Newbie 817 (Game over!)

[iamausername]

Do you think it would be helpful for me to claim now?

Vote: Halidon

This vote is not random.

[iamausername]

Guys, I have no intention of claiming any time soon. I asked that question because bouched said this:

So this is a random vote to get the guy to claim?

and I wanted him to think about whether or not a claim at this point would be a good idea. I wasn't going to claim regardless of what he said, I just wanted to know what he would say.

I voted Halidon because I think a brand new player is more likely to slip up under pressure if they're scum. Now, there are four players (bouchedufou, BagSquad, Halidon, Maemuki) who haven't played at all on this site before, so I needed to narrow it down a bit more. bouched and Halidon didn't have avatars at the time. Halidon only posted "/in" in the queue, while bouched posted "/in for next". Both of these things made him look the most careless of the four, so Halidon got the vote.

Really I just wanted to random vote someone and say "this vote is not random" because I thought that would get some useful reactions, and I like things to get serious as soon as possible. But I thought I'd better make it actually not random, because I wouldn't want people calling me a liar.

---

Anyway, what do we do if we don't claim? Apart from making useless and irrelevant posts?

Make useful and relevant posts.

The best way to understand how games get out of being totally random at the start of D1 is probably to look at other games and see how it happened there. Pick a few finished newbie games, read the first few pages, you should start to get the idea.

And could you please explain why we shouldn't have a no lynch vote?

There are two ways for people to die in this game:

the lynch
the night kill

the lynch has a 22% chance of killing mafia (at the moment).
the night kill has a 0% chance of killing mafia (and always will).

Any time we don't lynch, we are giving up the 22% chance in favour of the 0% chance.

---

Unvote, Vote: BagSquad

. Based on what everyone has posted so far, he seems most likely to be scum.

[iamausername]

I am curious about Iamusername's vote on BagSquad. He said based on what everyone has posted so far, BagSquad seems the most scummy, but BagSquad did not write a single post up to that point.

I'm not sure what you're curious about, because once you have observed that BagSquad had not made any posts at the time of my vote, it seems pretty self explanatory.

BagSquad is now at L-2. This is a situation for a mafia quicklynch.

Theoretically, yes, this could happen if BagSquad and everyone voting him are town. But if it did, who would end up on the chopping block tomorrow? It would almost certainly be the person who hammered a townie on page two. The mafia don't win by geting one townie lynched, they win by keeping themselves out of trouble until enough townies have died for them to overwhelm the town.

I think startransmission is very suspicious as well. 2 of his 3 posts have been with a hot temper, very scum like.

Why is a hot temper scum like?

---

Maemuki, what do you think of bouched?

[iamausername]

I say this because as soon as momentum went against Bagsquad, this game got very very quiet. It wreaks of scum sitting on thier hands and waiting for day two.

I think it's more like people were waiting to see what BagSquad had to say for himself. Also one person is being replaced, so we probably can't expect to hear much from him. And the weekends are usually pretty quiet.

Anyway, if you think this, why are you still voting for him?

I do want to know what iamusername found especially scummy about your earlier posts though.

I'd like to know too.

Do I really need to spell it out? There weren't any earlier posts from BagSquad. I said that, based on the posts made at the time, BagSquad was the most suspicious, because he hadn't posted yet. None of the people who had posted had done anything suspicious enough to make them scummier than the guy who was not posting. That's all.

---

Maemuki, I'm not sure if you misread the question in my last post or missed it entirely or what, but I would like to know specifically what you are thinking about bouchedufou at the moment.

[iamausername]

I'm thinking that Bag is probably town.

This seems like an odd conclusion to draw. I can see the possibility that he'd be acting as he has regardless of alignment, but I certainly don't see how his behaviour could be a

town

tell.

jeromus! What do you think of VRK?

[iamausername]

I don't understand. How do you think he is probably town if his behaviour is not a town tell?

[iamausername]

Did you not read the history that VRK has provided or even looked him up yourself? I am just thinking that it's inexperience.

No, I get that, I just don't see why it makes you think he's town. Would you expect him to be acting differently if he was scum?

[iamausername]

Starbuck, I think I have figured out the root of my confusion earlier. When you said you thought BagSquad was "probably town", I took that to mean "more likely to be town than the average player in this game", but from your responses, it seems like you actually just meant "is likely to be town because there are more townies than scum". Is this correct, or did you actually find him more likely town than everybody else?

iama, I'd like to know what

you

think of Maemuki, jeromus, bouched and Starbuck. You've asked all of them questions to get a handle on alignment, and I think you owe the rest of us a good turn so we can get a handle on yours.

Of course, you need but ask.

