next time.

[Leucosticte]

The only one of us that didn't either a) participate in lynching Chemist or b) clearly state intent to do so was skitter. She's your top townread.

Meanwhile, I'm in your bottom tier. I had the opportunity to back out and stop a hammer. I was clearly around to do so after Jamelia declared intent. Yet I didn't.

It doesn't sound like your opinions are based on how the votes went down.

Oh yeah, I forgot, I need to redo my ranking like I was describing in post #682. So I take back what I said in #705 about Micc and you still being tied for 4th-most-townie.

Point is - I'm showing reasons why I think scum-you hammered - deliberately - and why I think town-you would not have accidentally hammered - even though the hammer directly resulted in a scum lynch.

This sounds like you're claiming inexperience with majority rules. Inexperience is understandable. What's not understandable is missing all the warnings. Especially when you understand the potential consequences of missing those warnings.

Okay, well, keep thinking that, but it sounds like potential confirmation bias from the fact that I voted for you on Day 1, which has made you sus of me ever since, even though you pretty much implied that day in post #435 that from my perspective, you could be equally sus as Micc.

I mean, I get that being voted by someone makes someone more sus, all else equal, but it was RVS, and I was just doing OMGUS right back to you.

At any rate, you're talking about behavioral evidence right now, which is weaker than voting, so I don't really care too much how much you want to talk about it.

[Leucosticte]

Which is it, Farren; was Chemist already doomed (and therefore hammering him was harmless), or was he not doomed (and therefore I'm

townier

for having put him out of misery when he still could've been saved from the rope)?

The case I'm trying to make is not that hammering Chemist hurt the town. The only thing we really lost was giving Jamelia the opportunity to follow-through - or not. And I think Jamelia's Town, so I'm not too concerned about that.

The case I'm trying to make is that from a town-Leucosticte perspective, you should have been aware of the possibility that hammering Chemist

could

hurt Town, and that you'd be held responsible for not giving everyone the full amount of deadline time. Especially if it results in town-you getting lynched right afterwards; that would mean a scum victory. That given what you've seen in this game so far - you making a mistake and not realizing you were hammering is not credible. From a scum-Leucosticte perspective, you would know that hammering Chemist would be pro-Town, and did so to garner the credit, especially given that Jamelia had stated intent and nobody on the wagon was expressing doubts.

Nevertheless, I can answer your question: I think Chemist was going to die no matter what. The only one not on the wagon that was expressing doubt prior to the hammer was skitter.

One possible exception: Micc mentions after the hammer that he would have unvoted. I think if that does happen, we see the following:

1) Jamelia puts Chemist back at L-1;
2) EITHER Micc hammers Chemist, OR
3) skitter thinks Micc is scum saving scum|Chemist and hammers Chemist.

So basically all this comes down to, Farren, is that you're saying, "You're lying about why you hammered, which makes you scummy." The hammering itself was not a big deal; heck, it would've been kinda sus too if I

hadn't

voted for Chemist. Basically the only way to not be sus, would've been to have gotten on the wagon sooner. But I think there was more justification to get on it later, because Chemist had had opportunity to defend himself, and hadn't done a good job.

So whatever; it was a breach of protocol, but at the end of the day, who cares. I was gonna be sus no matter what (once a few people had already cast their votes while I was distracted), but I think I did right in at least giving Chemist a chance to present whatever defense he wanted to.

Save the talk about "you should've known better than to accidentally hammer someone" for people who have played more than one day of this game.

[Leucosticte]

In my eyes, the underlined parts and the bolded parts contradict each other. If you're casting meaningful votes based on scumtells (or pretending to do so as scum), it's no longer RVS. Meaningful votes are clearly superior to arbitrary and/or random votes; why would you use RVS to justify a vote after RVS is clearly over?

Okay, well, strike out "RVS" and replace it with whatever word refers to when we have no intel and no final vote tallies to look at, so all we have are, at most, behavioral cues.

[Leucosticte]

I think it's safe to say that if the scumteam is composed of two SEs, they're not going to make a rookie mistake by needlessly doubling their exposure to Tracker hits when there's a 50% chance of a Tracker being present.

I'm not sure that's really safe to say, because Chemist's level of engagement was pretty low, especially as the game went on (thus, maybe he wasn't paying close attention to what his teammate was doing at night), and there are a lot of n00bs in this game, and even SE players can make dumb, even potentially game-losing errors and oversights.

Therefore, I have to weigh that to Skitter's advantage and consider Skitter one of the less sus players.

[Leucosticte]

It could be. But if you're thinking I'm suffering from confirmation bias, then that should mean you think I'm Town. Scum doesn't do confirmation bias - they can't.

Yeah but both town and scum would have a reason to try to lynch people who vote for them, because regardless of what side someone is on, they're trying not to get lynched. If you're scum and someone's voting for you, maybe they're on to you, or maybe they're just paranoid about you, but either way, it works against you. Same way if you're town; someone voting for you either has the wrong idea, or they're scum; either way, that's a problem for you.

