Open 878: Scarfolk Council | The End

[Ydrasse]

i ended up trying to read the vcs instead of diving into that though and annoyingly i think that i have to read this game in full to understand why fire was a wagon and then why it didn’t go through and why it’s lingering today ~_~

[Ydrasse]

okay i rlly need to go now to ghost hunt goodbye

[sheepsaysmeep]

Actually there is a middleground option if we like, are collectively willing to bet the game on the towncore being town, which would be to massclaim minus the towncore and then have the towncore claim tomorrow. But I don't think that really achieves much.

I was thinking something like this earlier I suppose

I think if someone in the poe is a pr, maybe clearing themself is more useful than their night action.

if they claim today and die tonight it was helpful to resolve them

if tomorrow is lylo and they claim, they cant necessarily clear themself anymore

I changed my mind, I once more think we should not massclaim.

[Aisa]

VOTE: Aureal
I started writing half of this thought dump like 12 hours ago and it's... interesting to see what has happened in the interim

How my thoughts got to this point

(skip if walls make you sad)

Spoiler:

It seems like I somehow tricked you suckers into hard townlocking me, so I can skip the step where I apologise for being chaotic bwahahahaha

Anyway. fire doesn't seem all that scummy anymore. I thought his initial meta on me was extremely flimsy, and once I locked in {implosion Aureal Egix} as town there weren't many other places where it made sense to me to eliminate anyway. But his updated meta is better, and he didn't continue pushing me. That got me thinking about how it doesn't feel like he's been pushing any sort of agenda today. He hasn't really proposed an alternative solve, or done anything. If he's scum it seems like his only strategy has been to talk expend effort talking about how towny certain people are and how hard this game is to solve. This... just doesn't seem like scum behaviour.

I still have worries, of course. I'm worried about how bad for the gamestate (sorry) fire vs skitter was if it was a TvT. I'd need to reread that to get a better sense of whether it was something fire accidentally got sucked into (better).

I also have worries about my new push. For a while in my head Aureal was the mafia industrial complex's chosen mislim, and I still worry that I am playing into that. It feels like this is an elimination that might actually

happen

. Could it be that easy...? If Mena and implosion are town where is the opposition to the wagon...? But maybe it is that easy, I don't think it's possible to tell right now.

And Aureal... oh, Aureal. I think I've ignored some warning signs for too long. Let's talk about them.

Aureal scum warning signs

I tried to ignore these for a while, but I've come around to the idea that I... shouldn't, especially there are moments like these from

both players in this slot

.

Spoiler:

[...]
This game slowed down for a while then quickly blew up over the last day, I'll be in later to catch up.

To those asking why I voted dunn — I’m holding off a little more on this until I hear from woo

Yeah I dunno what to tell ya. it's gonna be a little late, had some irl stuff. I'm reading through the pages rn and nothing feels like it changed for me. Enchant and Andante still my biggest scumreads. Invis and Skitter still my TRs. Rest various shades of null.

This is not how I personally react to the game moving, by a large stretch. I'd need to reread to be sure but IIRC at the time it felt like lots of interesting things were happening. Woo was able to write this post on Drew, so I think this shows that at least in principle he is capable of paying attention to a specific slot's posting and being interested in individual posts. I feel like he should have been able to muster up the resolve to... have some more opinions on the rest of the game?

Spoiler:

Ok, the promised post on Aureal
[...]

Spoiler:

[...]
I'm watching implosion be a clear driver of the wagon on Enchant and going "scum wouldn't be

that

brazen... Right?" So I'm not like totally sold on implosion, it is kinda weird that there's apparently no counterwagoning, but probably not a Mafia slot?
[...]

The reads on Mena and implosion are both kind of hedgy.

- Feel free to address any of my megapost!

[...]
The Mena/implosion hedging I'm not completely sure what you mean? I don't even talk about implosion in the post you cite. I think I worded my comment about Mena poorly though - I was saying that we could consider Mena as being on the Enchant wagon (as implosion had suggested in 949 and I was vaguely remembering since I was reading some new stuff as I did my catch-up). Not anything about Menalque's alignment- I was putting him down as town for that and the read has only gotten stronger since to where he's my strongest townread.
[...]

