Newbie 2010: Pride Month | Game Over

[piisirrational]

VOTE: Elmo TeH AzN
Bottom of the list.

[piisirrational]

Just come out and tell us who your buddy is, gibus. Or we could do it the hard way.

UNVOTE:
VOTE: gibus

VOTE: gibus
Bigger wagons are nicer.

I'm curious about the newbies' past experience with Mafia here. Is this your first game? Did you play on another site first? Have you already played a game with anyone else in this one?

Hmmm one of them are scum...

What do you find in post 26 that is scummy? To me, it looks like they're agreeing with you that gibus made a post that was a scumclaim.

Post 27, on the other hand, is pretty scummy. The reasoning of simply wanting "a bigger wagon" seems opportunistic.

VOTE: Umlaut

What do you get out of having big wagons forming early on the game as town? What are your thoughts on the current wagons?

[piisirrational]

What's opportunistic about it? Is there someone else you think I should be voting instead, and if not then what's wrong with jumping onto the biggest wagon?

It just pinged me that you'd be jumping on the biggest wagons and that you were conveniently doing it, which can be justified by you moving your vote. I get that it was still the RVS phase but that was something that just stuck out.

@gibus: Why do you think the votes placed on you are not opportunistic and NAI? To me, the fact that you got three votes in such a short span of time for the same post is what felt opportunistic combined with Umlaut's switching of votes. If it's for any reason other than RVS, I would like to know.

Just an FYI: Just because I label one of your posts as scummy does not necessarily mean that I think you're scum. Town also makes scummy posts all the time. It does mean, though, that I would be asking for clarification/intent/context behind the post to get a better indication of alignment. Umlaut explains their reasoning satisfactorily.

[piisirrational]

Just an FYI: Just because I label one of your posts as scummy does not necessarily mean that I think you're scum. Town also makes scummy posts all the time. It does mean, though, that I would be asking for clarification/intent/context behind the post to get a better indication of alignment. Umlaut explains their reasoning satisfactorily.

This sounds like trying to hard to sound towny.

That's actually how I usually play though. gibus seemed to imply that I thought that Umlaut was scum, so I decided to clarify it.

[piisirrational]

What's opportunistic about it? Is there someone else you think I should be voting instead, and if not then what's wrong with jumping onto the biggest wagon?

It just pinged me that you'd be jumping on the biggest wagons and that you were conveniently doing it, which can be justified by you moving your vote. I get that it was still the RVS phase but that was something that just stuck out.

@gibus: Why do you think the votes placed on you are not opportunistic and NAI? To me, the fact that you got three votes in such a short span of time for the same post is what felt opportunistic combined with Umlaut's switching of votes. If it's for any reason other than RVS, I would like to know.

Just an FYI: Just because I label one of your posts as scummy does not necessarily mean that I think you're scum. Town also makes scummy posts all the time. It does mean, though, that I would be asking for clarification/intent/context behind the post to get a better indication of alignment. Umlaut explains their reasoning satisfactorily.

VOTE: Pii.

This just feels like a lot of noise. The wagon wasn't RVS.

A non-RVS wagon forming during the RVS phase is very different than it forming way after that, as people like Umlaut would have less reason to move their vote over later. Just because the initial votes weren't random doesn't mean that the wagons formed now are similar to those formed much later. I specifically implied that it was still RVS when the wagon formed, not that the wagon itself was RVS.

[piisirrational]

Why is it scum oriented to jump on the biggest wagon?

Pi can you answer this?

It is not scum-oriented to jump on the biggest wagon. Town does that but only when they have a good case to push. Umlaut's post 27 of bringing someone to L-2 with the reasoning of "bigger wagons are nicer," especially after already putting down an RVS vote, seemed more likely to come from scum than from town, even if minorly so. And hence, gibus, why I find it to not be NAI.

@gibus: To me, a vote is "opportunistic" if the person casting the vote already has a vote on someone else, but decides to switch over to a bigger wagon with the same/worse justification of voting the bigger wagon compared to the one they already voted.

[piisirrational]

Why is it scum oriented to jump on the biggest wagon?

Pi can you answer this?

It is not scum-oriented to jump on the biggest wagon. Town does that but only when they have a good case to push. Umlaut's post 27 of bringing someone to L-2 with the reasoning of "bigger wagons are nicer," especially after already putting down an RVS vote, seemed more likely to come from scum than from town, even if minorly so. And hence, gibus, why I find it to not be NAI.

@gibus: To me, a vote is "opportunistic" if the person casting the vote already has a vote on someone else, but decides to switch over to a bigger wagon with the same/worse justification of voting the bigger wagon compared to the one they already voted.

Why does town only do that when they have a good case?

