Newbie 2045: A Midwinter Night's Dream - End!

[quiet]

Sorry I'm late. Excited to be here! Absolutely no experience playing Mafia via forms, though some experience with hidden role games more generally. While waiting for a newbie game, I read through some previous games, and spent some quality time with the wiki, but I get the sense that none of that will really compare to the real thing.

To properly roleplay my naïveté, it feels only right and natrual to sheep for unwnd. @unwnd, please be my guiding hand, teach me the ways of killing scum.

VOTE: Mr Turtle[\vote]

[quiet]

I'm sorry, let's try that again.

Ahem.
VOTE: Mr Turtle

[quiet]

why sheep unwnd? his vote was before anyone else had posted, so clearly it has no meaning.

It's day 1, I'm not sure anything will have too much meaning. If it matters, I was considering a vote on unwnd, to turn my sheeping more obviously ironic than it was, and BBmola, because I'm interested to see what happens when we get to 3 on them. Also, I didn't love the "Why?" response.

In the end, I decided that I would commit to the role, and really embrace my inner sheep. @unwnd, I need you to come back and teach me fast, so I can make sure to vote for the right person today. What's the GTO strategy here? We talkin mixed equilibriums? What's the vibe?

[quiet]

Harsh, but fair. Here was my thought process:
1. Catching up on posts so far, thought the interaction between unwnd and BBmolla/safebet222 was the most fun of the bunch. "I will try to keep my thoughts a bit more simple", implications of condescension, not gaining much about being right about newbies, and most espeically:
2. unwnd "being excited to teach players his idea of scumhunting"
3. Seems like a fun dynamic to throw myself into, especially as I am, in fact, a total newbie. There's not much I can do on my first post to be town indicative, afaik, so why not pick the most fun thing and go with it.

So, I decided to offer to take on the role of pupil for day1. Given the dynamic with the whole condescension thing, I thought it would be fun. I have practically no reads atm, other then not loving BBmolla's "Why?" post, but that probably means just as little as my badly landed joke.

Is there much I can do beyond throw out some votes in day1 for totally arbitrary reasons? Stepping into the game when I did, would it be better to vote on petapan or BBmolla to push them to 3, turning up the pressure a little? The Mr. Turtle vote felt safer, something that wouldn't rock the boat.

[quiet]

Can't argue with the color coded reads, I'd def say I'm nervous. First game, intro landed badly, my teacher is already resorting to corporal punishment... things are tough, but I did sign up for this, and I will see my training through.

If you had to explain what you didn't like about BBMolla saying "why?" How would you describe it?

I feel like a why me response, especially in day1 where votes are p. much arbitrary, tends to be scummy. There probably is no reason, and there is nothing to defend, but it's natural to want to. On reflection, BBMolla's other post was also brief, so maybe it's meaningless, but it's what stood out to me on first glance.

Since you have given me no further guidance on GTO day1 voting, I will UNVOTE: Mr Turtle VOTE: BBMolla. They called your opening kinda yikes. No one talks about my teacher like that.

[quiet]

now that i've slept some and can actually read -
why the emphasis on being safe, though? is your concern more toward "not rocking the boat" and trying to look good, rather than trying to pressure people?

First game, first post, don't rock the voting boat would be the thinking there. I didn't want to enable two quick votes for a lynch, but I wasn't/ am not sure how likely that would be. It would certainly tell us something though, which probably means enabling it isn't bad.

A few posts in, I'm feeling a little more comfortable, and @petapan, you were right, Mr Turtle is a null vote, thus the change.

[quiet]

game openings are always awkward, but especially so in newbie games where often a lot of players won't quite have an idea of how to get things started. early game awkwardness often gets mistaken for scumminess.

How do things generally get started? How would you rate this game in terms of awkwardness out of ten? I think I'm having a good amount of fun, but there's also the sad reality that I'm decently awkward as a person.

As a side note, I'd never heard of RQS before, but after looking it up, I don't see there being much distinction between RQS and RVS in terms of outcome. It seems unrealistic to me that any scum is giving themselves away day1 (though information from day1 might inform future days, that I can understand). Am I missing something?

[quiet]

Oh, I totally believe some people here have a ton of Mafia experience. Just clicking through the profiles of a few people really briefly (is that allowed? frowned upon? I decided against reading into previous games, as that seems metagamey, and maybe a touch stalkery, but maybe that's a thing people do), it's clear some people have played a very reasonable number of games over years on this site.

[quiet]

Quiet, how are you reading your other newbies right now?

Let's give this a shot.

quiet: 9 posts
Illwei: 12 posts,
Lunar Martian: 77 posts, 2 games, vanilla town lynch day1, 1 game ongoing early.
safebet222: 369 posts, 3 games, vanilla town shot night1, vanilla town elim day5 , mafia roleblocker elim day3 (mafia win)
Mikul: 667 posts, 4 games, vanilla town replaced, town jailkeeper killed night3, mafia roleblocker elim day3 (mafia win), mafia rolecop elim day3 (ongoing).
unwnd: 2393 posts, lots of games, lots of roles, will check out later
petapan: 5650 posts, lots of games, lots of roles, see above
BBmolla: 23033 posts, all the games, all the roles, likes really short posts, see above
Mr Turtle: too slow to review, probably racing a hare
bonus round: mod edition
fferyllt: 17216 posts

Before checking this, I had my "newbie" list to myself, Illwei and Lunar. Safebet222 doesn't talk or act like a newbie, and reviewing previous games, they seem pretty experienced, despite the low game count. Mikul is def. experienced, similar reasons. Not ready to go down the rabbit hole of the rest of y'all just yet.

So give me a sec and I'll provide some reads on Illwei and Lunar, and maybe throw in some extras if anything else stands out to me.

[quiet]

why did you ignore mikul's vote on you to answer me instead?

I considered it, but I felt like I'd been up front about my reasons for acting like I did. I'm happy to follow up on some of his points, though.

Additionally, safebet222 stepped in. I was interested to see what responses that got, if any.

The stuff that most stood out to me from Mikul:

also to note, he can be scared because he is mafia and getting pressure as well. So being scared doesn't mean he is town. It gives him at least better odds of being town, and the fear of playing in the game could be there. But as I said, it could also be that he thinks he fucked up as scum when unwnd pointed out that he was trying to justify his votes in the rvs stage and then he felt the need to be defensive and further explain that vote and his though process.

Could be, but I don't think I come into game 1 joking then fold under pressure as first game first time mafia. More likely that I bother my partner in the mafia only thread, strategize a little, and model my opening messages after something I read in a thread somewhere. This isn't to say I'm not going to take my town game seriously, it's just to say that I would probably take a much safer line than "he hoo funny empathy play".

This is obvious newb town or nervous scum.

Frankly, I agree. I think one is a lot more likely than the other.

In my first post, I said:

Sorry I'm late. Excited to be here! Absolutely no experience playing Mafia via forms, though some experience with hidden role games more generally. While waiting for a newbie game, I read through some previous games, and spent some quality time with the wiki, but I get the sense that none of that will really compare to the real thing.

To properly roleplay my naïveté, it feels only right and natrual to sheep for unwnd. @unwnd, please be my guiding hand, teach me the ways of killing scum.

His first response:

This bothers me because it comes off as a half ass buddying attempt. It's also meant to install humor or emotion into his opening post. Maybe it's because he's new and trying to break in with a good intro or maybe to try and get empathy which is a typical scum tactic.

I don't think my post reads as trying to get empathy, at least not from unwnd. If anything, it was a bit of a joke at his expense (hopefully taken in the way it was intended, lightly); the dynamic up to that point in the thread was that his offer to stand back and let newbies take the forefront, to teach his idea of scumhunting, etc, was a little condescending (not saying it was or it wasn't, it was just the dynamic in the thread), so I figured, what the hell, I'm a newbie, this is as good a way as any to enter, especially in a round that is mostly about randomness and pushing people into making reads/giving information that can be used in later rounds.

The second point is that he is aware of what rvs is. Whether that is from research, asking the mod, however you want to say he learned it. If he is aware of what RVS, he is also aware that it's random. If it's random, then why try to justify your vote and then become defensive about it. Why also hedge that vote with qualifiers.

My experience is watching Super Mafia AllStars vods on twitch/youtube, playing mafia with very casual friends in a time before Covid, and reading a bunch of articles on strategy because it's interesting to me. RVS is like, one of the very first concepts you would pick up on, because it happens at the start of basically every game. I wanted to explain my rational behind voting because discussing your thinking is the best way (read-only way I know) to give and get reads, and people asked me to.

Do you think it would have been better to give that response after he voted/sused me?

[quiet]

Quick Newbie Reads:
(I reserve the right to circle back when I get some more time)
Lunar Martian: 4 posts short posts is not enough for me to have a read. I'm not sure what BBmola thinks is so scummy about Post #67, and I'm very interested to hear about it.
Illwei: Towny town to me. Seems relaxed, putting his reads out there, I don't agree with everything he says, but I see town in the way he says it.

unwnd was performative in a calm...something else...sorta way, and quiet was performative in a "this is a fun little bit here imma do it" sorta way.

Really like this read.

Part of me wants to sus petapan for just asking questions, but It's early D1 and there's also...not much...else...to do...

This also seems towny to me, even though I don't sus petapan for questions.

of course this kinda, doesn't apply as much to more experienced players, but hey! it's a newbie game, right? *sweats*

I don't think scum ever wants to be sweating day1.

Bonus round reads:

BBmola's playstyle confuses me, petapan likes questions and pressure, unwnd goes hard, where is Mr. Turtle, Mikul leans town to me, I want to like safebet222's defense of me, but I could be getting pocketed over that, and y'all experienced people make me paranoid.

[quiet]

There are a few things misconstrued (not sure if intentionally) in his recent posts as well.

Curious what you think was misconstrued. You are likely right, I just want to know which bits I got wrong.

Also, thoughts on the fact that BBMolla seems to (at least on my quick skim) generally play this way, with short confident posts? I also have him scummy, but I'm very open to the possibility that I'm off on that.

[quiet]

@BBMolla... is this vote cause I've been gone for almost 24 hours? I kind of feel that you're voting whoever has been away the longest.

Seems to me that BBMolla is doing the same thing they did with the last vote:

UNVOTE:
lunar vote was just for reactions and I'm relatively satisfied

moving on to a better vote
VOTE: safebet222

It def. got a reaction this time too

[quiet]

you say he "seems relaxed", but then like him because he makes a joke about sweating in one of his posts? isn't that a bit of a contradiction? why do you like the first read? to me, it didn't really offer much, which is why i asked him to follow up on it.

Not a contradiction; I think joking about sweating seems relaxed. If they were actually sweating, stressed, I don't think they make a joke about sweating and stressing; that calls attention. I get that someone might do it to deflect, but I have not gotten deflection vibes from Illwei at all.

I liked Illwei's read that unwnd was performative/calm and I was performative/fun bit let's get it because, well, my thing was a bit, so they were correct on me, and they were also aligned with how I read unwnd.

My towny read impression of Mikul was because of the way + reasons they sussed me. I only developed it after getting asked questions. Didn't feel a huge need to correct/argue with them on it right away, was hoping that some of my answers would help provide more context for them.

[quiet]

for the record, i have experience with bbmolla, and i would say his play so far is basically normal for him. in fact, his consistency is remarkable, given that we haven't been in a game together for 5 years or so. some things never change, i guess. in the past, i was able to townread him fairly easily, but i also can't recall if i've ever seem him as scum, and his playstyle is a fairly easy one to duplicate as scum (i know, because i typically play the same way, or used to, anyway). so far in this game, i don't feel one way or the other about anything he's done so far.

This, combined with my metadive from before, and this gem of a post

UNVOTE:
lunar vote was just for reactions and I'm relatively satisfied

makes me no longer want to vote BB
UNVOTE: BBmolla[\unvote]

[quiet]

Sigh. It really should be a backslash. UNVOTE: BBmolla

[quiet]

Enough for me. I considered unvoting post my metadive, but at that point, they hadn't moved the needle far enough back from scum yet from my perspective. Confirmation that brevity and pressure is his playstyle, both from them and from you, plus their interactions since then was enough to make me disinterested in leaving them at E-2.

I think the harder question is who I vote on now. Lunar is an option, safebet I would like to hear more from when they're available, but I don't feel super strongly about either at this point. Maybe I'm overfearing E-2.

[quiet]

I..disagree? I don't really feel like Lunar gave much of a reaction at all. I'm tracking backwards here, but nothing to me stood out in terms of what BBMolla was supposedly looking for.

