Open 193 - Friends and Enemies: It's over!

[hitogoroshi]

I've been watching the replacement queue (and looking at the player list for each game requesting replacement...hey, if I'm gonna replace in, I sure better LIKE the town) for a while now and it paid off here! I like everyone I know in this game and there are a lot of people I've heard about through the grapevine or seen in MD/GD and am anxious to actually play with (ABR and Zorblag in particular).

I'm going to ISO and post my thoughts on every player as a way to vomit up a lot of content very quickly. I'll post them in alphabetical threes. I have no homework and only three hours of lecture tomorrow so you guys get all my time for the next few days.

*scurries off to skim topic and start ISO-ing*

[hitogoroshi]

Iso Spectacular, Part I

Albert B. Rampage

I admit my eyes glaze over with his early stuff. He goes on a huge VP attack which apparently doesn't count because

That's Our Albert!

(tm) and what the hell ever I have no interest in opening that can of worms.

The first post that made me just stop and stare was ISO 51. Takes DDD's weak OMGUS and calls it good posting, and yet FOS's DDD for a relatively trivial point. His 'top three' scumlist has two townies on it. I don't know what that means for the third member of that list (DDD).

And reading his next few posts in ISO is just wacky. Clearly ranks his list in the order, charltan is most scummy, DDD is second, amish is third. And then suddenly porkchop express out of nowhere?

It's very very interesting to watch the flow of ABR's opinion in isolation. It starts with, well, porkchop hasn't posted much and we can use charlie's posts against him on later days. But then suddenly, PCE goes from being hard to read to 85% scum, and other people's cases on charlatan are scummy, and then this little gem:

Let me surmise the case on charlatan: he makes bad arguments. He doesn't read the game like everyone else. He changes his mind often. That's IT.

If you can give better reasons than that, go ahead and post them. I'm just not seeing it right now.

How about your case from sixteen ISO posts ago, are those good reasons?

Note: ISO viewing crapped out for some reason and ate some Albert posts (as in, posts that he did make didn't show up in ISO). I caught it this time because of his L-1 vote on charlatan not appearing, but this glitch could happen again in the future (I have no idea what caused it) so if it seems like I'm ignoring a specific post, please link to it when making a point of that nature.

So, Albert, let me see if I've got this straight. You thought charltan was scum. Then you decided to switch to PCE because he was 'pretteh scummeh'. Then, you started pointing out bunk cases on charlatan. After that, you went on to say PCE was 85% scum and charlie was almost certainly town. But after saying that you go back to charlatan ANYWAY because you want the day to end (which is understandable, that was a bugger of a long day) and start the next day...'not certain whether or not PCE is scum' despite being so certain d1 and now hopping on the reckoner wagon. The times you mentioned scien were largely positive (QFT, nothing to bother me, etc.) and you ended up teaming up with reckoner to end the day. And yet you're now saying you've thought him scummy for a while? Have I covered everything alright here, Albert?

I don't even know what I think this means in terms of alignment. I think my ISO's on the others are gonna be necessary to fit Albert anywhere in my mental picture of this game – remind me to voice my opinion on him again in a few pages.

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

Amished

Alright, I get to pick at the posts of a confirmed townie early. This is a helpful resource. That being said, I'm inclined to disregard his early stuff because while you want to look at the whole picture for alignment-uncertain people, it's more important to look at the last thoughts on the mind of the confirmed townie to see what reads they would actually want us looking in to.

I'm inclined to disregard his replacement scumtell, if only because it would hit me as townie – I'm posting the iso's in four sets of three regarding each slot, so yeah, I'm gonna comment on myself, and if I did something scummy I'm going to point that out. Maybe it's more applicible to some people. I do remember that reckoner had a very loose, no-format catch up post so maybe it'll be more applicible there? I'll keep this in my mind for the reckoner iso, but honestly I don't put much stock in to it.

Amish's reads were surprisngly consistant. I'll admit the reckoner wagon seemed somewhat arbitrary on first read, but I like it more knowing it was the main aim of the confirmed townie. His other major reads were PCE being townie (and my knowledge he's right makes me put all the more stock into his thoughts) and Sando/charlatan being scum. He was obviously wrong on the second, but the first is worth some investigation. When I think back on my read of the thread I can't think of anything sando did.

I'm gonna leave my amish iso-read there because this is already getting very long and I want to get this stuff posted in a reasonable time frame.

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

Charlatan

Looking at the other confirmed townie early due to the whole alphabet thing. This is helpful for me because I SHOULD have my perception colored by what other townies thought; but it kind of sucks for you guys because I'm sure what you're waiting on is my thoughts on the other living players. I'll try to get my next three-pack out quickly.