What's up with Micc wanting to lynch me every day? He must really hate that username. It's really easy to remember the spelling, though; just learn the mnemonic, Louis Eats Under-Cooked Onion-Stuffed Tomatoes In ConnecticuT Everyday. Just imagine him crossing the state line to go to this restaurant where they have a really good recipe for those.

[Leucosticte]

My town read on Farren is so strong that I feel like anyone who isn't townreading him is being silly. I don't know what else to say about it. Putting him in your lowest tier and dismissing it being a scum read is also pretty silly.

Unless you have some justification for your town read of him, then that's just your feeling, then. And I think there's a difference between having a neutral opinion about someone, and saying they seem scummy to you.

What's up with you trying to discredit my pushes by bringing up the reasoning I gave for my RVS vote as if that was still relevant?

Your reasoning has been kinda sketchy from Day 1 (e.g. saying in post #24 that my math doesn't add up, but then not really refuting it; although at the time I just let it go because you were townreading me just for putting in effort; but, it's like you'll bring up stuff, such as "opportunism" being an unhelpful concept, and then not really support your opinions.)

Anyway, Farren is acting kinda scummy by making a big deal out of my dropping the hammer on Chemist; you know what it reminds me of, is that scene in

A Few Good Men

, when they're accusing the Colonel of having ordered the code red and then lying about it. In reality, that soldier they killed was putting other men's lives in danger so he needed to be snuffed out. And it was the same way with Chemist!

Who's going to be upset about that decision, other than scum? Who's going to going to give me a hard time about it, other than someone who's upset that his scummy teammate just bit the dust?

You wanna know what I think about people ignoring protocol and dropping the hammer "prematurely"? On the record I tell you that I discourage the practice. Off the record I tell you that it's an invaluable way of lynching scum that might otherwise go free.

[Leucosticte]

I'm having a hard time finding a way to say this nicely, but "opportunistic" is one of those words where if you remove it from your vocabulary, you'll immediately have become a better scum hunter.

well i think they're misusing oppurtunist actually

When I think of "opportunist" I think of, for example, someone accidentally acting in a sus way, and then scum saying, "Ooh, let me exploit this to try to get him mislynched." Or more generally, any situation where one seizes an opportunity to accomplish some nefarious goal. E.g. taking advantage of confusion or mistakes or unavailability or any other weaknesses by town. So for example, if you know someone is on vacation, and the day is about to end, you try to get them lynched while they can't defend themselves.

But, maybe town could be opportunistic too, since opportunities arise for them to accomplish their goals too.

[Leucosticte]

hmmmm
kinda makes me think that the hammer wasn't as careless as you may have portrayed it being

Who really cares? Were you wanting to be the one to drop the hammer, so you could claim townpoints for it?

[Leucosticte]

i don't realy like that you're trying to give yourself townpoints here

People don't like the idea of approaching this game systematically, but we make these calculations in our head anyway. If you wanna say, "Okay, he gets x number of townpoints for hammering scum, but that number is diminished by the fact that Chemist was doomed anyway, plus he gets penalized for going against hammering protocol, plus I think he's lying about it being an accident, so he gets scumpoints for that," go ahead!

I think it's a legitimate argument for saying, "The other guy is more sus than I am," if you can say, "If I were scum, why would I blah blah blah" and in fact people say that all the time, which means they're claiming townpoints. But people don't like the concept of it, because they think, "That could be manipulated by scum." Well yeah, anything town tries to do could be manipulated by scum to achieve the opposite purpose. So then you try to factor that into your system, and account for whatever the current meta is, etc.; but with n00bs and such, there's always some uncertainty.

And in this case, there's really not a lot to go on, which is why people are seizing on petty stuff as a reason to be sus. When you see people focusing a lot on behavior and not votes or intel, that means we're in something close to RVS.

What do you think of all this, Jamelia.

Anyway, lemme ask Micc, if you're town, and then someone votes for you, even in RVS, how does that not make them, from your perspective, mathematically more sus than if they voted for someone you don't know is town (given that Mafia has information aboutwho's town and who's scum). In RVS, wouldn't scum want to pseudo-randomly choose a townie?

My view is, we don't have a lot to go on here, so in scum-hunting, we have to take even RVS decisions slightly into account; prove me wrong.

[Leucosticte]

Let me ask you this -- do you accumulate scumpoints for lying about stuff that can never be proven (such as your state of mind)?

Or does that fall into the category of harmless white lies, like saying, "Nah, that skirt doesn't make your butt look too big," so you can accomplish your goals in life without running into unnecessary interpersonal drama?

I was recently in a game where one dude was the gravedigger (aka coroner), but hadn't claimed; and then someone else claimed as gravedigger. The real gravedigger thought, "Hmm, I know he's fake, because there's only one gravedigger in this game, but the others might not believe me if I counterclaim." So what he did was wait till the day was about to end, and then he opportunistically said, "I know this guy is fake because he gave away some telltale clues that I'm aware of because I've played with him for so long; trust me, it's a meta thing" and went ahead and cast his vote when there wasn't really time to try to have a lengthy discussion about it.

