Open 869 | Fight for the Winter Court [Game Over!]

[absinthe]

greetings



gentlebeings!



Several players already know this is a fferyllt alt. Now everyone does.

I played in the first Guardians game and haven’t paid much attention to the iterations since then.

Preference order the same as before: Keep, Gate, Wall, but aren’t as strong this time. Some of ya’ll I’m not sure I can spot as scum, and some are new to me.

[absinthe]

Hi everyone!! Very excited to play with you all

A couple quick thoughts on this setup. These are just my own assessments. I would of course love to discuss if anyone disagrees, I know a majority of you have played in previous runs.

1) On day 1, it is extremely beneficial to scum to be among the first to lock in their locations. Any early votes should be put under intense pressure and scrutiny.

2) On day 2, I think it also benefits scum a lot if there is an open consensus about the order of resolving the locations. It allows them to plan ahead, plant associatives, and be prepared for what's coming. I suggest being flexible.

I agree with most of this. In the first iteration we were trying to feel out the best approach, and scum won that one handily. :/

Day 2, the Gate player that scum mod confirmed as town can be a sort of rallying point. We had a solve order planned, but didn't stick with it, mostly due to impatience and dithering. The dithering was my fault.

[absinthe]

I'm not familiar with you, Demona.

I wanted to go to the keep last time for similar reasons, I tend to townhunt/POE most games. And I felt pretty confident I could obvtown even as an unknown alt.

I blew the unknown part with my second post. Still managed to obvtown, not that it mattered.

[absinthe]

I think chemistry between people will matter more for games than like "put a consensus townread in game x" because townreads can be wrong if you get them all right you win anyway. Maybe picking scummy players for certain games kind of like gerrymanders your EV though? Maybe that's more impactful.

It seems like a nontrivial setup, brainwrinkler. Which can make me worried about dayplay health.

Coral should just solve the strat and then we should play mafia

the second sentence here makes no sense to me but it does sound very intelligent.

but i think i agree on the point that the important thing is finding scum and finding town and the rest will fall where it falls.

It's not a fully fleshed out idea but my brain was saying like, if you make all 3 games barely successfully sortable then your EV is high, if you pick that out by hedging the difficult players with easy games and easy players with hard games

Who's difficult and who's easy to you?

[absinthe]

This is way too fast for my brain atm LMAO

I know you're mostly joking but any game with me/you/skitter would be the biggest shitshow, but ~we'll see~

either you're scum and get your shot to humiliate me or we have a nightmare 3p that will ruin us both emotionally this sounds ideal to me

You say this like it's a good thing!

[absinthe]

someone came out of retirement only to roll scum in this game, what a hilariously cruel fate

how many players here came out of retirement for this game? i know i did, iirc Tammy as well?

Me-ish

Prism is very persuasive.

[absinthe]

I feel better about being able to read catboi correctly this time.

[absinthe]

I would enjoy the solving based on a known flip aspect if I'm uncleared

Elaborate?

[absinthe]

I would enjoy the solving based on a known flip aspect if I'm uncleared

Elaborate?

If you end up in the 1v1, you have one flipped scum from your POV to work with, prior to any games resolving. I think that sort of solving sounds appealing.

Ah, solving the other mini games. It wasn't computing in the context of solving the gate.

[absinthe]

nya purr uwu (๑ↀᆺↀ๑)✧

Interesting

[absinthe]

I'm sensing a pattern

[absinthe]

Even if we had a rigid resolve, there's the whole cat-herding thing. All it takes is a little impatience to lay waste to rigid plans.

[absinthe]

absinthe townlean? i can throw that out there too.

Do you know who I am? Just checking.

[absinthe]

I'm sensing a pattern

would you share what you're referring to?

I was just referring to why so many retirees signed up for this game.

pedit: you're ffery, right?

Yes. The townlean surprised me a little. I don't recall being an easy early day one read for you in our 3-4 prior games.

[absinthe]

like i said earlier, any meta i might have had is dried up. i do not remember a thing from our previous games together, or which ones we even played, barring that one secret alt game where i was scum.

Yggdrasil was our most recent game. morph hydra. Anything before FGO I is probably irrelevant.

But, I don't feel like I've done anything particularly town so far. I'm probably not as sleep deprived as Faker, but it has been a day.

[absinthe]

I have this odd feeling that skitter's *here*.

Demona seems sincere about being easily found as town, Do people who've played with them before agree?

Coral feels pretty town.

[absinthe]

I'm out for a bit. It's foodtell hour.

[absinthe]

foodtell hour.

Chara I thought about your response to me while I was cooking.

I don't think you've ever tried to read me via meta, so that wasn't what I was probing in my reply to your townlean post. It's more a case of how my playstyle looks to you from what I gleaned in our games. My "do you know who I am" was to obliquely challenge your read and see how you justified it.

Your response that it was a sort of reaction test is good enough on the face of it.

But, the response also is in contrast to how I perceive your town game from our prior games. It comes off a little more assertive and confident than my recollection of your early play in Yggdrassil and Maplewood. Maybe a little more in line with the way scum you pushed me a little the first few pages of FGO.

On the gripping hand, it wasn't as fault-findy as your early FGO interactions with me and without our priors, I'd be hard-towning you for the assertiveness.

[absinthe]

foodtell hour.

Chara I thought about your response to me while I was cooking.

I don't think you've ever tried to read me via meta, so that wasn't what I was probing in my reply to your townlean post. It's more a case of how my playstyle looks to you from what I gleaned in our games. My "do you know who I am" was to obliquely challenge your read and see how you justified it.

Your response that it was a sort of reaction test is good enough on the face of it.

But, the response also is in contrast to how I perceive your town game from our prior games. It comes off a little more assertive and confident than my recollection of your early play in Yggdrassil and Maplewood. Maybe a little more in line with the way scum you pushed me a little the first few pages of FGO.

On the gripping hand, it wasn't as fault-findy as your early FGO interactions with me and without our priors, I'd be hard-towning you for the assertiveness.

hmmm. i think you're attributing too much to our games together.

Possibly. I value experiential meta and models pretty highly

how much of my confidence level can you reliably say is AI?

Reliably? Hmm.

Without personal context I look at confidence in terms of what the inputs are, and whether the confidence seems reasonable to me. My gauge of confidence is self-referential. The one thing I know for certain is my alignment. Some players I expect to read me accurately in the first few pages. Players who aren't familiar with me, I know my play can be enigmatic to concerning in the early game. Your assertiveness in this game is a little off the map compared to our prior games, but it's objectively a generic townpoint.

and would you really hard-town that interaction from me if you didn't know me?

It's not about me knowing you. I'd likely have a strong early read* if you didn't know me from Adam.

what about it makes it so towny to you, in that hypothetical?

The experience of how things go with players who don't know my towngame. Pretty sure I waxed poetic once or twice in the FGO game when players jumped on me.

*early reads do get a lot of review because of error bars. See townreading you and midwaybear in FGO

[absinthe]

Coral feels pretty town.

mmm hard for me to not feel like there might me an angle here after i expressed my thoughts regarding keep:

I probably prefer Keep, if it matters. Purely from a playstyle perspective, I think it's ideal to have patience and cooperation there, since scum NEED a town to vote first and vote wrong. I have more faith in those abilities of mine than in pure read abilities, at least.

like i don’t really think we need patience and cooperation to win the keep we just need one town to believe in the other and it doesn’t need to be two way street or anything

and if in the keep and there is absolutely no way to be the town that is believed in like if the other players in the keep refuse to ever vote for you then you simply ask them to each self vote and then it becomes the gate at least from my perspective

On paper the keep is the easiest for town, but in practice there can be a delicate balance and a lot of back and forth. The on paper strategy is for there to be a consensus that the scummiest player votes first, and then if they refuse to vote, they are outed as scum. But it isn't always that easy.

For example, consider the scenario where town A has a correct townread, but town B townreads scum (C). Town A will want to encourage C to vote first. C can indicate that they want to vote A. If B panics and thinks that vote will lose the minigame, they may pre-empt the vote and vote for C themselves, thinking that is the only way to win the game.

In general it is quite easy if the two town find each other, and can run on a knife's edge if they don't. It can be a very exciting and tense minigame with a lot of potential for mindgames. I think that patience and cooperation are valuable for it.

I'm also aware that it's likely to be a favorite choice for a lot of people, and not everyone who wants to go there will be able to.

On paper.

Wound up not being easy at all for town in the game I played. Strategy pluses and minuses are probably much better understood since a few more games have been played.

setup strategy is not my forte, so I'm all ears about how to do the Keep better.

[absinthe]

hmmm seven pages. looks like I missed the best part of the game

Catboi. We meet again. I was trying to think of a quippy little hahaha sucks you drew scum you so scared of me boi, but sadly the best I can hope for right now is that I don't drool on my keyboard. Though the time for that has probably passed anyway.

Hi everyone I know and everyone I don't!

I've never played this setup before, and I need to read the setup again. I read it wrong a couple days ago and thought it said that if you get three soliders in one room together town wins and I was like oh this should be easy peasy, but this morning when I reread it, it's three scum so lolme. I might have questions about the setup once I read the first few pages though!

I've been up since 4 and have had a stupid long day. I'm gonna jump in bed and try to read the first few pages, but it's entirely likely I fall asleep before I finish the first page. Unless mafia insomnia kicks in, but let's hope not! So, it's more likely that I just see you all tomorrow.

(Oh, and those of you who do know me and know how terrified I am to finally draw scum again, nope no sorry, you're gonna have to wait to witness that humiliation for another day.)

okay bye bye

Do not speak of mafia insomnia!

[absinthe]

This is way too fast for my brain atm LMAO

I know you're mostly joking but any game with me/you/skitter would be the biggest shitshow, but ~we'll see~

Actually @demona i change my mind with 34 - i think you thought a lot abt the optimal strategy for how you should play this but 34 makes me think it's coming more from a town perspective

I think isis on p2 is townie

I like chara and prisms' vibes but nai for both of them. Maybe prisms' vibes are *slightly* on the townier side but i can't read them so well so not very confident on that

Ffery feels weird and a little scummy, as does coral

What is scummy to you about Coral?

[absinthe]

I have this odd feeling that skitter's *here*.

Demona seems sincere about being easily found as town, Do people who've played with them before agree?

Coral feels pretty town.

Why did you say this abt me?