I don't want to jump in to all of the walls, but let's get the highlights reel. He has a lot to say on VP. I know VP (like myself!) doesn't like a day dragging on too long so I don't agree about the 'sense of urgency' being a scumtell. What is a bit of a scumtell is that VP responsded by saying 'where is the sense of urgency?'. I think charlatan pretty accuratley summed up VP's posistion on him, and while it's a posistion I can see town-VP holding the fact that he rushed to distance himself from it is worrisome. But for now let's tuck that line of inquiry away for the VP iso.

Charlatan ended with a vote on reckoner? This wagon keeps getting more and more delicious.

His little final point at Zorblag is a bit interesting to me if only because I can't remember anyone ever suspecting zorblag of anything.

I'll leave my musing here and head off to my last lecture of the day. I'll be back with more very, very soon.

[hitogoroshi]

Iso Spectacular, Part II

Debonair Danny DiPietro

I join the ranks of everyone else not liking DDD's I'll wait until I see something scummy to start running with post. And then there is his disgustingly OMGUS vote on Amished. I'd have more to say if I had been there at the time, but I think most people have pretty well taken him to task on this already.


I also really, really dislike this quote in his ISO 16:

You couldn't get a read on me; sounds like the problem is on your end, not mine.

and this similar quote from ISO 18:

If Amished had initially said that he wasn’t getting a read on me that would’ve been acceptable. Instead he put it together as a lurker pressure vote, without actually attempting to engage me in a fashion that would actually help him get a read on me.

So we're not allowed to pressure vote others, but instead, should just 'attempt to engage' them? Presumably into a productive conversation regarding the matter of whether or not they are the ones trying to murder us?



But of course this is all apparently DDD's meta. Personally if that was my meta (and something like it was) I would view that as more of an issue to solve than anything, but it's easy for me to be lenient since apparently this day is what DDD was lurking with great anticipation toward. More importantly, the amish and charlatan posthumous suspicions make it hard for me to dislike someone on the Reckoner wagon right now. So as gross as it feels for me to say this, I'm basically just gonna count DDD as a no-read and start from scratch right now. :/

Ojanen

So Ojanen was sick twice and traveling during D1, if I remember correctly. I'll ratchet down my expectations accordingly, I guess.

The early game is a lot of floating and a lot of questions. If nothing else, she seems to at least be fairly self-aware of this.

I don't know what to make of her voting/making a case on VP and expressing dislike of the prevailing wagon, and then three posts later unvoting VP and calling charlatans suspicion of him a scumtell.

I would be a lot more angry at Ojanen if I didn't really like her most recent content. Okay, admittedly, I think it'd be pretty cool if she stopped voting for me, but her reasoning seems to be solid enough and I love post 636 a big huggy bunch. If she keeps posting like that and less like the start I've got no problem with her.

Porkchop Express (and hitogoroshi)

Yes I am iso-ing myself. Ghost of amish, you can shove your scumtell up your ass.

Wow, and I thought DDD was lurking.

To be honest, I think you guys are being a bit mean on PCE. Of course I'm biased because I know he's not scum, but even so, it seemed to be picking on his lack of activity more than anything. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough, but I can't see anything scummy coming out of this slot (and believe me, I can appreciate when I as town replace in to a scummy slot).

I'm liking the sando suspicion – I said in my amished iso that I was very much looking forward to iso-ing sando and having a second confirmed (though granted, only to me) townie gunning for him only increases that desire.

Sorry these three ISO's were so short - I pulled two players who were on the lower end of the content spectrum and then myself. Tomorrow (or tonight if I'm really motivated) I'll post the next three which should hopefully be much more substantial.

[hitogoroshi]

Iso Spectacular, Part III

This episode of Iso Spectacular is brought to you by the letter 'S'

Sando

So Amish and PCE both were gunning for Sando.

I can see why PCE would, though. Sando's only 'suspicion' for the early game was him demanding a response from PCE because...his random vote was not truly random? And he's demanding a response to THAT, over and over and over?

Finally he drops the damn point and switches to charlatan – but just kidding! He goes back to PCE two iso posts later! And then the next post has this...thing:

@Sando: I love how you swap votes while still leaving major suspicion about Char (your previous vote) while giving absolutely no reasoning for you to vote for PCE even though you're "more than happy to switch"

Seriously? ISO me and you'll find my reasoning. It was a couple of pages back, I'll give you that, but I was voting PCE for the first 15 odd pages... This is hardly out of the blue.

I'm ISO-ing you right now, and your 'reasoning' is the same stupid point you dragged along with you for the aforementioned 15 pages. You conceded to Zorblag it was old and not worth voting for, so what exactly made you switch back?

Oh and he starts D2 with this.

Vote: PCE

Reasons haven't changed.

Reasons haven't existed!

And then finally he goes for Vi for hopping on the Reck wagon. Hey, I appreciate the concern that I should be able to finish first, but I don't see what you're the one calling for it since apparently nothing will ever absolve this slot of the terrible, awful crime of giving reasons for an rvs vote.

This is the part where I would vote Sando if I didn't want to finish every ISO before voting.