When I voted on them originally, I thought the reason (lack thereof) BBmola put a vote on Lunar was scummy, and generally was suspicious of their posting style. The post I made a note of + my metaskim + peta's testimonial + more recent interactions indicated to me that my reasons for voting didn't hold anymore. Maybe there are other reasons to vote on BB, but when I see them, I'll vote then.

Thinking about it, I realize that I don't read BB as town, just not scummy anymore. Given that I do read some other people towny (hi, Illwei), maybe keeping a vote on someone I read as null is better than unvoting.

[quiet]

This is still fishing for empathy. Everything about quiet still bothers me.

Eh, fair, that does really look like that, doesn't it? It seems like empathy plays made to try to gain empathy would be strictly -EV though as scum, seeing as people are inherently suspicious of them.

The new quiet vote bothers me because it still comes off as sheeping unwn

You lost me here. I haven't placed a new vote? Just unvoted who unwnd still is voting for reasons I gave a couple times. Are you talking about originally voting BB?

Okay caught up. Peta also just did a 180 after a little pressure. That also sticks out to me

Also didn't get this read, but liked the back and forth between Peta + Mikul afterwords.

Still unfortunately think Mikul is pretty towny.

On the topic of pressure, let's turn it up a bit on...Lunar. E-2 has the added bonus of putting pressure on everyone else, too.
I considered safebet222, but they are away. Don't see myself voting for peta, Illwei, or Mikul day1.
VOTE: Lunar Martian

[quiet]

Also hi Mr. Turtle, what is going on in your life? Am very excited for a (sort of kind of) 3rd party opinion on everything that's gone down so far. I'll be eagerly and patiently waiting .

In my headcannon, you are going to move very slowly through this game, then solve it completely on like day 3. Slow and steady wins the race and all that.

[quiet]

Alot of the time it's scum trying to buy town cred. It can also be new players but I have caught scum quite a bit

Break down the odds for me. How likely do you think I'm scum vs. I'm new. Do you think I'm new? I recognize new + scum aren't mutually exclusive. If you think I'm new, do you think this is how I play scum?

I'm here to have fun. Solving games are fun. I also think that doing bits about sheeping the experienced one and welcoming the slow to post mr. turtle are also fun, at least day1. Do you think I should remove that from my playstyle?

[quiet]

Newbie 2008? I read that game! Was pretty informative, actually. Very very different to how this game is going.

[quiet]

Their name being not mafia might have been a clue that meta analysis wouldn't work on them. Or maybe it was the size 60 giant red TRACKER claims. hard to say.

[quiet]

I don't understand what was so great about this take... I thought it is pretty typical of players who play like this and should be expected by someone doing a meta dive of any kind.

That's my whole point. I didn't know he played like this before the metadive. I didn't understand and thought his pattern of posting and his vote on Lunar was scummy before I did the metadive, before he posted explaining it, and before other people confirmed this was his playstyle. How am I supposed to know what's typical of players who play like this....before I play with them and before I dive on them, which is when I voted?

Before I knew that, I was suspicious of him for it.

Now I know it, which means my reasons for voting him originally were provably wrong. He went from scum to null for me.

Is it better to keep vote on a null, given that I have some town reads? Or better to unvote after your original reason for voting is provably wrong? That's my waffling question.

[quiet]

Lunar has been a bit lurky

Lunar has been a bit lurky.
Lunar, what's your take on how newbie scum would play? Especially referencing Mikul's posts about me, and this post about you.

[quiet]

Might respond more comprehensively later, but on first read through, only thing I think you got factually wrong was this:

he has "newbie" reads and he makes sure to point this out.

I was asked directly by unwnd to give my reads on the "newbies".

In post 72, unwnd wrote:
Quiet, how are you reading your other newbies right now?
Let's give this a shot.

In 82, I determined who was a newbie. In the next post after, I gave my quick newbie reads, as in, my quick reads on the people I had determined through metadiving were newbies.

Another aside:

He voted Molla
Went straight into cuddling with unwnd
Has engaged with peta
has engaged with safe bet
has engaged with il
There has almost been a complete separation from lunar

Don't have much to say to Lunar because Lunar hasn't said much. I've been mostly responding to other people talking about me vs. asking other people stuff; I want to do more of the later, which is part of why I said hi to Mr. Turtle and voted + asked Lunar about being lurky.

The posting pattern that he starts with is trying to say he is a newb, and that he wants to be led to victory.

As a final point, my first post was fake. It was clearly, obviously, and very intentionally a joke. As I've previously said, it was a bit related to his offer of teaching. He literally said that he was excited to teach his version of scumhunting to newbies. "be my guiding hand, teach me the ways of killing scum" is using his words in a joking way. I don't see literally any world, ever, where that is how I make an empathy play for him. If anything, I was taking the micky out of him. The second thing you noted is me doubling down on the joke. "@unwnd, I need you to come back and teach me fast, so I can make sure to vote for the right person today." I'll accept that it was a poorly landed, forced, not effective joke, but it can't really be SO bad that no one reads it as the bit it was.

Does anyone else read me as not a new player? I'll make the hard claim right now that this is my first game of form mafia ever on any site, my first game of mafia played with serious players, and that my only experience is some home games with friends+family, and watching video mafia online, plus reading over the strategy wiki. Since starting this game, I've been reading some threads of other newbie games, especially those with some of y'all in them. Unfortunately, various things about how the game functions (rvs, pocketing) didn't prepare me whatsoever for actually trying to make my own reads or how to leverage my vote best day1. It's like, I know I should always be eliming day1 and it's usually going to be fairly random, but that didn't prepare me for actually having to develop reads and deciding who to vote.

[quiet]

As for how newbie scum would play: I'm not sure it would be helpful or useful for me to speculate. I don't know well enough anyway, but I'm not assuming anyone is new or plays a certain way without knowing more. I'm probably the newest person here anyway.

This is kinda why I want you to speculate; I think your speculation on how newbie mafia would play could help me get a read on you.

As for Illwei, posts like this tell me Illwei is probably town. Rather than just responding to what people are saying, they go a level deeper by trying to get into the shoes of the person posting and trying to understand why they make the posts they do. That's an extra level of analysis that Mafia would probably have a hard time imitating.

I also think Illwei is town, but more because of tone than the deeper level analysis. I feel like mafia could easily fake deeper level analysis. Lots of people in this thread are giving deeper analysis, and some of them are scum. Why do you think scum would have a hard time faking it?

Are we to take this to mean that you currently don't read anyone as Mafia, and me a null read is your best guess?

What I meant by my comment on unvoting BBMola was only about BBMola. I used to read him as scum, and then he turned null for me, as the reason I had him down as scum turned out to be factually incorrect. BBMola may be scummy for other reasons, but he is not scummy for the reasons I thought he was; that's just BBMola's playstyle. I was wondering if it was better to keep my vote on BBMola despite my scumread being invalidated. That would result in BBMola, a null, retaining my vote. Since I read some people as towny (Illwei, Mikul), keeping my vote on BBMola might have been better than removing it.

I voted for you next because I wanted to hear more from you. Stole the idea from BBMola. You were slightly scummy for me early in the game, but I think you are mostly null for me now. Voted anyway, because I wanted to hear more, and also because E-2 puts pressure on everyone else. If someone brings you to E-1, or hammers, that gives us a lot of info.

What is your take on my BBMola unvote? Should I have left it on him? Do you have a read on BB at all?

[quiet]

To clarify, cause I screwed up that phrasing a little, you were still slightly scummy for me when I voted you. Your posts since I voted you have turned you mostly null for me now. I've liked your response to the pressure so far.

[quiet]

faking tone is like second nature to me. faking real in-depth analysis is pretty hard, even for a veteran player.

What I mean is that I think Illwei's tone during their deeper level analysis seems towny to me vs. just the fact that deeper level analysis exists and Illwei is doing some of it. I'm not exactly sure why you think deeper level analysis would be hard to fake; aren't the systems and tools you employ to analyze someone else's posts/votes/etc repeatable regardless of alignment? You can follow the same process as scum or as town.

The only difference in deeper level analysis as scum would be that all of your scum reads (besides bussing other scum) would be wrong, which means your logic would be incorrect somewhere along the way. But it's easy for town to get things wrong somewhere along the way too, so being wrong early isn't exactly AI. You could follow the same deeper level analysis process you normally do to identify some true town.

I liked the tone/the way that Illwei's deeper level analysis functioned. I read that as towny. That being said, I may be giving people in this game too much credit.

[quiet]

I'm struggling pretty hard with my scumpicks.
BB and Lunar gave me scum vibes initially, but they're pretty null for me now.
No idea how to read peta, no read on safebet, unwnd...also confuses me. Later tonight, I'm going to re-read all three of them.
Not enough from Mr. Turtle yet.

I have town Ill, Mikul. (dispite continuously sussing me, still don't know how to fix that)

[quiet]

I would like everyone to put forth their strongest scumread or the person they would be willing to lim the most today; You may also post your strongest townread as well in conjuction

You've got two of ours, I'd like to see yours before too many more people give theirs.

[quiet]

a totally unrelated question
unwnd, found your thread on town meta/hyperposting. Thought it was interesting, and seems to inform maybe the reason you joined this game?

Has my posting been hyperposting? I’ve been super jazzed to play, so I’ve been jumping in a lot, but reading over your thread plus some of the responses (safebet, lunar, mr turtle) talking about the challenges of catching up, maybe you are on to something.

I’m curious if you think I should be sitting back more. Open to anyone else’s thoughts on that too, just found it interesting.

I also recognize the irony of posting to ask if I’m posting too much.

[quiet]

Well, I certainly picked an interesting day to be busy. Not sure about the mechanics of that BB powerole claim, but it seems...
like it will at least move things forward. But also, objectively bad town play I think? I would think that's something we care about?

Mr Turtle, I am doing my abject best to keep up my excitement for having you in this game, but I don't love your sus on me.

It would be fine if it was just the post you didn't like, but this:

Honestly, I can't tell the difference between towny and scummy behavior as most towny behavior can be faked. I guess that mafia tend to lurk and wagon more? Town are usually more confident, but then again confidence can be faked as well.

If you think that mafia tend to lurk and wagon, which of those two things have I been doing? And people have scumread me based on them thinking I'm faking being non-confident as an empathy play. Some towny players (Mikul) have sussed me for reasons that made me feel like they were town. Your sus did the opposite, and made me feel you were scummy for hopping on Mikul's sentiment.

Give me at least one other person you find suspicious.

[quiet]

I'm going to be busy until midnight EST, but will hop on and get thinking/responding after that.

[quiet]

Yeah, wait, re-reading that quote....
Mr Turtle, how is it that your description of mafia doesn't 100% match your playstyle so far? "Mafia tend to lurk and wagon more".

I'm not actually hard sus on your or anything, I just really don't like that post.

[quiet]

Even the site I use and they play a lot of mafia , could not tell you what ai is or what rvs is. They do it but not by name. I kept throwing terms around to see if he could follow the conversation intentionally and he understood what they all meant.

have a test in 2 hours, but I'm an addict and I need my fix.

I didn't know AI at the start of the game. At first, I thought it meant automatic, phoned in, or mechanical play like an AI would do. Didn't make sense in context, so I looked it up on the wiki. Alignment Indicative. Makes sense, not conceptually difficult. (My fav lookup so far has been IC meaning Inexperience Challenged, which is pretty hilarious). Other things, like WIFOM? I read that page like, three times, and I can understand the concept, but I would not be able to apply that in a game effectively. When someone throws that phrase around, yeah, no idea what to do with it. That one is a lot more challenging.

I knew RVS by name from my first intro to mafia, which was watching pretty high level zoom mafia where they threw that exact phrase around. It's also the first thing that pops up when you start looking at strategy, and the very first thing that happens in any game. I'm putting a decently high amount of effort into this game, and am doing my best to actively get better. Mind you, my play is far from optimal. Playing town, getting read as scum, means I'm not doing my job right. That's where the newbie thing comes out. Understanding concepts and language is easy, playing the game is hard.

Where you might see more of my inexperience come out to play is in a situation like what just went down. BBMola claims a power role, it's time to start sorting Mr. Turtle, now we can theoretically cut down the...what, solution space? number of possible permutations of the setup that it could be, but also narrowing the space for scum to fake claim? I think I can understand that. I have zero clue how to capitalize on it, how to leverage what just happened to make better reads, what the mechanics of this setup are, because when you watch mafia, you don't have to do the mechanics yourself. You just get to watch other people solve the mechanics for you, and then feel smart for following their logic. You guys are throwing out what his soft claim might possibly imply about the setup. I had to go re-read the setup a few times, and I still don't know what mechanically BB's claim results in. Someone is going to have to break down the logic chain for me, because I am absolutely sure that we gained/will gain tomorrow a decent amount of information as a result of it, but I don't know how to get the most out of it.