Mostly going on gut, because there hasn't been a whole lot of concrete stuff to get reads from as yet: bouched definitely comes across as town. Maemuki too, to a lesser extent. jeromus is neutral. startransmission is currently my top pick for scum, mostly because of this:

as soon as momentum went against Bagsquad, this game got very very quiet. It wreaks of scum sitting on thier hands and waiting for day two.

Considering he was voting BagSquad at the time, this does not sit well with me.

Unvote, Vote: startransmission

---

P.S. crazypianist, what do you think of Starbuck?

[iamausername]

What I don't understand is wouldn't scum act the same as town? Scum want a lynch the same as town as long as it isn't their buddy. They can put a vote on anybody, and give a reason. As far as I am concerned, the only way I see scum showing up to everybody else is by their vote pattern. As for over aggressiveness, that could be the personallity, rather than scum.

You think you would act exactly the same way as scum as you would as town, but it's not actually true. Knowing that you and another player are scum and that everyone else is not will cause subconscious changes in your play. That's just a fact.

It's not easy to spot those subtle changes, especially considering we are mostly completely unfamiliar with the other players in the game, so we don't know how they'd act normally. That certainly makes it difficult to spot deviations from that norm.

The best way to find scum is in looking for their relationship to each other, which we do by making everyone take positions on each other, even when there's virtually no basis to take those positions. Because by doing that, we'll start to form a reasonable basis for those positions.

It is much easier to find scum on later days, because a) we will know some people's alignments for sure (because they are dead), and b) there will be less people around, and thus less relationships to sort through to find the one scum pair. But that doesn't mean it's totally impossible to find scum on D1.

I don't understand what bothers you about my vote being against the (what was in my opinion) scummiest player at the time. Why would I unvote BagSquad after his "jesus christ you people" response?

You weren't just voting for BagSquad, you were simultaneously voting for BagSquad and suggesting that scum were trying to get BagSquad lynched. That's what I have a problem with.

---

startran, I would like to hear your thoughts on jeromus, if you don't mind.

[iamausername]

Iamausername - What do you think of the 3 votes on hiphop? Do you think he's worthy of them?

VRK's vote was presumably just a BagSquad remnant, since he's unvoted now, so that one was definitely warranted.

I don't think any of the points you presented in Post #100 were particularly valid, with the possible exception of "It really seems as if you're just jumping on iamusername's wagon".

bouched's vote, pretty much the same. The way hiphop followed me onto startran was maybe a little suspicious, but otherwise, I don't think there's much of a case there.

First of all, why is everybody becoming inactive? Is it because they are not interested in the game?

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't have any internet at home right now, so I can't get online very often. I'll be a lot more active once I've got that resolved, which hopefully won't take too long.

I say we wait a bit more, but if we wait too much, deadline comes...

I'll wait and see.

This is very unlikely to help. Let's pretend that the deadline is coming up in a few hours. What would you do? Who would you vote?

That's probably a good question for everyone who isn't voting right now to answer, actually.

[iamausername]

If I

had

to lynch someone right now it would be bouche, followed closely by Mae. He (gender ?) has had several people push against him, and knowing his alignment would help lead us to other potential suspects. Mae's lynch wouldn't help get us much more information like bouche's could potentially get us, but the active lurking is not helping get a handle on alignment. Good question crazy - do you have an opinion as well to add?

I don't see that knowing bouched's alignment would be particularly more helpful than knowing anyone else's, and I don't like this as a reason to support his lynch at all. Lynching someone because "it will be useful to know their alignment" is a good line for scum to push, because no one can say they were wrong if the player in question turns up town.

Do you think Mae's lurking has been more egregious than jeromus?

---

Lynches I would support at the moment:

jeromus
VRK
startrans

in that order.

Unvote, Vote: jeromus

[iamausername]

Why do you not vote for vrk instead if you think the vrk push is something a scum would pull? Lurkers don’t always have to be scum. Although it does bother me that he has time to answer the prod yet not make a substantial post at least once in a while.

Yeah, pretty much what Starbuck said. If someone is not keeping up with the game for whatever reason (as appears to have been the case with jeromus), then voting them won't do anything. But if they are keeping up with the game and just not posting, then the vote is probably going to provoke a response from them, which is what I was aiming for. I definitely don't think it would stop them from posting something they were planning to post before seeing my vote.

So iamausername are you going to change your vote, or are you going to leave it as is, waiting for the replacement to say something to convince you not to vote him?

Well, you'll find out at the end of this post!

No skipping ahead though. You don't want to spoil the suspense.