Because I thought it. You were present right at the opening of the game and then nothing for the first few hours. I wondered if you'd choose to observe for a while, and if so, why not interact.

[absinthe]

What is scummy to you about Coral?

Their posts feel kinda constructed and premeditated, and not really what they actually think

Why do you townread them? What do u think abt the fact that i think you're a little scummy?

I found their first few posts kinda dense, but I've warmed up to them. I like their interactions with Faker, and I like their concerns about scum making early moves to lock into minigame slots. It turned out that two of the three scum in the game I played were the first two players to choose. And then Anastasia/Pooky wanted to try to force all three scum into one minigame for an auto win. That game was such a disaster.

As for you thinking I'm scummy. If you're town, that seems to be your default setting on my play. You read me as scum and bork as town when we were hydraing in the game that must not be spoken.

[absinthe]

Can scum swap someine into gate and then conftown that person?

They sure can. I was swapped out of the keep and into the gate, and conftowned in the first iteration of this game.

[absinthe]

And I was swapped with a townplayer. The scum made it into all three minigames on day 1..

[absinthe]

and I like their concerns about scum making early moves to lock into minigame slots

I'm concerned because this seems to be coming from a scum pov
Like it seems like their concerns are stemming from 'having thought abt how they'd play this as scum'

Wrt you: fair, i have tried to block parts of that from my memory. You feel really like weird and distant tho

I was enjoying retirement, and wouldn't have joined, but Prism's excitement is contagious! Also, massive car issues to sort through and today was kinda stressful on that front.

I don't know if that's contributing to weirdness or not. If it is, I've played weirdly in a lot of games over the years.

[absinthe]

And I was swapped with a townplayer. The scum made it into all three minigames on day 1..

Right, for me personally I felt significant pressure to both spread out the distribution of the scum so we had a free swap of our choice, and I also had wanted to speed up the timetable so that town had less time to talk to one another.


Was wondering if it'd be possible given the group of people to have assignments decided in a democratic manner - was thinking that absent traditional gameplay mechanisms you can't really exert meaningful pressure on scum and if instead people were held to a vote on who to send where it'd provide data and some amount of discussion fodder. My approach the time I played this as town was pretty bad and I'd like to do something a little different.

Yeah, I'm obviously not thrilled with my play or the overall town strategy in the first game. Y'all had an insanely unfair advantage in Ydrasse being on your team, though!

[absinthe]

The wall is my least desired minigame because I hate hate hate 3p elo.

[absinthe]

The wall is my least desired minigame because I hate hate hate 3p elo.

that's the secret: it's all 3p elo

traditional

3p elo. I really do like the Keep conceptually and feel like in most player lists I'm a good choice to go there.

[absinthe]

I hate to dip when the game is lively, but I'm dead. gnite.

pedit a minigame with Coral, skitter, and me would be hilariously awful or awfully hilarious.

Probably not something to wish into the world!

[absinthe]

Catboi I'm not going to call you a hypocrite but I'd like to see your player thoughts.

[absinthe]

Also, Tammy, are you still on page 3 or where ever? Do you expect to be caught up sometime this morning?

[absinthe]

I was mistaken. I’m on page 2. That is the hope unless my desire to finish psycho pass overwhelms my desire to get caught up in the game. :p

Are you going to interact with me on something other than mafia insomnia or my eta if I do? Do you promise promise?

absolutely! I have to do some xmas stuff sometime today. Might do that early-ish and get it out of the way.

[absinthe]

wouldn’t that also tie up one of their night movements making shenanigans less likely?

bucket

[absinthe]

As scum?
I would try to avoid prism/catboi/isis

I kinda wanted to townread your concerns about me last night. probably not a good idea!

[absinthe]

Oh that was in my quote queue to ask what that post means

It's a bookmark. I want to revisit something in Tammy's post later.

[absinthe]

I'm crazy busy and I'm going to have to comb through the last 5 or so pages later today.

Saw this stuff before I gave up on getting caught up, though.

Oh that was in my quote queue to ask what that post means

It's a bookmark. I want to revisit something in Tammy's post later.

Why later

There's players where delayed reveal investigations are all kinds of spicy to me and none of them rhyme with Cammy

It's not a delayed reveal so much as I don't want to potentially walk through a line of questioning.

absinthe, any thoughts on going into a game with me/cat? I think it'd be fun. Also surprised that you don't want to quarantine me, so thank you!

Besides chills and nightmares?

Fact that she skipped over it feels like a big +scum flag. She really puts a premium on reading me correctly after viewing my scumgames and isn't likely to miss a nested question.

I did miss it! I have a lot of thoughts about you, but I'm not sure my experience with your play is current enough. I want to see how you're approaching the game now that you've presumably caught up on sleep. The stuff that makes me snap townread you a la the warehouse 13 game wasn't present last night. Your (and catboi's) joviality (and particularly catboi's opaqueness) in the first few hours of the game were/are a slow-burning concern. I'm thinking about the two of you together because I feel like I should be able read you in part through your interactions.

Writing that, I think I've talked myself into a tentative townlean on catboi.

That newbie game I replaced into after you replaced out had a huge impact on my scum-you model. I'm not getting that kind of vibe at all here so far, but I also wasn't seeing what I feel are town markers, either.

My current guess for the scumteam is ffery coral tammy

Someday you're going to figure out how to read me.

I'd say me/Tempest/cat in a game would be nice, maybe me/cat/ffery as a backup.

I don't really think in terms of placing people trying to go 3/3 in one game, but the approaches aren't mutually exclusive and even getting 2/3 constrains the scum's choices greatly.

At the moment, I'd rather be in a group that means getting Tammy right, though that's probably naive. I haven't seen/played with scum-Tammy in ages.

ATM, I have misgivings about going to the Keep.

[absinthe]

Coral made me laugh, at paramount.

The retrospective of her early reads as corrected is a lot better than her misunderstood one. I haven't been chipper enough to radiate light this game and wait-and-see is actually an optimized way to fish for the Isis-hates-being-scum-tell, aggressive page 5s on me tend to false positive or fix the energy problem for scumisis.
I guess I have a more vivid picture of how she's trying to push the game into an unfogged state than like catboi as an outlier or everybody else generally (including demona fwiw, different reasoning there)

you always radiate light!

and i feel the same about Coral, though it was more the delay in realizing that she conducts herself in A Way and that focusing on that feels like the wrong way to read her, putting that aside her play does ring townish.

but also, i've been trying so hard, you don't see how i'm trying to move the game forward myself?

Not to the same degree. I like that your comfort level seems high but like I believe you would post funnee minigame assignments as both alignments. If there's other vapor trails I'm missing them

This exchanges makes me wonder if I'm reading high comfort as assertiveness in Charo.

Also no clue where the Isis thing comes from. Her experience with you is more limited IIRC and she's more likely to just townread you for NAI reasons as a result.

Who was this to?

i'm concerned that skitter's "oh Tammy might actually be scum" post and my own initial read are both biasing me into continuing to read Tammy's contribitions as scum.

My mojo might be gone, but really nobody needs to worry about me this game.

heh. maybe my mojo is hanging out with yours!

skitter I probably get right in the long run but maybe a guardians game is too short term and doesn't provide enough info

Can u elaborate a bit more please? Why do you think i might not be solvable in this timeframe

because in early games I've misread you a lot (e.g. last time we played this setup together), when I have a clear arc of what you're doing in the game it gets easier (coalition). maybe that was because I had outside observer perspective and some degree of mechanical data, but at any rate this setup provides data as well. Of course this is all generalities from me that don't say much about what I feel about this game.

what direction do your misreads go?

I guess I can see your perspective on the Isis thing but by that account I too really hope I get put in a game with someone who is inclined to take me at face value

Is this why you suggested a catboi/you/me minigame?

I'm not sure i particularly care where they (or anyone else) goes, i just want to try to herd them to the same spot

I'm thinking about this through the lens of catboi's comment about needing time to read you. I've played a fair bit with town-Tammy and I've been good at finding her as town, though I sometimes have a paranoia flash or two. So far, I'm fine with being in the same minigame with her.

----------

Isis, I'm having a little trouble following your metaphors. I may wind up pestering you for clarification.

[absinthe]

Also no clue where the Isis thing comes from. Her experience with you is more limited IIRC and she's more likely to just townread you for NAI reasons as a result.

From catboi's pov it's not relevant whether I'd townread his scumgames right?

Yes, but see 382. We want to put people in that are likely to get an accurate read regardless of the person's alignment, not "Don't worry this strategy works BECAUSE I'm town"

This begs the question -- do you think you can read me accurately?

[absinthe]

absinthe, any thoughts on going into a game with me/cat? I think it'd be fun. Also surprised that you don't want to quarantine me, so thank you!

Fact that she skipped over it feels like a big +scum flag. She really puts a premium on reading me correctly after viewing my scumgames and isn't likely to miss a nested question.

That's about ffery, not Tammy

fferyllt is more because I think she's scum, likely to be scared of us both individually and our dynamic together a la 2181, and likely to flee if so. Forcing scum to make certain swaps or risk losing the game is a lot of what Day 1 is all about.

Yes, I saw all that. I dunno if I'd flee or if I'd want to test your confident lack of confidence in your towngame. Quite possibly the latter!

If you responded to my quotewall, I haven't gotten to it yet.

[absinthe]

Yes, and you believe I can read you much more than I do as a bonus. I don't see what you're getting at.

Just curiosity that you'd put me in your alternate group of three. It implies a confidence in reading me that is maybe justified. your self-deprecation has grown on me though.

[absinthe]

Can you elaborate more on why it's taken you this long to really engage with my content?

Lack of brain cells last night.

Lack of time this morning.

I'm still ~7 pages behind. Shouldn't take long to catch up, though I'll probably have to reread Demona and Isis a few times.

[absinthe]

I'm going to nap for a bit, I'm not the center of the world and you're doing a lot in general atm, but know that 560 is the crux of my skepticism. Maybe I'm not high priority sorting to you early as town, but I really think that I would be.

You're also

still

more concerned about me reading you correctly than the reverse, which might be fair given the current situation but it's early.

It's not just concern about you reading me correctly. The game that prompted my hiatus was the first time I'd been miselimmed in a very, very long time. outside of a newbie game replace in to a cursed slot.

[absinthe]

?