Then post-game, he admitted, no, there was no meta thing; he just knew 100% the guy was fakeclaiming because he had the role that the guy was claiming. In that case, it worked, but it could easily have gone against him if we'd thought, "It's pretty scummy to wait until right before nightfall to say that you've picked up on some meta tells that you don't have time to tell the rest of us about." But, it did win the game for town.

[Leucosticte]

This approach of, "I'm just going to see which way the winds are blowing and then be the first to vote that way" just doesn't seem very helpful. It would be better to base it on one's independent analysis rather than just blindly following others' lead.

VOTE: Micc

[Leucosticte]

One might say, "Oh, if you think Micc is just following blindly instead of being malicious, that indicates you think he's town, so therefore you shouldn't vote to lynch him" but the reality is, we can afford a mislynch and he's already not in my top townreads. If you don't have any strong scumreads, though, sometimes it's best to just think, "Hmm, which player would be the most likely to inadvertently be an asset to scum," and just go ahead and lynch them so you can be rid of them and then pursue the scumhunt without their getting in the way.

Some of the same people who make formidable town opponents can also make formidable scum opponents, so that's something to be aware of; just because Farren seems high-effort and so on doesn't mean that he's town.

On the other hand, some might say, "Wow, Farren can make these brilliant connections" but don't discount too, some of these lead him astray, like in post #562 where he thought Oobsy and I were a scumteam. Well, what about, say, post #680; do you still stand by your analysis from that post, Farren, where you reached those conclusions about Jamelia's towniness based on his scumreading Mr Oobsy after Micc had started the wagon on Chemist?

Farren has some cool Mafia theory that he expresses well but it doesn't mean he's town, so don't give him too much of a halo just based on that; you still have to challenge him and see what he's really about. Otherwise, you're potentially just giving scum a free ride.

[Leucosticte]

I'm still trying to figure out the best order to do this in. Should we lynch Micc today and Ferren tomorrow, or Ferren today and Micc tomorrow? I haven't figured out whether Micc is the low-effort scum or Farren is the high-effort scum, but I've pretty much narrowed it down to those two.

[Leucosticte]

P-edit

What's P-edit? (Didn't see it on the wiki)

[Leucosticte]

That last line right there also shows attempt to claim credit from the flip.

It's such a non-issue, though. Anyway, whatever, you're just voting for me in an attempt to escape this death tunnel I've got you in, but it won't work.

[Leucosticte]

It's scummy.

There's only one scum left. Why is he planning for there to be a tomorrow when he should be looking for the lynch that wins the game?

You hope for the best, and plan for the worst. I'm just saying, this death tunnel can accommodate two suspects if needed.

[Leucosticte]

me, since that's a rather important factor in my read of you

Chemist was a suffering dog that needed to be put down. I happen to believe in euthanasia as an important civil liberty, and in this case, he seemed unable to make his own decision (as evidenced by his lethargy in response to questioning), so I had to decide for him. He was on life support, the veterinary bills were mounting, and it was time to pull the plug. To have done anything else would've been cruelly indifferent to the agony of a wounded beast.

[Leucosticte]

While you're waiting for those, you can address post 624.

What is there to address? (1) There's a difference between a pressure vote, to get someone to talk, and other kinds of votes (like where you say, "I think he's guilty, so I'm ready to lynch whenever the rest of you are"). So if I vote for, say, Mr Oobsy to get him to talk, and then he talks, presumably I'll next switch my vote to someone else who's being quiet, or to whoever seems most sus. (2) Bad behavior is a matter of opinion/interpretation; some people think that anything that goes against their preferred meta is bad behavior. Okay, well, vote accordingly, if that's what you want to make your highest priority; that's what policy votes are for. Last game I was in, someone didn't like the meta people were going with, so he just said, "Lynch me, I want out" and after he got lynched, he turned out to be town; that's how far people take this stuff sometimes. (3) I regard you and Micc as equally sus, so it's pretty immaterial which of you I vote for; I don't see that as "having higher standards for others' RVS than my own".

At this point, it's just a mutual death tunnel where you and Micc regard me as sus over the Chemist vote and I regard the two of you as sus for giving it so much weight, and even for regarding it as a bad thing, so it's whatever.

[Leucosticte]

Micc approves of Leucosticte's bad logic (while acknowledging that it's bad); says Leucosticte is "more likely to be town than someone like than chemist who hasn't expressed any reads or shown signs of trying to make reads." If Chemist hadn't flipped scum, I would find this mildly concerning; majorly so if Leucosticte had flipped scum in Chemist's place. As it stands, no issue here.

How do you know Micc isn't scumteam trying to bus Chemist for the sake of townpoints? Seems like in some situations, you read it that way, but not in others.

Anyway, are you talking about "bad" logic or bad logic? Because I don't think my logic in post #20 was ever refuted, really. It's the same issue with regard to what you mentioned, about how some people hold others' RVS votes to a higher standard than their own. Of course they will; town players will always hold others' behavior to a higher standard than their own because they know other people might not be town, but they know their own motives are pure.

[Leucosticte]

OMGUS stands for "OMG you're sus" because if you're sus of me, then I'm sus of you. Why wouldn't I be, given the natural tendency of a townie to have a self-serving bias? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-serving_bias