I got into wanting to play mafia because I'm interested in game theory, mostly from the POV of incomplete information games like you might find in poker (or the stock market, and especially in applications to supply chain or systems). I'm an engineer, I do data analytics stuff. At some point, I'll probably start doing heuristics and trying to develop mixed strats or god knows what else; it's the social deduction stuff that is going to be the most new to me. I've played Coup a good amount, that's a fun game, but it's nothing like this.

The last thing I'll note:
If I recall correctly, some of your sus was over what you saw as empathy plays. Naked, obvious, empathy plays, that to me were jokes. That, right there, is inexperience. Understanding and researching and working hard to pick up on and use the right language is something a new player can do. Knowing how to say hello in a thread? How to post succinctly, give good info, form good reads? There's no way to practice that or research that, other than to maybe try to emulate other posters, and I have zero interest in doing that. I can understand getting scumread, that happens. Strangely, I'm almost more frustrated that I'm getting anti-newbie read, and that the anti-newbie read is leading to a scum feeling.

I discussed the forced and fake thing specifically in a previous post. I don't recall you ever responding to it. Reading games, watching games =/= not new. Not by a long shot. Playing is totally different. You don't have the answers before you start. You have to actually talk to people. That's the stuff I have no idea how to do, and am just making up as I go along. I can guarantee you that in my next game, I'm not going to make a joke about sheeping unwnd and having him teach me his ways of catching scum. Good god, that's one of his first posts, that he wanted to "guide" newbies. I asked him to be my "guiding hand". I just thought it would be a funny and interesting way to jump in.

If there's other stuff I can do to try and clarify, to help sort my alignment, let me know. I think I've addressed the "forced and fake" read already, and I'd ask you to at least revisit that post and then tell me why it's not convincing to you. I have a strong town read on Mikul, which means I can't infinitely allow Mikul to sus me.

[quiet]

Also, until I get answers for my questions of Mr. Turtle, I'm going to vote them.
UNVOTE:
VOTE: Mr. Turtle
That should be E-2

[quiet]

do it. Someone better have a damn good reason if they hammer.

[quiet]

One of the "ringers" can unvote if they think this is mechanically terrible for some reason.

And I swear, Mikul, if you sus me more for picking up on the incredibly obvious context clues for what ringer means (I didn't even have to wiki this one), I think I'll just have to stop trying.

[quiet]

and if I'm town? then I'm throwing a bit, for pinging you all kinds of wrong.
I didn't think about signalling townyness as a town. I thought I could just play, and it would come out. Apparently, even as a town, you have to work to seem towny.

And yeah, I've been quiet, as I mentioned, test. I just really want to sort out the whole you sussing me thing.
I'm cutting myself off until tonight.

[quiet]

wait, I lied, one last thing. Optimally, shouldn't a town....defend themselves, when they think a strong town is sussing them? The sus from Mr. Turtle bothers me considerably less than yours.

[quiet]

if he's town, there's a decent chance mafia just kill him overnight and we don't have to worry about figuring out his role. if he lives, tomorrow he should hard claim his specific role. if no one counter claims, either by claiming his role or an incompatible role from a different setup, the he's probably town.

That makes sense to me.
If we live in the world where BB is town and a role, are there any other risks to town besides them getting shot? I.e. can scum do something with the knowledge of their role (like identify specifically the other roles in the setup?) Is that something that we don't want? Does it benefit town to know the specific setup? Can we derive the mafia roles from knowing town roles? How important is it to town that we correctly know the roles of the mafia? I can probably do the math on this myself when I get a bit of time, but I'm assuming one of you just knows this.

With this question, I'm really asking someone to walk me through how mechanically optimal/ev- BB's play is assuming BB is what he just claimed. Additionally, are there any BB roles that this play would be better/worse with? Off the top of my head, I can't see a doctor doing this ever being EV+, and it feels like cop is too useful too. Never seen a mason played before, so not sure how that would factor in.

If we live in the world where BB is town and not a role, then...I think someone was suggesting a policy lynch. Is that because it causes chaos? Could result in a counter claim? Some other reason besides it seeming scummy?

Then theres the world where he BB mafia. That would be...some kind of play play. A lot of attention to call on yourself for not a ton of benefit, as I don't really think BB was getting elimmed today. Can someone tell me why a mafia might do something like this? I can't see a single reason, other than the fact that maybe it seems so stupid it can't be mafia? I'm still confused.

Also, I recognize that none of this is really pertinent, as the logic for not shooting BB today ever makes sense to me. Happy to redirect my attention to other possible votes. Still, I am curious.

[quiet]

Also, I'm noticing that I keep messing up my pronouns. I need to start defaulting to they. Sorry, everyone.

[quiet]

dude cmon you could have talked to me; you shouldn't pull this crap in a newbie game

I get the sense you want people to leave this for now, but I'll bite anyway.

Why was what BB did regarding pressuring Mr. Turtle to talk more or get voted "pulling this crap in a newbie game?" Is it somehow tryharding, or...something else? This whole interaction went right over my head, and I'm curious about it.

If you want to leave it till post game, that's fine too, but I feel like I'm missing why that would be an advanced strat or inhospitable to newbies or something.

[quiet]

The new people seem to lack the confidence to bite down on a read and the ringers are trying to give them room to learn and develop reads. I don't see that leading anywhere other than more inactivity and scrambling for a kill

This and the previous comment are interesting, that the ringers/active posters are going to have to step in harder than they have been. There seems to be an implication that in a newbie game, the ringers taking too much of a role early takes away from the experience? I don't exactly know if I agree with that, I feel like a lot is happening, but also, I'm pretty active and engaged, so other newbies might have a different take.

So, I'm active, I'd call Illwei active, and we're both new (at least to this form). Obv. Mikul doesn't trust me to lead, but I think you might trust Illwei to take a bit of a commanding stance in day1 voting. If Illwei is willing to push an agenda, would the ringers be interested in following it?

[quiet]

I will say it is a bit difficult not to, and my whole 'hey, we're spectulating too much' and 'not enough commitment' was basically a really polite way to say that I think our conversations right now while intriguing are not necessarily productive, I just didn't wanna discourage anyone lol

This seems related to Mikul's comments, and the comments from the active ringers (BB, Mikul, peta, unwin, not including safebet here just because he's less active right now, but p. sure they qualify as a ringer too) in general around the idea of:

Should ringers push agendas or not?

So, do people, especially newbies, have an opinion on this? Do we want ringers pushing agendas? Ringers, thoughts?

Personally, I think saying something along the lines of "hey, in my experience, Town wants to start committing to reads soon, otherwise things get messy towards the end of the day + it's hard to use the information from day1 in future days" doesn't seem problematic whatsoever. That's good, helpful advice. I certainly wasn't really thinking about the importance of clarifying and committing to reads early. I probably would have kept waffling (and frankly still am) for a few more days without that reminder.

[quiet]

I have a way to maybe sort Illwei. I think this play makes sense.

Illwei, if you keep your vote on Lunar for 2 days, I

INTEND TO HAMMER

Lunar. I’ve previously had my vote on Lunar, and don’t mind putting it back. Some of the arguments against a Mr. Turtle elim are satisfactory for now.

If Illwei doesn’t think that this is a good idea, I invite them to unvote before that time. If Illwei is willing to vote someone else, I’d be willing to vote the same person.

Lunar, do you have any compelling reasons why I should not take this course of action?

[quiet]

how does any of this help solve the game?

I think this is fair, and I can tone it down.

I do think at least some of the questions help solve the game. For example, tomorrow I’m excited to get the mechanics breakdown of BBmolas play. I think both the breakdown and the way people go about justifying or hating it might be telling. Also, it feels like some of y’all are playing with this mechanical information in your head. I don’t have it, so I have to ask.

Also, I do think that talking about the ringers/newbies thing helps solve the game. People have soft declared what they want their playstyle to be. I’d like that codified, so if it changes, that informs my position. Do ringers plan to be more passive or more controlling? What was the purpose of joining this game, and are newbies willing to step up and push agendas, cause if we’re not, ringers have no choice but to step in.

I’ll put a hold on all theoretical questions for the rest of day1, but given how long the days are, I’ll probably start them up again for the first few irl days of tmmrw. Unless everyone thinks I should save them for postgame-I’d love to get some feedback then. This has been super fun.

[quiet]

BBMolla, was Lunar's (lack) of reaction a reaction to you? He seemed to completely ignore your pressure here.

Am trying to answer BBMola’s question about scum partners in a world where Lunar flips scum.

Would scum unwnd ever defend like this?

[quiet]

To clarify, after lunar started getting pressured, unwnd redirected and challenged BBmola pretty hard.

illwei not likely to be scum partners. E-2 when Turtle gave his read, so I’d entertain a scum turtle world. BB unlikely to be scum partner.

Peta...I also think is unlikely, but maybe distancing? Don’t really love any of these worlds. Going to read more later tonight and try to form better reads.

[quiet]

Quiet why you semi-kingmake me? you'll vote where I vote? why?

Want to force you to take a hard stance on elim/not elim Lunar.
You are my strongest townread.

This is for today only, I reserve the right to change my mind in later days.

[quiet]

why's your townread so strong?

1. Illwei is going about the game in a way that reads new to this form, not too tryhard, but genuinely looking for information and scumhunting. Examples that support this for me:

I don't like this line of reasoning, it seems worse than an Info kill to me. It's voting someone out because you think you won't be able to read them later?? and you're kinda preflipping Turtle there as Village.

TLDR;
1) I Think BB's playstyle is not AI, as it is his playstyle it seems.
2) It feels like Unwnd is trying to use his playstyle as an easy kill
3) I have more thoughts but am keeping them to myself, as I want to see how things play out a bit first.

To summarize 1, Illwei is consistently offering quality and specific information when posting, and I read that towny.

2. I know this is probably bad, but the tone of said information/their posts. I had this conversation with someone else earlier; I have a hard time seeing scum Illwei saying any of the following:

of course this kinda, doesn't apply as much to more experienced players, but hey! it's a newbie game, right? *sweats*

Sweating as a joke as mafia, I just don't see.

This is definitely not me meaning to answer for him, so I hope it's not taken that way: but after looking at Lunar's responses, they seem like something that would make me want to leave my vote on Lunar if I was BBmola. so that's something that slightly confuses me.

I also think that a single vote doesn't do much in terms of pressure. Lunar stayed strangely calm during that, even putting what could have been a self-defense vote disguised with fake meaning on BBmola. The whole situation feels awkwardly like some sort of Distancing to me.

I would say that the whole thing feels...off. somehow. filing that away in "think about later" as there's too many directions this could go and I don't want to waste anyone's time talking about all of them and...how equally unlikely they all are...

This is a good example of Illwei's posting where they demonstrate both attentive reads and also, that tone? uncertainty? I'm struggling to describe it exactly, but I just get towny pings from both the logic + the way it is presented.

And this one is probably the worst read of them all, but:

Oh, yeah I did. and...I said Quiet? was more suspicious? huh. I don't know how... Well, maybe before I was looking at everything quiet was saying as if they had already flipped scum? ...huh. Well, that's, the above bit, my answer to...uh...let me find...it..

I read this as someone trying to remember exactly what they said. For whatever reason, I imagine scum Illwei wouldn't be willing to wing it like that. I don't think their uncertainty here is faked. I don't think scum Illwei would be alright posting something they were that uncertain in, given the chance of a slip.

3. These interactions:

Tbf, I was pretty tempted to vote on BBmola to put him at E-1, just...to see what would happen .

It's so tempting
to put him (Lunar) at E-1

Those interactions are also why I intend to hammer Lunar if Illwei doesn't unvote. I'm calling Illwei on their intent a bit.
@Illwei You placed your lunar vote first and have not changed your mind. I would like:
An updated reason why you think we should still elim Lunar today
Who you think likely partners are for scum Lunar

If you want to unvote then revote later when you've had time to make your decision, that's fine. I'll be voting in about 2 days, or if you commit to staying on Lunar, unless Lunar or someone else steps in with a good reason not to do so.

[quiet]

Times I wish I had a day vig.

In a world where you shoot me and I flip red, who is my partner?

In a world where you shoot me and I flip green, what does it say about you/others in the game? I still think your town, probably just as much as Illwei, who I said was my strongest, but I can't exactly follow your reads because then I'd be voting myself.