The bolded is false, hopefully this should be clear with the quote surgery I've done. I don't think I need to explain why someone forgetting what they've said is a little worrying.

Spoiler:

VOTE: fire

Skitt was a counterwagon because fire is scum

Anyone who tries to save fire from being the lim today is also scum

Uh, you think two thirds of the remaining players are scum? This just isn't really a productive attitude. I'm more open to fire now but we could still, like, talk about it?
[...]

Really made sure the day ended there by parking on fire for most of the day and then mind controlling merlyn

VOTE: aureal

You were parked on fire for most of the day? This all started because fire said you were "the one to actually take action and start campaigning for alternate wagons" remember? That doesn't seem to match up well with your description of your day. Why are you not seeming to take issue with the inaccurate way fire describes your action but nitpicking mine, other than obvious reason that fire's inaccuracy makes you look better?

Aureal let's talk about Ceph, I'm pretty sure he's town

Sure. Why's he town? I've not had him as better than null and these conversations with him have him coming off very oddly nitpicky.

Really made sure the day ended there by parking on fire for most of the day and then mind controlling merlyn

VOTE: aureal

You were parked on fire for most of the day? This all started because fire said you were "the one to actually take action and start campaigning for alternate wagons" remember? That doesn't seem to match up well with your description of your day. Why are you not seeming to take issue with the inaccurate way fire describes your action but nitpicking mine, other than obvious reason that fire's inaccuracy makes you look better?

fire's original wording was

person a) [Cephrir] was a part of tvt wagons and then actively worked to try to move away from them and dismantle the locked position towards the rest of the game

which is compatible with what Ceph was doing (pushing skitter, then parked on fire, then asked about starting a 3rd wagon, then decided to sheep Merlyn which resulted in him voting skitter)

I don't really see how that's compatible, but if you do I'll let it go. Saying "hey Merlyn what do you think about starting new wagons on one of these people" without even so much as moving off a main wagon yourself seems pretty

in

active and

not

working to me.

As far as massclaim, I've rather come around to the 'just lim fire' position. I really dislike how fire just vanished once I started pushing back at him, and has only decided to talk about implosion (a consensus townread) since then. It feels like scum realizing they could end up making me look too unpartnered if they keep engaging with me.

VOTE: fireisredsir

These are (IMO) some key moments in her trajectory today. 1. "let's talk not auto-elim fire", 2. pushes Ceph, 3. when I tell her that Ceph seems town she seems very happy to change back onto fire again. I'm specifically worried by the "I don't see how it's compatible but if you do I'll let it go"; this isn't how I would react I think. Usually when a player I respect disagrees with me I consider the merits of what they said to determine what to do. Sometimes there's some angst because I might find it hard to go against them. Here we have the opposite: she seems quite confident in disagreeing with me, but still lets it go and is quite happy to switch onto fire.

This... strikes me as how I'd instinctively play today if I were scum and fire was town. And also very much not how I'd want to play if I were scum with fire.

(Which brings up an interesting point: maybe if we eliminate Aureal today and she is scum, then her interactions with fire can help take the sting out of our collective paranoia of fire.)

Feedback please

[sheepsaysmeep]

I once more apologize for doubting aisa was a villager

[sheepsaysmeep]

(Which brings up an interesting point: maybe if we eliminate Aureal today and she is scum, then her interactions with fire can help take the sting out of our collective paranoia of fire.)

man this is what I thought about skitter lol

[Aisa]

Misc thoughts:

- I'm also maybe willing to think about voting Dunn or sheep? Haven't absorbed fire's Dunn towncase yet. sheep kinda vibes town but man it's day 3 and I feel like he's spent half the game making his mind up on me (<3)
- The explanation for why we shouldn't massclaim makes sense to me, #nomassclaim
- I think that if fire is town, then Mena looks a bit worse. (Which, ironically, makes me a bit way of Mena regardless of fire, because I dislike completely clearing slots off associatives.) When I think back on why I've felt some pressure to lim fire, it feels like a lot of it has come from Mena. That doesn't mean Mena is scum. But that got me thinking that he seems more confident on scum!fire than the situation warrants to me.
- The way implosion has handled the massclaim discussion looks towny. Not the part where he explains the setup, he obviously does that as both alignments, lol. Specifically the mindset in '73 and '80, and the fact he thought of '76 at all. (Just in case the quintillion reasons to townread him so far were not sufficient. )

(Which brings up an interesting point: maybe if we eliminate Aureal today and she is scum, then her interactions with fire can help take the sting out of our collective paranoia of fire.)

man this is what I thought about skitter lol

Yeah there is a certain irony if I'm helping fire wiggle out of it again

[implosion]

If he's scum it seems like his only strategy has been to talk expend effort talking about how towny certain people are and how hard this game is to solve. This... just doesn't seem like scum behaviour.