I think it would be most probable for town to only vote for someone and bring them close to a lynch (like L-2 or L-1) if they 1) actually think the person is scum to avoid something like an early hammer or 2) does so to get information. They'd need a good explanation in either case, whether it be to convince other people to move their vote over or to explain the reasoning behind the information they're getting out of putting someone at, for example, L-2.

[piisirrational]

@Ghost Ganster: Policy lynches are those lynches where one doesn't necessarily think that someone is scum, but wants to lynch the person because they think that their play will hurt the town later on.

[piisirrational]

Thank you! How about I only promise to troll on even posts? Odd posts will be completely, utterly, deadly serious.

What site do you come from, and do you think anything alignment-indicative has happened so far?

I'd rather not say what site, sorry. It's not for mafia-related reasons, though.

As for alignment-indicative things (and I'll list some things that are very borderline, here, just to further discussion, get more opinions and reactions):

-Umlaut's voting, mirroring and immediately following mine twice, looks so fishy that they actually feel like town (like "scum wouldn't do this", which is a faulty assumption, but you get where I'm coming from, I think).

-I'm generally wary of statements of facts that in actuality are opinions, so #30 (Elmo's post), looks slightly scummy, even if it's a joke (which is not clear to me).

-Raya answering your question about the most efficient way of "consuming" time as town, and then not doing it, basically at all, is slightly scummy as well.

-Your inside joking/weird hinting/trolling makes me very paranoid that I'm just not gonna be able to get a read on you and/or that I'll get annoyed at you, which will affect my opinion of you in an unhelpful way. I think being useful and cooperative is a good town trait, and in the vast majority of cases, not being so is either scummy or just good for scum.

-Snowblaze having exactly zero reads... I wouldn't say it's necessarily indicative of an alignment, but once again it's unhelpful, so it does raise my suspicions. I'm of the opinion that having bad reads (whatever "bad" means) is better than having none, so I personally would

force

myself to get some (if you get what I mean) in her shoes. Thankfully I'm paranoid enough that it's never going to happen, most likely. XD

-Elmo's following post was scummy as well. Not the vote itself, but the lack of an explanation and especially the one-liner used ("You can't make Lylo"), which I find very weird to say at this stage of the game.

-Your post, #68, is helpful but worded scummily, or at least the lack of an acknowledgement that you and Umlaut could both be scum is.

-Elmo's post, #69, gives me town vibes. I'm not sure I agree with it (unless here scum often makes very early hammers happen and gets away with it later?), but it's something that's worth noting in general and in a newbie game especially, and I don't think scum would do it. I feel that he could have found/bullshitted other reasons to explain his vote on Snowblaze in that case.

-Elmo's posts #78 and #79, go back to irk me, simply because I would say the wagon

was

still random voting, because at the end of the day it was based on gibus' scumclaim joke. Maybe we just have a different definition of it, though? I would be interested in knowing. Personally, I would equate random voting with "baseless", and I would include joke-votes under "baseless" as well. Am I off here?

-Raya's questions and especially the prod to get an answer (so mainly post #82) gives me a town vibe.

-Tonally, everything piisirrational in this last page feels like scum. I can't really put my finger on why, or at least, I don't know how exactly to explain it. Ironically enough, I think it's something about the need to explain, over-explain or needlessly explain (and not making a great job of it).

-It can be a bit dangerous to get a town read from a post simply because you totally agree with it, but that's what's happened when I read Umlaut's post just now.

I'm curious about the newbies' past experience with Mafia here. Is this your first game? Did you play on another site first? Have you already played a game with anyone else in this one?

I played somewhat frequently for a while, a few years ago, on another site where mafia was more serious business than here. Or maybe it's just that the days were shorter so the levity lasted less by necessity? Either way, I'm still getting used to all the jokes, the in-site references and such. That was a one-way-ticket to lynch-town where I used to play! XD

Would you consider any of the joking to be AI in this game so far?

I answer this a little above, but to add something perhaps more precise, I'd say that hinting and muddying the waters is a surprisingly effective scum strategy, in my experience (it works in real life too! ).

It's concerning that you have reasons to scumread nearly everyone on the playerlist

I don't get why this is concerning. Can you explain? To me, it looks like Ghost is just commenting on anything he finds to be AI. Just because someone does something scummy does not mean they're scum, because just everyone, regardless of their alignment, does scummy things. If there's things Ghost finds to be especially towny he's noting that as well. That post looks like Ghost is finding things other people are doing that are scummy/towny, but it doesn't look like he's actively forcing those explanations to scumread people, and I don't think he's actually scumreading over half of the playerlist.

[piisirrational]

You have a point about null reads but I think that applies much later on the game rather than 6 pages in. A lot of null reads this early is normal. A lot of scumreads this early doesn't sit well with me.