Do you read anyone else as maf?

[quiet]

Either way I think one of the ringers is scum.

I'm having a hard time reading ringers. Is there anything I can do to read them day1?

[quiet]

G2MH it's probably you and uwnd.

does this mean you are relatively certain it's both of us? Or like, that if you were forced to give an answer, it would be us two.

From the wiki,
"GTH: Gun To Head. Usually prefaces a statement containing absolute certainty by the speaker. Can also be a helpful or threatening question to prompt a response containing certainty"

I wouldn't think you would be that certain on unwnd. I understand me, but not both.

[quiet]

So mikul, you're saying that their opening salvo was scum theater? IDK about that.'re saying that their opening salvo was scum theater? IDK about that.

This is a really good point. With the number of questions I ask, and the amount I post...
You don't think I would have been blowing unwnd or any other ringer up with a million questions about exactly how I should introduce myself, things to think about, ways to post, etc? I think me + a ringer partner on a first game plays pretty different than I have been. I def. don't think unwnd would be excited with me opening the way I did.

[quiet]

My fear of being wrong was immediately re-inforced when Quiet jumped at me, pointing out the flaws in my logic (see #385).

Damn, I'm sorry. I'm having a ton of fun, and I don't think anyone expects anyone to be right day1. Didn't intend to make it feel like I was jumping at you, it just sucked to get sussed by you right away. Mikul's been doing it all day1, so it's not like you were confirmed wrong or anything. There's clearly reasons to be sus of me if Mikul is, and I've pinged bad for other people too.

[quiet]

i guess but the way he quoted illwei doing the same routine to two different wagons doesn't feel natural

are you saying that me quoting his want to E-1 routine is unnatural, or him doing the routine was unnatural? Confused on what you mean there, given you saying in the post before that it made me like me more but Illwei less.

[quiet]

asked and aswered, sorry.

[quiet]

@Lunar: intent to hammer
please claim

would you also be willing to wait on a response from Illwei before hammering? I want to have them double down or back off before Luner is elimmed.

[quiet]

How do you think that scum!Quiet would have done things differently so far? what would Scum!Quiet's next steps be?

So far, scum quiet asks a million questions in the mafia only thread, has a less awkward opening post, and generally has more of a strategy. I think scum!Quiet is also not as overactive. Given that scum!Quiet has no previous games, I would be able to play sort of however I want, and would probably be talking a ton behind the scenes to figure out the best way not to screw up. Maybe I'm being arrogant, maybe I would have gotten caught out for something different, but I have a super hard time seeing a world where I ping like I'm doing an empathy play or whatever else Mikul thinks I'm up to day1.

Hard for me to speculate next steps. I'd have been focusing a lot more today on making sure my voting patterns/suses/etc looked correct for tomorrow; that's something that right now I havn't thought about whatsoever, but day2 I'm sure I'll be doing a lot of research on to try and determine what info we got from day1's votes and the flip.

Also, @ill, being fine with a Lunar vote is all good, but given that you havn't really updated that read at all since you started voting, I'd still be curious for your

1. updated reasons for why you think a Lunar vote is good
2. possible scum!Lunar partners.

[quiet]

I'm getting a tad busy, so honeslty not hammering anything would be prefferable for me so that I can reread and post a bit more in the next few days

Sounds good to me. I'm excited to hear from Lunar + you over the next few days!

Mr. Turtle, where are you at w/ Lunar?

[quiet]

Something i think is off about quiet, is they talk about their intent to hammer Lunar, but tag me in a way that makes me feel like they know Lunar is going to flip village, and are trying to push the blame off of them once the flip happens.

I don't know if they're going to flip one way or the other. I read them scummy early, but they've been quiet. I just wanted to know where you were at before they got hammered. Me offering to hammer if you doubled down was a way to get you to sort yourself one way or the other. I want to know where you fall before the vote happens, I think it will help me sort you in the future. I've read you as town for most of today.

In short, it felt important to me to know your stance before the vote happened. I didn't expect/am still thinking about BB's decision to also intend to hammer.

[quiet]

I would like to state that I’m suspicious of Peta
I can try to elaborate but a Lunar flip would help me figure that out better anyway and I don’t want to elim PETA today

I want to hear more about this, but I'm fine with waiting for it. I can understand that a flip can provide info, but I'm not sure how Lunar's flip might provide info on Peta.

[quiet]

In post 145, Illwei wrote:
Tbf, I was pretty tempted to vote on BBmola to put him at E-1, just...to see what would happen .

In post 368, Illwei wrote:
It's so tempting
to put him (Lunar) at E-1

I believe Peta is referring to these two interactions. I quoted them during my list of 3 reasons I had you as my strongest town read.

These two quotes were also why I was "kingmaking"/asking you to commit strongly to a read on Lunar:

Those interactions are also why I intend to hammer Lunar if Illwei doesn't unvote. I'm calling Illwei on their intent a bit.
@Illwei You placed your lunar vote first and have not changed your mind. I would like:
An updated reason why you think we should still elim Lunar today
Who you think likely partners are for scum Lunar

I almost got what I asked for? Somewhat?

[quiet]

@Mikul, in a world where I am not scum, who do you think is?

Semi-related, I'm also getting less and less happy with Lunar pileon, as I think a two ringer scumteam seems more likely than a 2 newbie scumteam, which is the main way LunarScum makes sense to me.
In a LunarScum world, paired with a newbie, I think:

{Lunar, Mr. Turtle}

makes the most sense with how fast votes piled up. If Lunar flipped scum, I would think Turtle; turtle wasn't in a position to defend Lunar when they got back.

{Lunar, me}

I don't think I get credit for, but hard for me to judge myself. As played today, I think this world looks objectively more likely than the {Lunar, ringer} worlds, but I know it's impossible.
{Lunar, Illwei} I give zero credit at all, unless that most recent...very confusing post...was a play.

For ringer pairings,

{Lunar, Mikul}

is maybe a vague possibility given Mikul's unrelenting sus on me, and slight disinterest now in voting Lunar; but Mikul's sus of me and general play is so damn towny, that I'm struggling to credit any scum!Mikul world. Also, I think there are better redirects Mikul could have done, like pushing Turtle more.

{Lunar, peta}

is the only other pair I think I could understand, but I'd need to re-read to justify.
{Lunar, BB} I don't see BB ever being a Lunar pair with his claim, intent to hammer, any of today.
{Lunar, safe} If anything, I sus safe if Lunar flips green:

At any rate.. Turtle is just always a policy elim, right? Almost always flipping town.

We're always just pushing Lunar here, right?

TLDR:
Feels like it would almost always be exactly {Lunar, Mr. Turtle} given the way today went down. And we've talked about elimming both of them. They've both been wagons. How likely is that? {Ringer, Ringer} is a lot scarier, and seems more probable than {Lunar, Mr. Turtle}.

More importantly, can anyone give me a Lunar team that I should be giving more credit to? Knowing that there were more lunar!Scum worlds that were sensible would make me feel a lot better.

Also BB, I really feel like I need to understand this better. Can you explain to me why specifically a Lunar flip will help you sort peta, as opposed to flipping someone different? Or does that need to wait to tmmrw. I've re-read a few times, and I don't see how that flip specifically helps.

[quiet]

There are 9 of us. 6 townies and 3 scum, right?

I...is anyone giving scum!Illwei credit for faking not knowing how many scum there are in this setup? scum!Illwei always knows the setup.

I'm going out on a limb here and say that I don't think scum!Illwei ever fakes not knowing. It's just so.... it's too much. I don't want it to be the case.

Anyone have a different read?

[quiet]

that seems unlikely, and i'm not sure why he'd assume 6:3. it looks like a slip planted for the sake of appearing town.

Just....WHY.
Why would scum!Illwei make this play right now? Not being pressured that hard, Lunar or Mr. Turtle look like they're going to get lynched today...

It's not like anyone was even reading me as super suspicious right now from what I can see

Huh Illwei even said my argument for me.

I'm just not sure I can credit this as scumIllwei. But it's incredibly polarizing, either Illwei is conf town or conf scum.

ontinuous shade thrown by quiet

Illwei, quote me some shade I've been throwing. I've been trying to get you to commit to a read, to get you to give me just a little more, so I can confirm you as town in my head. Peta used one of my arguments for why I townread you as scumevidence against you. Other than that, I don't think I've been shading you whatsoever. My musings about scum!Illwei are how I'm going to remove you from my suspects pool.

What just happened is like, all of my reads on you times 100x. For this entire game, you've either been totally genuine, or committed to faking it. For the reasons I gave in my long post, I credit you being totally genuine the vast majority of the time. This is a "slip" is incredibly, incredibly polarizing; either you are 100% confirmed town, or you are scum. I still come down in favor of town.

[quiet]

I have to think he is either blind or stupid and judging by his posting styles he's very competent.

I just disagree with this. I think Illwei is plenty competent as a player/can think about the game, but doesn't research/read back deep into the thread before they post. At least not closely. As in (and this is not shade! I've been way over-attentive) they are not putting in a ton of effort yet.
Evidence of this is when they were trying to remember what they had previously posted.

Spoiler:

Which in my first readthrough I saw as attempts from unwnd as them trying to see how people were thinking/making them (them in this case being me) commit instead of being all wishy washy as I am =P

Reading through them again...Man, I hate having my reads list be 50 shades of Null. anyways-

Okay actually in reading over my notes I don't have specific posts that felt village, it was just you asking your questions, which I felt...well, now looking at it I like a lot more than how I saw unwnd originally.

Ignoring this, I immediately dislike unwnd and safebet a tad for having full reads, despite there not really much going on. Safebet was feeling pressured it seems, and unwnd was doing it under the pretense of teaching, so...okay...

I think that probably explains it a bit better than what I did before. Wait, did I answer this before?

Oh, yeah I did. and...I said Quiet? was more suspicious? huh. I don't know how... Well, maybe before I was looking at everything quiet was saying as if they had already flipped scum? ...huh. Well, that's, the above bit, my answer to...uh...let me find...it..

If we are to think that the slip is a scumplay, then we should also probably assume all of this was scumplay. I just don't buy that. Maybe it just super worked on me, but I don't credit that. People are universally jumping all over this, too.

[quiet]

Why

No ringer scumteam:
can remove all combos with me.
I townread Illwei (and even if I didn't, as noted in my previous post, {Illwei Lunar} makes zero sense, so it's just {Illwei, Turtle}.
That leaves exactly {Turtle, Lunar}. So one strong possibility, one possibility I hate.

Two ringer scumteam:
less likely to be sussed day1, way more permutations that work.
Like, at least 6 permutations that work.
Also, much scarier. I think a two ringer scumteam with miselim is a LOT more likely to be a loss than a two newbie scumteam with a miselim.

One ringer, one newbie scumteam:
need to consider more. Consider this decently likely, but...more for some newbies than for others. For example, if Illwei is scum, and did the whole slip act as a play, then either they're not talking and ringer scumpartner is mad af in the private thread, or the other scum didn't know any better, or is not talking at all. That makes {Illwei, Ringer} worlds hard for me to buy.

Ty for the explanation on PETA, though I don't see the information you seem to hiding in those interactions. Look forward to an explanation tmmrw with a flip.

[quiet]

Wait, that is absolutly not a hammer. Peta unvoted. unwin changed their vote.

I am
my goddamn spider senses are tingling now. What the hell was that? If this was supposed to be a play to get reactions out of other people, I'm sorry, but I'm not biting on that. What just happened????

[quiet]

Why are people not voting BB?

Cause BB claimed a role.

Lunar, if you have a role, you need to claim it rn.

[quiet]

you're going to have to clarify who you're seeing as a ringer and a newbie ere since it's clear you're not using the SE divide as a line. also, if you suspect one of the experienced players is scum, why is your attention not directed at us?

Newbie:
Illwei, quiet, lunar, turtle

Ringer:
Mikul, unwnd, peta, BB, safebet

My attention def focused on some of you; I just don't have good reads yet. Apparently, neither does anyone else. People that it seems like could be elimmed today so far are Lunar, then Turtle, then Illwei or me, in that order of likelihood. BB was there for a moment, but the claim got him out.

Interesting that all four of us newbies are on the chopping block. Seems like everyone is not ready to give scum ringer reads with enough confidence to elim. BB is relying on a lunar elim to give a read on peta; some other people have mentioned unwnd or safebet or a few others, but nothing they want to vote today. It feels like theres a pattern though for everyone else, something valuable. I took a shot at using that info when I gave my Lunar pair possibilities above.