[absinthe]

from a pure numbers standpoint, is it a good idea to herd universal-ish scumreads into Keep?

It really depends if we have a scum player having a consummate game in the keep. At this table that's a possibility.

You might or might not. You definitely won't clear me in any world, but I think you'd relish getting me wrongly eliminated and that your fear of me would be irrelevant if it's just a straight up 1v1 and I get defanged. I think whether or not you actually make the swap would depend a lot on the third, which is why I'm pushing Tammy who is literally the only person since 2012/2013 who has had insights into how I play that I haven't already thought about at great lengths. Trust Fall shows she doesn't quite get a lot of my approach around her, but her insight into how I interact with third parties is razor sharp. I also just think I'll be able to beat her if she's scum (prove me wrong!)

fferyllt is more because I think she's scum, likely to be scared of us both individually and our dynamic together a la 2181, and likely to flee if so. Forcing scum to make certain swaps or risk losing the game is a lot of what Day 1 is all about.

In 2181 all the heat you and catboi's alt generated was a good thing from my pov as scum. One of the few good things for my poor scum team that day.

kitty/Tempest/absinthe is my early call. Isis could replace one.

Who is kitty? catboi, skitter? I read the back and forth after this post and I'm not sure. :/

[absinthe]

felt a bit like a comment scum-you makes - "oh yes I need to reread these people please note that I am busy Thinking and Solving this game because I have said I need to Do Things"

Let me just go ahead and get this out of the way, then. I anticipate needing to do at least one semi-rigorous meta dive before day 2 starts.

[absinthe]

My instinct says that demona would be a good fit stylistically there but I don't know how the three of you would actually read each other, the commonality to me is more whimsy/fun/ADHD energy and not knowing how to read any of the three of you personally.

That said I actually would say I trust skitter's judgment on being able to read demona and therefore that they should go together, provided that there isn't a high risk of skitter just being able to pocket her in turn which I'm assuming atm is not the case

Can you unpack this?

skitter/demona/Tammatha in Gate
cat/Faker/fferyllt in Keep
Chara/Isis/Coral in Wall

Looks decent but I would need to actually go back and read more of the substance I've been putting off. Swapping fferyllt/Tammatha might work but I think we get a ton of mileage out of having Tammatha at the Gate, very good clear to have and the outsiders can still help any clear read her if she's not picked.

I'm feeling pretty good about going into day 2 with Tammy from what I've seen so far.

[absinthe]

I've played a fair bit with town-Tammy and I've been good at finding her as town, though I sometimes have a paranoia flash or two. So far, I'm fine with being in the same minigame with her.

This was more what I was expecting you'd mention about your ability to read me. The thing about being naive threw me off.

The naivety comment was a reminder to self that I haven't seen your scum game since 2014 or some such.

[absinthe]

@absinthe Can you lay out what minigame that would be and who it would be with?

I guess cat/Coral/me wouldn't be bad but it's not ideal and I'd greatly prefer you or Tempest. I'm not sure what shuffling to accommodate would look like, and I'm not entirely sure why you'd be averse to joining me/cat in the Keep given that it's more of a townhunting game than a scumhunting one.

I've come around to...not caring too much which minigame.

Shocker.

A Demona/Tammy/me Keep might mean I'd be the decider there.

[absinthe]

So want to get a headstart? I don't know if you've outed reads yet, but if there's anything you want me to look at in particular LMK

want to make sure people are okay with the arrangement first and no one storms in screaming I OBJECT!!! but other than that fine

hmm what do you make

of chara and faker both seemingly not wanting me in the keep

without really stating why

I think they've both had plausible explanations but also that type of explanation isn't really particularly hard for scum to fake I don't think. That particular doesn't move the needle for me much.

do you think i would be less fun

than absinthe

for you and faker?

I'm not sure "fun" is the operant word for that!

[absinthe]

So want to get a headstart? I don't know if you've outed reads yet, but if there's anything you want me to look at in particular LMK

want to make sure people are okay with the arrangement first and no one storms in screaming I OBJECT!!! but other than that fine

hmm what do you make

of chara and faker both

seemingly not wanting me in the keep

without really stating why

I have explained this repeatedly, and framing it as "not wanting you in the keep" is completely missing the point. The answer is about where should

everyone

go, not just you.

442 explicitly says swapping you/skitter/a third into the Keep is fine. I want me/cat to go there because it provides a very good safety buffer and prevents us from getting into an extremely grueling 1v1.

428 talks about preserving you/skitter as a pairing. This includes in the Keep.

I'm not going in the Keep

with

you. You struggle to read me, and I struggle to read your style. It makes essentially no sense from the perspective of trying to win.

385 elaborates on my approach to you in general.

This is the first post from Faker that I unequivocally like. No caveats. No footnotes.

whew!

VOTE: wafer wall

welp

I guess T->S I'd go something like

skitter, cat, demona, Isis, Chara, Coral, Tempest, absinthe

Some of this ordering is honestly random and I can see specific flips changing things greatly but I'll throw the dart for now and just YOLO look at people individually

I'm going to take somewhat cold comfort that your WH13 townread of me/nacho was apparently completely random!

Maybe it's a factor of not reading in the moment, but half the time it's a puzzle trying to figure who/what you're responding to in your posts.

[absinthe]

absinthe scum was a feeling i had, not much to it besides that.

I asked because you had a townlean earlier and even if the feeling was slight, as I'd expect any early game read to be, I was curious what prompted the shift

That read was to get a reaction out of me. and maybe others.

[absinthe]

Can you be more specific? The first sentence is talking about hypothetically putting demona/Isis/Chara together, but the second sentence says that I'm going to defer to skitter/demona and advocate for pairing them up in a minigame if they think they can read each other well.

It was the part about skitter that I wasn't sure about. I went from squinty-eyed about an implied townread to maybe you're thinking about both alignments there.

It looks like your skitter read has firmed up considerably.

[absinthe]

@Coral breaks up demona/skitter but I'm really just taking skitter's word for it on being able to read shiki

@absinthe I really don't see why. 471 is the easiest post of the bunch to fake. What's town is putting myself into the Keep anyway,

when I explicitly started the game off by stating I probably wouldn't want to go there

even if I was willing to defer.

You've seen me make incorporate longer emotional narrative arcs a la law school before but I think my play this game is pretty straightforward so far. I also like to do them as a slow burn, not just drop them randomly 24 hours into the game. Maybe there's a nightswap that would salvage this game for me but shrug. Adapting to the meta shift is a problem for future Prism.

Faking it would mean setting it up in a medium/long back and forth. And yes you can do that.

But, my sense of how with-it you've been up to the point when you made that post says you probably weren't faking it.

And yes. Iceland IS laughing and pointing at me.

[absinthe]

I am willing to give skitter a lot of leeway at the moment until I really see reason not to. Slaughter Hour she got me nicely by bussing Gamma, but she struggled in Perpetual when she protected people, and she's likely to run into similar issues here.

If I'm wrong on my other reads then I can turn the eye back to the tiger but for now if she's with me on most things then hell yeah sister. cat is somewhat similar but there's a bit more history, and him being so acquiescent to going in the same game is plausibly a called bluff.

She did ok in Perpetual Melo though.

Apropos of nothing, that table has some similarities to this one in some ways.

[absinthe]

I could probably go back and forth on this all day but I'm going to leave it for now. I would still like a response to 607, though.

I have to get to it before I can respond to it.

I am sooooo close to caught up.

absinthe can you lay out clearly why you don't think coming to the Keep with us is a good idea?

You get a chance to read two players whose games you always spectate to try and guess their alignment anyway. You've expressed some confidence in my ability to read you previously, and you've seen me have an OK track record on cat*. I'm also effectively neutralized as scum in the Keep, because if people are really worried I can just be made the designated voter.

*Nailing cat in a game I'm spectating and nailing him in a game with him are different things though, I think I can get him at the end of the day but it's not so simple when he actually preps

I'm looking at the keep from the perspective of winding up the decider The sentiment around my alignment will probably improve (gawd I hope so), but I'd never be the obvtown in this Keep.

I'm still not over feeling like your entrance and early play in this game was off the map for my Prism model. And the one time I remember playing against scum-catboi was actually in the first Fortress game. I wound up in the Gate with him and was having fits figuring out the scum between him and something smart. There were off notes, but something smart wasn't looking so town either. Not sure I would have gotten it right, but it didn't matter because town lost the Keep and Wall before we got there.

[absinthe]

Fuck it.

May as well face my demons.

I'll give it 12 hours for cold feet to set in and then vote keep.

[absinthe]

also how the hell did those "IPAs" knock you on your butt?

[absinthe]

If scum willingly break up Keep they're a bunch of nerds, and being a nerd is significantly worse than losing the game

I like this tune!

But, watch yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8LLZst_s3Y

[absinthe]

fuck.



Such an antiquated app.

BORK when can we have newMafiaScum?

[absinthe]

Minus the embellishments is that actually the logo on maftigers?

[absinthe]

Who's we?

[absinthe]

I love how offended you are by my calling them IPAs without quotations you gatekeeping fuck

Brews are serious business.

[absinthe]

Also I'm going to spend the next 10 hours or so regretting some life choices.

One of you please be readable.

[absinthe]

Maaaaybe!

I feel like a feather in the wind. Die is cast. You can grovel now.

[absinthe]

Or maybe I'm in a centrifuge. Massive mood swings.

[absinthe]

Go ahead and back out. Escape my clutches. You'll hear my manic laughter from 2050 miles away.

Yes I googled that.

[absinthe]

You've all infected me.

Mafia is not srs bzns until January.

~fferyposting sponsored by Baileys

[absinthe]

I think someone would have to be drunk to make that argument.

[absinthe]

getting my footwork just right

This really is in your favor and is why I cut you some slack and didn't go for your throat last night.

Plus lack of brain cells.

[absinthe]

@absinthe Can you lay out what minigame that would be and who it would be with?

I guess cat/Coral/me wouldn't be bad but it's not ideal and I'd greatly prefer you or Tempest. I'm not sure what shuffling to accommodate would look like, and I'm not entirely sure why you'd be averse to joining me/cat in the Keep given that it's more of a townhunting game than a scumhunting one.

I've come around to...not caring too much which minigame.

Shocker.

A Demona/Tammy/me Keep might mean I'd be the decider there.