Scien (and xXRECKONERXx

And here it is, the wagon confirmed townies love and that I will probably love.

Scien didn't really post content. Lots of answering dumb questions and asking dumb questions. If someone wants to disagree with me, feel free, but when I look I can't find anything of merit from this slot besides the meta-bickering I have long since been sick of reading.

(This is the part where I point out that if someone wants to make a meta point, package the link and give the relevant posts in a nice and tidy package, because I'm sure as hell not going to dig unless I'm being told it's very important.)

And now for Reck. I think you guys have done a lot of the relevant dissecting, but I still want to say how I don't like that his 432 scumlist is the biggest wagon and two lurkers – seems like a pretty easy way to take any wagon that pops up.

And sure enough, a PCE wagon pops up and he takes it.

It is time for me to make a case on Reck using only quotes he said. (I will bold for emphasis though.)

On PCE vs char:

I feel like either one or the other is scum. I see no connections between the two to link one to the other, so I don't think they're going to be on the same scumteam.

charlatanscum + PCEscum.

Why isn't charlatan going for PCE?

Why isn't PCE going for charlatan?

Cause they're scumbuddies?

Ojanen was at first a hard read, but her tendency to lean towards the PCE wagon makes me think she's town... scum would've just

gone with the easy wagon imo

Eh, what the hell.

Unvote, Vote: charlatan.

Hammah.

Yeah I love the Reck wagon as much as you guys. I'm not sure if I like it more than Sando, though, and I really don't agree with Reck's reasoning that Sando has to be town. Tactically, with reck-town sando-scum it might be worth being a fall guy to hammer, but Sando does not strike me as the type who would willingly do that.

Serial Clergyman

Clergyman has very readable posts, which is welcome after charlatan, but it's also a bit weird to iso-read him because he tends to be responding to people directly above him without quotes.

He spent pretty much all of D1 pushing the charlatan wagon and not liking people who supported it without voting. He posts a lot, they are readable posts, but it's the damndest thing that as soon as I try to dig in to them they seem to just kind of float away. I'm trying to find something to pin SC to in my mind and besides 'charlatan wagon d1, reckoner wagon d2' I really can't.

What is there? A lot of talking about meta. A lot of pleasant conversation. I'm all for keeping a jovial atmosphere but damn, it's really unsettling to me to read this ISO. The problem with this is that I haven't ever played with SC. Could someone who has please go in to SC-ISO and give me their thoughts? Because to be honest SC really, really unsettles me and while it's nothing as definite as what I have on Sando and Reck it's certainly there. I can't push anything on SC because I don't know what it is I want to push against, but when anyone posts any suspicions on SC I am going to read them over and over and see if they've managed to articulate what I can't.

So yeah, pretty much the letter S is where my suspicions are found. (Scum start with S. coincidence? You decide.) Finishing the set with Vi, VP, and Zorblag today or early tomorrow.

[hitogoroshi]

Sorry this was delayed a bit, guys. But without further ado:

Iso Spectacular, Part IV

Vi

Vi's first posts worried me a bit until I looked at the timestamps – they're mostly superficial points but they are also very close together and really all you can expect from the opening days.

This is all pretty much how I expect Vi to ask. Her ISO 40 is a nice catch on xRx that I hadn't noticed before.

But aside from that, D1 is just...bland. Most of the time, her vote is on DDD, and not because of any certainty he's scum, but because he's not giving a read. Now, there's nothing wrong with this, and I probably would have been pressuring DDD a fair bit day one as well. But that doesn't change the fact that I don't think I could learn a whole lot from poking around her D1 play if it came down to that on a later day.

Still, I'm not really of the mindset that there is anything malicious behind this, because quite honestly going for DDD was kind of the winning move there – I just wish circumstance hadn't maneuvered itself in such a way that Vi taking up that responsibility suddenly muted communications from that slot.

I'm liking her D2 content a lot, lot more. In particular, I like everything about her vote on Sando except for the fact that it's not anymore.

VP Baltar

Oh that's right, the game started with ABR and VP's fight-thing. I like that part of the game a lot more when it was buried deep in the vaults of my memory so I'm just gonna keep on pretending that never happened.

VP is the reason that I was late a day. When you have a player with that many posts I feel like the retarded child for saying I can't get a solid read on him, but I can't get a solid read on him. I will say that when you ISO him you can see that he's tunneling on charlatan D1 a lot more than you'd think just casually reading, but that makes just as much sense with a townie that think they've found scum (even more sense? I'd imagine scumbags would want to keep their options open.)

The one nice about waiting is, his brand-spanking-new vote on Albert is making me like him much more. His reasoning is pretty solid and I think I can dig an Albert wagon.

Zorblag

I really enjoy his posting style. It's sometimes nice to have a townie who explains their whole line of thought in one package instead of making you pull it out of them via questioning.

