Open 840 - Guardians of the Fortress [Game Over]

[implosion]

hello!

I think this setup is 100% fated to have approximately two people who go somewhere early and then a bunch of people being annoyed at them.

[implosion]

hm. my hope was to bring two scummiest people to the keep with me. if we're right on them both being scum, scum will be forced to move one of them, which would greatly help us. of course, wifom is a thing, and this whole operation rests on the assumption that people will collectively townread me, so we'll see.

This kind of logic that centers oneself is, I think, not the most useful in this setup.

The prima facie "right thing" in this setup imo is to collectively sort all 9 players from town->scum and then put the 3 towniest, 3 middle, and 3 scummiest in the same place. If you are town and think you will be very obviously town, it's a bad idea to put yourself with two very scummy people; better to put those two scummy people with a third scummy person. This way even if we're wrong about one of those three being scum, we'd need to be wrong about

two

of them in order to be wrong about the person that moved out of that area having to be scum. There's even the off-chance we get a day one win, though it shouldn't be counted on. If you think you will be super town, and join two scummy people, if we're wrong about just one of those two people then it's easy for scum to swap them out and muck with us.

I am quite excited to be able to actually talk about the setup productively (since the other time I played this setup I drew scum).

[implosion]

I don't think that people should be locking in right away

VOTE: keep

So probably don't do that lol

This is mildly towny.

Scum would want to make sure they end up in different places, so "I'll go where ever is left" seems townie I think.

I'm pretty sure I talked like that as scum when I played the setup. I think this is more personality-based than alignment-based. But jumps themselves can absolutely be indicative. Actions speak louder than words in this setup.

[implosion]

A brief summary of the other run of this setup and lessons learned from it from a scum perspective, at the risk of muddying the waters:

1) as I said, actions speak louder than words. I saw an opportunity to justify a jump that forced all three locations to have 2 town 1 scum in that game and I took it, and I got a lot of flak for it, correctly so.
2) I still won my minigame because it was the Gate and the cleared townie was more or less too far into wifom to listen to the soft majority of the rest of the town who I think would have preferred to lim me.
3) We were set up to win the keep too, but we ultimately lost it as well as the wall because the info from me flipping and from backward speculation about what scum would have done was extremely powerful.

Basically the main thing to keep in mind is, as this game goes forward, it's more important than most setups to be willing to change your reads. If you're willing to change your reads in response to new information it makes the scumteam's lives

drastically

more complicated.

[implosion]

here's the old game.
here's the old scum PT.

[implosion]

That seems like a strategy that would work for any location, not keep-specific?

[snip]

She could use the night swap on her to appear towny in whatever minigame she's swapped into. That seems like a reasonable play as scum? And also could just be hoping Tanner doesn't actually end up in Keep anyhow.

sure, the "if two scum are here, they have to swap one of them" could work on any location. but my main point, again, is that keep is the only minigame where we need to find only one town to win. even if we're wrong on one of those scummy-looking people being scum, we don't have to spend energy sorting them out.

not if scum is forced to use their swap between the other two minigames.

The flip side is that doing this means the remaining two locations are the ones that are harder for town to win.

I think there's almost no strategies that strictly increase town's EV from a random-choices perspective. I think there's mostly just strategies that are better or worse at leveraging different kinds of correct reads.

I want to call VP and Tanner town atm.

[implosion]

why those two names?

Pretty much impressions. I am hoping to consciously force myself to reassess reads more than usual and the corollary of that is that I don't really care about saying reads that I can't really justify strongly right now.

[implosion]

I think from that game you learned that collectivism is better for the town and that scum have an incentive to just take what they want in order to not let town dictate assignments. So you deciding to unilaterally jump feels like a bit of a scumclaim to me

...and we're not supposed to consider your unilateral jump a scumclaim because clearly, it's different?

[implosion]

oh i guess you weren't in that game. i see

[implosion]

Lukewarm, do you think you being in the Keep increases the town's probability of winning? Or is it simply something you want?

If the former why, if the latter then why should we take you at your word here?

[implosion]

Scum will avoid being stacked together - this is exactly why playing to try and lock 3 scum together is a good idea. Basically it lets us read the way in which people push back on plans that are formed, and try to interpret them.

[implosion]

I've generally been of the mind that first movers are +town because being a first mover is very conspicuous.

I think it's hard to clearly read in isolation. In the game I played scum moved 2nd and 6th (and then the last 3 people including the third scum were locked to the last location).

[implosion]

I think position of joining a location is in isolation something that can very much be determined by either personality or alignment. So without extra context it's not that useful. To be fair, Aristeia is trying to give that extra context to justify her Lukewarm read.

[implosion]

Lukewarm, do you think you being in the Keep increases the town's probability of winning? Or is it simply something you want?

If the former why, if the latter then why should we take you at your word here?

Bit of both.

-snip-

I guess what I mean is, what makes you special here? Sure you lost at the wall last game. The wall is the hardest thing for town to win, so that's not surprising. It'll be hard for

whoever

winds up there, and two townies will wind up there (unless we win d1).

If

anyone

gets widely townread at Keep, they win. If the sum in the keep gets scum read,

anyone

will win keep. It seems like your priority is "i win my minigame" rather than "town wins at least 2/3 minigames". Like, no duh you're most likely to win your game if you join the easiest game.

[implosion]

And to be clear I don't know if this is scum-motivated. Just trying to discern.

[implosion]

I've generally been of the mind that

first movers are +town

because being a first mover is very conspicuous.

I think it's hard to clearly read in isolation.

In the game I played scum moved 2nd

and 6th (and then the last 3 people including the third scum were locked to the last location).

I guess I did say "first movers" but I sort of meant literally first movers, with the plural meaning across multiple runs of the setup. But really the main point was that there are counterbalancing forces, and that a broad statement tying alignment to when-someone-moves is not robust without context of why they moved, with whom, their personality (i.e. whether they're the kind of person who'd tend to move early as town), etc.

[implosion]

(and also... keep in mind that in that game scum moved 2nd yes, but the rest of the first 5 people to move were town)

[implosion]

ooh. just noticed that game was open 820 and this one is open 840. satisfying.

[implosion]

If Luke played in a game where scum swept by locking in early, why would it imply he's scummy for locking in early here? Can't it also be the opposite, that he's seen early-lock ins as an effective scum strategy and is trying to counter that?

[implosion]

Was reading the game implosion linked, and it looked quite easy for scummy to get 1-1-1, so idk how effective strategizing will end up being. Like I said, feels like the best plan is to optimize minigame outcomes.

This is partially true but partially misleading; note the reaction from skitter and Penguin (both town) when I hammered. It was probably not going to be 1-1-1 without me making that play that made me stick my neck out somewhat.

I have no preference for where I end up and no strong feelings about how good I am in Elo.

[implosion]

I also do want to make one Keep strategy note in response to Lukewarm saying he'll just vote for someone else: if you are town in keep, be *VERY* slow to vote for someone other than yourself. Don't just accept that you're going to be the one to hammer between the other two. If a townie willingly gives up their ability to be the one selected, then suddenly the keep is 50/50 instead of being in our favor.

We should run the keep in such a way that we use majority "vote" (probably just for the 3 people within the keep) for who they think is scummiest. Then force that person to vote for one of the other two and they selfhammer. If they refuse to vote, assume they're scum and the other two players just arbitrarily vote for one of them.

[implosion]

consensus assignments are either done or they are not done

there is no middle ground

I flatly disagree. There's an obvious middleground of consensus assigning all players who have not yet been assigned.

[implosion]

Implosion, you think there is an optimal order to the games?

I don't think there is. I'm theoretically open to arguments about it. There's an argument for doing gate early because the IC doesn't get locked out of discussion, but also an argument for doing it later because it reveals the fewest people's alignments.

In practice the optimal order I think is to pick whichever location would give the most surprising information if scum were to win it (or optimize for something like that) and resolve it first.

[implosion]

Something like the area we're most certain about our reads collectively, because if we're horribly wrong about things we were very confident in, it's good to know that sooner than later, and if we're right then we'll be winning the area anyway.

