Newbie 2084: Signs [game over!]

[Prism]

Hello everyone. I'm an SE, or a semi-experienced player. I've been playing for 11 years, so I've been around the mafia block quite a few times. I'm eager to share all I've learned over the years with you, and my experience is here for you to draw upon. That said, I am far from perfect and I am most excited for the chance for some of you, as fresh young blood, to teach this old dog some new tricks. I have very little experience with any of you, which for me is very exciting! I hope we have a fun game we can walk away proud of at the end of the day.

Skimming there are some indepth discussions, which I am happy to see. I will catch up and vote a bit later after I get off of work.

[Prism]

As a brief summary, I have only some sparse comments at the moment. I lean that marcistar is town for the comfort and early force of presence, which is an improvement on her performance in Tarot. It is always scary to read players quickly improving, and there is less to worry about in a Newbie game, but I'm fine assuming the best at the moment.

Meg is the only player I have some direct experience with here, but it is very limited in the form of my brief appearance in Mini Normal 2216. They were much more reads-focused early that game, while they were a lot more theory/mech oriented in their run as scum in Trust Fall. This really piques my curiosity, but I'm not really sold on it being AI. I want to judge them more based off of their reads.

I'll hold of voting Meg, or anyone, for the moment.

[Prism]

Scattered commentary/questions I had:

The [marcistar's] invitation just feels like fake confidence and like I said, they never said they scumread you, so it came out of nowhere. I can easily see scum make that post in an attempt to posture as a confident townie willing to die, yknow?

I can see this applying to a generalized userbase, but leveraging your personal knowledge of marcistar-do you think she makes such an attempt as scum?

Let's say I do. Who is your choice and why?

prob meg, since I wanna solve them and I feel like it might be more benefical to do it earlier on.

Can you elaborate on why for both of these statements?

UNVOTE:

Spartan/Prism

since the slot’s said something now

My response was just a player intro, completely lacking in game commentary and a vote. I just replaced in so of course I would post eventually-it's the game content you should be waiting for.

[Prism]

Oh, actually I almost forgot:

VOTE: ProHawk

Seems like we've escaped the random voting scene so I need to take a few moments to digest the scene which I haven't had enough time to do properly yet.

Man I feel old when new terms come into play that are new to me... when did "locktown" become a thing... haha

Anyhow, I'd love to get a feel for the experience of our newer players if you'd like to intro that a bit for those of you who haven't, that would be great.

I was curious if anything came of this.

[Prism]

For StrangeMatter, I think the nervousness idea is very intuitive. Most of us remember the nervous trepidation of being scum for the first time. It's the first barrier to overcome, which also makes it quite common.

I don't find it strong, but I see exactly why marcistar keyed in on it. It is also obvious in one of her scumgames, Tarot, which I would link were I not on my phone, that she also struggled with it.

What do you think of marci's entrance on a mission?

[Prism]

I missed it, thanks for pointing it out Meuh.

i haven't actually voted them, i just threw their name there and dipped lol
the reason i threw their name out there, was partly because i felt like if we were to pressure them, we would get a good response, and hopefully make it easier for others as they join the game to get a few reads. i also felt as if they might be a bit harder for me to read as the game progresses, but like this is backed up on nothing except pure vibes.

Some people are very readable at basically every stage, some not readable at any stage, and some very readable lategame with flips. It's an unusual opinion to find someone easier to read early.

I was mostly wondering if this was backed up by any personal experience, but "vibes" suggests it'd be limited in how much to explain.

[Prism]

I’m not sure what you exactly mean by this last sentence.

Sorry, I typed that part when it was almost my turn for something so it wasn't very polished.

I'd characterize her entrance as being "on a mission", with the quick reads, forcing herself to justify them indepth, and the determination to use them to drive content from other users. I was asking what you thought about this approach.

[Prism]

Not too sure, haven't played a game with mafia!Marci (or with Marci at all) since last April, I could reread that game to try to see how she plays at scum? But then I'd also need to read a towngame of hers to actually see what she does out of the norm as scum. I've proven on multiple occasions that having played with Marci before doesn't actually end up with me making better reads on her sadly not sure if should try meta reading her because honestly I've always been further off doing it than without
my statement was more based on general patterns I notice than anything specific to Marci

My point was mostly that I specifically don't think so based off of the games I've spectated, but there are limits to how much I want to shove this read of mine down the throat of others, and players that grow quickly tend to render such meta obsolete.

[Prism]

I lean that marcistar is town for the comfort and early force of presence, which is an improvement on her performance in Tarot. It is always scary to read players quickly improving, and there is less to worry about in a Newbie game, but I'm fine assuming the best at the moment.

i think im just best when im comfortable with the playerlist

I'm not committing to it, but I'm not terribly concerned and am fine assuming the best until proven otherwise. I don't doubt your explanation in that Tarot was a brutal table to roll scum against, but Isekai you had a very similarly slow start.

This might be an intentional switch on your end in response to very specific advice from players, but I think it's both a towntell in general and for you specifically and I'm willing to challenge people to address the approach itself beyond shutting down the reads themselves.

[Prism]

The best part of newer players though is that you outgrow and surprise me quickly, leaving me looking like an outdated boomer, and I would welcome that here if it is the case.

[Prism]

Also a fair point, my first real scum game on this website has me playing pretty nervously despite not really showing it and not talking much.

How did it go? Were there any tangible takeaways from it?

[Prism]

I was referring to the digestion of the first few pages. The vote was a friendly prod.

I would love something more concrete on the Marcistar and Meuh reads, which are very vague. I am especially interested in the latter.

I also fundamentally disagree on the value of intense discussion relating to the new players. Your two townreads, three counting your gutread on me, all came from such discussions. Two of the newer players have been core drivers, and the rest have not shied away.

[Prism]

That said, if any of the new players find something I am saying hard to follow or overwhelming in volume, I will try my best to delineate things or scale it back.

[Prism]

I've intentionally avoided commenting on Greeting as I knew that they faced issues with players scumreading their tone and finding their play frustrating in Newbie 2081. I wanted to take the time to work through the substance and progression instead.

There's an instinct to be transparent about trying something new that might backfire. Unfortunately, it is usually counterproductive and results in more scrutiny being put on the thing you're testing. I think this is the confusion Greeting is experiencing.

Reviewing Greeting's ISO, I see some pieces I like and some common themes. It's very obvious, at least to me, that what they're doing involves running people up to high-but-not-elimination wagons. Post 91 makes it clear that they weren't voting Meg out of suspicion. I think the most illuminating line comes at the end of 91 in reply to marci: "Wagons can also be used for other purposes than actually voting someone out and that's what I want to do."

I'm not really inclined to vote this slot yet. I wouldn't call it hardtown but I liked 46's reply to Marcistar. Greeting wasn't enthused by the gamepace, but didn't realize that marcistar was highlighting that

someone

has to push the game forward, and the response is in line with that.

[Prism]

AsuStuckey-have you been around at all? Let us know if there's anything we can do to help clarify arguments or events.

[Prism]

Right now, this is where I am at:

Happy to vote pile: ProHawk, MegAzumarill, StrangeMatter
Willing to vote pile: Meuh, AsusStuckey by default
Not really willing to vote: Greeting, Cape90
Not voting: marcistar

[Prism]

Right now, this is where I am at:

Happy to vote pile: ProHawk, MegAzumarill, StrangeMatter
Willing to vote pile: Meuh, AsusStuckey by default
Not really willing to vote: Greeting, Cape90
Not voting: marcistar

You have not even really talked about me, walk me through why you aren't really willing to vote me

You've expressed mostly skepticism, both of players and of reads/process. I don't see any issue but I don't townread you either and I think it's better to put the question of reading you off. I also don't think a vote is really going to help sort you given that focus on process.

