Pledge of Allegiance (Game Over! Page 76)

[Phate]

##Vote: VP Baltar

I firmly believe that the vast majority of accusations of 'flailing' come from scum. It's like 'overdefensive'.

[Phate]

DGB, do you think Troll is scum or are you just criticizing him?

[Phate]

Good day. I know most of you but for those that I'm meeting for the first time you're welcome to call me any of Zorblag, Zorb, Zor, Z or Troll.

FLUFF

Introducing yourself is not fluff.

Let me start by saying that I'm particularly thrilled to see that people seem to be doing a good job following the format for the voting. I was expecting that people would get that wrong a fair amount but I enjoy being wrong thus far.

SUCKING UP

Willing to write this off as a character quirk rather than assume it's sucking up. Why aren't you?

Hopefully that means that everyone has read the rules and has a good understanding of the instant night mechanism. That along with a relatively short deadline for day one (15 days with 24 players means that we're going to have to stay focused and present) are the next two things that we want to make sure we're all on top of.

INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

IIoA is when a player spends more time dealing with information (such as setup speculation) than analysis (such as scumhunting). It's a legitimate scumtell. However, some setup speculation is justified in a player's first post.

.

If I was one of the first posters this game I was probably going to ask questions similar to the ones that Ojanen asked; they seem a pretty valuable way to get meaningful conversation going in this game. I think that it should be reasonably valuable to start with our expectations of how likely people are to pick various teams and work there.

INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

See above.

Personally I picked town...

WIFOM

That's not WIFOM. Seriously, if you think that's WIFOM go read the wiki. Besides, there is nothing wrong with stating a fact from your point of view, especially when it's a leadup to another statement. Do you consider assuming yourself to be town in your reads to be scummy? Listing yourself in your town list, for example?

...because in general scum is fairly easy to play

FALSE

I agree that this is false. In my experience, it's much harder to be scum than town. I'd have to meta Troll before I came to any conclusions as to what this says about his alignment, but this may be the only real scumtell in the post.

...whereas town is a nice challenge without being as impossible as other would be likely to be (I can get killed as town and not lose for my team; I imagine that wouldn't be the case for most other roles.) I like a challenge but I also like to have a decent shot at winning when I play a game.

FLUFF - INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

He's providing us with valuable information - his opinion of his own playstyle. This opinion can be verified or disproven with meta, and provides insight into his playstyle, allowing for more accurate reads regardless of his alignment.

Parama looks like he's going to be pretty distracting unless he settles down a bit. I mostly read his play thus far as clumsy rather than scummy but I don't have any experience with him so I might have to go look at some of his other play. He also is the one person who didn't pre-in so his claim that he joined based just on player list seems pretty decent. The rest of you I expect joined in larger part because it gave you the chance to pick your alignment.

NON-COMMITTAL - INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

Here you're accusing him of being noncommittal in his first post. I realize that pretending you've caught all the scum in your first three or four posts is standard operating procedure for you, but it's obviously not for most other players. So why single Troll out? Why not jump on RedCoyote, or SttB, or Ojanen, or LlamaFluff for not being convinced of the setup in their first post.

The whole cult as non-hostile other idea seems pretty odd. Given that Vi was part of the design team here it's probably more likely that if we've got non-hostile others they'll have win conditions more in line with some of the ones listed in the possible win conditions listed in Mafia Reverberation (lyncher, moychendiser (which was already mentioned), researcher, reporter and survivor would all work.) I don't think that it's worth spending too much time on the setup speculation until we've seen some flips but those are the sorts of roles that I'll be keeping in mind when watching for behavior. Cults and Serial Killers are the obvious potential hostile others but I'm sure that it would be possible to come up with others..

GIANT, PLANET-SIZE INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

The way you're trying to paint it now, speculating about the setup at all is scummy. That's not a very protown view; setup speculation is one of our best tools.

Parama's scum numbers are ridiculously specific but everyone should be keeping how powerful their role mind when looking for scum. If others seem to be working with the assumption that there are lots more/less scum than you are it's a pretty decent flag that their alignment might not match yours (keeping in mind that there should be some variation of power inside the town.)

BIG OLE INFORMATION INSTEAD OF ANALYSIS (IIoA)

See above.

For those that know Jack, is this his standard play or is the cult business an unusual distraction?

