open 894: near vanilla (game over)

[Dannflor]

Aisa is town but that isn't an unpopular take.

Jupiter and Project are both pretty towny too.

[Titus]

Fear not, for the Scum Queen has arrived to save this tortured town

I dispute this claim.

You can be the princess to inherit when I retire.

When I take my first loss as scum then I will consider relinquishing my title

I won my first 6. How many are you at?

[Titus]

UNVOTE: Kurtapika

Im new to the game so struggling to get involved, but whilst weak my initial suspicions would be for T3.

I’ve found his posts to be the most defensive. Particularly 39.

I also don’t like 63. I don’t like that he answered for Asia, whilst saying not to answer for her. Asia has been prodding slightly at T3 and I’m conscious whether answering for her was almost doing her a favour to get her off his back. Almost a ‘look im on your side’.

This read could be completely off, but I’d be curious to know peoples thoughts.

I feel Kurtapika is awkward and distant.

Why do think this is a scummy trait rather than a symptom of being new to the site?

It fully could be. But it's a fair gut thing.

[Titus]

the other actual reason I'm asking so many questions is because I watched a shitton of Columbo recently and am adamant to turn this game into my secret Columbo RP session.

Ok. I have just one more thing...

[Black]

I won my first 6. How many are you at?

5. I guess I need one more to get on your level but unfortunately this game won't be it

[Black]

VOTE: Kurtapika

[Dannflor]

what changed since 134 that made you want to join the kurtapika wagon?

[Black]

I'll get back to you on that

[ProjEctRy]

VOTE: dannflor

Is there reasoning to this vote?

Also, I’ve noticed several people posting solely a vote without context or reasoning. Is that normal?

I thought we were out of RVS. The posts also don’t necessarily seem to be placeholder for reasoning to follow. Am I missing something?

[JupiterXV]

But I guess it's basically impossible to tell whether someone trying to start early discussion is doing it from a place to look town or scum, unless they're being super LAMIST. I don't know if I'm right. I don't think this matters anyways.

it doesn't, and what i said about motivations is more a general thing thati use to help with making reads, jsyk!

It was on night start with faster games and generally smaller table sizes, so it didn't have as heavy of a reliance on solely post analysis during D1. New territory for me.

oh, cool!

UNVOTE: Kurtapika

Im new to the game so struggling to get involved, but whilst weak my initial suspicions would be for T3.

I’ve found his posts to be the most defensive. Particularly 39.

I also don’t like 63. I don’t like that he answered for Asia, whilst saying not to answer for her. Asia has been prodding slightly at T3 and I’m conscious whether answering for her was almost doing her a favour to get her off his back. Almost a ‘look im on your side’.

This read could be completely off, but I’d be curious to know peoples thoughts.

(and also in response to aisa's following post about t3)
actually i can kinda see this. i initially put t3 higher up due to vibes and trying to start conversation, but i guess tone isn't something i really considered (as it's hard for me to tell tone through text). "am i supposed to know your meta" does seem a bit accusatory though since it's pretty clearly rhetorical

JupiterXV, do you have any previous experience playing mafia on a forum?

i do! though i played primarily on AoPS from 2021-2022 (and then I took a break in 2022) though i played one or two games during the summer. this is my first time playing serious mafia in quite a while, so i'm a little bit rusty. PLEASE excuse me if i have any bad takes LOL (and also tell me if i'm wrong about any terms or stuff bc this jargon is NOT sticking in my head). aops is actually where i knew t3 from and when i quit the site recently (userbase is too young, i really hate the general site culture there outside of mafia) i decided to come here so there's a bit of ~lore~ :3
tl;dr: i do have experience but i'm not good in the slightest

Jupiter's 64 feels very townie, good vibes there.

thank you!!!!

Just statistically.

what statistics lol? i'd say newbtown and newbscum would be just as likely to say that actually

oops all this talk about removing RVS and voting t3 reminds me that i should probably remove my vote on t3 for now. UNVOTE: T3 tbh i don't think there's anyone that's specifically raised my suspicions since there's just been a lot of t3-centric talk?
let me run through the players i swear there's more people but i can only remember like two
bella - person who went "is it okay to have a townread" at the beginning, i'd say more likely to be town due to vibes alone but just a gutread for now
t3 - person who scumread bella at the beginning, i'd say more null? not completely convinced he's scum though since i used to be a little bit mean as town
aisa - towny
uhhhhh
what was their username
right!
dannflor - kinda floating around, haven't seen much from them yet or if they have posted i'm sorry i can't remember anything from you... null?
kurtapika(?) - good vibes, i like them! sadly i don't think they've done much yet either i think they only have three or four posts? not sure what's going on there since ive seen them post and stuff and make commentary on content, but there's not much actual meat. might have to check since this judgement might be innaccurate but it's what i remember
project - kinda towny idk, they're chilling! i can't reemmber much asides from good stuff
yeah i can't remember anything this is kind of a pointless exercise

For those that don't know me I'm Black. It's a pleasure to meet you all

ooh we got a new player! hi black, welcome to the game!!
got a question though, if you're the scum queen doesn't that mean you doom the game?