[implosion]

I’m not like necessarily opposed to Tanner‘a suggestion but am I right that it’s based off of solely 201? I can’t really tell whether Tanner actually thinks this is a good idea that we should do or if it’s just a passing thought he had or somewhere in between.

[implosion]

If it is based on 201 then wouldn’t someone as scum be more likely to mix up two townies than their two scum buddies?

[implosion]

we can test my theory - if i'm right, town wins. if i'm wrong, nothing is lost. i don't have to be insanely confident in that being the correct solve to realize there is no harm in test it?

Well, technically there is harm in that (1) we get to test exactly 3 teams like this, so each incorrect team is a slot that could have been taken up by a different team and, more poignantly (2) you could be scum who knows that this group is 2 town/1 scum and is trying to push it.

I do agree that VP pushing this as your "solve" is odd when your most recent post characterized it as a "tinfoil theory".

[implosion]

VPB's groups look mostly fine to me I guess? I'm not against being the 3rd in Keep.

NumberQ's post is, fine. It means he's probably not scum with DArby unless the third scum is already assigned, because he'd probably be loath to say they should both go to the same location if there's a risk that'd lose on the spot.

[implosion]

I'm okay with VP's plan (and leaving NumberQ/DArby/Toog at wall). Anyone at that gate is probably a useful IC and any of them being swapped out is probably a swap that can be read into to some degree one way or another.

We're getting to the point where I think it is valuable to keep reads closer to our chests, since we're coalescing around an actual plan. That's not to say we shouldn't keep discussing things and if there are objections to the plan they can be raised, but finer grained reads can be kept for later. The interaction with Toog saying they're getting bored is interesting, I think mech talk in this setup kind of bridges a gap where there's incentive to hide one's own reads in principle.

If there are no objections in the near future I'll head to Keep.

[implosion]

VOTE: Keep

Good night.

[implosion]

I’m getting on a plane shortly. Will maybe or maybe not have energy to comment tonight. The one thing I want to say before looking more is that lukewarm is probably the best vote at keep now, I was thinking he’s quite town d1.

[implosion]

Read up but not closely.
Vp is, alas, +town for that dumbtell.

I have a weak initial inclination toward toog scum at wall.

Less confident on keep; I need to think about the implications of the swap if darby was scum, given some of aris logic.

No strong feelings on resolution order atm

Will have much more later.

[implosion]

First off, irrespective of anything else, thoughts on the swap knowing that I'm town.

If Pav is scum, then the scum had exactly 6 legal swaps: they had to swap one of Pav/the other wall scum with one of me/ari/luke. I think if this is the case it's obviously viable that they'd make this swap; their options are just so limited. In my mind the keep was the likeliest place to have 3 town and the wall was the likeliest place to have 2 scum, and this is because... well wall is where we put the lurky/scummy players and I think everyone (except maybe ari but I never really pinned down a good individual read on her) at Keep was towny. Scum would be

forced

to swap a towny town with a scummy scum in this situation. The problem with this is that, of course, it's just assuming that our "collective reads" pre-swap were like, really good. Or at least that mine were. Like Ari said it's just very arrogant. But of course it can still be true.

If Pav is town, then it was 1-1-1 and the world is scum's oyster for options. I can certainly think of reasons they'd want to do this. The obvious one is that they felt keep was unwinnable with me there, which I think would be foolish if they did think that, but that's neither here nor there. The simplest explanation is if scum thought I was going to be townread no matter what, then swapping me to wall turns a situation they can't win and a situation they can win into two situations they can win.

Regardless of all of this, one thing I am interested in is that VP Baltar was the first one to suggest me as the third person in Keep. I think that's fairly + town for him if it turns out that Keep was all-town pre-swap. Which is another reason to resolve Gate later.

Back to reading.

[implosion]

One other thought I had: if you don't have a clear view on whether the scum in our game is VP or me, it might be useful to see where VP and I differ in our reads on other games and resolve those game(s) first to help you decide between us.

Hard line here (not certain if this is what you were saying but it's important to mention either way): we should

not

trust people more because their reads on other games are more accurate. Scum have absolutely every incentive to bus their buddies in this setup - after all, they have absolutely no power to vote for each other, so they might as well distance to all heck if they think it'll work.

We should give either exactly 0 credit or a very tiny amount of credit to someone for being town because they had a correct read in this setup at this point. The only disincentive to bus is that you might accidentally convince someone who actually has power to vote for your scumbuddy. To be clear it's fine to resolve other games first and then use those to help read imaginality and VP but those reads should not be based simply on how right each of their reads were.

This said: it'd be pretty wild if imaginality-scum gave this line, and then gave completely inaccurate reads. So if imaginality is scum it's likely that his "reads" here are at least somewhat accurate (and well, he's calling me town so etc, but).

[implosion]

Another thing I'm remembering from the first run of the game, looking at NumberQ's analysis, is that we felt pretty defeatist in that game when we were deciding the swap. I think me and Something_Smart both thought we were entering unwinnable games, to a degree. Or like, each of us thought we were making our own game unwinnable in order to make the other two better. It's entirely possible that scum would do that with the swap if they thought the DArby slot was unredeemable (which, again, i think they'd be making a mistake by thinking that way but etc).

1) Toog is scum, Pav is not. Splitting them up makes little sense, because it's putting implo (who was fairly TRed D1) into the Wall (which would have had myself, Toog, and Pav, 3 slots who were not very TRed). Why not keep the three of us in the Keep so it's that much harder for town to win?

You're missing something simple here which is that if me and Pav are both town, and scum think I'm more widely townread, the result of the swap isn't just that Wall becomes harder for scum to win, it's also that Keep becomes easier for scum to win.

[implosion]

I think we're more or less getting to the end of the ultimately very small rope that contains all the advantage we can get by analyzing setup info and we should be figuring things out more traditionally at this point, based primarily on D2 content if possible.

One sort of small thing that I've noticed: I, for one, absolutely forgot like half of my opinions overnight. I did not think about this game almost at all during the break and I kind of imagine scum would have been thinking about it more than town, for a couple reasons. One is that they have to pick what assignments to make, another is that since they know what the locations will look like they'll have a higher degree of anticipation. With this in mind:

Long night made me forget a lot of the game state lol

Was Pav moved because they're scum and it was obvious that slot would be voted out at the Wall? I could see both Luke and Ari being town tbh in light of this swap.

I have to look back at Toog and implo to remind myself what I thought of them.

I actually think this is +town for nQ for these reasons. I kind of don't see scum as being as likely to come into today with the attitude of "I kind of forgot where I was at during night".

Compare to Toog's opening post today:

I think The Wall should resolve right away. I think both imaginality and Baltar have given at least a few stances that serve as associatives to do the Gate and the Keep.

Tanner becoming an IC is good, and better than various scenarios I was thinking of happening.

I kept my reads close because I was certain Luke was buddying me early on with their encouragements to join the Keep and town reading me. Almost half the players in the game are scum and I didn't want to give them anything to work with.

Going into today, I didn't have much in the way of scum reads, I was playing as I usually do and trying to figure out town reads first. Tanner and imaginality we're early town reads, I think. I can't remember the game state since last week. I think I also liked Baltar, but no one got swapped there, so I'm wrong somewhere. I thought the Wall was going to have a swap.

My assumption for The Gate was that we were the unsorted and most likely to have 2 scum. I didn't like numberQ yesterday they kept making pushes as me scum early, and then again at day start today. I don't recall implosion's play yesterday, but I do recall them being mostly town read.

I'm currently leaning scum were already 1/1/1 in the games, and Darby was probably moved to The Keep for chaos purposes.

I think The Wall should resolve first, and we go from there.

He says he can't remember the gamestate much since last week but he also gives quite a few specific reads. The post feels a lot more prepared than numberQ's, whereas numberQ's posting today gives me a kind of genuine sense of being caught off guard.

I'm also inclined to townread nQ's swap discussion. There's nuance to it and this line feels genuine to me:

This scares me because swap analysis points me to a totally different conclusion than pure play analysis did. I sure would like others to weigh in on this theory because I don't like it lol, but I can't roll it around in my head to a shape that I do like.