However, this style does come at the cost of connections. Zorblag seems to be playing the part of disinterested observer at some points, which is great for keeping your reputation squeaky clean but it makes it a lot hard for the town to fit you in their interpretations. Your V/LA doesn't help things either (not trying to imply it was game-related lurking in any way, other that it came at an unfortunate time for town).

Still, the fact that you threaded in your lynch lists a couple of times (for example, 531) without being prompted is a point in your favor.

Zorblag, if you could try to just mention the other players a bit more, that'd be pretty cool, because right now I just get the worry that we could have two days worth of flips and it'd wouldn't tell us anything about you. Normally I'd be a lot more adamant about sniping a player that could become an endgame liability, but as I said, I really like your posting style and I supposed reduced readability is just a consequence of it (you obviously can't cover EVERY player with that level of scrutiny or no one would read that wall.) But please, meet me half way here.

For example – you have SC on your 'no interest in lynching' list, but I can't find really anything regarding SC coming from you. Why is SC on that list of yours? Knowing that will help me look at my SC read, and it will also tell me about you, particularly if SC is nk'd or lynched.

And with that the ISO spectacular draws to a close. Final thoughts:

• My strong town reads are: no one, I trust the lot of you about as far as I can throw you and I have notoriously poor upper body strength
  
• If I had been here from the start and had the accumulated political capital of a day of play this would probably be a vote for Sando, but I doubt I have any wagon pushing power right now so I should put my vote where it'll do some good.
  
• The last paragraph of 709 (which should be right above me unless I get ninja'd) is total truth and makes me like an ABR vote.
  
• I'll admit a bit of bias in that an ABR flip would tell me a whole lot about my two most ambiguous reads (VP and SC)
  
• If DDD or Sando wagons start up I'm totally with you guys on those
  
• I'm still cool with lynching Reck as well – I think it's just too early for a lynch and I really don't want a one-wagon day.

Vote: Albert B. Rampage

[hitogoroshi]

You can't lynch Reck if SC is voting you? Did I miss a "Day 2 - eleven to lynch" or something?

If you want to lynch reck you don't go about it by voting for apostates. :/

[preview edit - sniped by VP. nice!]

[hitogoroshi]

More certain on VP than Reckoner?

[hitogoroshi]

Hmm? Is there's some specific point aimed at me floating around I'm missing...? I've been checking in once a day here and until/unless the game picks up faster I think that's probably the best pace to provide content without spamming up the thread.

I like this point from Vi a whole lot:

@Ojanen: What do you think of xRx "Sando is defTown"? (684)
I'm a little Confused ish about how you're calling him a "juicy easy target if Town" after IIRC starting the PRETTEH SCUMMEH discussion about his targeting tendencies. How confident are you that xRx is Town?

Do you have any non-VP Baltar suspects in mind?

normally I don't like catch up/summary posts that are mostly questions but these are some exceedingly well placed questions.

A reminder for everyone: while this is called the VP/ABR circus, keep in mind that this all started with ABR's vote on SC, and he is 'certain' Reck and VP are two of our three scum. Also his last two votes were direct OMGUS's to SC and VP. Hey Albert, whatever happened to your SC suspicion?

[hitogoroshi]

So here's some of what I think of people/the state of the game right now:

Ignoring the reasons that he's giving for his moves I think he's putting pressure on a pretty reasonable group of people to be considering as scum (barring whatever reads I or whoever is looking might have.)

Why in the world are we ignoring the reasons he's giving for his votes?

hitogoroshi's place on the wagon actually feels off to me as well; I think that it's the statement that he'd be voting for Sando if he felt that his vote would have the proper wagon pushing power combined with the choice of Albert B. Rampage over xRECKONERx given that either would be acceptable to him.

As I said, I really didn't want a reckoner lynch feeling inevitable today - no matter how much I agree with it, it helps a lot to have more than one wagon floating around in a day.

@hitogoroshi, what would an Albert B. Rampage lynch right now if he flipped town tell you about SerialClergyman and VP Baltar? What about if he flipped scum? I don't know that I'm sold on it being informative which you seem to think it would be.

Poke me on this one in a page or so. I promise to have an exact post number to link to on why I wanted to wait.

I'm still not interested in lynching Debonair Danny DiPietro. I'm still not interested in talking about my reasons.

Even when she was being tentative about the wagon because of the way it was building she was bringing up problem points about xRECKONERx's play. Now apparently that's all been written of as inconsistent, bad play from town rather than scum. It doesn't feel like a fully legitimate progression of views there.

I still have Ojanen on the townie side of things (though not far, no one's far townie to me right now) but this is basicially the same point as Vi's 744 and I'm not liking that Ojanen apparently managed to miss both incarnations of the question. Ojanen, you say that you are aware of the inconsistencies you brought up on Reck but still think he's town. Did you think he was probably scum at the point when you started pressuring him and pushing his wagon (in which case, when did you change your mind) or did you think he was probably town even then (in which case, why did you push his wagon)?