OH LOL i didn't know "OWER" was referring to OutWorld
i kind of just associated ower with the cute little dog they have as a profile pictuyre

I would say it's more of a townlean than a full on townread, and yeah it's definitely weak. My reads generally are early on. There's not much more to my read other than thinking

T3 doesn't have to be doing this if he's scum here

. And thinking about his mocking of bella a little more I feel like that's more likely to come from town.

I don't think scum would want to make enemies on page 1

was reading this post and i went. wow :O this is exactly what i THOUGHT but i couldn't put it into words and here it is!!! i don't townread t3 much but this is kind of what i meant by talking about motivation and whatnot earlier. t3 wants to start talking because they: (choose one or the other) feel pressure to solve as town / feel pressure to be townread as scum. they push bella because they: think this post from bella is a bit off / want to make an opportunistic push
okay this doesn't make sense but i guess what the slashes indicate are that these are different motivations for town/scum respectively. i guess what i'm trying to articulate that there's two different worlds (and while there may be many more reasons!) and to me i think both make sense! it's just that i think i sliightly? favor the town world over the scum world in likeliness.
i don't think the push is articulated well. i now understand that maybe bella's "oh i have a townread!" post doesn't do much to start discussion and can thus be seen as scummy, but t3's push at the time seemed a tad bit reachy even if they seemed genuine about it. i think that scum t3 is likely, but town t3 is more likely because imho scum has no reason to be going around and picking fights, especially not when the game has just started. if i were in t3's position (assuming town bella scum t3) i would've just not posted that at all LOL. sure, t3 could've done all of that just to get a roundabout town read but honestly wifom is lame occam's razor for the win and what is simplest is that (at least in theory) scum wants to be present but not contentious, they want to be townread and i don't think scum t3 goes into this knowing it will get them widely scumread.
sorry this is a bit sheepy i think but wow reading that post was kind of like. in the nicest way possible it's kinda like a gateway drug i read it and i was like. THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IVE BEEN THHINKING. gently mindmelds(correct word??? idk) at you

That said, getting a ping here:
VOTE: Jupiter

It feel like they saw some reason to vote T3 and have been hanging on to it. 70 sounds like they're starting to form a reason to back out of their vote, without having to look anywhere else just yet.

pal it was an rvs vote i know them from other places...

I feel Kurtapika is awkward and distant.

would you be willing to explain? i can see the "distant" part but i dont see awkwardness. they just kind of talk a bit formally (which is actually a bit reminiscent of how i speak off the interwebs). what i see more is them not doing much

How many scum games have you had? My issue was about a year ago I hadn't rolled scum in a year and then got four In a row!

I'm 5-0

WOAHHH that's super impressive! good job

I am voting T3 because aside from their initial light push on Bellaphant, there isn't much content in his 24 or so posts.

I feel that T3's primary motivation in this game thus far has been to get people to town read him rather than to find scum or even genuinely push the game forward.
I dislike that T3 immediately undercuts the strength of his push on Bellaphant with 38 and calling it "weakly scummy" in 45.
Aside from that one read, T3 hasn't put forth a single other stance or thought about the game in terms of people's alignments.
Instead, his posts consist entirely of questions (that haven't gone anywhere yet) or explain-y self-defense posts.
For these reasons it feels like T3's start to the game has been more performative than not and I would think town!T3 would have outed some more reads by this point in the game with how clearly active he's been.

oh, these are interesting fresh new reasons! that kind of makes sense. i think i might have to reevaluate t3. honestly it's pretty interesting considering how you view them as performative- could you explain more on that point? i think their straightforwardness reads as a bit more genuine to me imo. the lack of content is actually a bit of a red flag that i hadn't exactly noticed, though i suppose it could be excused by the fact that people have generally been pushing them for a handful of pages and maybe this is to be expected?
idk. t3 is kind of a funky slot i'll figure it out later
got an exam tmrw so i'll probably just multitask, later posts will CERTAINLY NOT be as long as this ive spent like 30 minutes typing this up. too much time used *dies*