DOES NOT CONSIDER JACK MAY BE SCUM

"Is the cult business an unusual distraction" does not preclude "Jack is scum.

##Vote: Charter

for being the first one alphabetically by user name not to have posted yet.

AFTER ALL THIS TALK, A RANDOM VOTE???

In conclusion, this post by DGB pung my scumdar, hence my question. If it was a provocative post designed to get a reaction from Troll, I understand. However, a few pages have gone by, and DGB hasn't said "gotcha!" I don't understand how a good scumhunter can possibly consider this post as scummy as DGB seems to think it is. Since DGB is a good scumhunter, this casts doubts on her alignment for me. That said, I am not in favor of her lynch today. Regardless of her alignment, she's useful today.

As for my 'lurking', I've been working 9.5 hours a day for the past week. I'm also modding two games and playing in two large games. My work schedule is more relaxed at this point, so I'll be able to post more now.

Now I'm going to go through the thread looking for questions addressed to me.

[Phate]

Huh. That's odd. Couldn't find any. Hmm.

[Phate]

farside: I am not going to give you a view on everyone. Town doesn't benefit from scum knowing who town thinks is town. I'm going to take a shower now, and then go to work. When I get back tonight, I will reread the game, then read those I find scummy and players with wagons on them in iso. Then I'll tell you who I think is scum and why.

[Phate]

Reading a few players in iso. Here's Jack. As I wrote this, I gradually went from feeling he was definitely scum to feeling like he was probably town.

I much prefer town to mafia. Although strategizing in the quicktopic is fun.

It'll be interesting to see how the non-hostile "cult" thing works out, I kinda wish I'd picked that.

I don't understand why he would assume cult here.

Next he votes DGB for not being genuine. If he's ever played with DGB before, he knows this is genuine DGB. Whether it's scum or town DGB, I'm not sure, but it's nothing out of the ordinary.

It does seem likely to me that people who are known to love being scum would pick scum or other. The choice was far enough away from the actual game that worries about being caught out by it would be a bit distant. Most people probably just picked what the wanted to be, and figured they would use wifom to argue if they were accused of liking scum more.

These are the words of a man who at the very least considered being scum. I see Fishy also caught this.

It was included in the Pick Your Side pm I received.

That's a deliberately bare minimum defense,

fos:Nico

What?

You say Nico's defense is "minimalist". What, exactly, has he failed to defend, or how should his defense be expanded?

No I didn't, that's not important, and that's irrelevant.

His defense sounded like he was worried about being too defensive. Scum points for that.

Again, this sounds like something scum would think. In other news, I'm agreeing with Fishythefish 100% at this point.

Obviously, you don't "know the meaning" of my fos of nico ("I can't think of any purpose" etc). Have fun ice skating on hypocrisy lake. Vagueness is often honesty, and honesty is pro town.

I think FishyTheF needs some votes too. He makes points that sound like things he often uses as town, but they don't really jive with reality and he's avoiding backing away from them.

I don't think I need to qualify these with an explanation of why I think they're scummy. I'll just call attention to them.

Getting slightly out of order here, but these two look nice next to each other.

@FishyTheF: because it sounds like he was worried about being too defensive. Why are you defending him before he explains it himself? Isn't that what you jumped on me for doing earlier? Also, you should check and see if your book has a new edition. Or stop using a book, and start using your gut.

However, you are still basing your argument on a) your "tell" about scum making pointless posts and b) disagreeing with my read of Nico's posts. Neither jive with proper tell theory.

At this point he pulls his vote off of Fishy and votes Gammagooey because "Somewhat scummy." He defends his lack of reasoning with "none of this bleeding from the eyeballs stuff for me, not this early in the game thanks." In his next post, "Fishy may be scum after all", so he votes him. No reasoning. He notes DGB's criticism of Troll's first post with "It's a tell I've never heard of and I don't see it. Yet I'm feeling no inclination to be suspicious of DGB." I don't understand why he wouldn't be suspicious of DGB if he doesn't see a tell in Troll's post. Troll's not likely to make newbie mistakes and neither is DGB.

A few posts later he explains that he's voting fishy because "I already said. Keep the fake pro town 'asking questions because debate is pro town' thing going though."