It's odd that I can't quite tell what Sando thinks of xRECKONERx at this point given his general reaction and vote on Vi once the xRECKONERx wagon hit L-1.

Whoa, I'm watching Sando specifically for stuff like that and it hasn't even occurred to me. Good catch.

Hey Albert, whatever happened to your SC suspicion?

His unintelligent vote on me was scummy. I think he and I are relatively on the same wavelength in relation to how we read the game of mafia. Since I would have killed Amished too if I were scum, that adds to my suspicion of him, albeit an obscure one that I don't expect anyone to be convinced by it. Lastly, I find it suspicious that he believed so hard in charlatan being scum.

In conclusion, SC has played an unintelligent game so far, is quite unable to find scum, and may have made an intelligent night-kill if he were scum. He could be uninterested town, or uninvolved for some other reason mysterious to me, I'm not certain yet. I also largely voted SC to get him back voting RECK.

Wait so let me get this straight. On one page Reckoner is SO scummy that you're willing to vote someone because they STOP voting for reckoner, and the next page you're completely ignoring reckoner and SC to go for VP? If Ojanen jumps off of the VP wagon will you be voting her for that?

Seriously think about this one. The Reckoner wagon has defused but it's still light years ahead of the VP in terms of viability, and you were willing to hop off of it for first a hilariously self-defeating vote on SC (you say it was to get SC back on the Reck wagon, but you jumped off of the reck wagon in the process, doing far more hurt than good to it). That is such a hilariously zany reason to vote that it really strikes me as just you setting up a transition where you can get off of a wagon you still allegedly support for reasons related to it (since your stated reason for voting SC gives the impression you'll be going back to Reckoner soon) and then hop on another wagon without going directly off of the reckoner wagon and arousing suspicion. That's seriously the only interpretation that makes any sense with me, especially because no one seems to be batting an eye at the SC vote which seems to be it's purpose - your SC vote wasn't to start a wagon, it was to GET OFF a wagon.

[hitogoroshi]

hito, I didn't catch you answering about how an Albert flip would give you more concrete opinion about Serial/VP, can you answer that? would be pretty interested.

First off - yes, bussing exists and all that, but quite frankly I can't imagine ABR and VP being scumpartners. ABR flips scum, I'm willing to call VP-town barring extraordinary circumstances.

But more interesting is SC. For reference, here's his original vote on Albert, 694. And then look at 761. If you vote someone because you believe in your gut they're scum, and their wagon begins to pick up steam, this is such a frightfully out of character response. That was the post I was referring to when I said 'I'll have a specific post I'll refer to.'

And then there's 788. Hits every wrong note with me. He's talking about 'well, my wagon doesn't have a huge amount of support', but I think it's pretty clear he doesn't really have an interest in pushing the Albert wagon.

So let's review:

• ABR and SC are on the Reckoner wagon
  
• SC hops off, votes ABR
  
• ABR immediately OMGUS's SC back
  
• VP and I go after ABR for the swtich
  
• ABR OMGUS's VP; no more mention of SC from him
  
• SC stops pushing ABR's wagon, frequently states that he's considering ojanen's. Newest post makes a point of 'well gee, I guess this ABR wagon ain't working out...' despite the fact that it's at L-3 and is plenty viable

Notice what happened here. Reckoner was at L-1, and then suddenly these two slipped off of the wagon (and let's be honest, THEY were specifically what made the Reck wagon seem less popular and possible today.) They did it by 'gunning' for each other, but now ABR seems to have forgotten SC entirely and SC has been doing his damndest to suck any energy from the ABR wagon while he's sitting on it.

I'm calling it - if ABR flips scum, SC is probably scum with him.

Vi, as I've said before I like a Sando lynch, but after these last few pages I like an ABR lynch more. You should check out this tasty wagon of ours. No matter how bad tasting SC is trying to make it sound I promise it's good and good for you.

[hitogoroshi]

I can go for a SerialClergyman wagon, but the motive behind ABR's moves D1 looks too Town to fake.

I'll agree with you that I can see a town motivation behind ABR's D1 actions more or less as much as a scum motivation. You're losing me when you're saying 'too town to fake'. My suspicions on ABR are entirely found in his content on the last six pages. I'm talking about stuff like this:

I am sure about RECKONER. I can't lynch RECKONER if SC is going to be voting me. So I'm voting SC. Makes sense.

I don't know what you saw in his D1 play that's 'too town to fake', but does it really justify craplogic like that? That's what I don't get. It's like I'm the only one who realizes that between his vote on Reck and his vote on VP there was a very out there, strategic vote on SC.

@hito:
All right, but you voted Albert way before Serial*s 761 and 768 and said this:

# I'll admit a bit of bias in that an ABR flip would tell me a whole lot about my two most ambiguous reads (VP and SC)

So what was the thought process at the time?