I'm curious what Tanner thinks because I feel like I'm sort of starting to tunnel mentally on a gamestate where the scumteam is Toog/imaginality/??. Obviously I'm not locking into that or anything and I want to hear more from Toog. I'm mostly just trying to catch myself before committing more strongly to opinions than they have merit.

[implosion]

Tbh, tunneling on the dumbtell a bit.

[implosion]

Implosion,

if the game is at 1-1-1 preswap,

why do you think you get flipped to wall instead of gate?

Swapping keep/gate and keeping wall intact would give town a lot of information in the sense that toog/nQ/DArby were all "collective scumreads" and keeping them all there would tell us that there's actually only one scum amongst them.

Lots of other possible reasons too, I mean, maybe scum thought the current 1v1 at Gate was better than the equivalent 1v1 where I'm deciding instead of Tanner. Or that they didn't want to swap Tanner to Keep because of the Tanner/Ari situation. Or that they thought swapping me with whichever one of VP/imaginality is town would give a worse 1v1 there. Or maybe they thought they were only going to win wall and going to lose the other two no matter what if they swapped between them, or something. I can think of a lot of possible reasonings. Probably it comes down to, in some form, VP/imaginality whichever is scum thinking they could win this 1v1.

[implosion]

I'm struggling reading these walls. My brain isn't working right now lol. Every wall post looks like wifom discussion, like "It could be A, maybe B, probably not C (though that isn't off the table), maybe D?"

Yeah this is why I was saying we should go back to traditional scum hunting.

[implosion]

This is more or less what I thought.

Between the two of them, which do you think is more likely to believe they will win?

I don't know; I don't know either of them especially well. If there is strong reason to believe one of them would think it more strongly than the other, then that would be a decent reason to read them as scum, but only assuming we do gate last, since doing the other two locations first would confirm whether or not the situation was 1/1/1, and this logic obviously disintegrates if it was actually 2/1/0.

[implosion]

I think Ari asking Luke for his best scum game is poignant because if Luke is scum he's playing a hell of a game here.

[implosion]

So you find my light shading of you more acceptable, Toog?

[implosion]

a decent amount of what's happening in this game is starting to make my eyes glaze over.

I'm okay doing wall first if Tanner wants it first.

The point on VP/imaginality both talking about them + DArby is interesting. Where I'm at I definitely would call Ari scum before Luke though. I definitely don't think it's out of the question that Pav is town, certainly. Luke scum would just surprise me a lot. Ari and Pav scum would both surprise me very little.

[implosion]

I've been pretty clear with my reads, I think, Tanner. And I've given reasoning for the ones at Wall. I'm happy to justify why I think Luke is so town if you want, and am happy to wax about VP and imaginality but I honestly doubt I can really reasonably read the two of them better than 50/50.

[implosion]

I feel VP is generally spouting sensible analysis. As discussed earlier that doesn't automatically make him town because scum at the gate have every incentive to give sensible analysis. But I do also think he's town independently of how much I agree with his analysis, I think.

[implosion]

I also increasingly think Luke is the best vote in Keep. I feel like Aristeia's posting as a whole is some amount of fluff but like, a huge bulk of asking people leading questions rather than giving real original analysis or like, actual trying to figure out who is mafia. There are so many details of Luke's play that I feel would just be very difficult to emulate to the degree he has been if he is scum. 896/897 show a continuity in his train of thought. 881 is analysis that scum would have to go out of their way to think "I should fake what I would have been thinking during the break if I were town" and then do that accurately. Like, these things are not impossible but I feel like it would be fairly rare to see them emulated to the degree that I think they'd have to be if he's scum.

[implosion]

I could conceivably be convinced that Pavowski is a better vote but I don't know if anyone is really making that argument.

[implosion]

I feel like VP's solve explains the swap pretty easily as well. The scum plan is something like swap me with DArby, and then all Aristeia needs to do is look town to Luke, because Pavowski's slot is basically poisoned. It's like it's inevitable that it will never be voted for. So all Aristeia needs to do is convince Luke she's town, because the two of them were mutually townreading each other and Luke had indicated willingness to just be the one who votes in Keep rather than being the one voted for. And then Aristeia can just, say she's happy to vote luke but never actually do that before luke votes her. Meanwhile in Wall, I'm being shoved into a place with Toog and nQ, two of the few people in the player list who had not yet indicated a townread on me. And even if they both buy I'm town I still have to decide between them (of course this idea works regardless of which of them is scum, I just think nQ has been town independently of this argument).

It all seems generally fairly coherent.

[implosion]

I guess this is also all independent of which of VP/imag is town.

My reasons for thinking VP is town are the thing that feels most to me like I'm confirmation biasing myself. But it's mostly the way he's presenting arguments/interacting with the thread. It's not all that tangible. And there is still the dumbtell thing that I think is nontrivial. I can't really get much of a read on imaginality in isolation or at least haven't been able to at this point today.

[implosion]

Oh one early thing is I liked VP's justification and thought process on his early townread of me around my talking about the scum PT in my previous game. Not a huge thing on its own though.

[implosion]

but if Luke is scum I want Implosion/VPB to die.

Why? Do you disagree with my argument that scum have every reason to bus in this setup?

[implosion]

And if you're specifically worried that I am scum trying to influence another game I'm happy to flip wall first generally. I mean, one advantage of flipping wall is that there's definitely the least happening from the people here >_>

Though perhaps that will change when Toog gets replaced.

[implosion]

Oh another thing that makes me feel Luke is town is his repeated assertions of "selfishly, I want ____" regarding going to keep and now keep being later to resolve. It feels so far from how at least I personally would be thinking about the game as scum.

[implosion]

but if Luke is scum I want Implosion/VPB to die.

Why? Do you disagree with my argument that scum have every reason to bus in this setup?

You don't need to worry about this if Luke is town.

...okay??

[implosion]

Ari, what precisely are your current reads in each area and how confident they each are?

[implosion]

It's kind of weird for him to say that he thinks I'm scum who is performatively trying to pocket Lukewarm and never will vote Lukewarm.

Then when I say "hey I'll vote Lukewarm right now if Tanner says yes but I want assurances that he/vpb die if Lukewarm flips scum"

He fires back with an excuse about how scum want to bus and how he is willing to resolve first.

I just don't see why that would be his reaction if he actually believes that I'm mafia here or if he actually believes Lukewarm is town.

I did not "fire back" with this in the way you're describing. Scum having reason to bus, and your alignment, were two completely different parts of the discussion. Don't conflate them.

You saying "I want implo to die if Luke flips scum" in that context, to me, read as you saying that if Luke flips scum it would be reason to think I'm scum based on pushing him to be voted when I think that simply isn't how this setup works, especially given that Tanner's current preference was to resolve wall before keep. Correlating us in that way mathematically implies that you'd think Luke would be more likely to be scum (at least a little bit) if I flipped scum, so... you see the problem here, hopefully, given that Wall is probably being voted first.

And regarding your stated willingness to vote Luke: words are not actions. And it's not like you have any recourse if you're scum and Tanner tells you to vote Luke.

[implosion]

Also if Lukewarm is scum, Implosion switching out of Keep makes very little sense with how much Implosion was townreading Lukewarm.

I think I kept the strength of my Luke townread at least somewhat close to my chest.

[implosion]

Like it's not just one of his beliefs that has to be wrong for him to react negatively to my offer,

I wasn't reacting to the possibility of the offer happening. You have no power to make it happen and I don't think I'd be "afraid" of it if I were scum. I was reacting to seeming faulty logic behind it.

he has to be wrong on both his strongest townread AND his strongest scumread in the keep for it to blow up in his face and with how confidently he stated his reads in pushing for Luke over me I just don't see how he is suddenly backpedaling and making excuses.

One, I don't see how anything I'm doing can accurately be described as either backpedaling or making excuses.
Two, "both his strongest townread and his strongest scumread" there are only three possible states the Keep can be in. Being wrong about who the scum is is not being wrong about two different things, it's being wrong about one thing. I don't even know why this matters. Like I have very much lost the thread of the conversation here.