[Dannflor]

honestly it's pretty interesting considering how you view them as performative- could you explain more on that point? i think their straightforwardness reads as a bit more genuine to me imo. the lack of content is actually a bit of a red flag that i hadn't exactly noticed, though i suppose it could be excused by the fact that people have generally been pushing them for a handful of pages and maybe this is to be expected?

it can mostly be distilled to the fact that T3's espoused motivation for his opening posts was to "spark discussion," presumably to get the game going and find scum

basically all of his posts after that point was focused on self defense or other contentless questioning

I think T3 is capable of sparking discussion much more concretely and usefully as town which is why his claim of wanting to spark discussion reads as performative to me

[Dannflor]

bella - person who went "is it okay to have a townread" at the beginning, i'd say more likely to be town due to vibes alone but just a gutread for now
t3 - person who scumread bella at the beginning, i'd say more null? not completely convinced he's scum though since i used to be a little bit mean as town
aisa - towny
uhhhhh
what was their username
right!
dannflor - kinda floating around, haven't seen much from them yet or if they have posted i'm sorry i can't remember anything from you... null?
kurtapika(?) - good vibes, i like them! sadly i don't think they've done much yet either i think they only have three or four posts? not sure what's going on there since ive seen them post and stuff and make commentary on content, but there's not much actual meat. might have to check since this judgement might be innaccurate but it's what i remember
project - kinda towny idk, they're chilling! i can't reemmber much asides from good stuff
yeah i can't remember anything this is kind of a pointless exercise

I'm not really sure what the point of typing this out was? This definitely is performative while we're on the subject.

I don't understand what you're saying with your read on kurtapika. Why do they have good vibes / why do you like them despite them not doing anything

[Kurtapika]

Jupiter's 64 feels very townie, good vibes there.

What about this post feels townie to you? None of the discussion points seem to provide any useful information, and the explanations of self-consciousness almost feel like they're WKing Bella here (as does their random interjection defending Bella into the OutWorldER/Aisa posts).

Jupiter's posts I would view as insubstantial but in more of a town playing devil's-advocate way than anything, personally, as that's what they've seemed to be doing so far in terms of providing perspectives to the existing arguments, more so than necessarily pushing personal reads. But I agree with the overall reading of the post; not sure why one would get such a strong town read for this to be especially noteworthy.

I feel Kurtapika is awkward and distant.

I don't really have anything to offer to this, other than what Black said. Have not played anything pre-mechanics and nothing within these arguments feels as material as I'm accustomed to, I find it more difficult to fully commit to a player's impression on the basis of them.

Did you play Blood on the Clocktower?

No. Did consider it once, but I hadn't gotten a table for it. Had game count primarily on the short form online ones like Epicmafia and Mafia.gg (I've played/hosted before on forums, but they were distinctly based off this style of gameplay as well).

One thing about Kurtapika's post is that as of this comment:

I'm mainly in agreement with shaddowez on Aisa, no comment on the others for now.

The only thing shaddowez had said about me was this:

Aisa

Why is T3's 15 bad vs no comment on Bella's 13?

And ehhh interesting that Kurtapika thought that was something worth voicing agreement with?

VOTE: Kurtapika
I don't completely dislike this wagon and I have nowhere better to put my vote, so

The lack of engagement with 13 in general felt strange. Aisa I feel the most uneasy about, part in due to that and the other in that her posts scan as either opportunistic or overly middleman to me (I don't see anything 'interesting' about the reaction mentioned in 43, for instance, it and her overall vibe feels like TMI attempting to consistently stay within uncertain grounds). Given her apparent overwhelming townread, I grant that this might be a case of my just being unfamiliar with her meta, as most people have been making mention to it in reference to reading her.

Kurtapika - In this post you had Dannflor as town. On what basis?

By post 60, Dannflor had offered nothing serious or substantial to give any indication either way.

You refer to ‘as of this vote’. I assume you were referring to Dannflor’s vote on Shaddowez in the previous post. However, Dannflor offered no comment or reasoning for that vote. Dannflor’s vote didn’t seem serious either as Shaddowez hadn’t contributed much by that point to give a read.

Why would you think Dannflor is town based off of his limited involved to that point or off of that vote?

This is why I view Dannflor as town. The lack of need for upfront explanation and being comfortable to individually go and push/rxn in spite of his openly limited involvement reeks of townie POV to me. Essentially, a massive decreased incentive for caution. Doubt this would give any kind of good impression as scum. If it's a scum playstyle it's one I'd be unfamiliar with in experienced players for sure.