At the time, I was willing to call it town points for both VP and SC. But when I saw 761 it just hit me as so off that it put the idea of SC-ABR scumteam in my head, which is why I asked for a bit of time to give my opinion.

I'm liking VP's lynch list because it's more or less right in line with my own (though I'm also willing to go for SC). I disagree, though, that we should 'stop beating this dead horse.' VP, we seem to be the only ones that notice the horse is dead at all, and I think this is worth some more work. As I said from the start, it's hard not to like a Reck lynch when confirmed townies love it so, but this resistance to an ABR lynch is something I want to push at now, rather than defer to.

[hitogoroshi]

That's L-1, just so you guys know.

[hitogoroshi]

No, it's L-2

xRECKONERx(4): Debonair Danny DiPietro, Zorblag, VPB, Albert

6 to lynch.

Ah, yeah, my apologies - I was going off of a vote count a page ago and I forgot about Vi's unvote.

[hitogoroshi]

My understanding is that he feels I derailed the reck lynch then worked my way off Albert and onto VP, who is town. I think that's right - it doesn't make sense to vote my scumbuddy Albert out of the blue if Reck is town, and it doesn't make sense to work my way off of Albert and onto VP if Albert is town, so I think that's his opinion at the moment. If I've misrepresented you, by all means correct me, hito.

I think in vacuum that indecisive 'I might join another wagon' thing can be a red flag, it's just in the context of who I was talking to and about that his theory pretty quickly descends.

Not quite. What really bugs me is that you started a wagon that I agreed with, and you derailed that even while your vote was on ABR by not pushing the wagon at all and publicly, loudly exploring other options. ABR responded to your vote with an OMGUS vote on you, but you then seemed to completely forget where your vote was. Your post saying you'll consider ojanens wagon sounds like you don't have a vote on anyone. In essence, speaking as someone who finds ABR's actions scummy, I have a very hard time believing you honestly voted ABR because you thought he was scum.

I'm kind of aggravated that while I feel ABR came off greatly for the worse in that exchange everyone else seems inclined to pretend it never happened because his vote is back on Reck. That being said, lynching Reck is a hell of a consolation prize so I'm not as mad as I normally would be.

Vi, I'll probably be with you tomorrow on that Sando lynch (I'm gonna re-read him tonight with his most recent posts in mind). But for now, what the hell:

unvote, vote: Reckoner

And that is L-1 for real this time.

[hitogoroshi]

SC, VPB, myself, DDD. Gee, ABR, for a rockstar you sure like playing the same song (vote the last person who voted me) over and over. At least you took a break to replay that hit classic, "Vote the obvious scum confirmed townies called (claim the wagon as your own)".

Do you agree with me that it is safe to assume that both scum were on the RECKONER wagon yesterday?

Uhh, no? Bussing gets you town cred but in this case with confirmed townies calling for it posthumously you don't exactly get many points for being on the Reck wagon. This just seems like a nonchalant way of being able to avoid commenting on Sando and Vi for the whole post.

Consider RECKONER actively trying to make himself seem scummy. His hurried and failed attempt to hammer himself. RECKONER would have at least waited that both scum be on his wagon until trying to off himself for the benefit of his partners. This is just common sense.

Again, does anyone seriously so simplistically confirm anyone voting a scum as town that these tactics are warranted? I certainly don't hand out townie points so freely and I can't imagine anyone else doing the same.

Hitogoroshi made a 180 degree turn to vote RECKONER, so he is all but confirmed scum.

Uuh, I've been for a Reck wagon since I replaced in. I just didn't want to only have one wagon D2, so I pushed a counter-wagon (you) and when it didn't pan out I went with Reck.

To be honest, though, I think ABR's Reck>SC>VPB>Reck hop (not the vote hopping itself, but the circumstances around it) are a lot more scummy than how he's opened the day and if I couldn't get a wagon on him for the former I doubt I can get one for this. You guys know I'm all for an ABR wagon; but until more of the town is I'm not gonna waste my vote trying to convince you.

But having said that I don't exactly have a better place for my vote right now. I'd go for Sando but there's his V/LA. SC...still weirds me out but I don't have any sort of case to push. I'm gonna hold on to my vote for a little bit here I guess; it'd be nice to have everyone post to get a feel on where we stand.)

My top two scum suspects are ABR and Sando; especially because, after 894, I can see them being scum together kinda easily (n1 quicktopic: ABR tells sando to stay away from reck, he'll bus, and d3 he can frame it as 'obvious' both scum bussed and neatly avoid having to interact with sando.)

[hitogoroshi]

To be clear, 'much the same reason serialclergyman is' is 'people not voting for the scum are obviously town?'

[hitogoroshi]

Unvote, vote VPB

Yep he's scum alright.

What I don't like about VPB is he just attacks the same 2 people all day. Day 1, charlatan and me. Day 2, RECK and me. No imagination at all. Scum for sure, guys, lynch him up.