Contrast that with Meuh, who is in a similar nullish boat, but I think their more personal style means that pressure and aggression would probably be fruitful in sorting.

[Prism]

(To be clear, the reasons that I'm not voting Meuh given that potential utility are first that I'm pretty null on the slot, second happier voting the other 3, and third that I think playing very aggressively on arbitrary pretenses creates a very dense and difficult environment)

[Prism]

I like Prism for town, it's clear they are looking at very nuanced reasons to townread the people they do,

which I don't feel like would be a concern with scum!prism

? Is this based off of Mini Normal 2241?

[Prism]

So some of the slang I am not used to. I am guessing that a scum would be someone on the mafia side? And I'm not sure what abbreviated stuff like E-2 means.

I'm happy to help with most of these!

First, you're right that scum=mafia. E-2 is an abbreviation for "Elimination Minus 2", which refers to how many votes someone is away from getting eliminated. If someone is at "E-X" they need X number of votes to get eliminated.

Also right know I am trying to find out easy ways to tell if someone is mafia in the way you guys talk to each other, but in general I'm really confused on who to vote.
Finally, If you guys can give me tips on what to look for and how to jump into conversations that would really help

It's okay to be confused on who to vote.[/quote]You'll find as me ideas about what is "scummy", or mafia-indicative, and "towny", as there are players in the game!

That said, the MafiaScum wiki has some great articles that have kind of stood the test of time. I'm partial to this one. They're not universal keys to psychology, but they're great to get your mind thinking about what deceptive and honest behavior will look like.

Generally speaking, when looking for mafia you want to look for players that are looking for

an excuse

to vote out other players rather than a true belief. Some people focus more on who looks "towny", or that they truly believe the things they're saying and advocating for. Both of these approaches are very hard to discern: Does someone do a seemingly irrational 180 in response to pressure, do they go the extra mile when they don't need to, or is their thinking so downright bizarre that it's hard to believe someone could come up with it

without

believing it? People might think all of these are mafia or town depending on the situation!

Some people find townhunting easier than the scumhunting or vice versa, but it's best to strike a balance.

[Prism]

No not from scum!you just scum in general doesn't have reason to immediately deepdive into a player to try to find minute details to justify a player is town. ( It doesn't serve a purpose, is hard to do naturally, and often isn't convincing evidence to protect a partner. )

It doesn't serve a specific purpose, but many things don't as scum and they're fairly rote?

Spoiler: Scum post sample

is there any reason to doubt prism's alignment?

do you think scum!prism would be more or less likely to express that they were upset with a town/town pairing after witnessing menalque’s reaction to a scum flip in the tarot game?

This post by a scum player was extremely specific about why I was town, but wasn't targeted at getting me specifically to townread the player. It just leveraged pre-existing knowledge to create a believable read for general effect, very similar to my read on marcistar.

I don't want to get too much into the weeds here debating why my own play isn't strongly AI, but this is a strangely lax belief.

[Prism]

I'm skeptical of the legitimacy of this read in general.

It doesn't help that I don't think it applies to me, and instinctively I want to grab receipts and make it all about me and my history, but I'm going to restrain myself and not write a grand soliloquy of my mafia exploits way back in the year 1812.

[Prism]

I'm kind of wondering, can you explain the top two columns? [My happy to vote/willing to vote piles]

Sure thing, I'll go person by person.

Happy to vote pile
======
ProHawk: Didn't follow up with the content commentary and didn't seem to know how to engage with the marcistar/Meuh content. He ended up calling them both likely town but couldn't really justify it. The fear for me is that he saw two people who knew each other and that it would be suicide to get in the middle of them as scum.

MegAzumarill: I didn't really like his entrance and thought there was a slight meta difference from the games I had seen. I thought the comments about his own behavior and the policy about lurkers very easy to talk about as scum. Since then, I haven't liked his read on me.

StrangeMatter: I thought your entrance was pretty rote, and I didn't like either the vote on marcistar or the followup in 76. My fear is that that post, and this question to me, are engagement for the sake of engagement rather than genuine questions of interest. The only way to tell is over time, but for now it gets you in the happy to vote pile.

Willing to vote pile
======
Meuh: I explained this one a bit in 159, but she was generally null for me and I obviously disagreed with her reaction to marcistar.

AsuStuckey: As mentioned, this was by default, they just hadn't posted.

[Prism]

I really like the Meuh wallpost. I'm not going to go line by line and nitpick it, but it is very difficult for newer scum to put that much effort into ISOs and analysis, and I mostly agree with her conclusions.

She's in the not voting pile now, probably higher than marcistar too.

[Prism]

StrangeMatter, can you give more specific thoughts about that readslist I gave, or maybe what you think of Meuh's conclusions?

Take it whatever direction you want but some ideas might be whether you disagreed with my placements, thought that any were weird on my end, or think any of Meuh's conclusions (which actually track with my own almost exactly) are completely off

[Prism]

I'm actually wrong on Meuh and will have to revisit. They've done the readslist and analysis before as scum, though not nearly as indepth, likely because of the contrast in content available.

Pleasant surprise but also a bit annoying!

[Prism]

And you've already pointed it out, interesting

[Prism]

I'm honestly a little bit envious, getting ahead of differences and standardizing the format early to avoid clear tells is great work.

[Prism]

That links to a hidden topic. It is properly formatted for a copy paste (the post number is doubled in the link) and unlikely to be a simple typo.

VOTE: Greeting

I don't see another avenue forward here. Sorry.

[Prism]

I really hate to make this centerstage. It is unfortunate.

Did you draw this inspiration for a notes PT from a specific player? Why were you copying a link

towards

your Notes PT to begin with?

[Prism]

I am still curious as to what it links to within the thread and why you needed it copied, though it makes little sense to copy the scum PT either except to point a partner somewhere.

[Prism]

Thanks for answer. Unfortunately I think we've reached the end of the road on discussing this one.

I don't believe it and it's a matter of votes and whether the other players have questions and agree/disagree.

[Prism]

Whether it's a scum PT or a notes PT, it happens, it's okay and don't beat yourself up over it too much.

It is a mistake to link to either but any hypothetical wrong conclusions drawn from it are the fault of the voting player, which would be me.

[Prism]

I’m not sure what you exactly mean by this last sentence.

Sorry, I typed that part when it was almost my turn for something so it wasn't very polished.

I'd characterize her entrance as being "on a mission", with the quick reads, forcing herself to justify them indepth, and the determination to use them to drive content from other users. I was asking what you thought about this approach.

Not too sure, haven't played a game with mafia!Marci (or with Marci at all) since last April, I could reread that game to try to see how she plays at scum? But then I'd also need to read a towngame of hers to actually see what she does out of the norm as scum. I've proven on multiple occasions that having played with Marci before doesn't actually end up with me making better reads on her sadly not sure if should try meta reading her because honestly I've always been further off doing it than without
my statement was more based on general patterns I notice than anything specific to Marci

My point was mostly that I specifically don't think so based off of the games I've spectated, but there are limits to how much I want to shove this read of mine down the throat of others, and players that grow quickly tend to render such meta obsolete.

These posts further explain my marcistar read, specifically that I think she would struggle to make this interest as scum and that it would have to come from very specific player feedback.

The SE behavior is very NAI. A common side effect is getting townread, but it's just the reason I play these games.

[Prism]

Here's something completely random but I noticed but, Prism you really haven't made any attempt to respond to anything I've said, just every single time you've said something to me it's a question with I feel like very little follow-up or discussion. I know I haven't done that but still.

I'm currently distracted elsewhere but I assume this is referring first to my question about the previous scumgame and second my question about what you thought of my placements of players.