[implosion]

Like, I don't understand why you think I should think you saying "I'll vote Luke if Tanner tells me to" should mean anything. It's vapid, of course it's vapid, this is literally a game about lying :\. this is not you "making a promise" that you would then get to have your preferred choice of what happens in the other locations if it goes wrong, it's you saying "i will do the thing that i am obligated to do if i'm town if i'm told that i have to do it" like. duh???????

[implosion]

Also if Lukewarm is scum, Implosion switching out of Keep makes very little sense with how much Implosion was townreading Lukewarm.

I think I kept the strength of my Luke townread at least somewhat close to my chest.

again this does not matter unless Luke flips scum so there is no motivation for you to argue this point with me.

there is motivation because you said a thing that is false and i wanted to point that out

[implosion]

there is motivation because you said a thing that is false and i wanted to point that out

It only applies if Luke flips red which shouldn't really be something you are worried about.

you: "if lukewarm flips scum, then my reads will change in ways x y and z, and also ducks are mammals"
me: "ducks are birds"
you: "i said that was contingent on luke being scum, why do you care about that"

:X

[implosion]

this is just, so, incredibly, vapid. this whole page.

[implosion]

i feel like i've traveled to some alternate dimension where this is supposed to matter in literally any meaningful way.

What are your reasons for imag town over VP?

[implosion]

I'm going to not answer any other questions on this thread we've been going down for the past page unless anyone else explicitly says they want to hear my answers.

i feel like i've traveled to some alternate dimension where this is supposed to matter in literally any meaningful way.

What are your reasons for imag town over VP?

Why do you even care if you think I'm mafia?

contrary to popular belief, you actually are still allowed to be made a listmod if you've gotten any reads wrong before in any mafia games! I know, it's not common knowledge.

[implosion]

And also, I care because I'm really unsure about Gate and want to hear reasons in favor of the other side.

[implosion]

Care to answer the question? Why imag town over VP?

[implosion]

And just for unambiguity on that last one: I might be wrong on you. It's happened before, it'll happen again. And I'm more confident on Luke being town than I am on you being scum. It's something like you have 55% scum equity, Pav has 40%, Luke has 5%. Those numbers are nowhere near exact but you get the idea (probably if I was betting money on these I'd put Luke's odds of scum at much higher than 5% just because I don't really trust my ability to read people accurately in mafia games in general nearly that highly)

[implosion]

And just for unambiguity on that last one: I might be wrong on you. It's happened before, it'll happen again. And I'm more confident on Luke being town than I am on you being scum. It's something like you have 55% scum equity, Pav has 40%, Luke has 5%. Those numbers are nowhere near exact but you get the idea (probably if I was betting money on these I'd put Luke's odds of scum at much higher than 5% just because I don't really trust my ability to read people accurately in mafia games in general nearly that highly)

It's not just that you are wrong on me that makes me think you are scum.

I don't like how you said I ask questions that are "leading" and that do not help me figure out the game.

I think my questions are quite clear in exactly what I am trying to figure out.

When I ask you which of my questions are "leading" you don't seem to have a response.

I never saw you ask, if you did and I missed it then apologies. The reason I called them leading was that you've asked so, so many of them, but never really seemed to follow up or give original analysis based on answers as far as I could tell. Looking loosely backward through your ISO

869 858 831 826 823 790

these are all in the past 12 hours and it's not even all of them in the past 12 hours, you just ask so many questions that it gives me a vibe of you wanting to look like you're thinking about things, rather than actually having a real set of reads that you're working on creating or verifying. It's frankly very tough to determine the degree to which you're actually following through on all of them and to assess whether your view of the gamestate is being swayed by answers to them (as it should be if you're town, that's the point of asking questions) since you have such a high ratio of asking questions to stating opinions.

[implosion]

Imag's play is more transparent than VPB in that his posts do not need further explanation.

Imag not hesitating to vote skews townie to me, VPB "forgetting" to do it feels like scum who is awkward and unsure of the "right" time to do something.

Imag's scum game is somewhat lacking, I've read his scum play and it feels kind of stiff? I think he is somewhat out of scumrange here.

As for VPB I don't like the way he answered questions and he's demanding to be townread for things that don't make sense to me and he's not explaining further.

He has the time to pop in and take potshots at me but not the time to answer questions directed towards him.

The first two lines here I don't really buy as being alignment indicative rather than playstyle.

The third of these is probably the one that I'd potentially find convincing. I do think if imag is a bad scum player then that would lend credence to him being town here bc he isn't playing badly by any means. I just have a hard time gleaning much meaningful from his play.

The fourth thing here I actually view as kind of townish for VP. I think his sort of bravado has felt authentic or at least not inauthentic.

[implosion]

One post that I do get sort of scummy vibes from imaginality from is his reads wall 195 that I think VP criticized some parts of. On the whole it feels very "I have to give some thoughts on everyone" rather than I think the way that town more frequently will naturally approach a game, which is that you get stronger reads on some players and weaker reads on others. Forcing everyone into lean town vs lean scum in the way he did here feels, well, forced. Take for instance the numberQ read - it reads like "well I'm making a reads list so i gotta put everyone in a read, gotta come up with something based on these two posts" where I think town would be more likely to happily slot him as "null, need more posts". Especially like, the exact formatting here:

numberQ
- only two posts, so not much to go on
-but I find this switch jarring, from #42"I was really hoping we'd talk about assignments more" to #64 "I'm fine not picking where I go. I have no real preference for which location I'm in."

kinda fits in with this post of him saying "only two posts, not much to go on" but then also feeling the need to say something about him. Other parts of the post feel kind of similar as well.

[implosion]

And yeah I get that you have reasons for asking these questions. The point is just that I haven't felt like I've been able to clearly see that you're actually updating your read of the gamestate in response to them, rather than just asking them for the sake of doing stuff.

[implosion]

To be completely honest I've kind of lost interest in fine-grained sorting of you, Ari, at least for now. My opinion of you doesn't meaningfully matter; I can hope this discussion will be useful for Tanner if he is ultimately part of the Keep decision-making process and that it's useful for whichever 1-2 of Luke/Pav are town but my opinion on Keep right now is "vote Luke" and, candidly, that's unlikely to change from this discussion.

To be frank I'm somewhat annoyed because my situation is that I (generally/vaguely townread by everyone but you I think) am in wall with nQ (universally townread, unless i'm forgetting someone, and not the most prolific poster) and the Toog slot that's being replaced. It feels like the most impact on the game I can have right now is to demonstrate to whoever is town in the wall (and maybe Tanner, I guess) that I'm town, and maybe try to influence other games but really my reads aren't much likely to be better than the reads of townies in other locations and I don't have power in them. And I have nothing to do in my own area to improve my reads right now. So, idk. I'll probably just wander elsewhere for tonight.

Do you have examples of games where VP lacks Bravado as scum?

I don't know his meta well, didn't mean to imply this was a meta read.

[implosion]

I guess I do not take criticism very well and I do want to get to the bottom of why you think I'm asking questions for the sake of asking questions.

This is basically what I'm saying but it'd be more precise to say that the issue is that I can't tell if you're just asking questions for the sake of asking questions. It's not that the questions themselves aren't reasonable things to ask, or that I don't think them being answered is a good thing, it's more that it's a thing-scum-could-do to ask a bunch of questions where the actual reason they're asking those questions is to look like they're doing stuff when in reality they aren't committing to any actual reads. And for a while it's looked kind of like that's what you were doing, because you never actually said what you

thought

of anything or what your interpretation of an answer was unless prompted as in the past couple pages. Like,

And yeah I get that you have reasons for asking these questions. The point is just that I haven't felt like I've been able to clearly see that you're actually updating your read of the gamestate in response to them, rather than just asking them for the sake of doing stuff.

Do you feel any of the responses to my questions have been satisfactory enough to warrant me changing my reads?