Well, there's one exception. Mikul is willing to dayshoot me and elim Illwei or unwnd, so that's one person willing to vote a ringer today.

Any of the ringers willing to vote a ringer tonight? Or are we getting rid of a newbie no matter what today

[quiet]

Spoilertaged a bunch of newbie/ringer world musings, which I started to dislike more and more as I wrote them. Posting anyway because I worked hard on it, spoiler tag because I don't want to waste time. Peta, I have a short response to your comment about experienced players being charismatic there.

Spoiler:

frankly that tends to happen because experienced players are more charismatic. that was certainly a fear for me about the lunar wagon, given that he was a day 1 elimination in his other game.

Doesn't this make it more likely that it's {ringer, ringer} then? As I've previously stated, there's only one combo of {newbie, newbie} that makes sense from my perspective, {lunar, turtle}. If it was {ringer, newbie}, with the exception of maybe {ringer, turtle}, I would think the newbie would be getting a lot of coaching in the maf only thread. I know for sure scumQuiet is asking every single question ever, especially on how to play good, supportive scum, not ever sus them, etc. But none of the newbies are really acting like they have any info support at all, and none of the sussed newbies have been bailed out by anyone or seen any real redirections. For example, I don't credit any {Illwei, ringer} worlds, as I don't think a ringer partner likes or pushes the fake slip play.

Flipping lunar will help clarify a ringer according to BB, though I don't see how; Also, I'm getting concerned that BB is going to get shot tonight, and then whatever lunar/peta thing he's got in his head dies with him. Flipping Turtle takes away some uncertainty, especially as I can credit a lot more {turtle, ringer} worlds...but like safebet said, it's mostly a policy elim, which, okay.

That leaves us with {ringer, ringer}, which is kinda the worst case, since a town ringer gets shot tonight every time, every newbie has at least some sus on them and feels like an easier day2 elim than a ringer would (besides the whole BBMola claim mess, which I've decided to just not think about until tmmrw), and in that world, day3 is real scary.

I guess what I'm getting at is that if we are always elimming a newbie tonight, which newbie elim gives us the most info on ringers? Because if the meta is that ringers are harder to catch and elim, and newbies are easier to catch and elim (but also miselim), then...we have to adjust somehow. I'd much rather have two newScum alive day 3 then two ringerScum day3, and two newbieElims day1 and day2 give no chance and preventing that outcome. I'm thinking here from a risk perspective: risk of losing vs. two ringers with miselims > risk of losing vs two town with miselims, probability of {ringer, ringer} higher than probability of {ringer, newbie}, and we are already flipping a newbie today, so that will cut down even further on the possible {newbie, newbie} and {newbie, ringer} teams.

I've re-read this a couple times, and I'm not super happy with it; The more I go down this whole newbie/ringer chain of thinking, the less I like it. I'm going to post it, cause I don't have the heart to delete it, but it kind of feels like I'm getting off in the weeds here.

he picked that out as a reason to call him town, though

What's the difference? I think the fact that he's tuned into that is questionable.

@safebet, if it changes how you read it at all, my Illwei dive happend after either peta or BB asked me why I townread Illwei so hard. At the time, it was pretty much a gut read, but I felt pretty strongly about it; I took the chance to do an iso on Illwei and try to justify my read with evidence.

I didn't catch the double E-1 routine thing initially. I used it as an example of Illwei seeming relaxed, posting casually, not thinking too hard about their posts, which I don't think scum!Illwei does. If you are wondering how I got tuned into it, it's because it was basically handed to me as a HW assignment.

[quiet]

if you think logic points to an experienced player being scum, make your suspicion heard.

That's the reason I spoilertagged that whole thing. I think logic does point that way, but I don't think it's useful today, because ringerScum doesn't get sussed day1. I can spend a bunch of time (and might tmmrw if I get the time) isoing all the ringers and searching for clues, but it's probably going to take a flip and a night kill before there's enough info to sus a ringer.

I can say I think Mikul is town, I think BBMola gets sorted tomorrow a high percentage of the time, so that leaves unwnd, you, and safe. I can credit any of you as scum, but none of you with enough frequency to ever vote it today. If you asked me right this moment, without reading back over the thread, just based on feeling so far? In a townBB townNewbieFlip world, I think I vote unwnd or safe most, unwnd for their "i'm going to sit back and teach" play as being a pretty strong play as scum, and safe by process of elimination.

You, I think also gets somewhat sorted with BB tmmrw. Something is brewing between you two, but I don't know if I credit it as {BB, peta} or "if scum one, then town other" more.

But again, I don't think this is useful today. I just won't be super happy voting a newbie tmmrw if a newbie today flips town, unless a newbie also gets shot tonight for some reason (I don't think that ever happens).

[quiet]

and I would be lying if I said I'm not tempted to sit here and let myself get killed.

For the record, I still read you town, and will not ever be voting you today. I've given my reasons why I don't think scum!Illwei plays the way you have today.

I remain fine with voting Turtle or Lunar. I don't think there's really a save Lunar push going on here, I more think a lot of interesting things happened at once while we are also waiting for Wednesday to come around for a LunarParty.

Feels bad to preach about not liking voting newbies, then say I'm voting a newbie today, but I don't think there's another option here that gets the votes, and I don't feel like voting one gives us more info. I think I get voted before any ringers do today.

[quiet]

oh so you are skipping the lunar flip and just reading peta now?
what changed?

or is this another reaction test?

[quiet]

it's going to be awful and I'm not looking forward to it when Lunar seemed like a solid scum or info lynch

Does Lunar still seem like a solid scum or info lynch to you?

you never answered why you think lunar's flip would say anything about me

I've been wondering about this for the last few days, and asked about it a couple times.

Can everyone post who they are willing to lynch today? I think most people have made it pretty clear, but I'd like a recount post all the strangeness that happened over the last few pages.

I'm willing to vote Lunar or Turtle today, with at this point, zero preference between the two.

[quiet]

Shoot, wrong word, sorry.

[quiet]

As of now my needs to die pool is
Quiet
Illwei
Unwnd

I'm never voting myself, and I'm never voting Illwei, but I actually think I could find an unwnd vote today (or tmmrw). I mentioned willingness for tmmrw in a previous post.

Also, I'm still trying to figure out what to do with you mikul. I know I flip green. I know in your mind I'm never flipping green, but let's say you get the vote off tonight and I flip green. What does that mean, from your perspective? What happens to the game?

Would the info from me flipping green help you solve the game more than the info from these (I think) relatively null, almost policy votes on Turtle and Lunar? Problem is, I think there is a scum in there with enough frequency that it's never worth considering that angle.

[quiet]

I would advise everyone to consider this. As he's in most people's radar.

Actually, now I'm curious.
How many people are willing to vote me today? Not necessarily first choice, just would be willing to do it. I want to know where people stand on me.

[quiet]

this sudden mistake of me putting 3 people in the scumteam was such proof that I'm scum?

I read your mistake as alignment polarizing, if that makes sense. There is no longer any maybe with you. To be suspicious of you is to say that you faked the mistake thing as a scumplay. To think you are town is to buy that you made the mistake, which means buying that you did not re-read the setup, and also a few other things. The only uncertainty that exists with you anymore is uncertainty between those two polar opposites, as in, you think there is some frequency with which scumIllwei makes the fake miscount play, but you aren't sure how often it happens.

I also think that, like peta said, the too easy LunarWagon fears + the LunarDelay till Thursday thing, made it feel like the illweiScum possibility was worth pressing on.

My take is confirmed town Illwei, but I can 100% understand why some people would read it the other way. Mikul, for example, refuses to believe that you didn't read the setup, given your posting habits, and so has decided the only way the mistake is possible was if you were scum faking it.

Do you feel like the mistake is polarizing like I said?

[quiet]

To make it even more direct, if you are scum, you know exactly how many scum there are 100% of the time, because you share a thread with them. That means that for anyone to be suspicious of you as scum, they have to believe you made a fake not knowing the setup play. There is no way to be suspicious of you without also thinking you are capable of making that play.

My read on you is that you don't make that play, which makes you town.

@unwind.....

no chance. No way. Some mistakes I can understand, but not knowing how many partners are with you in the parter thread you get? When your card says you share a night kill with your partner? There is no way that you somehow forget your own role like that.

I give scumIllwei genuinely accidentally miscounts their scumPartners like, a 0.1% chance. I could entertain an argument for scumIllwei making this play, but not scumIllwei mistakenly making this play.

[quiet]

MAFIA GOON
Welcome!

You are a Mafia Goon.

You and your partner share a factional kill each night. You must choose which of you will commit the kill. You also share a factional Private Thread (PT), located here, where you may talk at any time.

You win when the Town has been eliminated, or nothing can stop this from occurring.

The game thread is here.

Confirm by replying with your role name and alignment or by posting in your PT.Welcome!You are a Mafia Goon.You and your partner share a factional kill each night. You must choose which of you will commit the kill. You also share a factional Private Thread (PT), located here, where you may talk at any time.You win when the Town has been eliminated, or nothing can stop this from occurring.The game thread is here.Confirm by replying with your role name and alignment or by posting in your PT.

Tell me how someone after confirming this role ever forgets they have 1 partner genuinely.

I'd bet the game that it's polarizing.

[quiet]

You submit that Illwei, as scum, while trying to say something that looks towny, forgets that they have 1 partner as the simplest answer?
Like even if they were just trying to look towny so they posted something without thinking about it, in what world would scumIllwei have forgotten about the setup? How does that happen?

I think the way simpler options are either Illwei did forget, or didn't forget. I think forgetting, in this particular case, because of the private thread and the role confirmation and the fact that it's a small game with very few roles....... forgetting is alignment indicative that Illwei is inno. I don't think scumIllwei ever can forget. This means it's either actually forgotten or they are scum and pretended.

[quiet]

I'm not defending you, i'm sorting you. Illwei, you are either 100% scum and made a fake forget the setup play, or 100% town and genuinly forgot, and nothing in between. I am saying that I give zero credence to unwnd's theroy that you as scum could have genuenly forgot, and think that you can be sorted on the basis of that decision alone. I'm way more attached to my take on how polarized you now are than my take that you fall on the Innocent side of those two poles. I see no way that forgetting isn't alignment indicative, which simplifies my read on you considerably.

This feels like a poker read to me, when someone makes a massive overbet on the turn. They've just polarized their range. I can eliminate a ton of hands that it would never make sense to make that play with; suddenly, they are either bluffing, or they have a monster, and you get to start going back through the rest of the hand history to figure out which combos are more likely. I strongly disagree that I'm reading too far into this, and honestly, I'm probably more attached to this point than anything else I've posted this entire day.

I'll drop the point, but I guess just hard disagree with un here.

[quiet]

And trying to figure out which way it is, is classic wifom.

Oooh, i've been waiting for this wine in front of me thing.

I don't think wifom exactly fits here! I said i'd drop it, so I will, but I think it's a lot easier to go through Illwei's posts and try to sort between "would genuinly forget about the setup" and "would fake forgetting about the setup" then it would be to sort "is scummy" from "is towny". I feel equipped to make a judgment between the two poles I set up. So did Mikul, even though they chose the guilty pole. If I understand right, wifom is more...well, I got revealed as doc, so mafia will expect me to protect myself tonight, so they are going to shoot someone else instead, so I should protect them. Don't see how it applies here exacty.

[quiet]

@safe Yeah, sorry, replying on phone while traveling so forgive typos.

I am keeping my vote on Turtle, but would vote Lunar if we go that way instead. I don’t know how to play with silence, and im not excited about trying to read that slot. No one else I feel great voting today, but I mentioned unwnd as someone I’d consider tmmrw, and then ofc bb’s claim stuff is going to happen, I think there’s just a lot more info then.

I will never be voting Ill, bb, myself, Mikul today.
Don’t have any confidence in my reads on safe or peta.

I’m going to focus on being more productive with what I put in the thread. I know unwnd’s comments aren’t directed necessarily, but I agree with them, and havnt been doing it. I think I just like musing about things, and I’m overexcited by that aspect of it. I don’t think that I ever solve the game today.

[quiet]

Possible votes, as I count them:

Lunar Martian (5.5+): Illwei, safebet222, quiet, turtle, bb I think, peta if they don’t deliver..anyone else?
Mr Turtle (3+): quiet, safe, Illwei <—— I think more might be willing, but this is policy vote
Illwei (3): unwnd, petapan, Mikul
unwnd (2.5): Mikul, Illwei, sorta me but prob not
quiet (1+): Mikul, plus probably at least one other person;
peta (1): just Bb here I think

Mikul, safe, bb never get voted today.