I think this is pretty reasonable. It's entirely possible that I'm being too obstinate. But I do still hold reservations; I think if fire got to today as scum, this is how fire would play today as scum. My impression of fire is biased in many ways, part of which is because I perceive fire as approaching the game of mafia in some ways similar to how I do, in that fire if scum is sort of trying to make the locally next best move without needing to think about the bigger picture necessarily because the bigger picture for fire is that fire needs to get townread and the way to do that is to act, in each moment, how fire would act as town. And I think fire, if scum, thinks that fire, as town, would just be going along like they've been doing in this day.

I do sort of wonder what they'd say about their own meta in this regard/if they think this is how they'd be playing today as scum.

The bolded is false, hopefully this should be clear with the quote surgery I've done. I don't think I need to explain why someone forgetting what they've said is a little worrying.

It's a little worrying but I think there is also possibly some +town justification in it; in particular I think carelessness is townish as scum probably on average tend to be more careful to not say something factually wrong because it's their entire job. I guess this case is sort of a strange thing to forget that she had written. Idk, I don't put a ton of stock into this bit.

These are (IMO) some key moments in her trajectory today. 1. "let's talk not auto-elim fire", 2. pushes Ceph, 3. when I tell her that Ceph seems town she seems very happy to change back onto fire again. I'm specifically worried by the "I don't see how it's compatible but if you do I'll let it go"; this isn't how I would react I think. Usually when a player I respect disagrees with me I consider the merits of what they said to determine what to do. Sometimes there's some angst because I might find it hard to go against them. Here we have the opposite: she seems quite confident in disagreeing with me, but still lets it go and is quite happy to switch onto fire.

This... strikes me as how I'd instinctively play today if I were scum and fire was town. And also very much not how I'd want to play if I were scum with fire.

(Which brings up an interesting point: maybe if we eliminate Aureal today and she is scum, then her interactions with fire can help take the sting out of our collective paranoia of fire.)

Feedback please

I think this point has merit. I do think it's possible for Aureal to be doing this with both her and fire as scum; I think if fire is scum then scum will feel like they need at least one person bussing, because there'd probably be a bit of doom in the air around fire's slot and someone would need to capitalize on that. Like Menalque, one of the townbloc, was talking about how if we don't lim fire today we ought to be autolimming fire tomorrow or whatever (don't quote me on this, idr the exact phrasing)

[implosion]

Unvote

[implosion]

Definitely Mena is townier if fire is scum and scummier if fire is town, if for no other reason than I think Mena's defensive wallpost would be a fair bit more impressive if it came from a world where both of them are scum.

[implosion]

That said I still think he's town either way. Like if we limmed fire today and fire flipped town and we got to tomorrow, I would probably want to re-evaluate Menalque somewhat

I think either Aisa or I dies tonight 90% of the time (unless like we lim fire and get a scumflip) so I definitely do what to hash out what we can today

[implosion]

I do like Ydrasse's entrance. It's not like, clearing by any means obviously but I think I do like it a little bit as towny

[fireisredsir]

implosion how is this not willful

i feel like maybe 1% of mafia games have actual instances of mafia intentionally misinterpreting something to gain a rhetorical advantage. it's just so easy to refute by saying "no, i meant z, not y". As such I think it's an extremely high burden to show that someone is actually willfully misrepresenting something, at least that they're doing so in a way that is specifically as mafia trying to lie to gain rhetorical advantage in an argument. Maybe you're using the word willful differently from me.