Idk, this is for you to decide but I don't understand what the point of asking so many questions is if not to either change reads or reinforce reads or come up with reads, and you weren't especially forthcoming with reads despite asking so many, unless I've missed something which to be fair I easily could have.

I do want to emphasize that I feel like this spat is coming from a clash in our playstyles in both directions, which is one reason why I'm just not really interested in it. I think there's a chance some of your posting here has been +town but again I just don't really see the point in trying all that hard to figure out your alignment especially when you also agree Luke is town atm.

This is all also making me want to just flip wall first because I want to just not deal with the contingency thing of other people not knowing if I'm town in the swap. Though of course it doesn't really work that way. I also do feel like other people's opinions about Wall have been less pronounced than other people's opinions about the other areas, and so I think the added value we'd get at Wall from seeing other areas flip is maybe less than the added value other areas would get from seeing Wall flip.

In context his readslist came after I asked him for "his list" and I only gave three names with no details attached. I think he easily could've just given me three names but instead he went over and beyond to respond to me with a full list with reasoning and I felt that seems somewhat +town given that scum could easily just not give a list or just put three names together.

Specifically you asked for "his list so far", which I feel even more is something that a townie would be likely to not feel the need to give a read on every player in the game.

Like ultimately on a gut level to me the post just feels like the kind of reads-wall that scum tends to make at that juncture.

[implosion]

this is a lot of goddamn content and i have very heavily skimmed not-all of it

another thing is, scum's wincon isn't "win the gate", it's "win 2/3". it did occur to me that if imaginality is scum, this game is probably deeply deeply fucked because why else is he here?

I mean the easy answer to this is that the game is easy and pav is scum and i'm town and they couldn't swap gate and imag thought that 1v1ing vp was more winnable than 1v1ing tanner.

[implosion]

implosion, have you considered that your TR on Lukewarm might be wrong?
(I'm still in the process of writing my reads table.)

...yeah? I've certainly considered that all of my reads could be wrong, most of them are wrong in most of the games i play probably, but hey, that's mafia.

I think that you forgot that Lukewarm desperately wanted to win and swapped you and Pavowski in order to fulfil his desire. Remember 125. Lukewarm was hellbent on winning Keep and scum!Lukewarm would have saw you as a threat.

I'm not sure what you mean by "I think you forgot" - like, I forgot that this is a possibility?

[implosion]

I think part of the reason I've been getting so hung up on Aristeia is that her being scum is like, the easiest way for this game to make sense without feeling arrogant. Or more, calling Pav scum just feels too arrogant. But I don't really have any particularly good reason for him to not be scum.

[implosion]

the only thing i was able to remember from you is that vp is town because dumbtell. scrolling back, the point on toog being prepared is nice but it's like, i dunno, is that all? it didn't give me the impression you're actually solving a lot. i dunno why i have the impression that you Should be solving more but here we are

Oh yeah and to respond to this, I wasn't trying to give explanations there, I was just saying which reads I thought I'd been clear on what they are.

My reason for Toog is more nQ-town than Toog-scum. I talked a bit about it but like, a

lot

of his content gives me town vibes relative to the amount he has posted. And I mean, most of all:

the point on toog being prepared is nice but it's like, i dunno, is that all?

Yeah, I mean, there's probably more but... I haven't exactly had much to work with in Wall.

[implosion]

I think part of the reason I've been getting so hung up on Aristeia is that her being scum is like, the easiest way for this game to make sense without feeling arrogant. Or more, calling Pav scum just feels too arrogant. But I don't really have any particularly good reason for him to not be scum.

Could you explain more what you mean by this - how scum!Ari simplifies the game?

Or more, calling Pav scum just feels too arrogant

Arrogant? Not sure what you mean.

What I basically mean to respond to both of these is that if Pav is scum then our Collective Reads tm on d1 were just really good. And (a) like I had mentioned on d1 I want to be flexible now and (2) no one was really complaining about the plans that we came up with on d1; they were universally accepted with no fuss at all. It just feels kind of ehhh to accept that that was the case if it was 0 scum at keep initially.

[implosion]

RH9 you'd better work to get a not-null read on either me or numberQ given those are the only two reads of yours that actually matter x_x

[implosion]

Right now I'm not entirely sure why we should drastically adjust reads in other games based on how earlier games flip anyhow - again having accurate reads in game X while playing in game Y does not really make one more likely to be town.

The one kind of analysis I do think is directly valid in this way is the analysis around whether the game was 1-1-1 or 2-1-0. That is to say, if we flip wall and keep before gate, and it turns out it was 2-1-0 before the swap, then suddenly any argument around imaginality not wanting to 1v1 VP becomes much less valid, because imaginality would have been forced to 1v1 either VP or Tanner. If it turns out it was 1-1-1 before the swap, then suddenly those arguments gain additional credence because we'd then have to account for why exactly scum chose to swap this pair of people.

[implosion]

Would scum!Baltar really want to place himself at the gate with him + imaginality + miselim bait, and be foreced to IC either imaginality or miselim bait over Tanner?

Yeah, that scenario sounds way easier. I would just IC imaginality and then get the easier player tossed. How is that not a way easier scenario than going into a situation with someone who regularly grills me in games where I am town?

I'd also note here that VP first proposed me+him+DArby/Pav, Tanner was just listed as an alternative. And from a scum!VP perspective DArby/Pav is very much mislim bait if town. So if DArby/Pav is town, VP's first option was what he himself says is a 'way easier scenario' and his backup option was a player who he knows will town read him for being at the same location. Flipping Keep first will confirm if DArby/Pav is town or not.

I guess analysis like this is also an exception actually. Though I also think the reasoning here is putting the cart before the horse by arguing that if VP is scum then this play makes sense for him to do as scum, without any reason he wouldn't have done the same thing as town.

[implosion]

As previously noted in 1086, 1060 feels like Pavowski is trying to do something which is something that I don't think that scum would do. This is because volunteering himself for a vote would appear LAMIST. I agree with a couple of his posts. Examples include 463, 467, 611, 614. Why is Pavowski the only one to get it?Why did my predecessor think so highly of Lukewarm? I agree with 50 149, and 150 from DArby. There is no way that Pavowski is scum.

This is kind of buck-wild.

First of all, Pavowski is hardly "volunteering" himself for a vote. Tanner instigated the interaction by saying he had been considering telling people to vote for Pavowski. How would scum react differently there?? By saying "nah, don't vote me"??

Second, agreeability is almost never a towntell. Especially when the person he's calling scum that you agree with is one of two people that he is literally obligated to call one of scum.

Third, "there is no way that pavowski is scum" is just such an extreme statement. Really? You gave me a "have you considered that you might be wrong on Lukewarm", but you're so confident as to proclaim that there's no way that you're possibly wrong?

I'm not entirely sure if the things I'm complaining about here are all that scum-indicative tbh. But I think the sort of left-field take on Pav's slot in particular is a perfectly viable tact to take if RH9 is replacing in as scum here. Certainly if he's scum he has to do something to shake things up, given me and nQ have both indicated preferences of voting his slot out. I guess I think there's a good chance town just would never come to this conclusion so strongly - I think it's certainly possible for town to come to the conclusion that Pav is town and Luke is scum but I feel like there's a sort of unearned confidence that doesn't really match the tone of the rest of his posting so far.

[implosion]

Okay the more I read RH9's read post the more I feel like I'm reading a different game from him.

1032 felt off to me due to his astounding confidence on his reads.

"Astounding confidence"??

I'm not even super interested in making a giant case about him because it's kind of pointless. This is why I'm saying people need to look at actual actions in the game and who is trying to effectively solve. Motive is the guiding light here.

You have both presented scum and town cases across games. Like I mentioned to tanner, I kinda planned on doing a hard sort of the two of you once the wall flipped. Or, if at any point we started leaning towards the keep flipping first sitting down to do an if x then y post based on how the keep flipped. (but he asked me for my thoughts right now)

Pre flips I am leaning you>imaginality but it is not a hard read. You are looking pretty unpartnered with Ari here, so my if x then y post would probably say that an ari scum flip = town baltar. Don't think that a Pav scum flip would sway my reads in the Gate tho

"I am leaning"

"not a hard read"

"would probably say"

In what world is this astounding confidence? If you're town, are you sure

you

haven't locked yourself into a narrative of Luke-scum and you're reading everything you're seeing through that lens?