I think I've been very clear and thorough in my responses to your direct questions so I assume you are asking about the lack of followup on my own. The first question about what you learned from the scumgame was to see how you think about the game, and about the idea of scum nervousness, for future reference. The second about the readslist was to get you to think about the players, your questions with my placements, and hopefully get you to discover your own reads in response. I found the response very dry and essentially calling ProHawk null for the engagement stuff. I could itigate this but chose not to.

[Prism]

The phrasing on the second question was very specific, and I took time to craft it, because it was meant to be open-ended and provide more of a foundation for you to build something off of and hopefully read you in turn. I didn't feel I got that, and blame it more on my inability to spur it rather than on you.

[Prism]

By "specific" I mean in my own word choice, not the question itself.

[Prism]

Prism why the change of read on Greeting?
And I know I am one of your scumreads so I'm wondering if you think I'm bussing, me/Greeting are s/t or something else

...Did you read the post where I voted Greeting?

[Prism]

I also don't do preflips.

[Prism]

"Preflips" is short for "Preflip assocations"

An example would be that if I scumread one person, I could extend that belief to thinking another person is more likely scum because of an interaction, as opposed to viewing them independently.

So as an example: I think A is scum. That post from A to B is weird, so I think B is probably scum too!

It's possible if you're ambitious, but I'd rather just go one at a time and analyze the interactions when I actually have a flip in hand.

I previously exploited bad preflip speculation in a game with MegAzumarill and gave a lot of feedback to players on why they need to be careful with it.

[Prism]

The implication is that it is most likely a scum PT. They provided the explanation that it is a notes PT. I find the scum PT more likely.

[Prism]

Yes. I have discussed this already with Greeting and acknowledged it is an irreconcilable difference.

I do not understand how this is even a question for someone who is supposedly reading my posts.

[Prism]

Thanks for answer. Unfortunately I think we've reached the end of the road on discussing this one.

I don't believe it and it's a matter of votes and whether the other players have questions and agree/disagree.

[Prism]

VOTE: MegAzumarill

[Prism]

My vote was direct and immediate. The questioning was in the hopes of catching him in an outright lie and making my life easier in pushing it. I think the explanation is implausible but not technically impossible.

They are uncommon, but not super rare, and the usage depends on the person. I personally use them exclusively to commentate scumgames for postgame reference and study, but this is not the norm.

[Prism]

They

[Notes PTs]

are uncommon, but not super rare, and the usage depends on the person. I personally use them exclusively to commentate scumgames for postgame reference and study, but this is not the norm.

[Prism]

My swap is because no one else is voting Greeting for it and I'm not going to harp on it. I don't enjoy pushing the angle to begin with. Someone asked about why a notes PT is less likely-uncommon, especially from newer players, though one...unusual player did during my last game, and unlikely to need to link to.

StrangeMatter, you haven't changed your vote since entering with RVS. Do you have nothing better than random in your mind?

Also very excited for ProHawk to ISO and give something concrete for once. The reads on marcistar/Meuh were vague, he declined to expound on them further, and I am hoping the read on me will be different.

[Prism]

While I am town, I am uncomfortable being assigned that way on the basis of guidance. Some of my questioning (eg. towards StrangeMatter) is trying to both further my own alignment and be guiding, but I'm always going to try and make sure players are engaged and walk away from this with a better understanding of the game. The fact that I am town this time, as implosion was, will make it tempting to reinforce this instinct that players are town for it, but this is a mistake. I can, have, and will provide the same sort of advice and guidance as scum.

While I've explained a lot of terminology and the like, I also want to emphasize I am not the only SE this game, and their experience is equally valuable and available.

[Prism]

I really want to meta Greeting when I have time. I'm not sure how to interpret his reaction to me, but skimming the walls made me want to reconsider.

[Prism]

I would love for Meg to go over the difference he sees and why it is likely scum indicative, though

[Prism]

I skimmed 2081 weeks ago when it was ongoing. I have not worked back over it since.

[Prism]

The takeaway about Greeting from that follow along was very limited and exactly what I described in the opening post-I was reading the game primarily to spectate the play of catboi, who I have been friends with for eleven years.

[Prism]

ProHawk-given that that post develops a Greeting townread as opposed to a scumread, and I did not hesitate to pull out the meta I had on hand for marcistar to justify the townread I developed on her, what are you concerned with here?

[Prism]

I again skimmed that game 3 weeks before the start of this one and only noticed Greeting in passing as my focus was on another player.

It informed my focus on using an analysis of his progression as opposed to tone and surface level when it came to reading the slot. My first post is exactly the result. I do not remember a single post of his, I have more vivid memory of the frustration of other players.

While it may seem like I have infinite time to work over every game played onsite, this is unfortunately not the case. I will reread it if I have time but it should be obvious

from the post you quoted

where my effort was directed and why.

[Prism]

Contrast this to marcistar and Meuh, who I skimmed new games of looking for

extremely specific behavior

as opposed to trying to divine some new pathway.

[Prism]

That makes more sense. Why haven't you skimmed my previous games?

I literally just addressed this in the two previous posts. What is making sense to you here if not those posts?

[Prism]

Here, I will make it ridiculously fucking explicit, one second.

[Prism]

I have cited 6 games of meta so far.

4 of these I had read or played in

prior

to the game starting, ranging from many weeks ago to several months.

-The first two games contrast a small behavior of Meg's, emphasis on mechanics vs. reads. One of these games is Mini Normal 2246, which we both played Day 1 of back in August. By definition, I read it before the start of this one. One of these is trist fall, which I spectated because of the playerlist and a personal interest in the setup. I can decisively prove I read this game prior to the start of this one, because I quoted from it in the next iteration.

-The third game is Tarot, by marcistar. I spectated this game because I wanted to play in it originally, I am friends with the moderator, and it was a good playerlist. This game swung off of marcistar's elimination Day 1 for the behavior I outlined here. I can again decisively prove I read this game prior to the start of this one, because I commented on the postgame.

-The fourth game is 2081 of Greeting's. I have explained why I spectated this game,

3 weeks prior to the start of this one, several times already.

While I cannot decisively prove I read it prior to the start of this game, why the fuck would I even bring it up if I were trying to dodge using it?

I have further skimmed 2 games that I

had not already read this game

. The intention was to look for

extremely specific behaviors

as a sanity check.

-The first of these is marcistar, who contended that she could be this forceful on entrance as scum. I looked at a scumgame of hers, Isekai, and looked to see how forceful and assertive of an entrance she made. The contrast was clear.

-The second of these was Meuh, who posted a giant readslist. I looked at a scumgame of hers with the intention of seeing if this is something she had replicated. She had.

[Prism]

I have no reason to spectate your games without a

specific behavior to look for.

I have already said this in post 300, one of the ones that "made sense" to you.

I am

not

randomly or universally spectating games to divine things from scratch for every player in a game.

[Prism]

re: 302 Yours was the only start I hated because you didn't engage with the content and didn't follow up on the promise to. It was on page 2. I wrote a catchup post when I finished reading and didn't like my vote anywhere. I remembered that entrance existed and placed my vote accordingly.

The trajectory is 4 minutes. Do you think as scum worried about where to put a vote I just made the decision to vote nowhere, then changed it out of fear or nervousness <4 minutes later? This isn't something impossible to fake but there's a clear trajectory here and you're arguing it's a lack of one.

I have kept you in my top vote picks ever since that opening. I have grilled you continuously to make your reads concrete and to provide content. If the trajectory you're expecting is to have moved you to town, why on earth would I have when you still hadn't done a thing?

[Prism]

302 is horrific, "lack of trajectory" when I had you as a top vote pick and you didn't give anything more than "vibes " for 10 pages, somehow expecting that to change, but 301 has me legitimately malding.