I tend to think that this sort of thing is more often someone who misread something or misinterpreted some phrasing (because we're on the internet, and we don't have body language cues or tone of voice or anything that would make it easy to actually interpret what anyone is saying) and then got stubborn about it.

fair i guess

i do think the original thing she probably thought was a real point but the digging in and doubling down doesn't even feel like she's trying to approach the situation in good faith

[fireisredsir]

"super pure game" is literally the exact words used in 1897, it's not in any way a misrepresentation. That's literally what fire said. You just don't like it being pointed out that that's not true in any meaningful way that someone who wants to solve the game would use.

you are taking those words and applying them to a context that they were not used in, in order to misrepresent my position

There is no context other than THE ENTIRE REST OF THE GAME in which sheep twice voted out town and you call his game super pure despite that!

ok just to be super clear so this can be the last post on this useless topic

i am spoilering this bc i think this the usefulness:length ratio of this is extremely low

Spoiler:

i have been, over time, starting to lean scum more on sheep. i went to reread his iso to see how i felt about it now. there was a lot that felt pretty reasonable to me and like he was having generally accurate/good takes on the game and the content of his posts felt towny. i didn't really scumread his play as much as i thought i might, once i really read the things he was saying and the positions he was taking

i then thought about if sheep scum was capable of playing a game like that, and if he did, what his goals would be

i thought that he probably was just trying to look pure (meaning, look like someone who is uninformed and is genuinely trying to solve the game) so that he could collect townreads (which he did!) and set himself up to endgame. he didn't stray too far from consensus, he built a solid and probably accurate towncore, and didn't push anything too hard himself but mostly just vibed

"on the right side of things" meant more in terms of general position and reads and approach to the game in the day-to-day takes and reactions and arguments, which i weigh more strongly than where he ended up on the end of day wagons

as i pointed out in the original post, i thought some of the way that he angled towards the skitter wagon felt like it could be a little slimy (and i felt it at the time too, i told skitter then that if she was town then she was probably right on sheep bc i was feeling it a little bit then)

your posts seemed to completely miss all of the nuance of what i was saying and assign meanings to things that seemed to me like they were really obviously not what i was saying

i never said that sheep's being on the end of day wagons was towny (i don't think it's that scummy either, but i didn't really comment on it, it didn't factor in much to my read)

the post wasn't even really offering a read on sheep. it was just me thinking about what his goals might be if he were scum

i didn't say that i knew the exact alignment of everyone on the enchant wagon, but if the only person really opposing it was andante, then obviously most of town was in favor of it

you were arguing against things that i never said and the arguments didn't even make any sense but it felt ridiculous to argue against them when it wasn't even a position i took in the first place. it just felt like you were throwing random accusations out that had no bearing on what i had said and my reaction to that is generally "???????"

[fireisredsir]

i want my feelers out before i poof

philosophically i think claiming sooner > later works better but that might that i’m obsessed with a dumb em setup where masons claimed and people solved before they burned through cleats in a smaller pool

i remember hearing about this setup from a little birdie

[fireisredsir]

I once more apologize for doubting aisa was a villager

ok but can you address this:

So sheep. Honestly, something about the way in which sheep is indecisive right now is really offputting to me. I generally tend to think changing your mind is more often than not something town do more compared to scum. But that's not really exactly what sheep is doing, sheep had this feeling Aisa might be scum but then abandoned that feeling when, tbh, nothing really changed. Yeah Aisa townposted more but it's not like Aisa townposted in a way that she wasn't already doing. It kind of feels like if sheep is town who thinks Aisa is town then he should have figured that out a long time ago, or at least like, I'm not sure why he changed his mind now except that he's scum who just realizes she's never a viable push.

bc i still don't really get what about aisa's posting now suddenly is so different that you don't think it would be fakeable as scum

to the point where you're even apologizing for ever even thinking she could be scum

this latest post feels pretty on par with the stuff she's been doing all game (and also not out of her scumrange at all)

so i don't get what changed your opinion

[sheepsaysmeep]

each time I read and reflect on her content I kinda find it >rand wolfy in that moment

like every time she flip flops and suddenly 180's a read, I think that was a relatively impure flip. everyone thinking it's villagery is something I disagreed with and the fact everyone liked it sort of accentuated negative feelings for me throughout the game

then for a moment she put in so much effort for like one page, and I stopped and thought about her overall game very large-scale. I realized theres just no reason for her to put in this much effort and keep flip-flopping her reads around right now. shitty read but she's already locktown by everyone, the entire rest of the game is coasting, just coast too lmfao it would be kinda depressing to keep tryharding like that when if scum you've already won. instead it's pro-town (makes the game less dead) and there's no agenda

there's no good reason why I didnt reach this revelation the past times she was doing it

