Mafia 102: No-Frills Game Thread(Town wins!)

[Pomegranate]

Wasn't RayFrost prodded? I wonder where he is...

@Mod- was RayFrost prodded? Did he respond?

I'll do that after the move, I told you.

And when will that be?

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

Super Accurate* Vote Count(as of post 550):

RayFrost - 2(mask man, crypto)
WarWound - 3(le Chat, muh316, Pomegranate)
crypto - 1(X_~)
muh316 - 1(Sando)
bigmc109 - 4(WarWound, charter, Empking, SerialClergyman)
charter - 1(hiphop, EtherealCookie)
Pomegranate - 1(Kaiveran)

Not Voting: RayFrost, bigmc109

*Not guaranteed to be accurate.

[crypto]

Nobody knows. Start posting substance.

[SerialClergyman]

crytpo - why is bigmc town?

[crypto]

Because he's done little/nothing scummy, and, less importantly, because he was scum in my last game.

[crypto]

WarWound, just vote for RayFrost. Or Pomegranate.

[Scigatt]

Wasn't RayFrost prodded? I wonder where he is...

@Mod- was RayFrost prodded? Did he respond?

I'll do that after the move, I told you.

And when will that be?

It was supposed to be four days ago.

[SerialClergyman]

You mean the game where he acted exactly as he's acting now?

And not doing anything scummy, even if it was true, doesn't make him actively town, just neutral, yes?

[crypto]

He's playing differently here than there (if my memory serves me well). He sat on the fence a lot in Mini 842; he isn't doing so nearly as much here.

Your case against him is embarrassingly pathetic compared to the case against Staple.

I have a gut town read on him. Regardless, he's been posting plenty and his thought processes are generally pro-town, so he's a poor choice for a day 1 lynch when we have gems like Pom, Staple, and Ray.

[SerialClergyman]

Well, have a read. In the game I linked earlier as scum he went straight for the staple-like player as well. He was one of the first to vote him and pushed the case on him for the entirety of D1. So if your reasons are meta, I'd say you're defintitely in the wrong camp.

My case doesn't have any relevence in working out whether he's town. If I made a bad case against him, which I don't think I did, it still shouldn't suggest that he's town.

Pom was also anti-staple, and agreed with bigmc significantly. Why isn't that a pro-town thought process?

[hiphop]

@WW page 2

@Scigatt-Why wait until after the move? Why not now? The game should be just as active until the move. My other games everybody is just as active. Nobody is absent. The move will happen when it happens. Until it does lets play mafia.

[crypto]

Well, have a read. In the game I linked earlier as scum he went straight for the staple-like player as well. He was one of the first to vote him and pushed the case on him for the entirety of D1. So if your reasons are meta, I'd say you're defintitely in the wrong camp.

Look, I have a lot more exposure to his play than you do. He pursued a crappy newbie without a second thought. Here he is pursuing a scummy, somewhat inexperienced player, not a newbie, and he has shown plenty of trepidation about mistaking newbie town for newbie scum, which is a natural evolution after deliberately lynching newbie town when he was scum last game.

Your/Charter's case on BMC pales in comparison to every other major options out there.

Pom was also anti-staple, and agreed with bigmc significantly. Why isn't that a pro-town thought process?

Are you kidding? You're saying scum never agree with townies in the game thread?

[SerialClergyman]

Whoah. Shit just got real.

As far as I can tell, that's solely and completely not true in a number of ways. For reference, GreenDude is the name of the VI that bigmc pushed and tried to lynch on D1 in his only game as scum on site.

Look, I have a lot more exposure to his play than you do. He pursued a crappy newbie without a second thought. Here he is pursuing a scummy, somewhat inexperienced player, not a newbie, and he has shown plenty of trepidation about mistaking newbie town for newbie scum, which is a natural evolution after deliberately lynching newbie town when he was scum last game.

Firstly - of the two, staple joined the site on Sep 2009, GreenDude joined on Jun 2009. So in terms of experience, I'd say they were atl east around equal, not 'crappy newbie' vs 'somewhat inexperienced non-newbie player'.