I realize that you might not have known demona went to the wall, but I’m curious about your thoughts there. I’m on record as having a town read on demona. It’s the only read I’ve unequivocally stated. I’ve mentioned a suspicion of you. Now I know my reads can change quite a lot, especially overnight, but your thought there that you’d be the decider doesn’t line up with the thoughts I’ve given.

I went back through your ISO to see where you'd expressed this, and don't see anything like that, at least prior to Demona's Wall vote? Am I missing something?

[absinthe]

For absinthe - I guess I expected a different sort of interaction than I’ve had. The mafia insomnia was good, but I did expect more of a follow up than wondering when I’d be caught up and then not interacting much else. The comment about being naive and not seeing my scum game in a while felt off because it did feel like using some of the momentum of suspicion against me to her benefit. I’ve been joking about how ffery never gets to god tier town on me in games. When I’m town she usually has me as town, but never in the top tier. In the last game we played together I got paranoid because I thought she had me town too early, but she asserted her belief she could read me, so the naive comment felt off. I didn’t expect her to call me town there, but I expected more along the lines of prisms “if she’s town, I’ll figure it out”. Some of the interaction with prism felt a little performative like finding a post to call her town on with “whew”.

I do hope/believe that if I’m wrong here, I will figure it out. Sometimes I start off with suspicion here and the realize I’m hilariously wrong.

Our active times just haven't meshed that well so far. But I'm here now. When we've both been here it seems like one or both of us is in catch-up mode.

It's looking like water under the bridge, but I'll expect I'll get to an accurate read on you. And that definitely plays into my wish to be in the same minigame.

[absinthe]

Tammy, I don't see that you and Demona went any further with the post I specifically bucketed. Is that exchanged settled or no?

[absinthe]

:/

I'll be in and out today. Yesterday was my big shopping push.

[absinthe]

Tammy, I don't see that you and Demona went any further with the post I specifically bucketed. Is that exchanged settled or no?

That was done. Nobody really interacted with that thought much so I figured it was a dumb idea.

And that was what I wanted to say about it. Scum CAN be a near or total universal town read and win the keep.

[absinthe]

I had a moment of Zen last night and I'm holding onto it.

People who object to me being in the Keep should probably say so.

[absinthe]

Oh yeah, no I know that. I was thinking in the case that we were right on our town reads we stuck there that it would force scum to use one move to put scum in the keep, which would limit what they could do in the night. I was thinking in the best case scenario how can we impact the moves scum make while giving us a better chance of winning the keep.

I realize there’s still a load of wifom involved and our reads can certainly be wrong. I was just thinking along the lines of how can we try to limit what scum can do. Does that make sense? I realize it might also be a dumb idea but I’ve never seen how things play out in this setup so idk

Heh. I don't know if my previous game turned out to be at all typical. It was a disaster for town, though, and a lot of it came down to the Keep.

[absinthe]

I realize that you might not have known demona went to the wall, but I’m curious about your thoughts there. I’m on record as having a town read on demona. It’s the only read I’ve unequivocally stated. I’ve mentioned a suspicion of you. Now I know my reads can change quite a lot, especially overnight, but your thought there that you’d be the decider doesn’t line up with the thoughts I’ve given.

I'm not sure exactly why absinthe didn't clarify this, and focused more on the reads portion, but the way I interpreted the original post was that she was saying that she would be the decider due to being the consensus scumread among the Keep players (scummiest person decides is the standard Keep play). Which I think does line up with what you're saying here.

It feels meaningful, somehow, that absinthe focused on analyzing your reads portion of this rather than clearing up what looks to me like a misunderstanding. But maybe I'm the one misunderstanding something here?

I'm pretty sure I already expressed this thought well before Tempest's post, so that doesn't appear to be what needs clarification.

[absinthe]

There's not much I want to say right now that wouldn't be better to hold off until day 2.

I'll entertain questions, though.

[absinthe]

I realize that you might not have known demona went to the wall, but I’m curious about your thoughts there. I’m on record as having a town read on demona. It’s the only read I’ve unequivocally stated. I’ve mentioned a suspicion of you. Now I know my reads can change quite a lot, especially overnight, but your thought there that you’d be the decider doesn’t line up with the thoughts I’ve given.

I'm not sure exactly why absinthe didn't clarify this, and focused more on the reads portion, but the way I interpreted the original post was that she was saying that she would be the decider due to being the consensus scumread among the Keep players (scummiest person decides is the standard Keep play). Which I think does line up with what you're saying here.

It feels meaningful, somehow, that absinthe focused on analyzing your reads portion of this rather than clearing up what looks to me like a misunderstanding. But maybe I'm the one misunderstanding something here?

I'm pretty sure I already expressed this thought well before Tempest's post, so that doesn't appear to be what needs clarification.

How do you interpret her saying:

1) she townreads demona
2) she mentioned a suspicion of you
2) therefore, you being the decider doesn't line up with the thoughts she's given

That seems to directly imply that, regardless of her reads and whether she stated them earlier or not, she thinks that her suspicion of you is incompatible with you being the decider, no?

It's the nature of the Keep to me. Just like any other group of three, if Demona, Tammy and I had gone to the keep, then two of us know that we are individually town regardless of which of the other two are scum. And I feel like it comes down to me in that instance because I either am townreading Tammy into the stratosphere or I'm having a nervous breakdown over which of them is town. And if Tammy is town, then given her reads right now, she'd make the wrong choice in that threesome. I feel like it would fall on me one way or another. Tammy and I both waffle a LOT. But I'm pretty sure I'm more decisive than she is in the early game. In fortress, it's ALL early game from my perspective. But maybe I'm totally wrong about how it would play out. And when I was thinking that a Demona/Tammy/me Keep it looked to me like it would be easier than it does now. I really didn't expect her to straight up scumread me at this point. I'm not blaming her for the read. I'm fighting off some major tilt and I'm well aware it's bleeding into my play, but I'm still going to keep it light in this game.

That's was convoluted to write because of the layers of hypotheticals and my own re-thoughts based on Tammy's posts today.

At the moment I can't imagine being the player who is voted in the Keep. So my agency comes down to getting my reads right. Otherwise I'm putting the weight of the minigame on the other town player.

When town, Tammy really shines out as town IMO. We usually have a few bobbles and misinterpretations, but those bobbles almost always have resolved, usually the next time we interact.

I expected (and kinda still expect) us to eventually connect pretty well in this game if she's town. Despite Tammy's assertion that she's never in my top town reads, that's hasn't really been the case in our last few games. WH13, Diffusion, Tenet, all three of those games my read of her settled well before hers did of me (and in Diffusion she never expressed a townread of my hydra. Her hydra partner did). In all three of those games she was high tier town to me (in Tenet even before her hydra were mod confirmed town I was townreading them). We meet as hydras a lot and my partners' thoughts play into my reads of her, but often I'm the first to get there. The Smokefilled game probably deserves mention too, but the dethy had a huge impact on my reads. She was my second-highest townread in the dethy, starting very early on.

[absinthe]

I should also mention the first fortress game I played, because that's coloring my thoughts about the keep. Three fairly well townread players went to the keep on night 1. I was moved out to the gate and inno'd, and one of the least townread players in the game was moved in on night 1.

The moved player cast the first vote. On the scum player. The reasons why that minigame resolved when and how it did weren't great, but I do feel for that poor player and I hope I do better in similar-ish circumstances.

[absinthe]

Tammy why do you think I whiffed my read of you?

[absinthe]

absinthe - I certainly didn't expect to come out with a scum read on you so soon either. It's not a read I want to have, especially if it's wrong. I'm a little bit annoyed right now. Part of it is game related; part of it is not. It's been a long time since somebody who knows me has whiffed so hard on my opening mood. Perhaps that's partly a fault of my own. I couldn't be here when the game started, and when I did come into the game it was after an extremely long day and several days of little sleep. What I do know is that I was enjoying myself and was generally happy to be here even if I was exhausted. Getting scum read is whatever; it's just mildly annoying to be told you're anxious or scared when you're feeling calm and enjoying yourself for the most part. (And trying to beat back the part of me that low-key thinks some of the taunting was to purposefully tilt.)

I thought you were saying that I whiffed on your opening posts, but rereading, this doesn't sound anything like what I've thought or said about you. So I'm gonna assume this isn't aimed at me.

The gamestate is annoying too. Perhaps it's just a function of this setup, and I just don't get that, but it just feels like we're all just sitting on our hands talking about the setup and I don't get it. Yes, I understand that people want to keep scum in the dark blah blah blah, but save for a few things, I just don't get that. Because to me, once we're all in 3p things get harder. What makes 3p so fucking hard is that scum and town are behaving in similar ways, but in a normal game there's a whole game's worth of game to go off of. But here there's nothing, just what we have today where people are just focusing on the setup or not saying anything much because they don't need to prove themselves town today or because they don't want scum to know their thoughts, which well whatever but I kinda think that sucks. Maybe I'll feel differently after I've played this setup, but it makes today annoying and I think it will make tomorrow even harder.

I feel like the gamestate is getting stagnant, but it's a weekend and 1/3 of the player list is on v/la. Also holidays. we're just going to have to live with a game going over the holidays.

I also hate feeling like I'm speaking into a void. My thoughts and reads might not be great thoughts and reads, but I have had them, and save for a small bit here and there, they've gone mostly ignored. Like, we don't have to be online at the same time to interact, I've been open with what I'm thinking as I'm going along, and I'd welcome any comment on my reads/thoughts, disagreements, agreements, anything. I don't like feeling alone in a game. Maybe the reason for that is that everyone is deciding not to actually give thoughts today because it'd be better tomorrow and that's whatever.

I'm here. Who and what do you want to talk about?

Beyond that and not game related and probably affecting me the most is that I'm just fucking tired. I haven't been tolerating losing sleep all that well lately, and while I got decent sleep last night, it doesn't come close to making up for what I've done to it lately. I woke up annoyed and have been annoyed with every single thing I've done today.