To clarify: I'm scumreading you because of your SR, not because you have a lot of nullreads.

Explain? This doesn't make sense. Raya's explanation of why she finds Ghost scummy ("I honestly think Ghost's list of scumreads was setting up mislynches and if any gained traction he would push that one." and how she disagreed with Ghost's suggestion of a policy lynch) is perfectly valid and I don't see any scum motivation here for Raya to push Ghost.

[piisirrational]

I'm not sold on Elmo being scum. She seems pretty aggressive with how she's voting people, but I don't think scum are usually this aggressive in their play. However, the only thing I can attribute to her continual movement of votes and reactions as town is as some form of reaction test (can't really explain much beyond this because this just feels like a possibility in this context). Reaction tests aren't useful though unless information is gained from them so I'd like Elmo to explain the motivation behind her movement of votes at some point.

[piisirrational]

You have a point about null reads but I think that applies much later on the game rather than 6 pages in. A lot of null reads this early is normal. A lot of scumreads this early doesn't sit well with me.

To clarify: I'm scumreading you because of your SR, not because you have a lot of nullreads.

Explain? This doesn't make sense. Raya's explanation of why she finds Ghost scummy ("I honestly think Ghost's list of scumreads was setting up mislynches and if any gained traction he would push that one." and how she disagreed with Ghost's suggestion of a policy lynch) is perfectly valid and I don't see any scum motivation here for Raya to push Ghost.

Not a fan. It's another "defend someone and ask the accuser to elaborate" kind of post. They're not hard for scum to make, and I want to see more independent thoughts, turtle.

I'm not sold on Elmo being scum. She seems pretty aggressive with how she's voting people, but I don't think scum are usually this aggressive in their play. However, the only thing I can attribute to her continual movement of votes and reactions as town is as some form of reaction test (can't really explain much beyond this because this just feels like a possibility in this context). Reaction tests aren't useful though unless information is gained from them so I'd like Elmo to explain the motivation behind her movement of votes at some point.

Hmm, following the trend here. I don't get why you think town!Elmo can only be doing this as reaction tests. Why can't it just be playstyle? This is a perfect way for you to look like you're defending town but without an actual valid reason, since scum!you might expect town!Elmo to absolutely not be doing reaction testing, so you don't need to worry about actually derailing the wagon.

In the first post, I actually don't see how you can scumread someone simply because they're scumreading someone you think as town. That's why I needed clarification on that part. Don't like how you're framing this post as me accusing the accuser of being scum and passively defending them when I'm simply asking for more clarification.

I stated that I find it that town!Elmo would be making posts 94 and 97 for a reaction test. How likely do I think it is for another reason? Not likely. It's still possible, which is why I want Elmo to clarify the reasoning/motivation behind those posts despite me giving her a slight townlean. Also, I don't like how you're saying how I would be worried about derailing a town wagon. I stated why I don't think Elmo is scum; not jumping on the wagon because of that is NAI.

Don't like your responses to either of my posts.

VOTE: Hectic

[piisirrational]

I'm not sold on Elmo being scum. She seems pretty aggressive with how she's voting people, but I don't think scum are usually this aggressive in their play. However, the only thing I can attribute to her continual movement of votes and reactions as town is as some form of reaction test (can't really explain much beyond this because this just feels like a possibility in this context). Reaction tests aren't useful though unless information is gained from them so I'd like Elmo to explain the motivation behind her movement of votes at some point.

Can you go over these reaction tests and see what reactions they caused and whether information was gained and what it could have meant?

Well Elmo's 94 and 97 in particular seemed formatted to test someone's reaction to their posts, as I saw something similar to that in an off-site game I played where the person doing the "reaction test" said they were doing it for that purpose and flipped town at the end. It's not really indicative that the posts were made for reaction testing, which is why I still want her to explain the motivation behind making the posts. The reaction tests reason was just a guess on my part, but to me it's the most probable guess which is why I suggested that idea.

[piisirrational]

However, the only thing I can attribute to her continual movement of votes and reactions as town is as some form of reaction test

This suggests the only way you could see town!Elmo is if she was doing what she was doing for reactions. You've said you don't think she's scum in the same post, but then given a weird condition she needs to fulfil for her to be town. If you're scum, you're essentially soft-defending the wagon without actually giving people reasons to hop off.

I don't see that as a weird condition; I see it as the most probable explanation for why town!Elmo would be making those posts. Just because

I

can't attribute it to anything else doesn't mean that other people can't; that's also one of the reasons why I wanted Elmo to clarify this.