Secondly, what trepedation has been shown by him towards staple's lynch? I'll give you a few quotes to explain what I mean:

I will admit Staple's first few posts don't come across as very scummy (I know I said in my PBPA before they did, but I think I was a little OMGUS-y from the no lynch thing), but ever since that they've had scum written all over them. How the hell do you not find him scummy? Defend your position with more than "the bandwagon seems scum-driven".

Everything since his 8th post has reeked of scumminess.

I refuse to consider he's town until he stops "screwing up". He has yet to do ANYTHING to defend himself well.

I have to say, I'm pretty amazed at the amount of people who are letting Staple's play go. I can see how the Staple wagon seems oppurtunistic; he's really the first to appear overtly scummy, and if he is town, I wouldn't be surprised if scum are jumping on it right now. But the point is that just because some people aren't providing the most unique analysis for their votes does NOT mean Staple's scumminess goes away.

Using AtE is suspicious because it means he has no other arguments besides "I'm town guysssss." Notice how he completely stopped suspecting X_~ (actively, at least) and started suspecting me as soon as I got into this with him. That's OMGUS if I've ever seen it.

ALL of them are good reasons when taken in combination. Add to that the OMGUS vote on me, and I see a strategy/playstyle much more likely to be used by scum than town. btw, when I said he could be scum or town, I think it was pretty clear that I didn't mean it was a 50/50 chance. I think he's scum.

And I'm sure there's more. So where's the soul-searching, worried about making the same mistake person that you're painting a picture of?

Also - what you're saying now is a direct contradiction of the last time you tried to clear bigmc based on meta. Can you explain this:

As someone who was in BMC's last game with him, I can say that he was much more indecisive then than now.

and he has shown plenty of trepidation about mistaking newbie town for newbie scum, which is a natural evolution after deliberately lynching newbie town when he was scum last game.

[Scigatt]

@WW page 2

@Scigatt-Why wait until after the move? Why not now? The game should be just as active until the move. My other games everybody is just as active. Nobody is absent. The move will happen when it happens. Until it does lets play mafia.

I don't think that doing a mass cleanup like that would be productive considering that the forum could go down within the next 24 hours for an unknown length of time.

[Empking]

EC: Why is Charter scum?

[Scigatt]

Because he asked for it, looking for a replacement for Rayfrost.

[Scigatt]

malpascp replaces RayFrost

Also, if that move doesn't come by Monday, I'm doing that cleanup.

[malpascp]

Im here
so I guess im not very popular around here?
I hope I dont get lynched before I finish reading everything

[crypto]

Yay, a real player!

Unvote. Vote: Pomegranate.

As far as I can tell, that's solely and completely not true in a number of ways. For reference, GreenDude is the name of the VI that bigmc pushed and tried to lynch on D1 in his only game as scum on site.

A newbie first and a VI second, yes. Referencing his push for GreenDude's lynch as support for your argument against him is a mistake. In Mini 842, BMC attacked GreenDude's VI play and assumed (or pretended to assume, given BMC's alignment) that not all of it could be due to sheer inexperience. But he attacked another player simultaneously, and he sat on the fence about just about everyone else. Retrospectively, it was crystal-clear opportunistic scum play: pressuring two easy targets—brushing aside the possibility that they're pro-town newbies—and refusing to tell your reads on other players.

Not the case in this game. He's opposed to newbie lynches, interested in setup theory (for better or worse), and generally more focused. He attacked Staple's scummy behavior, not Staple's newb-scum behavior.

All this isn't really a convincing argument that he's town, but my point is that his actions here aren't nearly as similar to his actions in that game as you insist.

Firstly - of the two, staple joined the site on Sep 2009, GreenDude joined on Jun 2009. So in terms of experience, I'd say they were atl east around equal, not 'crappy newbie' vs 'somewhat inexperienced non-newbie player'.

I could've sworn Staple had played on another site before coming to Mafia Scum, but I can't find it in his iso. Huh. I guess they're more or less equal i terms of experience, but Staple's posts are more mature than GreenDude's in general. He clearly grasps many gameplay concepts, even if he struggles with integration.

Secondly, what trepedation has been shown by him towards staple's lynch? I'll give you a few quotes to explain what I mean:

Seeing as I didn't think Staple was a newbie, I clearly was not referring to him as the newbie BMC showed trepidation about. BMC didn't like Hiphop's rapid attacks on EC because he thought EC-newb-town was being mistaken for EC-scum.