Then he votes Gammagooey again, with the case that his posts don't sound townie, he wants to know what Gamma thinks about xvart, and Gamma is choosing between xvart or Jack depending on who's more popular. After a response, he follows up with "So you have made up suspicions on two easy targets, and aren't interested in anyone else. Check." This is a well-reasoned vote and I like it.

D'oh, guess not. Turns out xvart already has reads on other players. Jack says "Sorry, can't reread." and asks xvart to quote his post. In his next post, he says "I can reread perfectly well thank you." ???

After a bunch of one-liners, and fossing LlamaFluff for "pushing a lynch a bit too heedlessly", and fossing charter and popsofctown without giving a reason, he votes me for no stated reason. When farside calls attention to the way votes piled up after DGB said to lynch me, he tells her "I was following you."

When xvart asks "Is there something I am missing in Phate's two posts that is glaringly scummy that I am missing?", he says "No, not really."

When I respond to DGB's attack on troll, he goes back to voting Gamma.

----

In conclusion, right now I think he's being way too brazen about not giving reasons for his suspicions to be scum. Too casual, if that makes any sense. He seems to be a very gut-based player. I'm not used to looking at it that way (looking at posts from the viewpoint of "If I were scum, would I do this?"), but he's consistent enough with it that I'm reasonably convinced that he is. Now I'm going to look through some of his past games at his scum play and see if matches.

[Phate]

Alright, I'm reading through Mafia 59: Hell on Earth. It's from 2007. Jack was a member of one of several scumteams. I wanted a more recent one but he doesn't have links to his wiki, so I just Googled.

He has the same "don't reason for my votes, lots of one-liners" thing going, but there's a big difference. Instead of putting himself in the shoes as scum the way he does here, he just makes standard accusations like "His play today was basically 'lurk lurk lurk jump on pj wagon for no reason', which is typical newbie scum." Some of that is definitely more experience, but it's a difference in the way he plays.

If Jack's scum, I'll be surprised. Now I think I'm going to go to bed. I have tomorrow off, so I can be productive tomorrow too.

[Phate]

I prefer mafia, but I chose town because I figured too many people would choose mafia.

Now this is WIFOM waiting to happen. "If I were scum, would I say I prefer scum?"

Meta is the playing style - how I scumhunt.
Personality is how my posts sound when spoken aloud.

I don't think I like this. I, for one, liked your opening posts. I don't care for all of this though, you know, all of this noise. You sound like you're kind of getting paranoid. I don't even get why you're making this argument other than to split hairs. This is over-the-top defensive. I don't like your spat with VP, and I think it's all just noise. I can't stand it when players think they have to make a bunch of noise.

Accusation of being 'over-the-top defensive'. Can't believe I missed this in my first readthrough.

Code: Select all

1.) Attack a player.
2a.) If they don't defend themselves, they're scummy.
2b.) If they do, they're overdefensive and thus scummy.
3.) ???
4.) Profit!

I'll tell you right now that I'm not going to play the one sentence post game with Jack, Parama, VP, and xvart. I just don't have that kind of devotion. I propose we lynch them all, what do you say?

Do Lynch: farside, Jack, VP, xvart, Parama, Cobalt, and every non-poster can be thrown in here until they decide to join us (half of them are scum anyways)
Don't Lynch: Zorblag, DGB, Fishy, imaginality, Ojanen, UK

This is in his

first post

, which was on

Page 6

.

You give a 'do lynch/don't lynch' list after saying "I'll tell you right now that I'm not going to play the one sentence post game with Jack, Parama, VP, and xvart. I just don't have that kind of devotion. I propose we lynch them all, what do you say?" To clarify, is that list a semi-tongue-in-cheek "lynch these people cos I don't like their posting style" list, or an actual list of scum v town reads?

It really isn't tongue-in-cheek. On a good day I don't usually have but enough time to check the website once, maybe twice. On a bad day (or week, as in, university finals week), I simply don't have the time to comb over the "no u" arguments. I'm just making it clear that I wouldn't mind if we cut out a bunch of noise by cutting out those that feel it necessary to have a post count of 50 by the end of the first real-time week of the game.

He's seriously advocating (he definitely stated there that it wasn't tongue-in-cheek) lynching a bunch of people purely because he doesn't like their posting style. You didn't miss any "Hey Parama, will you stop posting one-liners?" Nope, just "we should lynch these people." Scummier than that is the fact that he actually hasn't done any scumhunting by this point (this is his

second post

, on

Page 13

). He literally still has his random vote on farside.