[Prism]

Jesus Christ this gets worse, you even snipped the concrete criticism I gave you in the quotes and ignored all of the actual commentary on your slot.

111 gets cut from this:

I was referring to the digestion of the first few pages. The vote was a friendly prod.

I would love something more concrete on the Marcistar and Meuh reads, which are very vague. I am especially interested in the latter.

I also fundamentally disagree on the value of intense discussion relating to the new players. Your two townreads, three counting your gutread on me, all came from such discussions. Two of the newer players have been core drivers, and the rest have not shied away.

to this:

I was referring to the digestion of the first few pages. The vote was a friendly prod.

And therefore loses a giant chunk of the criticism.

You didn't even

touch

193.

Happy to vote pile
======
ProHawk: Didn't follow up with the content commentary and didn't seem to know how to engage with the marcistar/Meuh content. He ended up calling them both likely town but couldn't really justify it. The fear for me is that he saw two people who knew each other and that it would be suicide to get in the middle of them as scum.

nor did you touch 265

Also very excited for ProHawk to ISO and give something concrete for once. The reads on marcistar/Meuh were vague, he declined to expound on them further, and I am hoping the read on me will be different.

No wonder there's no trajectory beyond the vote, you cut out all of the criticism and every attempt to follow up on it to get something out of you.

[Prism]

Like I guess this

is

the answer to 265 but holy

I'm taking a lap before I blow a lid

[Prism]

There is a very good chance I vote swap but I'm going to get the tilt out of my system first then revisit if this is malicious or just completely inept

[Prism]

Let me set aside my tilt and rephrase this.

ProHawk, given that I have not liked your opening post, nor the vague reads on marcistar/Meuh in the following posts, and my repeated (3 times!) attempts to engage you/spurr you towards something more concrete than "vibes".

Please elaborate where my trajectory and attempts to solve you prior to 301/302 were lacking

in relation to your ISO.

[Prism]

...At least I finally got something concrete, I guess.

[Prism]

Well, that's quite the defense

And that's not a response to 317 nor to 322

Why did you cut all of the substantive criticism of your slot I gave from your quote of 111 and ignore all followups to it ex. 193/265?

[Prism]

(To be clear, that substantive criticism and the followups on it because these are definitionally the trajectory/solving of your slot. Your entire wall was an attempt to analyze those, which makes these extremely glaring omissions)

[Prism]

VOTE: ProHawk

Your conclusion was that I lack a trajectory on you and was not trying to solve your slot. You cut out all of the attempts to do so, and are now returning to my first vote on entering the game.

My initial vote was made when I remembered your entrance on catchup, which I did not like as it avoided comment. I prodded you to follow up on it and did not like what you gave. I interrogated you repeatedly over it and elaborated both on my initial vote and why I did not like the marci/Meuh reads.

The only criticism I can think of that is even vaguely rational here is that I "prodded" you to fulfill your promise to engage with the content, but did not explicitly say until later that I thought the avoidance pinged me as scummy. This is extremely banal but I think my initial vote and question makes clear that the lack of followup caught my eye.

[Prism]

I am tired of making variations of the same post. I think this is malicious and am willing to call it.

[Prism]

I'm going to quote this for you

one more time

I was referring to the digestion of the first few pages. The vote was a friendly prod.

So a friendly prod, why again make a comment earlier that you weren't going to vote someone? It's such strange trajectory, especially when the friendly prod turns into

Happy to vote pile: ProHawk, MegAzumarill, StrangeMatter

Which means there is

some semblance of this vote-prod having turned into more without.... having more?

This posts criticizes me for not "having more" at the time of 111 and 137.

It

cuts out the "having more" of 111

while criticizing me for not providing it at the time of 137. Do you understand this?

137 gets

explicitly explained and elaborated on in 195

after StrangeMatter asks me to elaborate. Do you understand the connection between these two posts?

Do you understand how this relates to your claim of "not having more" or should I be more explicit?

[Prism]

I do not enjoy walking you through your own claims and there is a limit to how long I will assume it is in good faith. We are quickly approaching that point.

If you don't understand my own claims, that's one thing, but you are claiming to not understand your own, and that is a serious issue.

[Prism]

Make that claim. Please, be explicit. I have a 5 year backlog to bury it because I

absolutely

care this much about rigor in argumentation and posting as town.

[Prism]

You literally don't understand your own posts. Go look at 333

This is a

problem if you are town.

[Prism]

I am about to get insanely vicious, and I am going to step away, but I'm going to address the "overly defensive" claim head on.

These are in locked forums so I can't easily quote. The screenshots are spoilered.

Spoiler: Sample 1

The game is Forest Fire

I get insanely tilted at a player who I think has glaring omissions and horrible reasoning in their push on me, threaten to policy them. They were scum, I correctly push them as such.

Spoiler: Sample 2

The game is Binding of Isaac.

On my alt Costello, I get insanely tilted at a player who I think has glaring omissions and horrible reasoning in their push on me. I spend several pages fighting over it. I correctly discern they are town despite this.

Spoiler: Sample 3

The game is Undertale.

On my alt Replica, I get insanely tilted at a player who I think has glaring omissions and horrible reasoning in their push on me. I spend several pages fighting over it. They were scum and I correctly push them as such.

Spoiler: Sample 4

I get insanely tilted at a player who I think has glaring omissions and horrible reasoning in their push on me. I spend 50+ pages fighting over it. They were scum and I correctly push them as such.

Spoiler: Sample 5

Too big to screenshot, the post is 138 in Perfect Blue Mafia

I get insanely tilted at a player who I think has a combination of glaring omissions, horrible reasoning, and a few reasonable points thrown in. I correctly discern they are town.

Why should I for a second believe that you do not understand your own posts, and that you are not yet another head to add to the collection?

[Prism]

Don't gaslight me

Get your shit together and figure out what you're claiming, then.

You literally don't understand your own posts. Go look at 333

This is a

problem if you are town.

That link is broken unless you want me to go look at another game... Can we all agree to stop using the damn POST bracket thingy on this thread? Just quote it.

333. It's on the same page, hypothetically you should have read it already, but my apologies for getting ahead of myself in digging up the samples.

[Prism]

This is the only thing you need to answer from me. It is the one I tried to link, and I will quote it directly for you as requested. Consider any of my other superfluous.

I'm going to quote this for you

one more time

I was referring to the digestion of the first few pages. The vote was a friendly prod.

So a friendly prod, why again make a comment earlier that you weren't going to vote someone? It's such strange trajectory, especially when the friendly prod turns into

Happy to vote pile: ProHawk, MegAzumarill, StrangeMatter

Which means there is

some semblance of this vote-prod having turned into more without.... having more?

This posts criticizes me for not "having more" at the time of 111 and 137.

It

cuts out the "having more" of 111

while criticizing me for not providing it at the time of 137. Do you understand this?

137 gets

explicitly explained and elaborated on in 195

after StrangeMatter asks me to elaborate. Do you understand the connection between these two posts?

Do you understand how this relates to your claim of "not having more" or should I be more explicit?

[Prism]

I'll be back tomorrow in any case for whatever the response is. I will try to have a cooler head by then but right now I just think you're flat out scum who can't keep track of your own claims.

[Prism]

It is the morning. I have calmed down. I see no reason to change my vote.

ProHawk did not, and cannot, satisfactorily answer my question. His criticism/vote on me was for not giving any reasoning on his slot at the time of 111/137, "seems to be more but not actually having given more." When confronted about intentionally cutting out the reasoning given in 111, and ignoring the two followup explanations I gave on 137, he shifted the goalpost to not having given more reasoning in my first vote.