Also - what you're saying now is a direct contradiction of the last time you tried to clear bigmc based on meta. Can you explain this:

His play is more decisive in general. And his Staple case seems to hold more conviction than his GreenDude case did. Early on he was wary of mis-lynching a newbie because in his last game he himself, as scum, had urged a lynch on a newbie who flipped town. That instance of wariness doesn't make him indecisive.

[bigmc109]

My internet has been down since this morning; I stopped by the library so I could post this.

Now, to SC, I think you're really misrepresenting me with your argument. Yes, I thought Staple was scum, and until WW has finished reading, I continue to believe it. The fact of the matter is that Staple could have signifigantly changed my opinion of him if his play had improved; it did not improve one bit. Was I pushing for his lynch? Yes, that's what players do in this game when they believe someone is scum. It's also what scum do when they are trying to cause a mislynch; the fact that I pushed for Staple's lynch is a null tell. Notice my unvote of him. This was in part because he was replaced, and also in part because he went against one of my arguments about him (that being he finally asked for a replacement). I was not going for the easy target, I was going for the scummy player.

I'll hopefully have a full PBPA up tomorrow night; today being my birthday and tomorrow being a field trip I won't be on a computer until then.

[malpascp]

Vote:bigmc

FoS:crypto

Crypto, townies dont unvote people just because they talk.
But im glad you did it

[Pomegranate]

V/LA from this afternoon till Saturday night

.

(I'm aware it's in my siganture.)

[crypto]

My vote for RayFrost was pressure because he hadn't posted squat all game. You deserve leeway until you catch up on the game, and Pomegranate's scummier than your predecessor was anyway.

[SerialClergyman]

Rubbish, I've read the game - he just never waivered at all. He attacked Green as soon as green had a couple of votes and never left, often posting cases and saying things very similar to those quoted in my last message.

FOr example:

GD's post did nothing to alleviate my suspicions, it made me a lot more suspicious. I'll be damned if I unvote him.

GreenDude

I've laid out this argument so many times that I don't feel the need to repeat it. My #1 suspect.

Well the 1-4 scale seems to be popular, so I figure I'll give my own.

(scum; suspicious; neutral/no reading; town)

1: GD
2: DRK, RD
3: Reck, SC, LF, MME, benmage
4: IK, Spyrex, crypto

Also, I don't understand how GD simply stating "claim = watcher" (yes, that was the extent of his post) alleviates him of all suspicion.

There are more, of course. In all scum lists, he never mentions anyone he is seriously considering as an alternative.

Now - that in a meta sense isn't exactly a smoking gun, but it's very similar to his play here and before I read it I predicted he'd go for the VI and lo and behold he does.

But you're constantly painting a picture of the other game that is NOT TRUE. I encourage anyone to go have a look here and decide for themselves.

His play is more decisive in general. And his Staple case seems to hold more conviction than his GreenDude case did. Early on he was wary of mis-lynching a newbie because in his last game he himself, as scum, had urged a lynch on a newbie who flipped town. That instance of wariness doesn't make him indecisive.

This is pretty much rubbish and an unsatisfactory answer to my question. You said that he was both more indecisive then than now, and that he has shown plenty of trepadation in this game compared to last. They are essentially conflicting statements.

However - I will give you that he didn't jump on the EC wagon. That's a very solid point in bigmc's favour.

bigmc - happy birthday.

Your reasons for voting staple aren't really the issue. Staple's play was bad, but scum have no reason to act like that just as town don't. Your vote was opportunistic and very similar to how you acted in a previous game as scum - not to mention a willingness to turn on someone who voted with you on the wagon if you were wrong. That's scummy.

@ all - we just picked up another vote! It's like trying ot crawl through honey over here with the move and the inactives, but this wagon has momentum, we're all going places and we're open to accepting busses from fellow scum, so free your conscience and get your votes on!

[muh316]

just want to let everyone know Im alive. I just dont know what to post.

[crypto]

All right, I'm going to stop defending BMC after this post.