[implosion]

The rest of RH9's stated reasoning for his Luke scumread in that post is that he is "strangely into meta and theory" which I have no reason to tie to alignment (I'd consider myself to be strangely interested in meta and theory, generally), and 125, which is just kind of a weird angle to pin a read on and RH9 is acting like it's a slam dunk reason. RH9's argument (he can correct me if I'm wrong) is this: the best way to explain my being swapped with Pavowski is that Lukewarm has a personal motivation beyond simply winning this mafia game to win his minigame personally, and because of that personal motivation he made the swap that gives him personally the single biggest chance of winning his game.

If I'm interpreting this correctly there are many, many issues with this.

1) Why, if Luke's motivation is to win his game, would he not swap himself to Wall? If you think he's scum he'd be able to do this whether or not I'm town. And Wall is the easiest minigame for scum to win.

2) Why are you assuming that Luke's personal motivation would dominate the mafia's reasons for picking who to swap? There are three mafia members and the others probably would not entertain a swap that is specifically engineered for that reason.

3) If this is actually Luke's personal motivation, why wouldn't he just not say anything about it, and instead go to Wall (immediately or eventually)? Why would he, as scum who really wants to win his game, choose to go to Keep and then stay in Keep?

4) Drilling in a bit more to that, why are you assuming that scum-Luke would be truthful about his motivations at all? It's like, taking at face value all of Luke's talk about his reasons for his early move and his desire to win, but then refusing to take anything else he says at face value. It's very selective, very arbitrary.

5) Why is this the best way to explain the swap, rather than just one theory among many possible theories? Wouldn't it make plenty of sense as well if I'm town and Pav is scum, and we were swapped because scum just only had a couple choices? Or if I'm scum and Pav is town and vice versa?

[implosion]

Oh dear! Thanks, implosion! I just realised that I was confbiased on Lukewarm. Maybe, I have been in the wrong, this entire time. I am so grateful that you are here.

If you're town, my point is not to say "You're wrong, and it's obvious you're wrong"; my point is that you did this to me, and that I don't know why you have so much confidence.

[implosion]

While I'm at it, here's a summary of why I personally think Luke is town.

1) his early play around Keep. If we do take his motivation at face value then this is a strange thing for him to do as scum; beyond that I think the insta-jump first mover thing, and the tone of 28, reads very much as town who isn't really afraid what is thought of him rather than as scum. 169 is very early for scum to willingly say something like this - while, sure, actions speak louder than words, I think town is much more likely to unpromptedly say "Yeah I'm happy to just vote for someone else in Keep" early in the game. I think this is evidenced by the previous run of the setup I played where iirc town were doing this and the scum we sent to the keep, we put there very much with the idea of having him be voted for and I don't think he ever tried to hide that.

2) Reasons I gave in 901 - these points were literally me going to the previous page and looking at posts and finding things I think I could justify as very +town. I feel like I could go through Luke's ISO with a fine-tooth comb and find many dozens of posts that would be really hard for anyone but very experienced scum to fake.

3) Like I mentioned, and to elaborate again, I think his repeated talk of "selfishly" wanting things (both his instajump to keep and his saying he wants keep to flip later) is just foreign to how at least I personally think about the game as scum. Both of these ideas are basically things that would help Luke-town selfishly win his own minigame at the expense of other minigames - this means in order to make those posts, he would have to both (1) think "okay, if i were town i would be selfish here and want to win my own game more than I'd care about the game as a whole, so I'd do this" and (2) actually

self-sacrifice

- if he is scum then him going to the Keep makes it

harder

for him to win his game. Him resolving his game after the other two gives the town more information to work with and should therefore also make his game easier for town to win. If he is actually the kind of player who is selfish in this way (which, like I said to RH9, I don't think would be safe to assume if he's scum, but etc) then he'd literally have every incentive not to do these things if he is in fact scum.

I'm sure I could come up with more specifics but eh.

[implosion]

Just noticed:

Go offsite for one day and come back to almost 10 unread pages, wee. Gonna try to catch up, but is there anything in particular to focus on?

Focus on me and RH9. We're the ones in your game, after all.

Regarding Wall: nQ disappearing is a bit unfortunate of course. The only reason that it's worrying from an alignment perspective is because if he is scum then all he needs to do is coast while I drive my currently-incorrect read into the ground. But I really don't see anything from RH9 that makes me feel like I'm wrong right now. His reads post has lots of reasoning I disagree with, which is fine/not really alignment indicative, but it's also just coming at the game from a very peculiar angle if he's town. Sure, as town you don't really get to pick who you get reads on first, but having null reads on both people in the room with you is awfully convenient as scum in a regular 3p eLo like Wall, since it sets you up to align with whoever you can get to flip on the other person. There's nothing in his posting thus far that I feel would be especially complicated to fake as scum - it's clear he put a lot of work into his analysis, but that can be done as either alignment.

I feel like he's the kind of slot that in a regular game I'd want to read in principle based on how he votes and how his opinions develop, what wagons he's on and not and how they flip, etc. Of course that luxury doesn't exist here and it feels like the content he has so far is sort of mostly opaque from a perspective of reading his alignment in isolation.

[implosion]

-snip-

If you're annoyed at me asking if you're confbiased (at least, I'm 99% sure you're being sarcastic in the snipped post, but if I'm wrong then do let me know), then I'm sorry for frustrating you. I don't want to close avenues for dialogue and I can see how it's frustrating being told to magically stop having opinions that you've spent time justifying. I was frustrated when you directed 1204 at me as though I've never considered that I could be wrong about a read, when I've spent the game questioning and re-questioning my reads, and I've been reflecting that frustration toward you.

If you don't want to engage with me directly about Luke, then that's fine; we can just engage with others about him.

[implosion]

And as a last point before I head to bed: we're down to 7 and a half days in deadline. If we're giving Tanner discretion over which game resolves first, he should pick sooner rather than later.

[implosion]

I'm just about ready to scream into the void.

[implosion]

i assume rh9 is still being sarcastic but still can't tell

numberQ is still absent

like 60% of the content in this game is about Keep and like 38% is about Gate, and like 2% of it is about Wall.

[implosion]

And like half the content is people relying so heavily on partner reads with no flips and in a game where like 2/3 of scum play is supposed to be about BSing partner reads.

[implosion]

I just don't even know what else to say rn.

[implosion]

I think if I had unilateral control and was forced to use it to decide everything right now I'd say vote luke at keep and VPB at gate and RH9 at wall; I don't really know about order because there are very few associatives that I'm putting stock in right now.

There are pros and cons for everywhere going first and I'm not entirely sure which ones outweigh the others.

Wall first pros: we're contributing by far the least, so losing our voices matters the least. It's unlikely we're going to use (or even really be able to use) the info from other games usefully.
Cons: conversely our flips aren't really that useful for other games so it's not like there's all that much benefit to actually resolving it. Maybe things will actually start happening here eventually.

Keep first pros: the most contention has been happening here so we can all be either vindicated that we're right or sad that we're wrong. FMPOV it resolves the question of 1-1-1 vs 2-1-0 (and doing it + wall before gate resolves that question from a neutral PoV), which is one thing that is actually relevant for associatives.
Keep first cons: we lose some useful voices, if we lose it it'll be pretty tough to recover from. But really probably the least severe cons.

Gate first pros: it gets vpb and imaginality to stop yelling about how obvious it is that they're town to everyone.
Cons: Tanner will no longer feel the burden of having a vote that matters and will inevitably lose focus and slip into a fugue state

[implosion]

whoops meant to say vote imaginality at gate, not vpb.

[implosion]

if you're gonna give a boring answer like "vote luke at the keep", tell me what you wanna do after that because >_>

Like this would be my boring answer and what comes next would either be "vote imaginality regardless of how keep flips" or "wait to see if anything ever actually happens at Wall".