He has not interacted substantively with any of my commentary on other slots, such as marcistar or Meuh. He retreated to "overly defensive" then immediately ran the opposite direction with no acknowledgement when I pulled out the receipts of having this same conversation with scum repeatedly. He has no reason to, because acknowledging actual reasoning and that my defensiveness is NAI is inconvenient for him and the push he wants to make.

[Prism]

I don't think this is just bad play. I think this is bad faith engagement. He wanted to know why things were missing. I highlighted that they existed, and in one case cut it out of a quote. There was no evaluation of that content even upon learning it was there, and he changed his argument out of convenience. There was and is no evaluation of any of the substantive reasoning I have given elsewhere.

None of this points towards a genuine curiosity in my alignment.

[Prism]

I'm going to try to work back over Greeting's wallreads and my read on marcistar today, so someone poke me if I don't do that by end of today.

Right now, ordered T->S, I'm at:

Meuh -> marcistar -> Cape90 -> Meg -> AsuStuckey -> StrangeMatter -> Greeting -> ProHawk

I also need to revisit why I think Meg's improved, and hoping for more from the Asus replacement

[Prism]

It is extremely typical for people to look into arguments with me, see that they are too complex or specific, and dismiss them as likely TvT.

All 3 of the samples I gave where I had similar arguments with scum had multiple town players drawing the same lazy conclusion and losing two of the games for it.

[Prism]

ie. I don't enjoy getting the substantive parts of my argument dismissed as That with no response to the actual meat of my argument.

[Prism]

dismissed as TvT*, phone autocorrect strikes again

[Prism]

Alright, if you're insistent on focusing on tone over substance there's not much I can do on that front. I'll circle back when I get free time today to read marcistar and yourself (Greeting) again.

For anyone looking for a singular concise post from me, I think this post and the immediate next are the clearest summary I have made of the argument. It helps to revisit ProHawk's posts from 302 on afterwards to check what I am saying for yourself. My other posts are mostly just redundant restatements.

[Prism]

It’s a little odd as well to me how they don’t show cases of not necessarily being right.

My reads in general are very average to below average. If you're looking for something I'm usually more wrong on, I am often skeptical of players

townreading

me for something I think inadequate, where I powertunnel them in response and only realize I'm wrong like a gameday or two later. My townreads are also often wrong and complete garbage.

However, my reads in discerning how genuine a push on me is is the singular area where I shine. It is responsible for virtually nearly every scumflip I have ever driven.

There are at least another 3/4 examples scattered around of it netting scumflips, and plenty more of getting townreads out of it. I did it

with both scum

in the last Newbie game I played, Open House, with a third false flag coming when a town player (catboi) admitted to lying about having scumread on me.

There are only two reads where I can think that it went wrong, and in both I backed off when I cooled down. The first is Happy Face Mafia as willow1, where I got into it with VFP Day 1 before eventually deciding it was null. The second is Warehouse-13, where I went back and forth on MathBlade but generally thought they were town all game up until the last scum mechanically threw the game which caused me to doubt my PoE.

Could I be wrong this game? Absolutely, but this is the most reliable tool I have in my kit and I will use it aggressively. I am willing to admit I am wrong on ProHawk, but he has to give me reason to think so first.

[Prism]

I'm actually going to take the evening to do non-mafia things since I've spent a bit too much time on this and spectating a few other games lately.

I'm hoping we get a replacement soon that revitalizes the AsuStuckey slot, and I'm eager to let other slots dialogue without me dominating the discussion spamming about ProHawk and why I approach the push the way I do

My point with ProHawk isn't "Fuck you, sheep me, I'm right and foolproof" but to engage with the meat of the case rather than just dismiss it as a niche slapfight definitionally TvT. I'm grateful that several players (such as StrangeMatter and marcistar) have done so, even if in limited ways, and respect that others will read it but from an angle I am less enthusiastic about (Greeting's focus on tone over substance)

[Prism]

I would like to know where the strength of that read comes from, and who you would be other good flips. Presumably I am still one but there isn't enough appetite.

[Prism]

Here, I will make it ridiculously fucking explicit, one second.

I have cited 6 games of meta so far.

4 of these I had read or played in

prior

to the game starting, ranging from many weeks ago to several months.

-The first two games contrast a small behavior of Meg's, emphasis on mechanics vs. reads. One of these games is Mini Normal 2246, which we both played Day 1 of back in August. By definition, I read it before the start of this one. One of these is trist fall, which I spectated because of the playerlist and a personal interest in the setup. I can decisively prove I read this game prior to the start of this one, because I quoted from it in the next iteration.

-The third game is Tarot, by marcistar. I spectated this game because I wanted to play in it originally, I am friends with the moderator, and it was a good playerlist. This game swung off of marcistar's elimination Day 1 for the behavior I outlined here. I can again decisively prove I read this game prior to the start of this one, because I commented on the postgame.

-The fourth game is 2081 of Greeting's. I have explained why I spectated this game,

3 weeks prior to the start of this one, several times already.

While I cannot decisively prove I read it prior to the start of this game, why the fuck would I even bring it up if I were trying to dodge using it?

I have further skimmed 2 games that I

had not already read this game

. The intention was to look for

extremely specific behaviors

as a sanity check.

-The first of these is marcistar, who contended that she could be this forceful on entrance as scum. I looked at a scumgame of hers, Isekai, and looked to see how forceful and assertive of an entrance she made. The contrast was clear.

-The second of these was Meuh, who posted a giant readslist. I looked at a scumgame of hers with the intention of seeing if this is something she had replicated. She had.

I have no reason to spectate your games without a

specific behavior to look for.

I have already said this in post 300, one of the ones that "made sense" to you.

I am

not

randomly or universally spectating games to divine things from scratch for every player in a game.

[Prism]

I have answered every question you have presented. You have yet to respond to any of the substantive reasoning I presented, other than calling it "OMGUS" and suggesting that I'm not interested in your alignment.

You quoted from the dual post of 358 and 359 and summarily ignored the actual allegations against you.

[Prism]

We have to vote someone off D1, so my approach is going with someone who I feel like has the greatest probability of flipping RED.

Right, but you're suggesting that you're a better flip than her, and while she does have two votes most of the table townreads her. The chance of you flipping red is supposedly zero, and there are other slots on the table (ex. StrangeMatter is consensus below-null even if not anyone's top SR)

[Prism]

So if I am reading this correctly, you are stating that you do not normally meta people to determine alignment?

When I am playing or spectating, I stumble across

specific

behaviors or attitudes

that I think may be strongly indicative of alignment.

I then

check those

specific behaviors

against the player's record

.

I typically do

not randomly read games

broadly

hoping to find something

.

[Prism]

That'd be great if you had acknowledged or worked through the reasoning.

You did not and contrary to what you're claiming now where it just seems fake, claimed it did not exist at the time of 111/137 and that this was the basis for the scumread.

You then shifted the goalpost that it was excluded for not being relevant, because I did not give it in my first vote out of RVS in the 90s.

[Prism]

Since you're working through all of these in order, as opposed to settling for addressing the more succinct and complete 358 and 359, I will give you time to do so and circle back later rather than continue responding contemporaneously.

[Prism]

You"re adamant I should have read your games looking for nothing in particular. Perhaps you should peruse the samples I linked and look for a very specific behavior. This hyperaggression in response to inadequate or contradictory pushes on me is my bread and butter.

I am aware of my meta and can fake it accordingly, but this is a trivial misconception to fix, and you would be powering down the same doomed and easily preventable path as many players before you in pursuing it.

[Prism]

So, why not correct the misconception right at the beginning instead of blowing up the thread? Or maybe I'm mis-interpreting this?

I have done so repeatedly, and immediately from the moment you made the claim.

[Prism]

The spoilered provides sample posts but they are often only a small slice of a much larger, 20-70 page back and forth, and I link to the games directly underneath the screenshots. Sample 3, Replica in Undertale, is a sterling example.