[hitogoroshi]

My view differs from Albert's. I'll agree about hito and you can have my vote in a sec. I still have a town read on DDD. He was actively pushing Reck before many other people. I don't think it's necessary that both scum were on the wagon.

Humor me. What has ABR said about me that makes you think I'm scum?

So at this point I think that our two best lynches are hitogoroshi or SerialClergyman. As I said yesterday, hitogoroshi's vote for Albert B. Rampage over Sando or xRECKONERx when he replaced in (for reasons that look to boil down to because he wouldn't have had enough influence when voting for Sando but would have had too much influence when voting for xRECKONERx) didn't feel particularly natural.

It wasn't about 'too much influence' on the Reck wagon - I just wanted some sort of counterwagon D2. I knew my vote on Sando probably wouldn't result in anyone else jumping aboard, so I joined in on the (then) fast growing ABR wagon.

Today he's got Albert B. Rampage and Sando still listed as his top suspects but he chooses not to vote at all at the start because voting for Albert B. Rampage would be a waste of his vote because the wagon wouldn't get going yesterday and Sando isn't current around to defend himself. I just don't buy it. How is voting for Albert B. Rampage more a waste of a vote than not voting at all at this point. If he's all over an Albert B. Rampage lynch (which I still don't think is a good move) then there's really no good reason at all not to rest his vote there while he's seeing what others do.

The reason is that as soon as I vote for someone, having an 'unvote, vote X' will give the impression that I think X is more scummy than ABR, when in truth ABR is still my top suspect and I'm only not voting him because nothing will come of it at the moment.

@Zorblag: Any chance we can hear what you think about DDD yet?

Random observation: SC thinks Sando is town because he doesn't think he'd try to derail a wagon on a scumbuddy at L-1, when SC himself tried to derail the wagon on xRx.

[hitogoroshi]

Sorry for the random silent day there. I've been ADD-ing like hell the last few days (is that a verb? let's say yes) and having such trouble keeping focus it's almost cripplingly impossible for me to get anything done at all. This post may be scatterbrained but at least it's here.

@hito: Nothing will ever come from a vote that isn't cast. I thought you said you were over this meta.~


Elaborate a bit on your thoughts about these two not getting lynched.

If my ABR vote was 'stale' before there's not exactly a whole lot more new stuff to add that would convince anyone at the moment. As for Sando, the biggest thing I didn't like about him after my ISO-posting was his tip-toeing around Reck and that's the sort of thing that you need to them around to talk about.

I like Sando 928. I still don't like how little he had to do with the Reck wagon and the fact that his vote on Vi is rarely pushed and instead gives me the vibe of 'look guys I am voting for a player no one else is, that means I am an independent figure and not scum!" But for reasons you are about to see I'm glad for him helping me finally pin down SC.

@Vi, Albert B. Rampage is probably town at this point. He continues to narrow his attention in a way that I think fits his town play. I disagree with the individual statements he's making (his hitogoroshi is 100% scum stance is pretty ridiculous, I don't agree that both scum need to have been in on the bus and his interpretation of xRECKONERx being forced to follow his lead on PorkchopExpress doesn't seem to be based on anything I can see in the game are a few examples) but if he was scum I'd expect him to still be throwing more flack out there rather than to be this focused.

As I said, I think his focus of 'both scum bussed Reck' is a clever way for ABR-scum to neatly avoid any comment/analysis of his scumbuddy. (For reference, the people not on the Reck wagon yesterday were Vi, Sando, and SC.) You say you'd expect ABR-scum to throw out more flak but I think 'calling the scum' as two within four players strikes me as a perfect space to play in, (especially because I can easily see him abandoning the idea of 'both scum bussed Reck' when D4 starts without anyone batting an eye.)


Basically I think the most likely scumteam is ABR/SC. I'm not gonna compile a pretty case what with my recent focusing issues (this little fart of a post took me over an hour, and I have another game to post in) but you can all see it pretty well I think. Start with my 806 points, add in what I just said to Zorblag about ABR picking a criterion exonerating his buddy, and sprinke in SC's 'gut scum read' on ABR magically and rapidly turning in to a town read (I especially like his every time I try to get out comment - why would you need to get out from a gut scum read? Oh yeah, because he's your scumbuddy and you need to work with him to mislynch in later days.)

I was a bit hesitant to do this because SC-scum could self-hammer, but then I realized that if he does that will probably get me the leverage to finally get you guys with me on an ABR wagon.

So what the hell -

Vote:SerialClergyman

[L-1!]

[hitogoroshi]

But Albert, I thought you were 100% certain both of Reck's scumbuddies bussed.

VPB, is this my meta or Reck's meta we're talking about here? Also it would have been nice for you to point out you cast the L-1 vote.