Mood. I'm also dealing with a totaled car and trying to line up a house repair that I hope is a lot better than the worst case scenario. None of this is tragic, but it is what it is, and it's all happening in December. :/

I didn't write all this to sound like a big whining whiner. I just wanted to explain my mood and how it's affecting the way I'm thinking about and looking at the game. When I get into a mood like this, the part of me that waffles, overthinks, deals with the indecision and frets about being wrong on a friend doesn't exist. Or at least to the extent that it usually does. If I were in any other mood than I am right now, I'd probably not just come out with a scum read on you; I'm sure I'd handle my suspicion quite differently. My reads might be hilariously wrong, but right now I don't even care and I know that's not usually like me but it is what it is today. Maybe tomorrow I wake up and I'm back to my old self. But, I am really really sorry if you're town, and I'm just stupidly wrong here. I know how frustrating it is to have the town against you and one of the people you expect to read you right is not. I do want to get the read right; I do hope/think that I will, and I'm sorry if I'm being annoying about it.

I captured my zen moment last night and I'm not going to let it go. It's ok to scum read me.

I felt seriously burned in the first game by being moved out of my chosen game after I spent the night phase prepping and getting psyched for day 2. That may happen again this game to one townie. I encourage thinking flexibly enough about the minigames that being yeeted like that isn't a major blow. I don't think you're at risk of feeling that way, but maybe some of us are.

Knowing you can't be night killed is one of the upsides to this game, though you're right, going straight into a bunch of ELO situations with a lot less data than most games is a mess.

[absinthe]

I'm pretty fond of Hegel. I originally dug into his work because someone told me my playstyle was Hegelian way back when.

[absinthe]

I think despite how much I've tilted Tempest this game we both agree absinthe should be shot into the sun, so there's that

cat is close

I'm going to just close my eyes and vote catboi. What could go wrong?

[absinthe]

I mean if I'm wrong on you I can't complain, but this is probably the freest read anyone's ever going to get on me. Flex on me by carrying me if you can!

I'm not complaining, personally. I've seen my way clear to ways I can be beneficial here despite the headwinds.

[absinthe]

If you want to trust I'd actually for really reals say who I'd vote tomorrow given what's in the thread so far, go you, I guess.

Until my moment of Zen I was wracking my brains how to get through to you and and other players I expected to read me correctly if you're all town.

I'm probably wrong about someone but hopefully it won't matter.

[absinthe]

Basically I resent being herded, but I feel good about the direction and I'm done talking about my reads for now.

[absinthe]

I realize that you might not have known demona went to the wall, but I’m curious about your thoughts there. I’m on record as having a town read on demona. It’s the only read I’ve unequivocally stated. I’ve mentioned a suspicion of you. Now I know my reads can change quite a lot, especially overnight, but your thought there that you’d be the decider doesn’t line up with the thoughts I’ve given.

I'm not sure exactly why absinthe didn't clarify this, and focused more on the reads portion, but the way I interpreted the original post was that she was saying that she would be the decider due to being the consensus scumread among the Keep players (scummiest person decides is the standard Keep play). Which I think does line up with what you're saying here.

It feels meaningful, somehow, that absinthe focused on analyzing your reads portion of this rather than clearing up what looks to me like a misunderstanding. But maybe I'm the one misunderstanding something here?

I'm pretty sure I already expressed this thought well before Tempest's post, so that doesn't appear to be what needs clarification.

How do you interpret her saying:

1) she townreads demona
2) she mentioned a suspicion of you
2) therefore, you being the decider doesn't line up with the thoughts she's given

That seems to directly imply that, regardless of her reads and whether she stated them earlier or not, she thinks that her suspicion of you is incompatible with you being the decider, no?

It's the nature of the Keep to me. Just like any other group of three, if Demona, Tammy and I had gone to the keep, then two of us know that we are individually town regardless of which of the other two are scum. And I feel like it comes down to me in that instance because I either am townreading Tammy into the stratosphere or I'm having a nervous breakdown over which of them is town. And if Tammy is town, then given her reads right now, she'd make the wrong choice in that threesome. I feel like it would fall on me one way or another. Tammy and I both waffle a LOT. But I'm pretty sure I'm more decisive than she is in the early game. In fortress, it's ALL early game from my perspective. But maybe I'm totally wrong about how it would play out. And when I was thinking that a Demona/Tammy/me Keep it looked to me like it would be easier than it does now. I really didn't expect her to straight up scumread me at this point. I'm not blaming her for the read. I'm fighting off some major tilt and I'm well aware it's bleeding into my play, but I'm still going to keep it light in this game.

That's was convoluted to write because of the layers of hypotheticals and my own re-thoughts based on Tammy's posts today.

At the moment I can't imagine being the player who is voted in the Keep. So my agency comes down to getting my reads right. Otherwise I'm putting the weight of the minigame on the other town player.

When town, Tammy really shines out as town IMO. We usually have a few bobbles and misinterpretations, but those bobbles almost always have resolved, usually the next time we interact.

I expected (and kinda still expect) us to eventually connect pretty well in this game if she's town. Despite Tammy's assertion that she's never in my top town reads, that's hasn't really been the case in our last few games. WH13, Diffusion, Tenet, all three of those games my read of her settled well before hers did of me (and in Diffusion she never expressed a townread of my hydra. Her hydra partner did). In all three of those games she was high tier town to me (in Tenet even before her hydra were mod confirmed town I was townreading them). We meet as hydras a lot and my partners' thoughts play into my reads of her, but often I'm the first to get there. The Smokefilled game probably deserves mention too, but the dethy had a huge impact on my reads. She was my second-highest townread in the dethy, starting very early on.

hm

i do not really understand how your approach to being the decider at keep with me/tempest would not involve, ya know, sorting me in anyway?

In the hypothetical and now impossible keep we've been discussing, I'd have spent hours meta-ing you between now and day 2. I plan to run some meta, but the pressure is off. Me getting you wrong is currently not a win/lose proposition.

[absinthe]

felt a bit like a comment scum-you makes - "oh yes I need to reread these people please note that I am busy Thinking and Solving this game because I have said I need to Do Things"

Let me just go ahead and get this out of the way, then. I anticipate needing to do at least one semi-rigorous meta dive before day 2 starts.

This was about you, Demona. And also Coral, who I keep wanting to write as Carol and break out into "Deck the Halls". I'm diligently avoiding canned holiday music but holy shit the earworms.

[absinthe]

Like idk why you keep acting like faker was trying to herd you to keep, that wasnf happening

I think you're wrong about that. I don't see it as a necessarily bad thing for town to do, but I definitely felt herded yesterday. The pressure decrease after I agreed was palpable. To me anyway.

[absinthe]

Like idk why you keep acting like faker was trying to herd you to keep, that wasnf happening

I think you're wrong about that. I don't see it as a necessarily bad thing for town to do, but I definitely felt herded yesterday. The pressure decrease after I agreed was palpable. To me anyway.

? Decrease after you agreed to what?

To go to the keep with Faker and catboi. One of my nightmare parings when I looked over the player list and signed up, though the specific minigame didn't play into it.

[absinthe]

I'm here. Who and what do you want to talk about?

Are there any of my reads you disagree with? Besides the one on you of course?

Is Isis, skitter, me still your scumteam thought?

Are you scumreading Faker for raising an eyebrow at your entrance and very early play?

I have misgivings about speaking my strongest townreads out loud right now.

[absinthe]

Someday you're going to figure out how to read me.

Ffery do you think i should be townreading you at this point?

At this point you're one of a thousand points of light.

You pretty much default scumread me in our two recent games and you were right about one of them. Should you be course correcting? I feel like you should be because you're a skilled player and part of that is reading playstyles that clash. My expectations may be too high. I scumread read you pretty emphatically in Tenet, and really only talked myself out of that read momentarily here and there until it was too late to do anything about.

Most likely some of the scumreads on me are fake. IIRC there are only a couple of players who haven't taken a stance on me. I don't feel like you've really justified your read but day 1 in this setup probably goes better with some cards held to the vest. I shouldn't have talked so much about my reads on day one of the first Fortress game.

[absinthe]

I realize that you might not have known demona went to the wall, but I’m curious about your thoughts there. I’m on record as having a town read on demona. It’s the only read I’ve unequivocally stated. I’ve mentioned a suspicion of you. Now I know my reads can change quite a lot, especially overnight, but your thought there that you’d be the decider doesn’t line up with the thoughts I’ve given.

I'm not sure exactly why absinthe didn't clarify this, and focused more on the reads portion, but the way I interpreted the original post was that she was saying that she would be the decider due to being the consensus scumread among the Keep players (scummiest person decides is the standard Keep play). Which I think does line up with what you're saying here.

It feels meaningful, somehow, that absinthe focused on analyzing your reads portion of this rather than clearing up what looks to me like a misunderstanding. But maybe I'm the one misunderstanding something here?

I'm pretty sure I already expressed this thought well before Tempest's post, so that doesn't appear to be what needs clarification.

How do you interpret her saying:

1) she townreads demona
2) she mentioned a suspicion of you
2) therefore, you being the decider doesn't line up with the thoughts she's given

That seems to directly imply that, regardless of her reads and whether she stated them earlier or not, she thinks that her suspicion of you is incompatible with you being the decider, no?

It's the nature of the Keep to me. Just like any other group of three, if Demona, Tammy and I had gone to the keep, then two of us know that we are individually town regardless of which of the other two are scum. And I feel like it comes down to me in that instance because I either am townreading Tammy into the stratosphere or I'm having a nervous breakdown over which of them is town. And if Tammy is town, then given her reads right now, she'd make the wrong choice in that threesome. I feel like it would fall on me one way or another. Tammy and I both waffle a LOT. But I'm pretty sure I'm more decisive than she is in the early game. In fortress, it's ALL early game from my perspective. But maybe I'm totally wrong about how it would play out. And when I was thinking that a Demona/Tammy/me Keep it looked to me like it would be easier than it does now. I really didn't expect her to straight up scumread me at this point. I'm not blaming her for the read. I'm fighting off some major tilt and I'm well aware it's bleeding into my play, but I'm still going to keep it light in this game.

That's was convoluted to write because of the layers of hypotheticals and my own re-thoughts based on Tammy's posts today.

At the moment I can't imagine being the player who is voted in the Keep. So my agency comes down to getting my reads right. Otherwise I'm putting the weight of the minigame on the other town player.

When town, Tammy really shines out as town IMO. We usually have a few bobbles and misinterpretations, but those bobbles almost always have resolved, usually the next time we interact.