[Prism]

OTT defensiveness=over the top defensiveness

[Prism]

It was my second post after you made the defensiveness claim, 15 minutes afterwards because I had to screenshot and dig up links. What the fuck are you talking about by saying I should have done it sooner?

Go look for yourself instead of outsourcing it to me 24/7 holy shit dude

[Prism]

Imagine a world where you have a question about when something was posted and could just click the link that takes you to the time it was posted

[Prism]

I'm not moving my vote. I will explain this one more time but I refuse to go anywhere else.

[Prism]

So, why not correct the misconception right at the beginning instead of blowing up the thread? Or maybe I'm mis-interpreting this?

We are talking about my level of defensiveness and hyperaggression in response to bad pushes on me,

not the initial vote on me

You imply that my defensiveness is scum indicative in Post 336. I ask you to make it explicit in 337. You do so in 339. I respond with 343

This entire sequence takes place in 22 minutes.

[Prism]

I refuse to believe that ProHawk is not literate. I'm not moving my vote.

[Prism]

In case you somehow directly responded to this post without understanding what misconception I was asserting, I will make it extremely large for you.

You"re adamant I should have read your games looking for nothing in particular. Perhaps you should peruse the samples I linked and look for a very specific behavior.

This hyperaggression in response to inadequate or contradictory pushes on me is my bread and butter.

I am aware of my meta and can fake it accordingly, but this is a trivial misconception to fix, and you would be powering down the same doomed and easily preventable path as many players before you in pursuing it.

If you interpreted this as a response to the meta claim, rather than a suggestion to do a minimal amount of work, I again addressed this other claim immediately but am tired of doing your work for you. 343 is blatantly about my hyperaggression and not how I meta other players, and it is literally impossible to interpret it as anything else.

[Prism]

I just can't believe that ProHawk actually takes the time to think about any of the things he says or responds to. He does not read linked posts, he does not read for context, he does not do basic research. I am 100% fine voting him out for it.

[Prism]

Alright, time to take a lap

My vote isn't moving, I can get overruled but yeah, end of story. I will vote him all the way to ELo without remorse.

[Prism]

I have put a large amount of time, effort, and good faith into engaging with you. I do not feel it has been returned. I will restrict it to that and apologize for the literacy comment. Let's end it there

[Prism]

I've had a few projects I have wanted to do with this game that I have put off but time is ticking. We'll see.

Only town point I saw from ProHawk was the suggestion of himself over marcistar, which is one of the older tricks in the book but generally +town. It's why I immediately questioned it and I wasn't sure about the answer.

I think Cabd not keying into anything other than Cape's post is scum indicative.

[Prism]

People also seem to miss where ProHawk's attempt to consensus vote StrangeMatter comes from, and it (probably?) came from this discussion around him/marcistar is not the split.

We have to vote someone off D1, so my approach is going with someone who I feel like has the greatest probability of flipping RED.

Right, but you're suggesting that you're a better flip than her, and while she does have two votes most of the table townreads her. The chance of you flipping red is supposedly zero, and there are other slots on the table

(ex. StrangeMatter is consensus below-null even if not anyone's top SR)

I think shifting to not-yourself is generally a good play regardless of alignment.

[Prism]

At the risk of making the above paranoia worse, I see no reason to swap given that ProHawk is at 3, but Cabd is a great second vote with Strange probably third. There's not a lot of info if Cabd flips town but if he flips scum we take those.

I wouldn't vote Greeting without having finished revisiting that slot completely.

[Prism]

I'm aware of the possibility that she got specific feedback to have exactly this kind of start. I don't see a reason to assume that at the moment, especially with the way she leveraged several parts of the intro.

[Prism]

Every time I read the phrase "yomi layer" I want to vomit onto my monitor.

[Prism]

I am generally a dirty player who will put pine tar on the figurative baseball without thinking twice, but I do limit my actions somewhat in Newbie games.

[Prism]

Can you elaborate on why ProHawk's "hilarious reaction" bit strikes you as scummy? I thought it very natural, which is why I moved so quickly to try and nip it in the bud so I could hopefully get something useful instead. It's his lack of acknowledgement that this is a deeply-ingrained tendency while sticking to his guns on it that is the red flag for me. I don't see an issue with the defensiveness assertion itself.

[Prism]

Ah, now that is useful to know.

[Prism]

I'm not currently voting you. That may change in the future depending on wagons and your content, but I'm not going to vote you just for that. I wouldn't bother outlining availability and selection of what to respond to and would focus more on other players, but that's just me.

[Prism]

I expect that a...disconcertingly large chunk of my time is about to be freed, by the way.

[Prism]

I did not give a full explanation, because their value is definitely up for debate and not at all consensus. I don't do preflips largely because my individual reads tend to be bad enough without trying to extend them into chains.

Preflips are hard just because it adds more steps to mess up, first in the individual reads then second the causal links.

Usually town falls off the tightwire without any help, but if you're willing to play more boldly as scum you can intentionall play into S/S links and push town over the edge.

[Prism]

Thank god, yes, I have been f5ing Slaughter Hour and spamming the dead PT for weeks.

[Prism]

Also, spoiler for that just-finished game, hyperaggressive defense netted a scumread and a townread, both correct.

[Prism]

This game just finished.

Also, to go straight off the deep end logic-wise,

your little post link paper trails reinforce the idea that you’re overly self-conscious.

Strange that half this table, every single one of whom have fewer games with me than you, can readily vouch that

I am this aggressive and pull out receipts like this in a flash as town, but this is the most pertinent and scummy point to you.

This exchange was with a scum player as town.

[Prism]

Cabd is coming in all kinds of buddy buddy hey guys remember this game and that let's use the history we have together to skew my reads... And if memory also serves right, he uses meta as scum to frame most arguments for mis-eliminations.

It's still dumb to me that he hasn't voted considering the time we have renaming.

VOTE: Cabd

Cabd explains that your retreat to "overly defensive" is a scum habit of yours. I may try to corroborate this later, but it looks like you think it should be a towntell.

If you can explain this satisfactorily I may swap.

[Prism]

I am pretty sure he (Cabd) is discussing you being dismissive of my walls and focusing on the strength of my reaction instead.

We can wait for him if you'd like but I think it is clear if you revisit my initial question to him.

[Prism]

You currently have zero votes on you. You need to vote somewhere, not within the next 10 minutes but in the next 12 or so hours. Any movement/new wagons closer to deadline is dangerous and vulnerable to a no elim (mechanically the worst outcome)

[Prism]

Tempted to hammer but still prefer ProHawk flip.

[Prism]

I am also unlikely to have time today, but I have done all the work I needed on today's candidates. I will apologize to Greeting for never looping back.

I would like Meg to give a more full throated defense of the ProHawk slot. There was one town post in that ISO (about flipping himself over marcistar) to me and the rest was bad.

[Prism]

I really want StrangeMatter to explicitly weigh in on the 3 players with votes on them and ideally vote before end of day.

[Prism]

If I weren't waiting on StrangeMatter I would hammer right now just to end this.

[Prism]

I think it is a real shame that you are not invested in flipping your scumread.

[Prism]

I don't think my expectations matter, but I was sincerely hoping for a foundationally sound performance in a Newbie game.

[Prism]

I will be around to hammer tomorrow as needed.

[Prism]

Still here to hammer if needed, and you can treat not doing so as a scumclaim from me.

I am adamant that we hear something from StrangeMatter today. Not commenting on either wagon is unacceptable.

[Prism]

Perfect timing, Greeting.

I will 100% be around and hammer as necessary barring severe physical injury. We will not no-elim as long as there are no random unvotes, so rest easy on that front.

[Prism]

...And given exactly two options, which would you pick?