Rubbish, I've read the game - he just never waivered at all. He attacked Green as soon as green had a couple of votes and never left, often posting cases and saying things very similar to those quoted in my last message.

He wavered about

other

players, not about GreenDude. GreenDude was a go-to lynch. In this game, he's been slightly more decisive about his reads on the intermediate players (i.e., players who aren't hugely suspicious or pro-town).

This is pretty much rubbish and an unsatisfactory answer to my question. You said that he was both more indecisive then than now, and that he has shown plenty of trepadation in this game compared to last. They are essentially conflicting statements.

*sigh* I said that in this game "he has shown plenty of trepidation about mistaking newbie town for newbie scum." But he has been more decisive in a greater number of reads here than there.

After rereading his iso. in the other game I'll concede that his conviction about Staple here is no stronger than his conviction about GreenDude there. I couldn't even make such an argument in the first place, because his case on GreenDude was much more extensive due simply to the fact that that game was farther along in day 1 than this one currently is.

My point about newbie mis-lynches still stands, though.

More importantly than all this crap: In general, using a single game as meta evidence is an extremely dangerous maneuver. BMC has only completed two games—one town, one scum, and the town one was his first on the site. There isn't a strong enough meta base for you to use meta as your primary argument against him.

---

FYI, at this point I take a

hard

left turn onto Loony Lane.

I mentioned way back that BMC's evolution from newb-lynch-happy scum to newb-lynch-wary town was natural. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's certainly acceptable that he might've literally taught himself something about scum tactics through his own play. On the other hand, I find it . . . awkward, I guess, that his own actions as scum would lead him to be so strongly opposed to a bandwagon on an inexperienced player. Furthermore, EC is definitely more competent than GreenDude was (no offense intended), and BMC's statement that he was unwilling to vote "the newbie a few days into the game based on some stupid/contradictory stuff he said" was a knee-jerk reaction to just two votes (SC and Hiphop). And lastly, with hindsight I'm unnerved by BMC's parenthetical "crypto knows what I'm talkin about" comment. If that was intentional buddying, then by God I ate it right up.

I realize the above paragraph is a jumble of crap. It's hard to explain.

Looking through his iso., BMC did other iffy (but not truly scummy) things early on. Iso. 2 focuses on pure statistics, leading us to believe that lynches aren't worth it unless a lot of us are really sure they're scum. Statistics suck. Judging by statistics, the town fails every time. But seriously, the town rarely comes to such a clean consensus on day 1. (The implication here is that BMC-scum is confident that lack of consensus will lead to a no-lynch, which could be good for the mafia . . . I don't know.) Iso. 11 continues on that line of thought. Math sucks. Don't use math to justify strategy in Mafia.

Iso. 6 says he doesn't want to lynch a newbie (EC) just because that newbie made some argumentative blunders, or whatever. He opposes an EC wagon out of caution. But in iso. 7 he says his issue is actually with one of SC's own points. Suddenly the problem is SC's case, not EC's inexperience. Tsk, tsk.

Iso. 10 is KRAPLOGICK™. A naive/paranoid cop is 100% useless. Taking three days to figure that out is a massive waste of scum-hunting opportunity and a loss of up to three townies. All for nothing. A naive/paranoid cop won't "help us lynch scum." And an insane cop might not have the good fortune to investigate players of both alignments. Even if he does, working out sanity requires lynches

minimum

, at least one of which (probably more) should be a mis-lynch.

Even worse (still iso. 10) is this: "If we lynch, we will lose so many more townies than we have to. The odds of hitting scum on D1 or D2 are awful." Yecch. The significance of this statement only just struck me. In BMC's first game, scum got lynched day 1. In our game where he was scum, scum effectively got caught day 2. In the game he replaced out of

prior

to the end of day 1, scum got lynched on day 1. (I find it unlikely he didn't check up on the thread at some point out of curiosity.) Experience just about completely disagrees with his assertion here. Massive blood-red penalty flag here.

I still think Pomegranate is today's safe obvious scum lynch. But I'm bored out of my mind.

Unvote. Vote: bigmc109.

Humor me, BMC. (And Happy Birthday.)

---

By the way, the number of deliberately scummy lurkers/fluffers in this game is beginning to drive me insane.