I expected (and kinda still expect) us to eventually connect pretty well in this game if she's town. Despite Tammy's assertion that she's never in my top town reads, that's hasn't really been the case in our last few games. WH13, Diffusion, Tenet, all three of those games my read of her settled well before hers did of me (and in Diffusion she never expressed a townread of my hydra. Her hydra partner did). In all three of those games she was high tier town to me (in Tenet even before her hydra were mod confirmed town I was townreading them). We meet as hydras a lot and my partners' thoughts play into my reads of her, but often I'm the first to get there. The Smokefilled game probably deserves mention too, but the dethy had a huge impact on my reads. She was my second-highest townread in the dethy, starting very early on.

I'm so confused, if you are really good at getting correct townreads on Tammy don't you want to go to keep and vote for her? But you don't want to go to keep? Or was that gate?

That's EXACTLY what I wanted to do.

[absinthe]

Sorry @ffery remind me which game you were scum in with me?
A few games are starting to run together in my mind >.>

That absurd normal game. 2181.

[absinthe]

I shouldn't have talked so much about my reads on day one of the first Fortress game.

how were your reads used against you in the first Fortress game? is that why you found yourself shifted by scum?

I think my reads had something to do with being shifted but I believe my reads probably had more to do with me being conftowned at the Gate. I was more suspicious of the town player at the Gate than the scum player on day 1, and my suspicions of scum-catboi increased over day 2, but I don't know what I would have eventually done if we had the chance to solve the Gate.

Our strategy was to solve the Gate last so the conftown player could be there to give input to the other two games.

[absinthe]

I realize that you might not have known demona went to the wall, but I’m curious about your thoughts there. I’m on record as having a town read on demona. It’s the only read I’ve unequivocally stated. I’ve mentioned a suspicion of you. Now I know my reads can change quite a lot, especially overnight, but your thought there that you’d be the decider doesn’t line up with the thoughts I’ve given.

I'm not sure exactly why absinthe didn't clarify this, and focused more on the reads portion, but the way I interpreted the original post was that she was saying that she would be the decider due to being the consensus scumread among the Keep players (scummiest person decides is the standard Keep play). Which I think does line up with what you're saying here.

It feels meaningful, somehow, that absinthe focused on analyzing your reads portion of this rather than clearing up what looks to me like a misunderstanding. But maybe I'm the one misunderstanding something here?

I'm pretty sure I already expressed this thought well before Tempest's post, so that doesn't appear to be what needs clarification.

How do you interpret her saying:

1) she townreads demona
2) she mentioned a suspicion of you
2) therefore, you being the decider doesn't line up with the thoughts she's given

That seems to directly imply that, regardless of her reads and whether she stated them earlier or not, she thinks that her suspicion of you is incompatible with you being the decider, no?

I'm so lost, aren't suspicious people compatible with being deciders

i think coral/tempest were saying

‘why wouldn’t tempest simply be the decider by voting tempest’s townread, demona’

and the answer to that from a town!absinthe perspective would simply be that tempest was not town and therefore would not actually decide that, at which point i would think absinthe would realize tempest was not town and tada!

but from a town!tempest perspective it makes sense for tempest to simply vote for me and win the keep

Scum-tempest holding off voting town-you is 100%. But, I think town-tempest waffling a while once the decision looms is also a possibility. Right or wrong, in a town-tempest situation, I very well might have put a vote down first.

[absinthe]

I think i'm kinda at:

Wall - demona, me, coral
Gate - chara, isis, {ffery/tammy}
Keep - catboi, faker, {ffery/tammy}

Whoa. I feel like scum-you would love this wall.

[absinthe]

Maybe a kneejerk, but you're suggesting joining the two players I know least about at this table.

[absinthe]

^ to skitter

[absinthe]

Maybe a kneejerk, but you're suggesting joining the two players I know least about at this table.

Ok so .... why does that mean scum-me would 'love' this?
Also i've been saying for a whilei think i should be with demona

Because scum-me would. It raised a few neck hairs.

[absinthe]

Where do u think town-me should go?

I don't have a strong opinion about which minigame but I'd like to see you go with at least one player who can spot your scumgame. I don't think that's an easy task.

[absinthe]

Where do u think town-me should go?

I want town-you to go where you want to go.

Thinking about it some more this morning, I'm less concerned. Just because catboi and/or Faker wouldn't be in the same minigame with you doesn't mean they can't influence your game and vice versa. That applies to any scenario about your alignments.

[absinthe]

Where do u think town-me should go?

I want town-you to go where you want to go.

Thinking about it some more this morning, I'm less concerned. Just because catboi and/or Faker wouldn't be in the same minigame with you doesn't mean they can't influence your game and vice versa. That applies to any scenario about your alignments.

I think i want to go to wall
But i'm a little ???? at the notion that you're finding it sus that i want to go to wall as that's a good pairing for scum-me without really having an opinion on where town-me would go instead

It's pretty simple, though? I trust town-you to make a good choice for you and for town. I didn't object to you going to the wall last night. Your trio was what set me off.

[absinthe]

I intend to lock in the Keep unless catboi objects.

[absinthe]

From your perspective, do you mind walking me through why that makes sense to you as town one more time?

Is this to me? There's a much better chance I actually help town in the Keep than in the other two minigames given the current lay of the land. We've got about 2 days left so not much time for the lay of the land to shift.

I don't think catboi has expressed an actual opinion about me going to the keep, which is why I'm still holding off.

[absinthe]

Also, if that was to me, what did you expect to learn from my answer?

[absinthe]

partly because of the challenge/fun aspect. partly because I got tired of arguing against it. partly because I was cheated out of the Keep in my first game.

I still like the idea of being in the same minigame with Tammy regardless of which one. with enough time we've always found each other in the past. there's a dearth of either of us being scum in those games, though. Tammy may get pissed at me for pointing that out again.

[absinthe]

From your perspective, do you mind walking me through why that makes sense to you as town one more time?

Is this to me? There's a much better chance I actually help town in the Keep than in the other two minigames given the current lay of the land. We've got about 2 days left so not much time for the lay of the land to shift.

I don't think catboi has expressed an actual opinion about me going to the keep, which is why I'm still holding off.

hm

it is strange to me

how accepting of reads on you you are right now

like your general preference for keep and the other iteration you played would indicate that you could just fix that by posting if the reads were coming from other towns

i guess like

you seem not very skeptical of it being a coordinated mafia effort to neutralize you

which i feel like, on paper would be possible and if i knew i was town in your position i would be very

!!!

ya know?

but maybe it is not a fair thought because

you are not me

and i am not you

I came into the game wanting to be in the keep so from that aspect I'm not unhappy. I am a little squinty-eyed about Faker pushing me, but I like a lot of their content for town.

The game that prompted my hiatus is on my mind a lot. I got pretty tilted & borderline toxic about what felt like relentless scumreads in that game. most of the scumreads were from town. I don't want to be in a similar scenario here, but it's probably a good test of my readiness to play the game again.

There are some people I'd expect to starting to self-correct by now. Looking at Tammy and Prism (though that maaaay be unfair to Prism). And catboi to some extent. Town-him has misread town-me once, iirc and that was very late in a bizarro large theme game where I think the inherent differences in our playstyles exacerbated things. skitter gets a degree of slack for misreading me because we haven't played often or recently and she hasn't actually shown she can find town-me in our prior games. I feel like she should be getting better but meh.

[absinthe]

I need to go back out into the world for a while today. I should be around-ish for another hour before I head out.

[absinthe]

Not really sure where the lenience with me comes but I'll take it!

hmm

[absinthe]

Ffery - were you waiting until tomorrow to give your thoughts on that skitter/coral interaction I asked about or did I miss the response?

Also I’m not gonna worry about reassessing until tomorrow unless I see something that sticks out strongly.

I missed the question. If it's the area of thread I think you mean, I asked about skitter's Coral read on page 7 or 8. I didn't really like the answer, because I liked some of Coral's thoughts about the setup and how scum might approach it, particularly about scum wanting to lock in early. That happened in the first Fortress game. It could be a genuine thought process, though. Her early scumlean was based on different stuff from my early townlean.

[absinthe]

VOTE: Krampus Keep

[absinthe]

Ffery - were you waiting until tomorrow to give your thoughts on that skitter/coral interaction I asked about or did I miss the response?

Also I’m not gonna worry about reassessing until tomorrow unless I see something that sticks out strongly.

I missed the question. If it's the area of thread I think you mean, I asked about skitter's Coral read on page 7 or 8. I didn't really like the answer, because I liked some of Coral's thoughts about the setup and how scum might approach it, particularly about scum wanting to lock in early. That happened in the first Fortress game. It could be a genuine thought process, though. Her early scumlean was based on different stuff from my early townlean.

"different stuff" isn't really accurate, I guess. My read was based on agreeing with some of the concerns Carol outlined and liking the thought process around them. skitter said she was thinking that looking at how scum might approach the setup indicates a scum mindset. That's kinda eh to me regardless of skitter's alignment. A player that's focusing on the setup will think about the scum approach regardless of whether they post about it. In this case, I thought posting about it might cause scum to proceed with caution, which gives up some of the opportunity to spread out as they prefer.

[absinthe]

Ffery - were you waiting until tomorrow to give your thoughts on that skitter/coral interaction I asked about or did I miss the response?

Also I’m not gonna worry about reassessing until tomorrow unless I see something that sticks out strongly.

I missed the question. If it's the area of thread I think you mean, I asked about skitter's Coral read on page 7 or 8. I didn't really like the answer, because I liked some of Coral's thoughts about the setup and how scum might approach it, particularly about scum wanting to lock in early. That happened in the first Fortress game. It could be a genuine thought process, though. Her early scumlean was based on different stuff from my early townlean.

"different stuff" isn't really accurate, I guess. My read was based on agreeing with some of the concerns Carol outlined and liking the thought process around them. skitter said she was thinking that looking at how scum might approach the setup indicates a scum mindset. That's kinda eh to me regardless of skitter's alignment. A player that's focusing on the setup will think about the scum approach regardless of whether they post about it. In this case, I thought posting about it might cause scum to proceed with caution, which gives up some of the opportunity to spread out as they prefer.

Thanks! I know I’m focusing a lot on that interaction but for me it seemed like a pretty important interaction wise, and I came out of it thinking coral was more likely town and either skitter or chara were more likely scum. So I was basically at does anybody else see what I see, and how I’m interpreting it or am I placing too much emphasis on a conversation that is not as important as i thought it was.

Yeah that whole section needs attention. Maybe tonight.