[implosion]

Basically my reads at not-Wall are at a place analogous to a regular game of mafia where we're nearing the end of the day and it's just like, I need a flip to make progress. They could easily be wrong but it's hard to really think of events that would drastically change them at this point.

To be clear though I'm very conflicted over who scum actually is in Keep. It's just that Luke would surprise me the most. And it's not like I feel I can't be wrong there either.

[implosion]

vp is town because of his approach/attitude mostly.

I actually think 195 is like, enough to justify a decently-sized scumread on its own that I justified here.

[implosion]

Like really if I'm trying to justify why I feel like VP is town and I dig deep enough I will eventually not be able to justify it beyond the bedrock of "gut". I can come up with superficial reasons though but they're just a facile representation of the actual reason which is "his approach to the game just feels like it's not coming from scum" or something like that.

[implosion]

I'm just about ready to scream into the void.

i think there is a giant gap between where I am and where you are because when I read your posts its like you don't think I exist.

Do you just mean in terms of like, my opinion of the Keep? I'm basically just finding you (and Pav) harder to sort than Luke. And the point of Keep is to find one town.

Like really if I'm trying to justify why I feel like VP is town and I dig deep enough I will eventually not be able to justify it beyond the bedrock of "gut". I can come up with superficial reasons though but they're just a facile representation of the actual reason which is "his approach to the game just feels like it's not coming from scum" or something like that.

Implosion, is your take that I locked into VP-me deliberately or that I couldn't swap out because it's 2-1-0 (and also for some reason I decided to IC Tanner rather than VP)?

Either's possible.

If it's 2-1-0, I think it's kind of silly to speculate on whether scum-you would rather 1v1 vp or tanner (and whether scum-vp would rather 1v1 you or tanner). Tanner said he didn't want to be cleared and then was; that's potentially reason enough.

If it's 1-1-1 then like I've described it's entirely possible scum just saw the other locations as more important to mess with for some reason. Maybe they wanted to try to make it look like it was 2-1-0 and they thought this was the best way to do so, maybe they thought putting Pav in Keep was their best shot of winning there, etc etc. I did say that 2-1-0 makes you look scummier and 1-1-1 makes you look townier and so I guess I'd probably want to reconsider some based on the Keep flip but I don't know if it'd be enough to surpass my individual reads.

[implosion]

7 more pages to look at. Probably will mix of close reading and skimming.

@Ari 1388: meh, i mean, fair. I probably missed your read flip in, as I mentioned, heavy skimming. I don't view it as my job in the game to singlehandedly convince people in Keep to agree with me; it's my job to figure out who's scum in Wall, to convince whoever's town in Wall that I am town, and to contribute to a correct view of the other areas.

@Luke 1417: This is kind of a wild theory on pav-scum implying me-scum. Like, following that logic, why would the two of us as scum swap from a situation where Keep is very winnable for scum to one where it basically just isn't? Wall is certainly winnable with Pav-scum staying there too. I just don't follow the reasoning.

[implosion]

what the heck

[implosion]

i was extremely ready to lecture luke; i imagine now his scumbuddies are extremely ready to lecture him instead

[implosion]

the only thing i can assume is that he was going for a gambit of vote ari, hope pav votes him before ari self-hammers.

[implosion]

but also, good

god

this universe i think means scum did perhaps the single worst possible swap x__X

i guess maybe it's good i kept my luke townread close on d1??

[implosion]

LUKE fuckkkkkk

Jesus Christ. If you were town, you voting me was the way out of this. omg

yeah it must be what he was fishing for.

[implosion]

alright tanner no pressure on you but please pick correctly i would appreciate it (:

[implosion]

ofc we can flip wall for the info in keep first if you want to know for sure that it was in fact 1-1-1 pre-swap.

[implosion]

i am not. just awful town.

[implosion]

So with luke flipped scum I guess here's how the swap makes sense fmpov: luke thought keep was more winnable with me not in it, probably because of how the rhetoric was on d1. So he wanted to swap me somewhere. I'm not entirely sure why he didn't e.g. swap me with Tanner then confirm me. Maybe that is a point in favor of VP scum, idk. Is this whole VP-is-better-than-imag-at-1v1s thing like, public knowledge that I just didn't know or what.

To be quite frank I don't really have a good idea why scum picked the swap they did now. I'm not sure why they wouldn't rather swap me with someone in Gate. Maybe scum were just thinking about the game overnight very differently from how I would have, or I guess maybe the best answer is it was just a matter of wanting to make it seem like it was 2-1-0 and the swap was forced. I'm very curious to see why it was now >_>

[implosion]

i have no idea how good I am at reading him; we played together once maybe half a decade ago.

I have no idea how I would have been thinking about the game if I'd been IC'd.

[implosion]

But why would Luke vote Ari like that? I can understand why he'd declare intent to, but the 'Pav will vote me in time' theory when Ari was online and clearly ready to vote immediately doesn't stack up.

Keep it to the scum PT.

This rhetoric reminds me of how Pooky won vs Milobird in Pokemon. Call the other player's posts junk, buddy the deciding voter.

I mean,

[implosion]

(yes i get they're different i don't care :X)

[implosion]

Do you want exclusively Tanner to answer those?

[implosion]

VP I know it is partially an act regardless of alignment but I feel like you aren't giving credit to how difficult Gate really is here. Like, I said it before and I'll say it again, I very much do not envy Tanner's position.

I can like try to do some associative analysis but I've also spent literally a third of this game complaining about people doing BS associative analysis so :\

[implosion]

I so bad want to provide commentary haha.

why didn't you provide commentary and what did you want to say?

I was going to say at that point that Luke and Pav should cross vote with ari deciding, but that actually would have been pointless because Luke could have self hammered.

I don't think we took into account how fucking crazy the voting in the Keep is.

The reason I didn't say anything at that point is because I didn't want to influence the outcome of the game, or give someone an excuse if something shady went down. I figured town gets the most information when the action plays out purely with the players involved at that point.

Also my being me obligates me to point out that this is wrong about Keep. First off there can be a cross vote with the third person deciding, it's just that the two people crossvoting need to both self-vote instead of both voting for the other. Second there are a couple valid ways to resolve Keep with town getting explicit 2/3 odds of winning - it's just that Luke resolved it "wrong" in that if he were town his method would have been wrong. One method is that the IC picks a player they think is towniest and demands that they be voted for. Another is that the IC picks a player they think is scummiest and demand they vote for one of the other two. There's also the option of the three people in Keep choosing to collectively decide on a player using either of these methods, but probably the latter by using "pseudovotes" and when someone is "pseudohammered" they have to vote for someone else. The only problem with this last method is that it runs into the issues I outlined in this old-ass thread, but those problems exist in regular eLo as well.

[implosion]

I've read/skimmed Luke's d1 iso and the only things I see that are super relevant are (1) him early saying he wanted Toog in the same location as him and (2) 236 which surely must be interpretable in some way lol. He advocated for me and toog as going with him in Keep at different points so I can see that as an argument for nQ scum.

The case for imaginality town is (1) the explanations for why the swap happened as it did now that it's 1-1-1 confirmed for me seem more plausible if he's town; (2) Tanner's point about it not making a whole lot of sense to set up this 1v1 if Tanner's already biased against him (which also goes hand in hand with it being 1-1-1, i.e. scum having plenty of other options); (3) his game really hasn't been especially scummy on the whole afaict, there's just a couple things that ping me a fair amount personally but hey there were like 80 things in luke's iso that pinged me as town so .-. but point being it really doesn't feel like a slam-dunk to call his iso scum in isolation.

[implosion]

look if we want to resolve gate first that's fine. I was saying wall should go first if Tanner wants to know that I'm town because me being town is in principal very relevant information for reading Gate.

[implosion]

that it was 1-1-1 pre-swap, and therefore that scum had a choice to make a swap that included gate but chose not to.

[implosion]

because I think VP is significantly townier if I ignore that fact.

[implosion]

also it's not our company's job to provide policy recommendations - we simply tell the lobbyists what outcomes we want and

they

write policies to support those outcomes.