[Prism]

You literally have the decisive vote. Right now you are, in practical effect, voting Cabd but not making this explicit. You are forcing me to vote him for you.

[Prism]

You can reread but if you did not vote, we no elim. The only way to avoid this is Cabd selfhammering or someone on ProHawk swapping. I have volunteered to be this person who will swap if needed, in return for making sure we have as much time as possible to hear from you.

[Prism]

Even if you have them both null, and do not know which to vote, it is important to understand the mechanical takeaway here.

The game is deadlocked, and without your vote neither wagon will go successfully build a coalition to go through.

This risks no elim, which mechanically throws away like 10%+ of the town's chance of winning with random mechanical choices. You need to get in the habit of voting ahead of time even if it's not what you're confident in.

[Prism]

Just to commit to a more explicit time: I will hammer with 1 hour to deadline if necessary.

[Prism]

Meg, I believe you've been around.

Do you have any further thoughts on the last few pages?

[Prism]

I still would really appreciate walking through exactly what was so town about it to you then, and what has changed now.

While I wouldn't say this should be a decisive factor, you seem to be interested in preflip associations and speculating about linkage between players based off of your question to me. Cabd flip doesn't really net a lot of information on that front-he's given very little, and only had brief interactions with 3 players (ProHawk, marcistar, and I). One of the votes on him is just going to be to avoid a no-elim. Contrast that to ProHawk, who has had very strong stances taken on him by virtually every player except StrangeMatter. I'm curious as to why Cabd is the better elim to you given this.

[Prism]

I would also love to hear what has lowered me in your eyes, given that ProHawk's interactions weren't as town as you thought. I get that I have never been sure what to do with Greeting after his reaction to my scum PT accusation, and still currently do not know what to do with him, but I was too enthralled watching Slaughter Hour earlier and there are more pressing issues on the table right now. I can forgive myself for not circling back.

[Prism]

This game is also an

extremely stark

contrast to the one scumgame you have seen from me, where I intentionally got scumread, caused deliberate chaos and disarray, and was adamant about amplifying the worst ideas of the town players over pushing my own.

[Prism]

I didn't like how limited the comment was, nor the fact that Cape was his immediate focus. Cabd is a more meta-based player than me, so his first engagement being with someone he is unfamiliar with was strange to me.

He's also personally spectated and witnessed many of the labyrinthine arguments and book-length fights I've had, and seen that they have almost all been Town Prism v Scum Player. That doesn't mean I'm right this time, and assumes I'm town to begin with, but there should have been a much bigger concern on his plate than where the bystanders are.

[Prism]

While I'm aware you are more generalized than you used to be, I think the games I have played with you or briefly glanced at the last year reinforce the idea that you are most enthralled with are those where you get to leverage your own research, perceptions, and insights into players as people. Your insistence on Yomi layers, and attempts to discern true intent and player strategy rather than just a more binary true/false, often by leveraging facades and deceptions of your own to induce reactions, reinforces this in my opinion.

This is looking past the fact that I said "than me", where I think that comparison is true at a glance, but I realize I am suggesting a baseline and trying my own hand at discerning your likely town behavior in response to that baseline.

[Prism]

Elaboration on your reads list might also be of help, Cabd. Your influence as a player does not end on death.

[Prism]

UNVOTE:

This puts ProHawk at 3 (E-2) and Cabd (E-1) at 4. I am unvoting to give myself another chance to read ProHawk if StrangeMatter decides to vote that slot. I will still vote Cabd if StrangeMatter defers and does not vote.

[Prism]

I did some meta searching. I am very fine voting ProHawk.

This is from a scumgame of his in 2016 and reinforces what Cabd is saying about his old meta, though it's less in reaction to a case on him but leverages the same attack on another player that I do here. The rest of his site history is speckled with his games where he bristles against similar claims against himself as town.

This more recent exchange from him as town seals it for me:



VOTE: ProHawk

[Prism]

Huh, thought that game was from 2020, not 2018. Not that recent. Ah well, still fine with it.

[Prism]

I can't really do enough to emphasize that ProHawk has a history of making the exact attack he does against me here as scum, and a record of bristling against it when turned against himself as town.

Perhaps there is cognitive dissonance where he believes in it according to his own convenience, but in conjunction with ignoring the more obviously town parts of my play, refusing to engage with my substantive reasoning on him, and willful blindness and refusal to investigate my claims that I am this aggressively defensive as town, I really don't see why we shouldn't vote him beyond the "me over marcistar" comment.

[Prism]

1 hour and 9 minutes to deadline.

Since Strange is here and commenting sporadically, I will wait to 30 minutes remaining, but do not feel comfortable waiting any longer than that. That is a hard deadline.

[Prism]

Ah, Cape's post is why I thought it was 2020, "thou doth protest too much" was used as town. Cognitive dissonance it is, I guess.

[Prism]

Personally, though I'm fine with eliminating Cabd here. Though I'm wondering if we still have things we want to discuss at this point?

If you are open to voting ProHawk talk about it.

Otherwise there's nothing to discuss right now. No other slots are on the table but him and Cabd. If you're not open to voting ProHawk vote Cabd.

[Prism]

You have 8 minutes before I hammer.

I get being indecisive, or perhaps patient to a fault. Do you understand the ramifications of not voting as town? It is fine to be wrong. It is not fine not to vote, to risk no elim, and to let scum exert more influence on the elimination by default, and I cannot press this point on you enough.

[Prism]

I do not appreciate being made to vote against my preference in order for

any

coalition to be formed. The entire premise of the game is forming voting blocs and compromises based off of strength of belief.

You are not getting my sincere belief in voting Cabd, despite him being my second/third choice, and we are not getting yours by refusing to vote. You are forcing others players to salvage mechanical advantage without regard for a correct vote.

[Prism]

I've said to treat it as a scumclaim if I don't, I have no qualms about facing the ramifications.

He's got like 2 minutes left anyway.

[Prism]

Thank you, and also they*, my apologies for the incorrect pronoun.

[Prism]

[Prism]

Congratulations to the scumteam, who did very well at understanding exactly what they needed to win and pursuing it to the end!

I will try and give substantial feedback later, but I am a bit swamped at the moment with other commitments. You can also find a lot of my (hilariously wrong!) commentary in the dead PT.

This was a hard game, and I don't envy the town players left alive for it. I think Meg did something people tend to really overlook: blatantly openwolfing when it is to your wincon to do so. He also did a good job with positioning around wagons & players to actively mislead and disguise his partner. Meanwhile, StrangeMatter did really well at abusing their indecisive town meta, and I was content to put them aside. They naturally carried it through the endgame.

I think I take most of the responsibility for the loss after that disastrous Day 1, and I am especially sorry to ProHawk whose alignment I failed to discern correctly. Mafia is a story of being very confident and very wrong, but we try to improve anyway. I also was sharply suspicious of Meg after the wagon positioning Day 1, but chose to wait until Day 2 to pursue it more aggressively. Not the right call!

[Prism]

Bahaha nice job cape rofl.

Maybe put in a little more effort next time.

I don't think this is fair. Cape did not take the full time in Elo but it is clear how much time and effort he put into the game. Sometimes, you unfortunately know when you will not switch, and it is best to just get the job done with so you can spend time debating what matters (the 1v1) or lose if you're wrong. I would encourage looking back at Day 3.

[Prism]

While I wanted to take the time to own up to my own failures, which are what matter most to me, I really don't like this.

You spent all of Day 1 forgetting your own arguments, shifting the goalposts without realizing it, and refused to do the most trivial meta check when I laid out all of the links for you. I felt very resentful even when I found out you were town; I felt you put the onus on me in an incredibly difficult way to go above and beyond in looking into your mind. Our mutual fight and failure to communicate our intentions was ruthlessly exploited by both members of the scumteam Day 1. This is looking past the Greeting Day 2, and Meg correctly chose to set you up for that exact battle by selfhammering and denying you the chance.