Let me know if I miscategorized anyone, I only glanced over the last few pages. If people update who they are willing to vote, I’ll update this.


Quiet: Lunar, Turtle
Mikul: Quiet, Illwei, unwnd
Safe: Lunar, Turtle
Unwnd: Illwei,
Bb: peta, lunar...but also lots of people?

[quiet]

Ignore the bottom thing, sorry, that was a previous count and the phone UI isn’t great.

[quiet]

If I were turtle or lunar, I think I’d be pretty intimidated by the prospect of jumping in now. I mean lunar has a pretty rough job now, after promising that today they’d come back and start posting more, to step in and...well, basically defend against what is looking like a pretty likely vote.

I don’t know if there’s really anything that could make it easier; I guess I just want to say that Lunar (and turtle), I’m excited to hear pretty much anything from you both, and if anyone in the thread has some ideas of where they could start to make it a little less overwhelming, it would be nice to post that. I don’t have any good specific questions for them.

[quiet]

Lunar, maybe starting by giving your top three town and top three scum would be nice.

[quiet]

Busy until tonight, will respond harder then.

Going to move my vote from turtle to newTurtle.

Lunar, what is your take on what norfolk just posted?

VOTE: Norfolk boy1

[quiet]

@lunar
what they just posted/ the slot in general

[quiet]

Got busier with the holidays then expected. Will try to pop on tmmrw evening.

I remain feeling good about voting the turtle slot. I wanted to come back tonight and justify it more thoroughly, but I’m out of time. Beyond not loving what they posted so far, I’m also very much not excited to try and read them tmmrw with so little to look back on. Lunar has shown a lot more of themselves even in their brief posts over this period, and I feel more comfortable reading them in future days.

Also, to peta’s point, I actually discussed in this thread how I imagine a scumQuiet with ringer partner would play, and I don’t think it’s very consistent with how I’ve posted so far whatsoever. I would have asked paragraphs of questions in the mafia only thread, probably workshopping messages. It was interesting to me that Norfolk picked that of all possible reasons to sus me, as I think there are way more valid reasons. Mikul had covered them extensively.

Lunar, I want to review your posts more closely, but can you remind me exactly why you read me so scummy? Like maybe the two or three biggest reasons. I don’t exactly understand the opportunistic argument; I’ve been pretty happy with your elimination the entire game, to the best of my knowledge, with the slight fear of course that I think everyone else has also shared that the wagon on you built up so fast/has stayed so consistent. The biggest reasons I’ve been in favor of your elimination have been that I have some townreads I’m happy with, you’ve pinged me a couple times (I’ll find quotes for you tmmrw if you want them), I’ve been convinced by a few others in the thread that your flip will provide some good information, and that I was previously concerned about how little info we’d have in future days if you stuck around. None of your posts since you’ve been back have screamed town at me yet, but at the moment, I’m more scared of the turtle slot than I am of you tmmrw. That’s where I’m at.

[quiet]

my New Years resolution is going to be brevity. sorry, people, I’ll get better at this

[quiet]

where have they "shown more of themselves"? how do you expect to feel more comfortable reading them in future days?

TLDR: scumLunar has a much harder time playing around what they have previously said then scumNorfolk.

Spoiler:

At the time of posting, lunar had been more responsive, more emotional in their responses, had interacted with more people, had given more reads, and generally was just more present in the thread. I expect to feel more comfortable tmmrw because frankly, I feel decently comfortable now. If we go Lunar, I'm fine with lunar. I detailed last post the reasons why I've been suspicious up to now. I also think that scumLunar has a harder time digging themselves out of trouble in the future if they survive today.

Why vote norfolk over lunar?
Norfolk is starting to catch up with the post count, but unlike Lunar, where they've yet to give me town pings recently to offset my early uncertainty,

every norfolk post makes me more and more suspicious

. Two biggest factors here are who they're deciding to target and how they are doing so.

More reasons I'm unhappy with the turtle slot:

Spoiler:

What I'm not super comfortable with, and maybe this is "bad town play", is absolute silence turning into detailed, and in my opinion, completely just non-sensible reads. There is still, at this stage, less to hold Norfolk to, less information they have given that could be contradicted in future days. They also seem very comfortable writing carefully, emotionlessly. I've at least had time to get used to the rest of you ringers. I'm not excited to develop reads on a new one with nearly a week and a half less to go on. Then, comes the fact that they have yet to post anything I see as useful for town.

I was a little shocked by just how much I disagree with Norfolk's reads. I don't know if that's AI necessarily, but... I was under the impression that literally everyone thinks we can sort BB tmmrw nearly all the time. It even made sense to me after a few posts, where eventually people were just like "drop it, we can solve this tmmrw" I was also pushing for a while, a long with Mikul, for a more complete flip, and I have no extra information, just thought it was better to know/am curious. If Mikul has somehow made me townread them after scumreading me the entire game relentlessly, I'll be upset.

I think targeting me is the obvious play for both scum and town, but as town, you would be searching hard for good reasons to do so.

Spoiler:

If anything, I'm the low hanging fruit of this thread. If someone was to come in from blank, and choose the players that have pulled the most attention that aren't existing wagons, that's me. Targeting the other existing wagon would get jumped all over. So sussing me, I can understand. If it were a townplay, though, they would have actually good reasons. And I know those exist. With a little work, I'm sure you can come up with at least logical reasons to be suspicious of me. More damning still is the fact that you could reference some of Mikul's posts to find reasons. Obvioulsy I know he's wrong, but no one is sussing him for sussing me, and plenty of people think I'm at least a little scummy.

Norfolk's reads on me are terrible, and un-town. Sussing me is right play for both town and scum, but as town, you'd have good reasons for it.

Spoiler:

But Norfolk's reasons for me? Reading them made me feel crazy. I didn't even open calling unwnd condescending, I made a joke that supposed that they were, and then immediately had to defend myself from making an empathy play vs. unwnd to get into their good graces, so clearly the joke didn't work. I only used the word condescending to describe what I saw as the state of the thread at that point during RVS. I've discussed at length the idea of ringers, and never once have I called any of you condescending. It's not something I think is true. Like my goodness, I never expected that rvs joke intro to carry this far. I do agree with other people. I don't think I'm magically going to be the one that gets all the reads myself. And this:

but pushing the importance of meta in your first game is scummy to me.

I don't think I pushed the importance of the meta? In fact, I'm not sure I mentioned it once outside noticing it. I was trying to at least look into each other posting player, to see what else they had going on. The unwnd thread on town meta pops up on the first page of the mafia general discussion, with unwnd's name right there. I just thought it was interesting, and I still think it maybe informs why they chose to join this newbie game. I'll cop to being curious about the meta, though. I've asked questions about optimal play, stuff in the weeds. If anything, people in the game have called that a distraction, and that I need stay focused.

TL;DR
I wasn't looking forward to forming reads from ground zero, where I feel like I have at least a handle on Lunar, even if it is a scummy handle. I don't like any of norfolk's posts. Before them, nothing turtle said inspired confidence. I actually feel better about voting Norfolk than I did Turtle.

trying this, maybe it works better. To the brevity being pro-town thing, I think it is, but it takes experience/more skill than I have to pack lots of info into a few words. I think typing out my thoughts helps me clarify them, but maybe this way these thoughts are a little more consumable. It is also still hard for me to assess which are useful thoughts and which are just...thoughts. I'll keep playing around as the game goes on to try to find something effective.

[quiet]

Looks like we have competing wagons again

Pretty sure they're the same competing wagons from when you left tbh

[quiet]

Will catch up, on phone till tonight, but wanted to quickly chime in:

Not claiming role, no CC, I’m vanilla town.

[quiet]

I still just can’t believe the IllweiScum makes show of miscounting number of mafia.

Assuming no cc and lunar is of the table, I’m willing to vote Newfolk or unwnd, never voting Illwei, mikul, bb. Don’t think peta, safebet get voted today. Leaving vote on newfolk for now.

[quiet]

Sorry, thought it was important to say I wasn’t CCing, but yeah you are right should have just said I don’t cc.

[quiet]

but i think it's less likely he'd try to offer his head up like that

Is anyone ever being genuine about offering up their own head?

Like if you know you are town, especially after a day like today, how often is giving town the info of your green flip going to be better than a chance at eliming someone else who might be mafia?

Maybe out of scope question, someone can explain tmmrw.

[quiet]

Short response to peta on Norfolk 'offering his own head'.

Spoiler:

but that has a high chance of backfiring

Does it have a chance of backfiring? He was already getting voted a high percentage of the time, so saying something like this in recognition of that fact has a risk of backfiring....how? He was already at risk. If this helps him survive to tmmrw, then it did it's job. I guess I don't see the risk. Doesn't feel like a long con at all, but that's probably irrelevent atm. I read it more like feeling defeated, which I don't see as AI

Peta/bb interactions are interesting and complicated as usual. BB, now that Lunar never gets flipped, can you explain why you thought a lunar flip would help you read peta? Is following peta with the vote on Illwei another way to get that information?

With lunar doc claim, does bb survive to tmmrw more frequently than they used to? I rather want some answers.

[quiet]

as in, I want some of the answers that bb has promised to give tmmrw, not I want answers to these questions.

Also Illwei said some of the same things I asked in my spoiler text, just in a different way. @peta do you scumread me asking basically the same thing, or was it just how Illwei said it?

[quiet]

@Illwei, peta never gets voted today. Your realistic choices are me or norfolk, with maybe, possibly, unwnd, but this late, I don't think so. We are out of time for a peta wagon to get moving, and I see no other candidate that gets votes. Personally, I need tmmrw to develop a better read on peta.

I also think the Illwei pressure is madness, and I think BB only voted it to get info on peta.

Keeping my vote on norfolk, as it's the only viable wagon that I feel good about. If Illwei bamboozled me with the scum fake town slip, then tough luck, and until BB or someone else can convince me that a green Illwei flip is still valuable enough information for me to vote for someone I don't find scummy, I'm not going to get behind it.

Also, the wagon on me is finally gaining some steam; I don't know if there's much I can say on the topic, but any directed questions I'm happy to answer. I think that the biggest susses have had to do with me:
-seeming like i'm being too careful/polished about what I type out (mikul's "he sounds forced")
-the awkward opening, which I feel like I've discussed ad nasium at this point
-my detailed, direct responses to being sussed
-seeming like I am lying about my experience/am playing up my inexperience as a tactic/pick up on terminology too easily
-"nervousness"
-being unproductive/not thinking or summarizing before I post

If there's anything outside this list, lmk. I've addressed most or all of these points over the day, but i'll try to summarize some of my responses below:

Spoiler:

Generally, I think most of the susses are explained by what it is: High effort, really excited, brevity challenged newbieTown. I put in a lot of effort in my posts and in reading the thread, generally kept a window open through most of the day as I did work, and reading up on anything I didn't understand and trying to be comprehensive in my posts. I've been super excited to play, I've been into incomplete information games (poker, trading, ai stuff) for ages, and this long form mafia is a fun outlet to do this in the context of a social deduction game. I actually found this particular form from reading the mafiascum wiki first, trying to learn more about strategy after watching some zoom mafia games online. I am def nervous about posting, giving reads, the social part of the deduction game, but also excited, and I've enjoyed this more than I'd hoped. I don't know best practices (example: claiming VT as a CC off my phone; I thought that was necessary to a counter claim), I'm not good at directing my energy in efficient ways, I am not yet good at the brevity thing. I wonder if some of that genuine inexperience has come out, or if the effort kinda offsets it a little bit. I've been pretty conservative about my reads, not really all that excited about going after the petas and the bbs of this game, but that's because I don't think scumPeta really gets sussed day1 in any situation outside of a really exceptional circumstance. I think I have given some firm takes, though I understand if they weren't as helpful or indicative to town as they could have been. Generally, I guess I'm saying I'm playing as pro-town as I know how to, and have really enjoyed every moment of it (especially whatever is going on between BB and peta, I'm very excited to see more of that tmmrw).

[quiet]

Lunar, they're listening to you because you claimed a role. No one is going to vote you today ever, unless there is a counter claim.

[quiet]

Also, I am now at E-1. Nothing to claim.

[quiet]

typed out a few different messages, kinda hate all of them. Anything I say sounds either desperate or unhappy, which is totally not where I'm at.

@peta, i've had so much fun, so please zero heartbreak. Apparently the way I play the game is a little suspicious, and I'll work on it for next time. There will def. be a next time, and this was about the best intro to forum mafia that I could ask for.