I also don't see how saying that someone making posts such as 94 and 97 could be a reaction test doesn't give anyone reasons to hop off of their wagon. Town is more likely to do reaction tests than scum because scum doesn't actually need the information gained from doing one to do so, while at the same time drawing attention to themselves for pushing such tests. Meaning that if you agree with me, then you would probably hop off of the wagon as someone pushing hard for a reaction test like Elmo did is town-indicative.

[piisirrational]

That said,

@Pi

Why are you still voting me? Last time you talked about it you were saying you didn't even really think I was scum. Did you decide I was at some point or do you just still have no scumreads two days later?

The fact you've changed your vote doesn't relieve you from answering this.

I usually only change my vote when something pings me really hard, which nothing since your wagons comment has until Hectic’s post.

[piisirrational]

Going to bed right now so I’ll explain more tomorrow.

[piisirrational]

Well, his responses are what changed my mind. Not Raya's disapproval.

This makes sense, but I’m still confused about the part where you said that I was not even your top scumread, and yet you pushed me as scum the hardest in your catch up. Did you decide just based on my responses that I was no longer your top scumread? Who is your top scumread right now?

[piisirrational]

Why this game specifically, gibus?

M2H, if you think I'm faking a slip, would that not make me scum?

You’re in my solve pile rn, but to answer your question: not necessarily. It depends on why you were faking it.

In post 53 he said that odd posts would be serious and only even posts would get trolled. The fact that he landed on an even post I think is the reason.

[piisirrational]

I don't think I ever scumread Elmo. I'm getting town pings from your posts and I like your explanation for Elmo's actions.

I initially disagreed with Snow's read on Raya but I realised it would have been a bad trade off to be scum motivated. That's why I flip flopped on their slot.

This doesn't make sense. You're flipflopping on Raya's slot because you feel that someone who's townreading them is now town instead of scum? Feels like you should be flipflopping on someone under the consideration of their own posts, not based on who's townreading them.

[piisirrational]

Ok, more fully catching up now

I'm only on page 7 but I have a stronger-than-typical-by-page-7 scum lean on Ghost Ganster

His long post was the sort of ramble that I have definitely employed as scum to sound like I am evaluating people and really trying to get reads, but without actually making my mind up much on anybody. Like, the way that there are so many posts that have scum equity to him SO early on in the game just feels more like a scum player who is actively trying to read every post in a bad light in order to scum case them and keep multiple push options open. The scum read is then seriously compounded by the fact that after that noise, and with real substance in the game, he defaulted to a poke-the-lurkers stance. He even said that he tries to have reads early in the game to the point of forcing/faking them early on, used that stance to criticize another player for not having strong reads by like page 5, but all he came up with after those posts is policy voting a lurker. That just feels like scummy hesitation because the scum equity posts he talked about feel like too much of a reach even for him.

I don't think Ghost is scum by his long posts. Although he was inconsistent at many points in his posts (such as the things he found in other people that are scummy), that reads more like town to me because I would expect scum to come up with a story and stick to it. Ghost did make a good point that even when some of the wagons gained traction from people whom he scumread he didn't vote and go with it, so I don't see any scum motivation there.

Well I'm caught up now, but I can't believe how close to deadline this game is for having only 14 pages. There's not a ton of alignment indicative interactions yet simply because it's been slow and there has really been a lack of real time interactions.

I'm sorry that Elmo wasn't able to come in and answer the questions but I know that she is an extremely busy person between her job and probably like modding 3 games at a time.

Anyway, I don't see her case on Snow and I generally disagree with it.

I have a town read on Raya, town lean on Snowblaze and Pi, null-paranoia on Hectic, entirely-null on Homura, scumlean on Umlaut (Umlaut is a pretty darn good player so I haven't seen anything here that isn't, IMO, a "towny" or "scumhunting" post which would be easily imitable by Scumlaut), Gibus, and Ghost.

Feels like someone not making something towny regardless of how well they play as scum is NAI in a low-activity game. I can understand this if this was a much higher-level activity game, and even you said that there weren't many AI posts/interactions yet. Any other reasons why you're scumleaning Umlaut?

[piisirrational]

I'm still not totally sold on Nauci town; her catch-up was good but not so good that I don't think scum could post like that. I think people in general give a bit too much credit for making any effort at all. That said the wagon seems to have disintegrated and her posting has been good enough that I'm willing to hold off and see where she goes. In particular I think her paranoia about how fast the gibus wagon has grown is pretty believable since I feel the same way about it.

It's not the fact that it's the effort that is what giving me a townlean on her, but more of the content behind the post. I think the fact that she split up her catch-up post (I feel like scum would probably be more likely to put everything into one post) and the fact that she plans to "properly resuscitate the game" is town-indicative.

[piisirrational]

Yeah there's no way I'm setting up three mislynches at this point, especially when everyone else alive finds me suspicious so

VOTE: piisirrational