Both you and I were exploited and punished every step of the way by the scumteam, even more than Cape was.

[Prism]

Oh yeah, I have no issue with it given that you were scum. Exploit the hell out of it, and really put the pressure on town to be the one to avoid a no-elim.

[Prism]

(And my idea was obviously to ensure you couldn't do that and were forced to take a stand!)

[Prism]

I'll try to swing by and type up some individualized comments in a few hours, but I am really overcommitted at the moment and V/LA to boot.

[Prism]

The meta point is that all of the behaviors you scumread were trivially checked for playstyle vs. alignment by hitting a link. You did not do so.

I'm not really interested in re-litigating our half of it. I think our flips confirm the good faith of our perspectives.

As an observer for Day 2 on I resent greatly the idea that Cape did not try and that the most salient takeaway from the game is that he fucked up. Criticism for voting wrong and voting early is valid, but he absolutely tried harder than you and I, and he was far from the only reason this game was lost.

[Prism]

Most of the dead thread I thought it was Meg/ProHawk, and analyzing from that perspective, so I was absolutely way the fuck off base!

[Prism]

Individualized feedback, meant to be constructive and just random small things I noticed. Note that if this seems overly picky, you probably did a good job and that was all I could find!

Feel free to yeet these out the window if you disagree-you saw how bad my own play was!

Spoiler: StrangeMatter

Congratulations! I obviously guessed wrong, and I think there are several things you did well here. Letting us risk a no elim is #1, waiting for town to mess up in Elo #2. It's easy to panic as scum, such as when you were both at risk Day 2, but generally you can just wait for town to make errors. Correctly capitalizing on mistakes by myself, ProHawk, and Cape was very good.

I have two points of feedback. First, I think you could have been more proactive with and indepth with reads Day 1. You frequently asked questions but had minimal followup, and some demonstration of deeper thinking is honestly free and goes a long way. I also think that waiting for deadline wound up bringing so, so much more attention to yourself than just hammering one slot and letting us push another slot the next day would have.

Second, I think you should have been more proactive Day 2 in helping steer a vote. You/Meg were both on the chopping block, and while the scum PT wasn't released, it was honestly a miracle that you dodged being voted out Day 2 and require a lot of heavy lifting on Meg (...and, unfortunately, Greeting's) part to avoid. You didn't have that many votes on you but you were a consensus and uncontroversial

second choice

, and the second someone realizes that and starts a wagon you risked having the game slip out of your control entirely. I think going to bat a bit harder would have thrown a wrench into this and made it easier to get a wagon on someone like Greeting or ProHawk through.

Spoiler: Meuh

I loved, loved, loved your reads wall. I had you as hard town from that point on and basically never doubted it from there-I also thought, like marcistar, your comments/interventions with me/ProHawk oozed town in intention. I hope you keep making these, even though it also puts more pressure on you to deliver as scum!

I think your biggest mistake was similar to Greeting's. Greeting selfvoting was a bad move, and unfortunately you needed to catch it rather than just trust they knew what they were doing. Voting out an uncc'd PR in an open setup is always going to be a bad move. Scum fishing for a cc is simply the price for a 1 for 1 trade and you should accept it gladly, throwing away an elim AND losing marcistar a day early was disastrous. You should have been the one to refuse to let Greeting go off the ledge.

Spoiler: Cape90

My spirit animal, god bless you, channeled me from the grave for better and for worse. I generally have very little to critique here; I saw exactly what you saw in Meg/ProHawk and I think it's to Meg's credit for handling their interactions so well. I don't even know what constructive criticism to give you, honestly-I would have and did make the same mistake. I would say going to bat harder Day 2 was the best bet, and while I couldn't find a way to work constructively with ProHawk, perhaps you could have with time. Maybe taking it one scum at a time would have gone further.

In general, I'm just sorry that it didn't work out in your (our) favor. It happens, and you will get more chances.

Spoiler: Greeting

I think I've covered the majority of the constructive criticism in the dead PT, so I'll truncate it. I liked your reads and thinking a lot Day 2, very well thought out, and was very pleased to see it, but I also think that my (and your) miss on the scumteam emphasizes just how important that extra elim was for town to have. StrangeMatter was one of your next choices, and we would have had the chance at them! Your play and process is solid qualitatively, but I think a solid mechanic foundation

complements

that in a way that I don't think has quite clicked yet. Sometimes they're in opposition, but this game they went hand in hand!

Spoiler: AsuStuckey

I did not forget about you! It sounds like you got overwhelmed with the pace and intensity of the game, and I feel that I am probably the main culprit here. I'm sorry that you didn't stick it out-it would have been exciting to play with you, and I hope you try again another time.

Spoiler: ProHawk

I think there are a lot of takeaways from the nitty gritty of our fight, but I think we can skip them and focus on the bigger picture. I think the biggest miss was on Cape Day 2, the push that they were bussing really didn't make a lot of sense I think. Forcing the vote in 5 way ELO is generally just a bad play, throwing it away for free, and I think taking it one at a time (same issue was Cape) probably would have gone further. Pushing Meg as scum but not just...voting Meg, instead being very open to voting Cape "because they're bussing Meg", made it look like

you

were the one bussing.

I have to go to dinner, will do marcistar/MegAzumarill afterwards.

[Prism]

Wrapping up..

Spoiler: marcistar

As I said on Day 1, loved everything about your start this game-the intentionality in putting yourself out there with a read that might be wrong, and leveraging that for reads and reactions out of others. You are developing into a stellar player, and I think the only point of feedback I have is something that you're already aware of: the level of activity afterwards. (I think the argument between myself and ProHawk likely sucked the air out of the room-but Day 2 on that was off the table)

Spoiler: Meg

I think I went indepth plenty on what you did right. I loved everything about your play Day 2 on. I still think the start this game was a bit shaky, and the progression around the end of the Day 1 wagons was underexplained and not too believable. This is really nitpicking, because everything I felt made you "obvious" wound up serving a very useful purpose (ex. Shaky reasoning on ProHawk implicated ProHawk after your flip), and I think that tradeoff wound up being well worth it.

I did think the fakehammer was a very nice stylistic touch to get townread if Greeting was a VT, but I think it backfired when Greeting claimed cop, both because it made you less likely to be a PR and more likely that Greeting's claim was legitimate. It should have been very difficult for you to cc at that point if needed.

Finally, I am very appreciate of the comments, dead PT discussion, and the feedback from Meuh.

This Newbie was a great source of joy for me, and I am deeply grateful that I got to play with all of you. Thank you all for playing with me, and I hope you had as much fun as I did.

[Prism]

Hilariously, in my last game the Town Cop, RH9, also had a notes PT. This was part of why I pulled back at the end of Day 1.

It is also worth noting that I was able to pin down the near-exact timestamp of the time the linked private post was made, with a minute as the margin of error. This was at a time I thought it unlikely Datisi was online, and thought it was the scum PT accordingly.

I was barred by Datisi from speaking about the timestamp and its implications during the game, and understandably so.

[Prism]

(It was very reasonable for Datisi to be awake at the time it was made, but he had no public posts around that time, which is why I suspected it was a scum post within the thread)

[Prism]

I do not think it did. I wound up not have much trouble making my point, and it was irrelevant by end of day. It was arguably arbitrary but I would say zero damage happened.

[Prism]

Very amused by the scum PT, and I always love to see a functional team succeed!

Reasonable concerns Day 1/2, good if scattered ideas Day 2, and finally a clear understanding of what was needed to win on Days 3/4 and how to get it. Excellent work.