What makes a good town player?

[mastina]

Years ago, I defined the town triple-threat:
*Being obvtown
*Being charismatic
*Being accurate.

You can be a god of charisma with the entire scumteam nailed, but if the town paranoia-mislynches you because they don't see you as town, then all that charisma, all that accuracy, is worthless. So, you need to be able to be obvtown in order to be good to the town. A player who has absolutely zero charisma and is absolutely trash at scumhunting can still add value to the town by being

so ridiculously obvtown

that players who're better scumhunters can, via knowing the obvtown player is town, narrow in on the solve. By pure virtue of being obvtown, even lacking the other aspects of a good scumhunter, you can make the game easier for your faction to win.

You can be godly good at obvtowning yourself and have reads that are ridiculously accurate, but if you can't convince people to follow you on those reads, then you won't be able to translate that into a win. Sometimes, being charismatic in of itself can be enough to make you a threat--even if your reads are wrong, well...wrong reads can change at any time to be right. If your wrong reads change into right reads, and you have the charisma to get people to listen to you, that is lethal.

You can be incredibly obvtown and charismatic, but if you drive the town off a cliff via having the worst reads in the game, the town will still lose. By having accurate reads, you can provide value to your team by applying the pressure where it needs to be. That read accuracy presents a credible threat to the scumteam, because even if you're only one vote--the later into the game you go, the more one vote can make a difference. One vote from an accurate player who isn't obvtown or charismatic doesn't mean much on D1...but one vote from an accurate player in lylo probably wins the town the game.

You can never rely on any one of them individually, but having one of them individually as ridiculously strong will always

help

even if it cannot be relied upon in of itself to win you the game.

And in my opinion, the best town players on-site are the ones who have the overall balance of all three traits. Not the most obvtown players in the game, not the most charismatic players in the game, not the most accurate players in the game, but the players who have the

overall highest

across all three traits. In other words, say someone is an 8/8/8 in all three; they're probably the highest threat in a game even if other players in the game are a 10/3/3, 3/10/3, 3/3/10, etc.

Just, being able to be a credible threat in any field, rather than a threat in one specific field.
It is usually doable for scum to work around a town player who's ridiculously obvtown. It is usually doable for scum to work around a town player who's absurdly charismatic. It is usually doable for scum to work around a town player with insane accuracy. The scum pretty much only have one answer to a town player who can provide all three. (AKA, the nightkill.)

[mastina]

Respectfully, RC, your analysis of Ellibereth is flawed.
Ellibereth had the highest accuracy yes, but he wasn't lacking in the charisma or obvtown departments, they just came from a different location than usual.
Ellibereth had the

reputation

of being so highly accurate, and by putting that reputation forward, he could--and did--get the people who were scum, lynched. This is not the form of charisma most people think of when they think of charisma, but it is still a type of charisma.
Ellibereth had the reputation of being so highly accurate, that if he lynched scum, he was basically instantly obvtown (and similarly, if he pushed for the lynch of a town player, basically instantly obvscum). That's not the form of being obvtown most people think of when they think of being obvtown, but it is still a form of being obvtown.

Neither would be possible without his reputation.

If Ellibereth had no reputation behind him, then him having the best reads of anyone, ever, wouldn't make any difference--he was never charismatic about it and he was never obviously town on his own. When you compare Ellibereth's success before he gained a reputation for accuracy and after he gained a reputation for accuracy, it's pretty much night and day. Before he got the reputation, he was good, but not renown. After he got the reputation, he was only not a double-Paragon because he turned down the title when he was nominated for it as the current holder of the award.

(Basically. Ellibereth played the game for like, nine years. He was accurate for most of those nine years, but it wasn't until the last three or so of those years that people knew of him. Was he less accurate before, during those six prior years? Would have to check, but I'd wager no, he wasn't any less accurate. But in those last three years or so, he stepped up his reputation and got people to follow said reputation.)

[mastina]

Reputation != charisma and having good reads naturally begets having "charisma" if you define it as such

No? There are plenty of players who've had renown for accuracy that, in spite of that renown, didn't develop the reputation that would allow them to be demanded to be sheeped.

A quintessential example: Creature. Stereotypically, he's known for being far far far more accurate than most players, yet in spite of his accuracy, he never had people go sheep him by virtue of being Creature. He was known to be accurate, but the reputation didn't demand he be followed in spite of that. (In fact he was quite infamous for being "very accurate, but very, very ignored"--a classical Cassandra, not listened to in spite of spewing the truth.)

If charisma were defined as a function of read accuracy, then every player who has consistently reads with higher than average accuracy, would be charismatic--but they aren't. Ellibereth was different because he more or less developed a cult following. People who knew him to be good so would sheep him, spread the word, and the cult would grow. Every game he had, he had more people following him than the game before that.

That's not something which has happened for other scummers who have had high read accuracy. High read accuracy in of itself doesn't get you charisma. Ellibereth with high read accuracy got charisma, with a reputation, but his feat is one which nobody has been able to replicate. Ellibereth is more or less an exception to any standard. The proof is in how nobody has been able to, on virtue of having good reads, replicating his success by just those good reads. Ellibereth, specifically, pulled it off. Ellibereth managed to get a reputation and waver it into charisma and into being obvtown where his mere presence changed the nature of the game if he were town. But nobody else with just good reads, has done what he did.

also if ur defining charisma as getting other people to do what u want, whenever elli announced someone was scum they would be dead in less than 24 hours. I don't think anyone else can do that.

Pretty much this, yes. You can't call that not charisma of a type. Ellibereth didn't give reasons most of the time for his nailing scumreads/townreads, but people still followed him in spite of the no reasoning, no logic, just him making a declaration and then it was to be so.

Most people would think of charisma as being that, convincing others, giving good reasoning, good logic, winning over the crowd. But Ellibereth didn't need to do that to achieve the same result.

[mastina]

No matter how hard a penguin tries, there's no way it will ever soar through the sky.

Umm, about that...