On the others I find of note, I would give OutWorldER and Titus a slight townlean. Possibly also Black. T3 I have no opinion on either way, could just as well be an aggressive wolf or argumentative town with the same manner, he seems the type who plays straightforwardly regardless of alignment. Project's posts are good and give the vibe of new town evaluating.

[Black]

ooh we got a new player! hi black, welcome to the game!!
got a question though, if you're the scum queen doesn't that mean you doom the game?

I'm like Bowser in Super Mario RPG. Occasionally I will align myself with the town to take down a mutual enemy

[Black]

This is why I view Dannflor as town. The lack of need for upfront explanation and being comfortable to individually go and push/rxn in spite of his openly limited involvement reeks of townie POV to me. Essentially, a massive decreased incentive for caution. Doubt this would give any kind of good impression as scum. If it's a scum playstyle it's one I'd be unfamiliar with in experienced players for sure.

On the others I find of note, I would give OutWorldER and Titus a slight townlean. Possibly also Black. T3 I have no opinion on either way, could just as well be an aggressive wolf or argumentative town with the same manner, he seems the type who plays straightforwardly regardless of alignment. Project's posts are good and give the vibe of new town evaluating.

We're seeing the game similarly except for the Aisa read. I'm not familiar with her meta but I feel good about her thoughts and questions so far. I feel the same about Dann except I am slightly familiar with his meta and this certainly feels like his town game, although I don't have much experience with his scumgame to compare it to

Why do you townlean me though?

[Kurtapika]

Your posts give me the impression of being open about a lack of certain knowledge without necessarily pushing a look of impartiality, particularly the observation in 112 and 157. Similar reasons as I have for OutWorldER's 145 and Titus's 152.

[Black]

Ok. Any thoughts on my vote on you? Do you think there was a reason behind it or did you read 157 as me not having one?

[JupiterXV]

I'm not really sure what the point of typing this out was? This definitely is performative while we're on the subject.

I don't understand what you're saying with your read on kurtapika. Why do they have good vibes / why do you like them despite them not doing anything

trying to figure out who i remember and what my reads are on them, i was just typing my thoughts down lol

idk kurtapika literally has not done anything they just seem chill. it's not a mafia read it's just like an "oh this person seems fascinating" thing

[JupiterXV]

honestly it's pretty interesting considering how you view them as performative- could you explain more on that point? i think their straightforwardness reads as a bit more genuine to me imo. the lack of content is actually a bit of a red flag that i hadn't exactly noticed, though i suppose it could be excused by the fact that people have generally been pushing them for a handful of pages and maybe this is to be expected?

it can mostly be distilled to the fact that T3's espoused motivation for his opening posts was to "spark discussion," presumably to get the game going and find scum

basically all of his posts after that point was focused on self defense or other contentless questioning

I think T3 is capable of sparking discussion much more concretely and usefully as town which is why his claim of wanting to spark discussion reads as performative to me

okay, this makes sense. i'm a little busy now so when i have more time i might return to this but i think i'm willing to trust your judgement since i haven't actually played w him

[Afrayed Knott]

Hi again, shit! I had an even busier day yesterday and didn't get to this, sorry sorry sorry. I shall read and get some thoughts down. welcome Black btw.

I know super scummy of me not to be involved so far in.... again apologies..

I shall get to it within the next hour or so...

[Afrayed Knott]

So I have finished reading through and making notes. Thus I am about to do something that seems to be becoming my trade mark, annoyingly or not, and that is post a shit load of content.

I'm sorry but I feel I need to make amends for not being tin the game thus far... so here goes....

[Afrayed Knott]

44 Outworld pushing a TR on T3 based on the premise that trying to jump start discussion is more a town thing to do. But couldn’t the same be said for scum, especially a player who knows how to play scum? Not sure we should take that as a way to read people. And T3 backs that up in 48.

[Afrayed Knott]

Also, my impression of T3 as far as scum players go is that he enjoys the alignment and thrives off trying to look towny. I think he could definitely pull off the things you've listed as scum (and he's said so himself).

wait, what...... you are new to the game right?

[Afrayed Knott]

Aisa Why is T3's 15 bad vs no comment on Bella's 13?

I think T3 was having a giraffe (laugh) with Bella’s comment. Just my humble opinion, which he bears out in 63.

[Afrayed Knott]

There's less than 3 pages to read through, but there's been some non-RVS like interactions. I was curious if you had read and decided to still RVS, or if you had seen something to make a legit vote against Dann.

No, from limited experience he is just a very good scum player, who, if he survives to end game, is very very good at casting doubt into the minds of town. But he is also a great town player when town as far as I have seen. So policy vote was a joke based on that..