[absinthe]

She intersects with several of my favorite genres. I like that a lot.

[absinthe]

Today is crazy here. I'll be around tonight.

[absinthe]

I don't see a ton of value in preflipping in general, but especially before swaps this is just an exercise in convolution IMO.

I think giving scum a roadmap of who to swap is a bad idea and so discussion expectations around what happens seems outright counterproductive

Agree.

[absinthe]

edit i don't think ffery chooses keep if she's scum with catboi @ prism how do you think that makes sense

I put a ton of pressure to bring her here, and I don't think that progression on her choice makes sense except as reactionary to my prodding.

Eh.

Keep was my first choice since I decided to /in. I thought my reads would be more solid in a Keep that included Tammy and that was my main gripe with your "pressure". The only pressure that matters in mafia is the pressure I put on myself.

[absinthe]

See you on the flip side!

[absinthe]

I'm here and I'm not happy.

Catching up. Hope y'all are discussing the solve-order for the mini-games.

-------------

Mod, I'll be v/la on Thursday possibly into Friday

[absinthe]

Does Tempest not leave after the Gate is solved? That's a huge improvement over the original setup.

I was hilariously wrong about Coral yesterday. And I don't plan to vote anytime soon.

Faker -- I believe you know in your bones that me getting and keeping a townread on you is not a slam dunk

catboi -- you wouldn't move me out of the keep two games straight would you?

skitter -- I'm trying to decide which makes more sense. That you were moved out of the Gate because of your alignment or because of your reads.

[absinthe]

ffery when you're around I'd love to hear your thoughts on my alignment now, and especially rehash your thought process on me in the very earlygame.

My thoughts are in flux and I'm mentally in solve-keep-like-I'm-part-of-it land. Working on that.

What about my thought process in the very early game? Are you referring to 445?

[absinthe]

skitter -- I'm trying to decide which makes more sense. That you were moved out of the Gate because of your alignment or because of your reads.

Plz elaborate on the 'because of your alignment' bit

Either there were two scum in the gate, the scum in the keep thought you'd misread them, or it's purely shenanigans.

In the first game, the swap was part shenanigans and part to increase the probability of scum winning the keep. The scum ratio at the start of night 1 were 1-1-1.

[absinthe]

Does Tempest not leave after the Gate is solved? That's a huge improvement over the original setup.

I was hilariously wrong about Coral yesterday. And I don't plan to vote anytime soon.

Faker -- I believe you know in your bones that me getting and keeping a townread on you is not a slam dunk

catboi -- you wouldn't move me out of the keep two games straight would you?

skitter -- I'm trying to decide which makes more sense. That you were moved out of the Gate because of your alignment or because of your reads.

structurally this post kind of sets me on edge. not doing anything with it just making the observation.

That question in and of itself seems kind of silly? Like, yeah, I'd double down if I think I could get away with it/it was the best move. I have no fucking clue what I'm doing here if I'm scum and chose to remove the person most likely to vote for me to leave myself with two of the people

least

likely to vote for me, as well as one who I'd be most concerned with outshining me. That just seems to be terrible play on its face, which shouldn't be hard from your pov.

Scum-you moving me out of the keep doesn't make sense unless you weren't as sure I'd vote you as you've indicated. Scum-Faker moving me out of the keep after so much effort to get me into the keep doesn't make sense, period but would be hilarious if true. Scum-skitter would probably like to not go up against Tammy in the Gate. Maybe she sees the keep as an easier win given how minigames shaped up.

[absinthe]

Scum-you moving me out of the keep doesn't make sense unless you weren't as sure I'd vote you as you've indicated. Scum-Faker moving me out of the keep after so much effort to get me into the keep doesn't make sense, period but would be hilarious if true. Scum-skitter would probably like to not go up against Tammy in the Gate. Maybe she sees the keep as an easier win given how minigames shaped up.

So you're leaning toward town-Faker right now?

I'm concerned about how Faker's gone full-in on a scumread of me. My read went a little south by the end of day 1, mostly because of how they seemed to be taking full credit for pushing me into the keep. My first post exists, and aside from angsting over picking correctly between the two of you, nothing suggested me in another minigame looked like a good thing for town.

[absinthe]

I'm home. going to make something to eat. Will catch up shortly.

[absinthe]

I'm headed back to the start of day 2. Will probably need to do this in 2 time chunks.

[absinthe]

I know Faker's getting replaced, but I'll poke at posts that bug me or otherwise are noteworthy anyway.

LMAO okay yes that makes a lot more sense

idk i know if you’re town you want to not be a paranoid mess but things like this make it impossible

Elaborate?

It does make sense for scum-ffery to want to try to get out of that keep

this sounds like you know catboi and Faker are town.

I'm grateful for not being swapped into the Wall, but I don't think it rules out a 1-1-1 distribution entirely.

Isis is scum at... i want to say 80% confidence, which for me is very high. this is the outcome i expected if demona wasn't swapped out, though that doesn't mean i'm any more prepared for the next phase.

feel free to vote for isis

i would be super happy to play as confirmed (noone is

really

going to argue that i stayed in the game as a scum to, like, manipulate the other games or whatever, right?)

I may be reading into this post, but encouraging someone to vote in your elo so soon after the day starts is hmm.

Tempest, thoughts on absinthe swapping in? My impression is that she'd likely be scared of you in a similar way that she would be scared of Cabd, but if she has to go somewhere I think this arrangement makes a lot of sense (Keep is 99% a loss if she stays with me, might think knowledge of you is an advantage/can be exploited even if reverse is true too)

Just going to point out that I wanted to go to the Keep with Tempest. Which doesn't really negate this as a reason to scumread me, but w/e.

On a similar note my confidence in Faker in the first phase was mainly done to see how scum would react to it, my anticipation was that in a world where Faker truly is town, scum would basically never let us stay together because I'd all but promised a vote there.


Additionally it makes more or less perfect sense in a world where skitter is town for scum to move her here because she's highly unlikely to vote for me.

This makes as much or more sense than the scenarios I was thinking about being moved out of the keep. I felt like the keep is the place where being misread wouldn't be harmful in itself. It would be down to my getting accurate reads.

i'd also like to point out that between Isis and demona at the wall vs. the configuration at the gate, does scum Chara choose to duke it out against Isis?

Your thoughts on this, Isis?

1258 is very specific to a behavior and is not at all a read of me, and you were very explicit about not having any reads you felt strongly about.

I mean, whatever, I meant for it to look that way

1359 also isn't really true. It's about who town has to pick between. skitter is probably more afraid of my scumplay than any other player at the table. I'm not good at reading her and have got it reversed basically every time.

I don't follow. Skitter had explicitly stated a scumread on me at multiple points in the previous phase. I'm speaking from the perspective of knowing I am town (obviously).

skitter swapping to keep as scum with absinthe is borderline nonsensical in my eyes unless you think they did it hoping people level themselves, but it'd be probably outright -EV in both instances. skitter being scum with coral also feels fairly unlikely. She's not averse to extended theater with teammates but typically she'd need rapport with the teammate and the way the back and forth with coral went didn't feel s/s

I don't think scum-me would have sat still for being swapped to the gate. it would depend a lot on the make-up of the team, though.

i think she's been playing defensively since we started. it'd be the easiest win in a minigame for her to miselim me, though i do think her desire to go where i go is also a genuine "i want to play with Chara" feeling and not a ploy, just one that happens to also work out with her goals.

i was really hoping for this outcome because i think if Isis and i

are

both town we can find each other, even if demona if scum is being exceedingly town to me and Isis both. unfortunately the game has in a way just started.

i got sidetracked but my main reasoning is this is an ideal situation for scum Isis. i started considering it seriously in 236, it feels like she's been playing to me to make me easier to handle. (and that Coral read is very... i don't know, obvious?)
when i said i didn't want to be in a minigame with her and i just hoped she was town, she brought up the time i was rightly suspicious of her as scum. a way to make me more confident i can read her.

i haven't reread with this in mind re: the timing of demona's locking in Wall.

"defensive" wouldn't really be a word that comes to mind to describe Isis's play although I see your point about 236 I guess, will review it at some point. Had lingering suspicion of Isis for gut reasons but

with the clarity of distributions things are coming into focus more so not as sure.

I don't get what you mean by the bolded?

I think absinthe's whole spiel about being okay with going to the keep and being able to control her own destiny there was very town and strongly favor her being town over coral

Strongly disagree. I don't think it made sense to go to the Keep with me under those circumstances, and she hit the wrong notes with me literally from start to finish yesterday.

Start was very awkward/wonky and she went full deer in the headlights when I got started. She similarly got caught off when the switchup to the narrative you're describing had essentially no effect.

Welp. Don't know what much of this is in reference to. From my perspective, the only headwinds I've been fighting are all the misreads, and trying to figure out which ones are faked.

...Do you mind walking me through why I'm in the Keep as scum, along with why I swap out someone that I am 100% sure I can snow in absinthe?

I'd like to think this confidence is fake!

...Do you mind walking me through why I'm in the Keep as scum, along with why I swap out someone that I am 100% sure I can snow in absinthe?

in this game keep is the most difficult location to play as scum and there's a decent likelihood you have a higher confidence level than anyone else in pulling it off and winning here

absinthe had expressed the possibility of voting for me and she is much more valuable as a potential mis-elim elsewhere than staying here if that's the case

I thought I had mitigated the mislim potential with my keep pick. The reasons why I was moved out of the keep in the first game were murky to me before the keep flips. given Briar-scum, I figured it was to prevent pooky from deciding to vote me.

[absinthe]

Current consensus is ffery is scum there

Is this actually consensus? not rebutting it, yet at least. I have a lot of pages to read.

[absinthe]

I'm ffery.

[absinthe]

I'm ffery.

Noted. Why do you think you’re scumread?

I don't think it's due to being too busy to post much during day 1, but I think the effect of that -- posting mostly in catchup mode -- is a major reason. I'm usually one of the most prolific posters regardless of alignment, so this game is pretty far off the map. I think I'd have to go back to 2014 to find a game where I wasn't keeping up for long stretches.

[absinthe]

post swap? you mean pre swap?

[absinthe]

catboi can you talk about how your Faker read developed?