Notice how the question was asked and the bolded part of my statement. If I

HAD

to lynch someone,

RIGHT NOW

. Frankly I don't see any "good" candidates for lynching at the moment. But we're not under the HAVE TO clause at this time - we still have until Friday.

I'm well aware of the context, and I somewhat agree with the "no good candidates" point, but I don't see that it makes that much difference to my central point. You're still arguing for the lynch of someone that I believe to be town, for reasons that I find scummy.

And yes, we really are under the HAVE TO clause. Factor in the time for the leading lynch candidate to claim, and for everyone else to evaluate their claim and respond to it, and we really need to be coming to some kind of consensus on who that leading lynch candidate actually is, ooh, about yesterday.

As for the jero versus Mae line, yes I do think Mae's lurking has been more egregious because her lurking has been more active than jero's. And since Elmo is replacing jero I have to believe the problems he said he was having were genuine.

You can't really use jeromus's replacement to justify your position before we knew he was being replaced, but otherwise, fair enough.

---

So, yes, just in case I didn't stress the urgency enough earlier:

WE DO NOT HAVE MUCH TIME. IF YOU ARE NOT VOTING, YOU SHOULD BE.

Unvote, Vote: Vel-Rahn Koon

If it comes down to a choice between hiphop or bouched (I specify these two because they are the only other players who have any votes at all right now), I will vote for hiphop.

If it comes down to a choice between lynching

anyone

and lynching no one, I will vote to lynch someone.

[iamausername]

I find him having way too much indecision - but that is one of the caracteristics of day one, but it still is suspicious.

Why is it still suspicious?

That's fence sitting. That is pushing for my lynch without voting for me. Very bad, and very scummy indeed. You are sitting on that fence, waiting to see if anybody will jump in. Later after my lynch, you can say, "He had the most votes on him I didn’t know if he was scum or not.”

Fence sitting is the completely the wrong term; fence sitting would be not taking a position either way between you and bouched.

But semantics aside, I can't be waiting to see if anybody will jump in, because people

already have

jumped in. You were already one of the two most likely to end up as the day's lynch, that's why I made that comment in the first place. I think VRK is the most likely scum, but if no one else is convinced by my case there, voting him at deadline will be useless, so I'm telling everyone where my vote will go at deadline if things stay as they are. I don't see what's scummy about that.

2nd thing about this quote. I don’t know how you can get a town read from bouched.

I find that bouched has displayed a particular brand of confusion that is unique to newbie town players, and is hard to fake. That's how.

You are defending him for no reason.

False, I'm defending him because I think he's town.

That is budding. That is also very bad.

Call it 'buddying', but I disagree with the prevailing opinion that it's a bad thing to talk about who you think is town.

You cannot know for sure of which side he is on without being scum.

By this logic, we should just keep no lynching and waiting for the cop to tell us who the scum is, and if we don't have a cop, I guess we're just screwed.

You can't know for sure which side anyone is on unless you're scum. If you're town, you have to go with your best guess, that's pretty much how the game works.

For anyone’s info I find that starbuck and startranmission seem to be the most likely to be town.

Why isn't this buddying, and therefore bad, but me saying the same about bouched is?

[iamausername]

What term would you use? Either way you are sitting back and waiting for everybody to bite the hook, so that you can jump on later.

That's not what I was doing. But if it was, I wouldn't call it fence sitting. Fence-sitting is refusing to take one side or another, like Maemuki is doing.

I don’t think you can say this. There were only two people voting for me, and one was an OMGUS vote, so technically only one. Starbuck’s vote came later. That even isn't half the votes needed to lynch. Like you said things have changed. So do you believe I am more likely scum or more likely town?

OMGUS votes are still votes. But yeah, I never said one of you two was definitely the day's lynch, just that you looked the most likely at the time.

I think you're more likely scum than bouched, less likely than VRK. And, since it looks like the tide has turned and another candidate has cropped up, I will also mention that I think you're less likely scum than Maemuki at this point.

False, I'm defending him because I think he's town.

The only person that you know can be town is yourself, and I wouldn’t even believe that.

That would be why I said 'think' and not 'know'.

Call it 'buddying', but I disagree with the prevailing opinion that it's a bad thing to talk about who you think is town.

But you just said above you were defending him, talking and defending are two different terms.

OK, fine, I also disagree that it's a bad idea to defend people you think are town. Problem?

VRK really should be lynched for making pretty much no scumhunting effort all day, and for trying to dissuade any sense of urgency when deadline was coming up, because I know he knows better than that. But that's obviously not going to happen today.

So, as far as Mae goes, the "wait and see" attitude was bad when it was a few days before deadline, it's absolutely unacceptable when it's a few hours. I'd rather lynch her than hiphop.

Unvote, Vote: Maemuki