Yeah, Ill prob hammers me here. I can't shake the illwei townread, but maybe they got me. Still suspect norfolk, still fascinated by the interplay between you and BB, I think there is something there that we can learn from tmmrw, still have unwnd as a likely ringer candidate. Townread Mikul, no idea on safebet, wish we saw more from them. Lunar.........

call me crazy, but given BB's soft cop claim, if I were lunar, and especially if my partner just got replaced by a ringer by the name of norfolk, and I knew the column I was in because we were both goons, well....

hi there doctor claim.

I think i'm just annoyed that....there's....

i'm probably just biased against lunar at this point, but yeah, norfolk.

I'm trying to put something together for if I do get voted that clearly states my thoughts on the state of the game. Is there anything that would be helpful to know?

[quiet]

More probably unnecessary musing on pr things

Spoiler:

I should note that the idea for Town Doc claim could come from any ringer, or possibly even Lunar themselves. I talked in a post a long time ago why I thought {ringer, ringer} or {newbie, newbie} was most likely given the way the day had gone, but someone had the good point that {ringer, lunar} or {ringer, turtle} would be a hard coach given how unavailable they were. And it's speculative anyway. This isn't a super serious theory, it pre-supposes to exact a column for me to feel good about it. Even though there are only three ways for cop to exist. BB, if you are cop, then I guess you can find out easy enough if you don't die. If BB dies, then that probably confirms them as cop, and I guess you have to determine if lunar was lying then. That widens the field a bit. As a side note, I don't think Ill acts coached, and I don't think I do either.

I would also like to push the people that voted me that have not given clear reasons for it to re-iterate them before the hammer, and give any high frequency partners. Don't think I can defend them necessarily, but I think it would be useful to have them recorded.

[quiet]

No review reads:

Illwei

: Towny town that has ever towned. I don't buy scumIllwei townSlip play. Nope, no, not buying it. If you got me, you got me.

Mikul: medium town

. Concerned they get sussed after I flip green, I think they supported everything they said well and they could have had their choice of elims by moving their vote or their sus earleir in the day. Generally very productive, and efficent. Maybe I should drop them more points for getting me wrong, but I don't.

BBmola: Town/selfsorting

. I really enjoyed BB's play, even if it wasn't exactly.. conventional. It was for sure interesting and fun. Said a lot with very few words, lots of reaction tests, the weird claim, the fuck it voting style, the plan to discover peta's role, etc. I think that if not town, gets sorted p easy tmmrw.

Peta

: Null/look for all their contact. Never got anything but engaged town vibes, but from background reading/the respect of other players in thread, I put this well within their scum range. Really enjoyed playing w/ them.

Safebet

: Null/need to review. I actually think the last few days might give me more insight on safebet. They've done some things I really, really liked. A specific example was calling out my discussion of the town meta post, and asking some questions about Mikul's sus on me, developing their read on me over time. They've done some things that I didn't like as much, but besides feeling that way, I don't have an immediate example on hand. I thought they were also very productive when they posted.

Unwnd

: very oh so slight scum lean. I need to re-read an iso to express why with more detail, but I think part of it was my calculus about the likelihood of {ringer, ringer} and what those worlds look like, and part of it has to do with their reserved style. This is the read I'm struggling with recalling specifics on the most, and feel the least certain on. I'll try to update it. Frankly, recently, i'm doubting it. They were the ringer that if someone insisted I choose a ringer, I'd say was scummiest, but as I said, wouldn't be willing to vote today as I felt that another day would help sort.

Lunar: Scum lean

. Sorry. I don't like your vote on me, I don't like the "finally, everyone is listening to me" vibe, I... I'll admit that it's possible that you being gone has colored my opinion, and I think a few pages ago I would have felt better about putting you closer to neutral, but strangely, your role claim doesn't make me feel better about you. I thought it would.

Norfolk: medium scum

. Maybe I'm letting Turtle's long absence skew my opinion, but as I most recently noted, while Lunar (despite the most recent thing where they almost...were triumphant about being listened to after claiming a role?) gave me blank vibes since they came back, norfolk gave me nothing but scum pings. The quiet wagon, as I said well before the quiet wagon got to this point, is by far the easiest push for norScum coming into the game. Just about everyone thinks i'm at least a little suspicious, and you have Mikul, who is down for the cause into forever, and safebet, who was verbally growing more and more sus of me, that seem easy enough to get on board. They could have done the kind of thing I've been doing, even if i've been doing it amaturly, and done deep dives, picked up qoutes, identified specific reasons why I felt scummy. Instead, they gave three actually terrible, zero effort reasons. The reasons were so bad that other people picked up on how bad they were. I've already stated my opinion on the VT claim, and how from my perspective, there was nothing to lose.

[quiet]

Hey, at least BB didn't forreal hammer me as a reaction test.

looks like it's down to BB and Illwei.

[quiet]

Me and turtleslot? As partners?

Or me and unwnd. That second one makes no sense to me. Unwnd would be happy to coach me in private thread.

[quiet]

You had a bunch on you for a bit.

I was never voting you today anyway, but even if I wanted to, if I had, you could have voted me immediately and that’s that. So voting you was never an option for me, it’s not like peta could convince me.

[quiet]

It was peta, unwnd, BB on you. With me, that would have been 4.

[quiet]

Just to make sure it’s clear,
E-1 for quiet
E-1 for Norfolk

Bb yet to vote. No slowrolls please, unless you need the time to decide.

[quiet]

Ill, brief reason for your vote?

[quiet]

I was pretty saddened about the self-hammer. I didn’t expect it, and I think it took away some important info. Also, just feels bad. I pushed so hard because I knew I wasn’t scum, and I really genuinely didn’t like the Folks reads on me. Mikul is going to have a field day.

Understand not pushing lunar today. P sure they have to claim roleblocked into infinity yep? So pretty much a coin toss between {cop, doc} and lunar safe, or {cop, town} and lunar scum, and scum lunar with ringer partner knows to claim that from scum roles. So no red flips today, we sort that out tmmrw is the plan? Or am I missing something.

How to scum act at the end of yesterday if they know both Norfolk and I are town?

Going to do some reading and thinking.

[quiet]

Do you believe that there is potentially one on Norfolk's wagon, or did scum simply let town shoot themselves in the foot?

I’m thinking some of the earlier wagons might have better info-such as the lunar wagon, the BB half wagon maybe. The discussion during the 4-4 and 3-4 state on me and Norfolk was also interesting. I want to think about who was calling attention to themselves and who was trying not to be responsible, but I wonder how AI that is. I also want to say something like I think the people who were talking a lot at the end there get townpinged by me for it, but I feel like that’s in some people’s scumrange.

[quiet]

i think he's likely a player who gets falsely suspected a lot and he probably just gets killed overnight

I agree with not voting them today, but I don’t think they get killed a lot.

The rb can just rb them every night, and force town to decide. The doc just becomes another vanilla town that can’t do anything-which neatly masks the goon play.

[quiet]

From my perspective, I think I need to scumhunt within peta, safe, unwnd. Illwei maybe, but I think I’d like to focus on the first three. Mikul is clear in my eyes.

@peta oof, my bad, lie more, got it.

[quiet]

I’ll note that Lunar was E-1 when they claimed it, people were telling them to claim, and especially with the known columns, and bb’s pretty heads up soft cop claim, there’s not much to lose. They were 100% getting elimmed otherwise. I’m not going to push it today, but I think saying you’d eat the loss and never consider it is going a little far imo.

[quiet]

More then the occums razor thing, I don’t know why you think it takes so much balls to make the only (informed) claim possible that could save scum. If BB was bluffing, then nothing lost; lunar was already going to get ellimmed. How many other people put BB on cop before the doc claim? Personally, I don’t think his soft claim was all that subtle at all, I thought it was cop or a fake claim entirely, with a lot more weight towards cop.

Out of curiosity, lunar, who did you protect last night?

@safe on the Illwei slot, I’m trying to determine if townIll just doesn’t want to be responsible for hammering. The reasoning was strange, but that uncertainty is strangely...consistent? With how they played?

[quiet]

Is a lunar flip more valuable than flipping me? I’ve been wondering about this for a while from the Mikul/Safe perspective. Like if I flip green, mikul, what does that mean for the rest of your reads?

I think we need to start hunting in the ringers, but if we were to flip one of me, illSlot, or lunar, which gives the most info?

[quiet]

I think I trust you, Illwei, Mikul, and unwnd. I'd love to see quiet flip today, but I am fine with going safebet first too.

@lunar, can you expand a bit on your reads on safebet, peta, and unwnd?

[quiet]

I’m also provisionally coming around on the lunar town doc claim. Four minute latency between getting put on E-1 and claiming. ScumLunar now has to have had the claim planned in advance, and be willing to pull the trigger in four minutes or less, while also posting two other messages, which prob rules out checking in with partner. Def possible, just less likely.

[quiet]

If it’s goon, goon, then at WORST, making the doc claim is a 50/50. No way BB is a mason here, nothing from day1 indicated it in any way. So from scum POV, bb softclaim must be fakeclaim, jailor, cop. Didn’t really credit fake claim, and from the way the soft claim went down, I was thinking an investigative role. Mikul, ask yourself if you had any kind of read on BB when Lunar claimed doctor. In that situation, do you have enough info about BBs role to take the 50/50 on E-1? Totally reasonable from my perspective.

I think it’s productive to discuss, but I agree with mikul that that voting in that direction seems bad today.

Something I’m curious about. Unwnd, why do you feel like safebet is a good vote today? Re-read what you said yesterday, but it was fairly brief/mixed in with a lot of other things. I also think I’ve heard safebets name thrown out as a possibility by a few others (e.g. lunar). Curious where the read is coming from.

[quiet]

Peta is going out of his way to interact with people and engage with people and try to understand their thinking. I think that's probably hard to do convincingly as Mafia.

Maybe I give peta too much credit, but honestly, I put that well within peta’s scum range. I read them as pro town, but I’m still searching for exactly how I’m going to tell the difference between pro town as good scum, or pro town as good town. Clearly I’m not the only person giving peta this kind of respect-look back at BBs posts in particular and the lengths they were willing to go to try and sort peta.

Unwnd had been a lot more circumspect about their contributions (of late, understandable given real life constraints, but even early on, it was a kind of playstyle they adopted). Safebet had been somewhat busy too, but engages more directly than unwnd when involved.

Starting to think that I, like Lunar, am a decently large liability for town. Mikul votes me infinitely, townLunar does the same pretty much and is never dying, and at least one and often two of them are town. Problem is, I don’t think knowing that yesterday’s final wagons were town-town gives all that much info. I know that every one of yesterday’s wagons besides Illwei and possibly Lunar are town, and I can’t seem to do much with that.

In other news, I think I’ve decided to never read into any opening posts as a fundamental rule. Just not worth it.

[quiet]

I hate the threat... its almost like you're baiting us to go there. Eliminating a perfectly plausible scenario and just throwing up your hands that you'll take the "L" if it is the case is not very town friendly. I get the point of view of not wanting to push there today... but you have to at least consider it at some point if he doesn't die, right?

This is basically my exact fear. Don’t think Lunar ever dies. Don’t think I ever die.

I don’t think it’s bait, but I agree that Lunar needs to be in consideration in future days. Next time we have this conversation, there’s going to be less town around, and if Lunar is scum, then Mikul is def also going to be around.

[quiet]

To clarify, don’t think we ever get shot at night, not that we don’t ever get voted.

[quiet]

unwnd + safebet

Well, I townread Illwei into infinity, and I’m in the other pair, so I’m all aboard this train pls and thank you

[quiet]

If I’m right about things a night kill on me is likely to fail but I welcome it and why I’m pretty okay claiming early

Huh. This was posted right after BBs soft claim of “hard claim I’m probably a PR”

Mikul did ping it out then.

But they’ve been so earnest in their hunt of me.

Also, re-reading some of the posts around then make me feel a lot better about peta, especially the reaction to the soft claim, and generally the engagement they’ve been showing. I think I like Unwnd’s read in that regard.

[quiet]

Disarray because you thought {safe, mikul} likely partners? Or for another reason.

Also, town peta gets shot often tonight. A little note before the end of the day would be nice, just in case.

[quiet]

Mikul, I feel your frustration, but if I’m giving half ass reads (admittedly been a busy time with holidays and been posting from my phone, so I’ll agree that my quality/effort may have dipped in the last week)..I literally posted yesterday exactly that neither lunar nor I ever get shot at night, expecting that either way lunar always survives and is therefore a liability to town...as am I, so long as you and lunar are in the game. I gave that read, along with the whole lunar chain of logic, that we have been (imo productively) discussing. I said at the start of today that I’d be trying to get reads on safe, unwnd, peta. It’s going to take me a bit.