[absinthe]

I don't think cat's explanation that I'd prefer you to absinthe here makes a ton of sense. Tempest scumread you and I can manipulate her into leaning into it from Keep. I've had my fun with you in Melancholia, while ffery hasn't gotten to face me yet. The only points for it are "+challenge" and "Supreme confidence that I'll win anyway", but I'm on record in another game as Keep being explicitly to my strengths as town and my favored game. I started out angling elsewhere then

went out of my way

to go to Keep anyway precisely because I love how the game is styled.

I'm curious as to what you think about the recent back/forth. I also think Tempest should weigh in.

I'm not sure:
- i'm only half skimming rn and will actually reread ajd think abt this after work
- i don't follow why cat thinks i don't swap there
- i think that you/ffery beinf scum together is wild given you pressuring her to join keep yesterday. If she is town i do see an element of you enjoying the challenge of me being here and doing this swap, esp. if she has very strong feelings abt being elsewhere (this is true for catboi as well)
- i'll see what tammy says r.e. me voting but i am nowhere close to making a decision at this time. I also think this is more likely to get resolved via you two voting. I would prefer on me since i know i'm town but eh
- in a vaccuum catboi feels scummy to me but (esp. In this back and forth) but i am very, very worried abt getting snowed by either of you

I feel like getting me into the gate was probably more the goal than getting you into the keep.

I would prefer on me since i know i'm town but eh

if a vote is placed on not you and you are town then town loses the keep

unless the ‘eh’ was like,

like ‘well we all lose sometimes’

in which case yes but also! i would rather not

I imagine someone's already

Chara pointed this up. A vote on not-skitter loses the keep if the not-skitter is scum. The not-skitter could also be town.

On the one hand I don’t mind being confirmed because that removes my concern that I fuck up the game by being misread. But now there’s the issue of getting it right and the situation I said was the one I’d not be keen to end up in is the exact situation I’m in. While I would want to get it right with anyone, Ffery is the one person I’d be putting the most pressure upon myself of getting right that I fear the most I won’t get right. I think in any other game I get it right almost every time, but here I worry I end up like I did in our deathy and I shudder to think about that.

We got there in the dethy! Though it may have actually required making it a masonry :/


Reading 1482, I think demona didn't mean what I thought she meant, but it's tough to parse.

[absinthe]

Does Tempest not leave after the Gate is solved? That's a huge improvement over the original setup.

I was hilariously wrong about Coral yesterday. And I don't plan to vote anytime soon.

Faker -- I believe you know in your bones that me getting and keeping a townread on you is not a slam dunk

catboi -- you wouldn't move me out of the keep two games straight would you?

skitter -- I'm trying to decide which makes more sense. That you were moved out of the Gate because of your alignment or because of your reads.

structurally this post kind of sets me on edge. not doing anything with it just making the observation.

That question in and of itself seems kind of silly? Like, yeah, I'd double down if I think I could get away with it/it was the best move. I have no fucking clue what I'm doing here if I'm scum and chose to remove the person most likely to vote for me to leave myself with two of the people

least

likely to vote for me, as well as one who I'd be most concerned with outshining me. That just seems to be terrible play on its face, which shouldn't be hard from your pov.

I like this.

[absinthe]

lol and I commented on the post earlier. The thing I like is your comment about the trade not making sense from a scum-you perspective due to your confidence of me voting for you.

I'm having trouble internalizing I'm not in the keep. :/

[absinthe]

Scum-you moving me out of the keep doesn't make sense unless you weren't as sure I'd vote you as you've indicated. Scum-Faker moving me out of the keep after so much effort to get me into the keep doesn't make sense, period but would be hilarious if true. Scum-skitter would probably like to not go up against Tammy in the Gate. Maybe she sees the keep as an easier win given how minigames shaped up.

So you're leaning toward town-Faker right now?

I'm concerned about how Faker's gone full-in on a scumread of me. My read went a little south by the end of day 1, mostly because of how they seemed to be taking full credit for pushing me into the keep. My first post exists, and aside from angsting over picking correctly between the two of you, nothing suggested me in another minigame looked like a good thing for town.

Understood, I guess. Do you have thoughts on the Wall? that game feels the trickiest to me right now.

I agree it feels tricky. Maybe because it's the threesome I have the least amount of experience with. I'm trying to compare Isis in this game vs the hood game you modded. I feel like she was more decisive, but very different setups and playerlists. Though the scum choosing who went where parallels the scum swap ability in this game.

And Chara feels *more* decisive in this game than in the others we've played, especially Yggdrasil. Large themes, though.

Chara wanting you & Faker to take a break reminds me of how it tried to make peace between my hydra and LLD.

[absinthe]

skitter -- I'm trying to decide which makes more sense. That you were moved out of the Gate because of your alignment or because of your reads.

Plz elaborate on the 'because of your alignment' bit

Either there were two scum in the gate, the scum in the keep thought you'd misread them, or it's purely shenanigans.

In the first game, the swap was part shenanigans and part to increase the probability of scum winning the keep. The scum ratio at the start of night 1 were 1-1-1.

So i guess which of these do you think is the world we live in?

I think we live in a world where there was more to the move than pure shenanigans. If you're town, I think me in the gate was preferable to you in the gate based on our day 1s. At least in scum eyes.

I believe I can dig myself out of this hole, but that doesn't mean scum would believe it.

[absinthe]

Chara wanting you & Faker to take a break reminds me of how it tried to make peace between my hydra and LLD.

do you think that's an AI behavior? Faker is my friend as well.

That's been evident to me!

The main difference I saw is that there's a lot more warmth to your peacemaking here. Is that AI? I'm not ready to try and figure that out. I haven't read carefully through that part of the thread yet, but I'm closing in.

[absinthe]

I need to get to bed. Hitting the road pretty early tomorrow.

@MOD V/LA until Friday afternoon.

[absinthe]

I'm back. May or may not catch up tonight.

[absinthe]

Happy holidays! Hope you enjoy however you spend tonight, tomorrow.

I probably won't be around until late late Sunday.

[absinthe]

i'm happy with catboi deciding who to vote in the Keep.

Agree.

[absinthe]

Maybe I'm tunneled but that being the only thing that absinthe has chosen to comment on in a game-advancing way in the last 500 posts seems more likely to be an attempt to create WIFOM than an actual attempt to push forward scum agenda.

Especially with her previous trajectory of her read on catboi heading in a positive direction.

tunneled.

heh.

If catboi is town, I trust him to find town. figuring out the keep was my top goal throughout day 1, though I didn't want to give away thoughts that would make the scum night choices easier. I feel most comfortable with his takes and stances of the three of them.

[absinthe]

That opinion weighs soooo heavily from someone I'm not exactly positive is town.

I'll take ~some~ responsibility for being misread, though. I should have realized how much the holidays were going to impact Dec and definitely should have realized how much the car and home repair stuff were going to chew up my free time.

[absinthe]

A lot of my unsureness originates with spinning in circles over why we were switched on night 1.

this is the lowest activity game I've played in MS since sometime in 2013. It's like I want to hibernate after the last month.

my content is necessarily town content though.

[absinthe]

your pov is missing context.

Regarding the keep, because you thought you'd be townread? You keep reiterating that you want to be voted, not to vote.

[absinthe]

well, probably lacking context.

[absinthe]

Chara wanting you & Faker to take a break reminds me of how it tried to make peace between my hydra and LLD.

do you think that's an AI behavior? Faker is my friend as well.

That's been evident to me!

The main difference I saw is that there's a lot more warmth to your peacemaking here. Is that AI? I'm not ready to try and figure that out. I haven't read carefully through that part of the thread yet, but I'm closing in.

i was trying to see what we had last spoken about, absinthe, and i saw it was here.
i do go for the "peacemaking" as scum in an attempt to replicate my town meta. as town i tend to let my emotions show more and have sometimes gotten more personal than i should have in a game (i'm not including this instance in that, for the record) while as scum i am pretty uncomfortable with doing so. it does still happen as these peacemaking attempts tend to have little to do with game events and more to do with disliking toxicity in games in general. if i call out behavior as scum in a "you need to stop" sense it's always my honest opinion, and only a tactic in that i'd often do the same thing as town.

i'd also rather not go over this part of the game any more than that, so i'd appreciate if you went through other avenues to read/play around me. but i understand it is game content so i won't be mad if you do choose to use it in the game given i've expounded... expanded? on it here.

I'm ok with leaving it be. I'm not sure what more I'd get from further discussion.

earlier in the game I called your tone confident and assertive, which was at the point on day 1 where you appeared to be giving me a really easy townread, when actually you wanted to see my reaction to the read. shortly after that Tammy said you seemed comfortable. And I think you also said something about feeling comfortable and liking the game.

I thought you were more comfortable (heh) with "comfortable" than the terms I'd used. I keep chewing on this but I don't know if it's a marker for either alignment for you. Tammy said you felt town for that, though.

[absinthe]

I haven't been solving much either though! This game has been weird. Part of me wants to just vote ffery and put her out of her misery. If she's town, she's not having the greatest game or time to play, and if she's scum, she's probably just miserable.

I realize that the questions of the night actions can't really be answered until we know, but I do wonder why skitter was moved from the gate if she's town. I don't think there was any indication that I had changed any of my reads, so why not leave her there? I guess it could all be wifom to have me ask this very question, so meh.

I am town, but I don't expect I'll get any further dug into the game than I've managed so far. I've angsted over this way more than I should have. Just really a terrible concatenation of real life and unresolved mafia burnout. I won't beat myself up over it, and I hope you won't either.

[absinthe]

You're not going to badger me into cross voting atp.

[absinthe]

are you actually asking me for input that you haven't provided, yourself?

[absinthe]

I believe catboi is town in the keep. I haven't been able to figure out the wall.

[absinthe]

His energy dip resonates. And so do his thoughts about the game.

I could say some things that I think are indicative of his scum game that aren't present and vice versa, but I think the less he learns about how I read him the better.

[absinthe]

<3 catboi

I hope hope hope you're town skitter.

[absinthe]

bad reads.

I went looking through my imgur stash for my sadyes smilie, and found this and I have no idea when or why I saved it.

Spoiler:

Still,

I need my sadyes.

[absinthe]

not going to be around much tomorrow, but I'll try to keep up.

Winning the gate isn't as critical with a town point for the keep, but I have nfi who the wall scum is. :/

vote: coral

[absinthe]

gg all.

I wish I'd had the time and spoons to give town a good, well-fought win this time.