[implosion]

i feel like,

95

105% of the time i read a post of yours, i have no clue if it's sarcasm or not, and that fascinates me

[implosion]

did you know that "tanner alter ego" slant rhymes with "hammer baltar eLo", and that it's much harder to come up with a slant rhyme using "imaginality"?

this is not policy advice, simply an observation about the english language

[implosion]

i have 9!!! tabs open on this game and i do not remember what ANY of them are!!!

you have 162 tabs open???????????

[implosion]

i'm not great at math, but isn't 9! like much larger than 162, implo are you drunk already

Alas, no.

[implosion]

i've also decided to 180 my reads, since that's what's New and Hip. numberQ is clearly scum.

(i want to post this without anything else but I actually have started swaying this direction partially bc of the luke associative stuff and partially bc RH9's opinion changes are... well... i mean i still am not entirely sure about the sarcasm and that is genuinely making it hard to read >___> but if there isn't much then it's maybe townish to change so drastically in response to being challenged??? idk)

[implosion]

This fails at step 4 - the correct move for town or for scum is to self-hammer if possible. It doesn't do anything to heighten Pav's suspicion of Ari. If anything the fact she wasn't lurking ready to instavote herself might be painted as her being less likely to be scum.

You wrote step 4 wrong - it should say "Pav: look Luke voted someone other than himself, such town". And step 3 doesn't need to be there.

[implosion]

I strongly think Luke's actions shouldn't be read into as strongly as they are now, for a few reasons. One is that I know at least half of imaginality's theory is wrong since I'm town. More generally, people make mistakes. Us venerating Luke and being like "he's a good player he wouldn't have done this" like, that's like the argument that "good people can't do bad things". It's reductive. He perfectly well could have made a mistake. Maybe he voted and was going to unvote literal seconds later and got p-edited by ari.

[implosion]

He might not have "decided" he was flipping first. That's my point.

[implosion]

Like I personally think it's kind of far-fetched that Luke-scum in this situation would tank the Keep like that even if he thought it'd help some in the other locations. Keep was clearly gonna be resolved first one way or another, right?

I

strongly

do not buy imaginality's argument of "he needed to do it before ari solved the whole game". Even if ari solved the game it's not like people would magically listen to her. That just is not how mafia works.

[implosion]

oh shit hi im town

[implosion]

if implo hammers that i am going to scream

but hrrm you tempt me

[implosion]

there is a significant part of me that wants to just hammer lol

and tbh i would probably slowroll here as scum

[implosion]

What would RH9’s scum motivation for voting here be. Like they can exist but it just seems much simpler to imagine it’s a town move. Scum should at least want to entertain the notion that the afk player might be convinceable.

[implosion]

tanner would you be angry if i hammered and rh9 was scum

[implosion]

imag, what would your reaction be if Wall was resolved incorrectly and I flipped town?

[implosion]

Tanner doesn't have to interpret that information the same way that I do, it's just giving him more complete info. Probably the real answer is that I'm suggesting Wall flip before Gate because... well if we're wrong the weight of winning the last game goes to tanner instead of me and the other wallfolk. And also to some extent i want out and am just too wimpy to hammer when i had the chance >.>

[implosion]

oh, EVERYONE just wants out huh. if i could get out of this game, i think i would have hammered like 3 years ago

Well if you hammer wrong you still have to stare at the wall. If I hammer wrong I get to see the dead PT.

Idk I have nothing new to say and I don't think I will until/unless the nQ slot does anything. imaginality and VP slinging zingers at each other and pointing out All The Reasons Why The Decision Is Clear eventually gets old.

[implosion]

And in particular your previous two posts are also "I'm about to catch up" and "I'm about to catch up".

[implosion]

I guess specifically I want to hear your opinions on my posting and RH9's posting since you've last commented, since the Wall is where you are.

[implosion]

But what does scum!Luke gain from going after scum!RH9 so hard? Luke was in the hardest game for scum to win, and RH9 is in the easiest game for scum to win. Not sure it really makes for scum!Luke to work on trading those odds.

If I was scum in the Keep I'd probably just consider it a lost cause and do my best to muddy associations. And my final thought for now is, wait, is that literally what Luke did and I'm falling for it?

I'm not sure why you're asking this question when you answer it immediately at the start of the next paragraph?

But moreso this post has no real conclusions in it; saying that Luke went after RH9 so if RH9 is scum he'd have to be bussing pretty hard but maybe he was doing it to muddy associations... is... all true. What's your conclusion from it? Is the conclusion that RH9 is town because Luke wasn't bussing, or that RH9 is scum because Luke was bussing?

We're at the point in the game where we need to be making conclusions, not just stating facts.

[implosion]

I don't understand this post. I agree with the conclusion that the RH9 vote is probably town, but the way you got there doesn't make sense to me. Like, sure, scum are going to entertain any notion that might get them a mislim. Including trying to get an afk player mislimmed. Why is that a reason to TR RH9?

There's strong disincentive to vote first in 3p elo and I think that incentive is more pronounced as scum than as town who can be more brazen specifically in the situation where things are so precarious as they were when RH9 voted. I think at a precarious moment like that scum will want to keep options open.

[implosion]

Speaking of keeping options open you seem to be still doing that in spades, saying you're gut scumreading me and then going back to on the fence immediately thereafter. I know it's possible to be on the fence as town but from the perspective where RH9 and I both at least seem to be leaning you (at least, I imagine RH9 is given that he was willing to vote you earlier, though things could have changed, but what's important here is the appearance) playing the way you are in this fashion seems like the prudent thing to do as scum.

RH9, do you think this recent spate of posting says much meaningful about nQ's alignment?

[implosion]

If town vote first in ELo and they are wrong, the game is immediately lost. That is a much greater disincentive to be brazen. Unless I'm misunderstanding something your logic doesn't track to me.

I probably could have phrased this better but the idea is that the precariousness of the situation wouldn't really affect town as sharply. In this case town voting first in eLo doesn't necessarily mean losing the game because there's also the Gate. I guess I shouldn't have said 3p eLo in general (the reason I was thinking about it is because I was thinking about the MD article I linked earlier) because there are two things about this situation that make it different from the usual. The first is that there's the Gate - this affects scum by increasing the pressure on them (because they *have* to win Wall) and town by decreasing pressure on them (because we don't) and so I think that would lead town to be more likely to vote in the way RH9 did. The second is the precariousness thing I keep saying which basically, the fact that Gate is so chaotic for what it is combined with your slot being gone for so long and the fact that I'd been townreading you before I think would have made the more prudent move for RH9-scum to be not to vote (as evidenced by me not hammering I guess, but well, I guess I'm calling him town for it now so etc). All moot if you're voting me since there's not much reason to argue about RH9 beyond that.

Misrep. I didn't "go back" to the fence. I've been sitting there pretty comfortably ever since I started posting again, actually. I have been pointing out posts that make me suspicious of either party. Scumreading you and then finding a post that makes me doubt that scumread isn't "keeping options open". It's a thought process. Being extra cautious and particular about that process during ELo is not scummy.

It's not a misrep, you said your gut was saying I'm scum and then two posts later you were saying actually you're on the fence. That's literally "going back" to the fence. Maybe you were misrepresenting your own thoughts with your words but I'm accurately representing your words in the order you said them.

[implosion]

Actually, I don't think that scum would wonder if I'm pocketing them like numberQ did in 2011. But scum could say it in order to make me think that they're Town. But would scum!numberQ do that? I need to check his scumrange again.

I don't think it's a hard thing to do as scum in a P-edit where he was just reacting in the moment to the post that was posted while he was writing.

[implosion]

Tanner do you have a strong opinion on resolving wall or gate first right now

my scumteam atm is still the same as baltar's.

[implosion]

The only thing I can really say about this game fmpov is this:

[implosion]

But yeah I guess I'm just curious to hear about the logic behind the swap. My intuition behind this kind of thing is that when townies in a game like this go "a-ha, the reason behind the swap must have been X or Y or Z", as a rule, it's almost never X or Y or Z, even if the townie's conclusion about who scum is winds up correct.