If there’s one thing I’ve felt decent about, it’s been my level of attention and engagement. I know you scumread me into infinity. I know nothing ever changes that until I flip. I know you don’t believe it, but this is my first game, and I’m still trying to figure out how to be useful, give confident reads, especially on people that are experienced and I believe have the ability to post in a way that is basically never AI unless forced to defend/wagon someone in an anti-town way.

From my perspective, yesterday gave very little mechanical information, as I know both final wagons were innocent, and we really can’t do anything about Lunar right now, and the only other wagon yesterday was Illwei, who i townread into infinity and just got replaced, and BB, who was also town. This means two things: one, scum could have played basically the entirety of yesterday as pro town as they wanted with no cost to them whatsoever, and two, I have no mechanical info to use, so I now have to do the thing I’m least experienced at: make reads.

The field of play has narrowed. That’s something useful. I have some town reads. That could be useful. What I don’t know is if it’s going to take me getting hanged, because like I said, with you around, I NEVER GET SHOT, to move the game forward, or if it’s better to elim someone else.

Also I’ve been very clear I don’t want to elim Lunar today. I just think it needed to be discussed, as I said in my previous post. It’s just about the only mechanical info we got yesterday. So now we’ve discussed it. Great. I’d like to discuss the scariest world now, which is a {ringer, ringer} or {ringer, Lunar who we can’t vote}, where in this case I’m trying to sort between:

peta (town, but I remain frightened)
Unwnd (playstyle seems like it would be rather effective as scum)
Safebet (lots of susses been thrown their way-prob mostly for lack of activity, which has proven to be an incredibly bad indicator of guilt this game, more likely in ringer ringer game than otherwise)

I recognize that there are other possibilities, but these ones seem like they result in a town loss most frequently, so I want to explore them today if possible.

I want to keep my mikul townread. Does anyone think that scum mikul tunnels and plays like this? I’ve looked for some other games that might show something, but this seems...uncharacteristically intense.

[quiet]

Short summery: if lunar is scum, they have a ringer partner. I guess I’d entertain mikul then, but could just as easily be anyone else. If lunar town, I’m very sure there is at least one ringer scum. In the words of our dearly departed cop, “fuck this game is hard”. Scum never had to put themselves at risk yesterday, as the majority of people on the chopping block were town, and all PRs are eliminated or blocked forever now. I am most concerned about going into the late game with me, Lunar, mikul alive, with some ringers left, and me always getting voted, or lunar always getting voted, which sounds like a really really bad deal. An innocent ringer gets shot tonight. It feels like we should elim at least one of them and hope...or just get rid of me, to make sure a mikul, quiet, Lunar, x, x world doesn’t develop. That sounds world feels to me like a loss.

[quiet]

To make it even more direct, if none of the following happen:

1. Mikul or lunar or both stop thinking I’m scum (yeah no)
2. We hit on scum tonight
3. One of mikul, quiet, Lunar are voted tonight
4. mikul and Lunar are exactly scum

Mikul, Lunar, and I survive to tmmrw;
I get voted tmmrw and from my perspective where I know I’m inno, town loses.

Solutions:
1. everyone is so confident in townreading me that we vote one of them. I don’t like the mikul vote, Lunar is at best a 50/50, don’t think i inspire that kind of confidence, don’t love this plan.
2. Someone changes their mind and stops tunneling me into infinity.
3. We just find a scum and solve all our issues.
4. Vote me and make sure we find scum tmmrw. After scum hasn’t had to put themselves in the limelight once.

Am I missing something? Is that too in the weeds/making too many assumptions?

[quiet]

Also happy new year from PDX! Thx everyone for making the end of 2020 so much fun.

[quiet]

Just read every single Mikul game on this form, and while I have not seen any examples of tunneling this extreme, I’ve seen every example of play this passionate/engaged/detailed as both alignments. No longer have any read on Mikul, as I no longer give Mikul any town credit for pushing me so hard with such specificity. I’ve seen Mikul do that both ways. Am considerably happier with a Mikul elim now than I was.

Mikul, is there any world where you stop voting me? Ever? Or is literally my only play as town to either vote myself, or vote you? (Or lunar I suppose, but they seem to come around way more frequently then you do.)

[quiet]

But saying my only play is to vote you because you won't stop
..yikes

This is nearly willfully misrepresenting what I said.

Answer me this.

If you, me, and lunar are Alive tmmrw, with 2 scum, where BECAUSE I DONT THINK BOTH YOU AND LUNAR ARE SCUM, at least one is outside us three-

Is there ever a world where I’m not ellimmed? You and lunar almost always vote me there. You and lunar and me always survive. I gave four options. I’m happy to hunt within unwnd and safebet. I don’t see myself ever voting BM, because Illwei is the townyist town that ever Towned to me.

But in a world where I am town, if we don’t hit today, and we don’t elim you me or lunar, then from my perspective, we lose tmmrw. People hunting for my partners feels bad, because I know I don’t have any. Unless there is a world where either you or lunar change your minds, I don’t see many options.

Skiing today so will be on more thourgly tonight. But mikul am I actually wrong about my logic?

[quiet]

If rb gets flipped, they die that same night. Obviously. Don’t need to kill before then. You always get a shot after a vote.

[quiet]

Or because they mislych me.

[quiet]

I’m also down to vote safebet. Not doing it or justifying till I’m home though, just announcing I like it a fair amount.

[quiet]

It was a reaction test yes. Not actually at e-1

[quiet]

I’m not hammering until you are back from vla. I wasn’t voting until I was off mountain today and could re-read properly either way. I’m okay with a safebet vote, but it comes off the back of the mikul lunar voting block, who partially credit it safe scum because they think I’m a good partner.

I don’t see how shorter days benifits town. I also want to hear more from peta on this development.

[quiet]

I was happier to vote safebet when it was just BM. Mikul on board, okay; mikul and lunar vote blocking, oh god.

Frankly I’m half convinced the “quiet it’s your hammer go right ahead do it” is a reaction test.

I didn’t vote safebet while out and about today for this exact reason: I didn’t want to make a halfway considered decision of yeah, I’d be willing to vote safebet, I think they’re scummy a reasonable amount of the time here, then look back when I got home to see that they’d been quickhammered. Looks like that pretty nearly was a reality, and makes me rethink it a bit, despite the fact that my two towns, BM and Mikul, are on board.

I think mikul/lunar like the wagon in part because they think safebet is a good partner for me, which I know to be wrong. I want to vote within peta, Unwnd, safebet today, like BM, okay, I can get behind this- that was the thinking.

[quiet]

From BMs earlier post inviting me to hammer, I thought they were at E-1. Thanks for the heart attack, unwnd.

Yeah, I’d also vastly prefer to let safebet have time to say what they want. Unwnd, I’ll try to be more productive moving forward. Today has been not my best. Still don’t think that’s a reason to end a day early, it feels like there’s at least some stuff here worth thinking about/discussing.

[quiet]

oh god I just said I wouldn’t get off into the weeds. One last time.

I recognize I’ve been all over the place today. Need to just stop posting off my phone, sit back, get on my laptop, think, then post 1/4th of what I normally do.

I feel like tmmrw is a big problem. Mikul and Lunar vote as a block. They want to shoot me. I am almost positive at least one of them is town. Neither of them die tonight. I don’t die tonight. Tmmrw, if we don’t get rid of a scum today, I get voted and we lose. That’s my perspective.

I’ve given a number of solutions, mostly desperate. We just find a scum today. Mikul or lunar or both consider not voting me tmmrw. One of the three of us dies.

I really really really really hope mikul is scum, and his read on me is a tactic. Last night, late, reading over some of their other games, I realized that I actually put deathtunneling me and posting this specifically and all the towny things are within mikuls scum range.

I just sadly think that mikul is town. Which means, from my perspective, if something isn’t done about this situation today, we lose.

I’m more okay with a mikul vote because it solves the me getting misellimed tmmrw issue, and because unlike prior to my metadive, I now think scum mikul does this with some frequency. It’s plausible to me now, though still unlikely.

But reflecting today, and thanks to BM saying hey quiet get out of the weeds, it feels stupid to vote someone I think flips town most of the time. I just don’t know how to solve the tmmrw problem.

[quiet]

My reasoning for hunting within peta, unwnd, safebet is that

An inno one of you gets shot tonight always, imo
I find it incredibly unlikely that we are in a newbie newbie game
I townread mikul and Illwei who had become BM

If lunar is scum, def ringer partner. If lunar inno, even if mikul is scum, still has to be ringer partner. Am I getting fooled by a fake townSlip? Maybe. I don’t think so. So I have to hunt between you three, or go back to my in the weeds theory that apparently makes no sense.

[quiet]

Maybe I’m just wrong here.

I’ll just spend tmmrw before safebet gets back trying to develop new reads from the ground up. Maybe I’m just too stuck in my own perspective.

[quiet]

I like this a lot better than safebet.
VOTE: unwnd

[quiet]

Personally, I thought my vote on unwnd was decently productive. I declared my intent at the start of today to put pressure on the three ringer slots of unwnd, safebet (who is no longer a ringer! Plot twist of the year! Safebet, you play really experienced for this being your fourth game), and peta, all of whom I felt like as scum could have easily skated through day1 with no suspicion raised whatsoever.

Got more of a reaction out of Unwnd just now than anything I’ve seen all game. Want to consider what that means and do an iso.
Also, have lots more peta interactions, and a wall from safebet that I rather liked on first read.

Finally free for a day, and on my laptop. Maybe the quality will go up a bit, idk.

[quiet]

Quiet town
BM townSlip of a town
Mikul town, or pulling quite the tunnel gambit with lunar or someone below.
Lunar prob town, but def requires a partner from below or exactly mikul. I agree we lose to mikul/lunar, and don’t find it too likely.

safebet undecided, everyone I like voted them though

Peta or Unwnd - good partners for safe, good partners for lunar, frankly good parters with each other, and how in the world am I supposed to read them anyway with the town implosion day 1

Unwnd, how could I have dealt with you 8 pages ago?

Peta, how do I sort you? I’ve liked pretty much everything you’ve posted. I’m just not sure if there’s been a time in this game where scum peta has had to say anything dislikeable.

[quiet]

Oh hi!

Had fun, makes sense. Sorry for getting so lost in the weeds, I’ll work on that for last game.

This at least prevents my worst fear, which was a miselim tmmrw.

I don’t see how my inno flip townclears unwnd, but maybe I’m missing something.

I think one of peta, unwnd, safebet seem most likely. As for the partner? Good luck. Sorry to not have been as much help.

Had a ton of fun, will be back, and I was being genuine about this being my first game, so please let me know some basic shit I can do in the future to be more useful as town. Kinda just jumped right in without a plan; def should have come up with a better town strat before playing.

[quiet]

Excited to see mikuls reaction. Wish I didn’t townread them still.

Any other thoughts? Hey, a pretty great into to form mafia, everyone. Excited to watch from the sidelines, was decently scared I’d have to be one of the people trying to win this very, very difficult game we’ve made for ourselves.

You got this town. I believe in you

[quiet]

Yeah peta, that’s kinda why I was pushing for a elim within you and unwnd and I thought safebet today, because I assumed that if town, you are a frequent mafia target, and if mafia, you look like town anyway. Helps with fop. Idk.

[quiet]

Thanks for the game everyone. I learned a lot, and it was a really great experience. I left post-elimmed thoughts for everyone in the deadthread.

[quiet]

And double thanks to the mods!

[quiet]

^^^ I am very excited to see the mafia PT.
I want to know how the fake claim went down.

[quiet]

Ask and ye shall receive

[quiet]

Lunar! Looks like Safebet was the one to put BB exactly on Cop, but that fake claim was all you!

Lunar played an amazing game, a game that probably only works once, but hey, I think they nailed it. GGs.

[quiet]

Yeah, I recognize that unwnd. I wouldn’t mind getting told to be quiet-it’s right there in my name.

I’m going to try over the next few games I play to slowly figure out how to cut down and become more streamlined in what I say. It’s hard for me to know what to focus on, how to play well, where to push, so I think I default to just reacting and analyzing what I can. It ends up being not focused and distracting.

[quiet]

I... also had no idea how to react to a deathtunnel. I

Still don’t know what I’m supposed to do in that situation haha

Reading the PT was great. Town may have made this game hard on ourselves, but safe and lunar took full advantage.