Phate 216 feels scummy. I don't like the single question that add nothing to the game post.
I'm on the fence with Elli
Seriously 2 post from Phate that say next to nothing and a very minor (one line) case against VP. Either bussing or bw vote either way Phate gives me scum vibes

This seems kind of like a cop out to me. I mean, I'm one to talk, as I'm the only one voting you, but do you plan to push Phate's wagon, farside, or are you just throwing something out there?

What the hell? She voted me. How is that a cop-out? What do you expect her to do, dayvig me?

I'm going with my gut read of phate based on how little he has said this game (meta) right now.

Note from Phate: I'm actually going to address this since it's a fairly decent point and farside22 reads town to me. My response is at the end of the post.

This just seems misguided to me. I don't like how Parama caught you and it looks like you are trying to back away from that. I can buy you saying that Jack/xvart seem town to you, but it's still kind of awkward. I guess if Phate was the only one lurking it would make a little more sense, but why Phate over someone of the other lurkers?

Note: He's referring to the following post where Parama "caught" farside22.

##Vote: Parama

##unvote
##vote: Parama

##unvote
##vote: Parama

Tempted to LaL @ farside.

I'm not sure how that post proves anything at all, and I definitely don't see farside's mevote as "uh-oh, Parama caught me, I'll try to back away by voting a lurker for no real reason." Besides, farside gave a reason (her opinion of my town meta involves more postage) as to why me over some of the other lurkers. I would bet money that RC didn't even do a quick search to see whether she and I had ever played together to get an idea of what she was talking about. This seems like a bullshit "accuse someone to look like I'm participating" post to me. Of course, those posts can come from town, but I'm okay with an RClynch at this point.

The rest of the farside/RC argument is still going, and most of my thoughts on it mirror my thoughts in the above paragraph, so I'll let farside defend herself.

This is overdue. I don't agree with Phate that Jack is too gutsy to be scum. He's flying by the seat of his pants,

throwing suspicions at everyone and everything, and expecting people to be so dizzy by the time he's through that they can't pinpoint why they've got a bad feeling about him.

I think he'll flip scum, but regardless, I really want to see what he flips. No, he's probably not cult, but I don't think he chose town.

What? How the hell does that make sense? You think he's making a whole bunch of scummy plays hoping that people won't be able to notice his scummy plays?

Vote: RedCoyote

RC is a good lynch today.

----

tl;dr version

1) Lurking while advocating lurkerlynches
2) Advocates lynches based purely on playstyle (ie, policy lynches) on multiple players

instead of scumhunting

3) Didn't start scumhunting until people started noticing he was coasting through the game.
4) Now that he is scumhunting, all of his accusations strike me as fake "do it for the look of it" accusations.
5) Accused someone of being "over-the-top defensive" early on.

----

This graph is for farside22. She seems to think I have a town meta of posting a lot. She's basing this meta on an ongoing game. The difference she doesn't see is that I post a lot more in games I'm interested in. This graph is of a completed game that she and I played together in (I was town and she was scum), and it illustrates that when I'm not interested in a game my posts consist mostly of one-liners, and not very often at that. She used that herself ingame in a comment about how I was "laying low".

[Phate]

Good call.

##Vote: RedCoyote

[Phate]

I figured some would be able to figure out my preference by meta. Since it didn't seem useful for me to WIFOM this (you thought I'd pick scum but I PICKED TOWN so now you are going to lynch me when... oh... crap....) I elected to go for the dice instead.

I used Mafia 89 Revenge. Generated a random number from 1 to 22. 1 to 3 were mafia, 4 was other, all other numbers were town. I got town.

Mafia 89: Revenge had FIVE mafia, one serial killer, and the rest town.

I should know.

I modded it.

[Phate]

I will not be posting at all tomorrow in this game, and likely not in my other games. I work 9 AM to 8 PM tomorrow.

[Phate]

Mod: Please replace me.

I apologize for having to replace out of this game, but I'm swamped with work and other commitments right now. I knew when I was invited that I couldn't handle another large game, and I should have declined, but I figured maybe my workload would slacken a bit around the corner. The opposite happened, and I'm not going to string you guys along with a bunch of "will catch up soon" posts. Good luck, and I'm disappointed I missed out on this because it has a great mod team and a great playerlist.