[sheepsaysmeep]

she is also very tonally pure lol and I had been ignoring it for my read on her content

idk I just stepped out of a tunnel

[fireisredsir]

My impression of fire is biased in many ways, part of which is because I perceive fire as approaching the game of mafia in some ways similar to how I do, in that fire if scum is sort of trying to make the locally next best move without needing to think about the bigger picture necessarily because the bigger picture for fire is that fire needs to get townread and the way to do that is to act, in each moment, how fire would act as town. And I think fire, if scum, thinks that fire, as town, would just be going along like they've been doing in this day.

I do sort of wonder what they'd say about their own meta in this regard/if they think this is how they'd be playing today as scum.

idk how accurate that is exactly

i think i am good as scum at getting townread and knowing how to appear natural and all that, but primarily i am more of a long term planner than a live in the moment type

i don't generally attempt to act how i would as town, i act in ways that will set the team up to win the game. sometimes that means getting townread, sometimes not

so i think how id act here would really depend on my team. if there was someone positioned well and set up to win already, i probably would kinda let them do their thing and focus on trying to help them set up the win, maybe trying to push out a townie

if there wasn't, and everyone is in the poe, then the focus would probably be on making sure that 2 of us (if there's 3) are locked as unpaired, but not really caring who we elim, bc that isn't as important for winning the game. that might mean a hard bus or some in depth theatre. i think this world never really gets to this point bc there's no way i play yesterday how i did if im our team's best shot at endgaming

i don't think there's any world where i as scum pressure and bait mena upon entering lol bc as he said himself, that would be really dumb

i think i only would try to push out skitter like that as scum if i am okay trading myself for her because someone else can carry it to the end, so probably like you or aisa

[fireisredsir]

each time I read and reflect on her content I kinda find it >rand wolfy in that moment

is this usage of read pronounced like lead or like lead

[fireisredsir]

im still wondering what about her latest post didn't feel wolfy and in fact felt so couldn't be wolfy that you wanted to apologize for not seeing her as town before

is it just, now you see her as town, the tunnel is gone, so you can see her posts as town? there's no doubts that you backed off too easily or anything?

[sheepsaysmeep]

I now think she is obviously trying to solve the game, which is something that recent post of hers (and the very big shift in her readlist that it implies) compounded especially strongly

I do suddenly think she is obvious town with little doubt

I found her Way of solving wolfy but that was like a Day 1 type of read that I held onto too long

it was like a sorry to Aisa, you've been so hardworking for us u didnt deserve that lazy read lol

idfk

[sheepsaysmeep]

each time I read and reflect on her content I kinda find it >rand wolfy in that moment

is this usage of read pronounced like lead or like lead

past tense I guess

[sheepsaysmeep]

I think the bad faith here in aureal-fire is aureal pulling out "sheep was on both the mislims while I, your wolfread, wasnt" and trying to apply it to this discussion

it is a) basically irrelevant, and b) misused in the way she tries to say alignment-related things with it

a) I just dont think fire said anything that has a good connection to the fact that I was on the main wagons day 1 and day 2, so the whole conversation was just spawned with inherently bad faith

b) aureal's stance in this conversation makes a lot of implications. I think it shades me (aureal disagreed when I said that so maybe im just misinterpreting??) she has snuck self-defense of herself in there, etc. but I think presence on both mislims just blatantly doesnt make sense as something thats relevant. implosion was on both mislims. hypothetically, if skitter's counterwagon fire was village, there's simply nothing wrong with being on the mislim. etc

[sheepsaysmeep]

His apparent position of "person who voted out two town is super pure, person who voted out zero town has got to be scum" is actually logically consistent. It just is not at all likely to be correct and anyone who plays Mafia is going to know that.

this quote I guess is what a lot of above position is based on