Notice what happened here. Reckoner was at L-1, and then suddenly these two slipped off of the wagon (and let's be honest, THEY were specifically what made the Reck wagon seem less popular and possible today.) They did it by 'gunning' for each other, but now ABR seems to have forgotten SC entirely and SC has been doing his damndest to suck any energy from the ABR wagon while he's sitting on it.

I'm calling it - if ABR flips scum, SC is probably scum with him.

See - it's written as if Reck had already flipped. It also makes no strong stand (we'd need to have ABR flip, and flip a certain alignment, before he makes a solid prediction.) The actual accusation itself isn't revelatory at all - I was openly and honestly discussing my doubts about ABR and my opposition to the Reck wagon.

But that's just it - what happened to those doubts on ABR? You had a 'gut read' on him and yet almost immediately after casting the vote you downplayed the wagon every chance you had

while sitting on it

.

'm liking VP's lynch list because it's more or less right in line with my own (though I'm also willing to go for SC). I disagree, though, that we should 'stop beating this dead horse.' VP, we seem to be the only ones that notice the horse is dead at all, and I think this is worth some more work.

As I said from the start, it's hard not to like a Reck lynch when confirmed townies love it so, but this resistance to an ABR lynch is something I want to push at now, rather than defer to.

This is the actual way a scum player attempts to derail their partner's lynch, as opposed to the Sando way.

So when you vote Reck, then unvote, then vote ABR on an ephemeral gut read that you fail to follow through, that's townie, but when I say I'd take a Reck lynch but would prefer an ABR lynch, that's scum derailing?

I'm kind of aggravated that while I feel ABR came off greatly for the worse in that exchange everyone else seems inclined to pretend it never happened because his vote is back on Reck. That being said, lynching Reck is a hell of a consolation prize so I'm not as mad as I normally would be.

Vi, I'll probably be with you tomorrow on that Sando lynch (I'm gonna re-read him tonight with his most recent posts in mind). But for now, what the hell:

unvote, vote: Reckoner

And that is L-1 for real this time.

And thisi s the way an actual scum player sneaks in at the end of a wagon to bus their buddy before it's too late.

That's one thing I don't understand - it's like both you and ABR think that the scum will DIE if they don't get a bus in before their partner gets lynched (except ABR forgot he thinks that now I guess). Granted I'm not the most reliable source on this what with the never-scum and all, but it seems to me that you'd want to mix it up precisely to avoid this simplistic kind of analysis. Vi and Zorblag were both not on the Reck wagon and I have not heard a single accusation that it's a particularly scummy place to be.

[hitogoroshi]

VP: So you're saying you're voting me because you're convinced Reck's early vote could have only been a bus? I can see your meta argument arguing that it could have possibly been a bus, but it kinda tees me off that you're putting me at L-1 for what looks like nothing more than the idea that it's impossible for Reck not to bus d1 - and that argument was apparently enough to get you to get over your two big scum reads/preferred lynches of SC/ABR and vote with the pair of them.



(In the interests of not being mis-interpreted if I die, I do still think VPB is town - it just bugs me because it seemed like he was seeing the same scummy things I was and yet now he switched to me for what I think is a frivolous non-argument.)

But Albert, I thought you were 100% certain both of Reck's scumbuddies bussed.

SC did vote RECK for a good part of the day, he just unvoted at the last second.

lol wut

So now you're trying to say that you NEVER thought the Reck wagon argument cleared SC?

Thinking back, Sando is town much for the same reason Serialclergyman is. Vi is town because Vi is town.

To be clear, 'much the same reason serialclergyman is' is 'people not voting for the scum are obviously town?'

Yes hito, RECKONER was bussed by both his partners, one of which was yourself.

Unvote, vote hitogoroshi

Seriously, your post is trying to say 'but SC DID bus Reck' and that is just stupid.

ps. Also, ABR, you and SC should talk because you said this:

I highly doubt scum would try to mount a rival bandwagon out of nothing when RECK was almost certainly going to be lynched.

And yet SC thinks that me jumping on your wagon was clearly me trying to derail the Reck wagon. You can't both be right here~

pps. when I say talk, I mean here and now, not tonight in your scum quicktopic.

[hitogoroshi]

Okay since apparently SC and ABR are going to ignore anything they can get away with ignoring let me try this as a direct question:

SC, ABR, I want to hear what each of you thought about the other from D2 to now.

Additionally, SC, I'm curious to know what your level of motivation for mafia in general and this game in particular has been for the last week or so.

Also, I'm a vanilla townie. I've got a little theory on this game (which is partly dependent on ABR and SC's responses, which is why I'm not posting it quite yet) and it's also dependent on my non-masonhood so I'll just throw that out now.

[hitogoroshi]

Unvote

.

I'll be explaining that one in a minute, but first, Albert, I asked you a question. Please answer it.

I still don't like SC in this scenario and if you're not scum, then I'd say with almost certainty that he is.

Why?

[hitogoroshi]

So that's your answer to 'what have your thoughts on SC been through D2 to now'? You trust your instinct? That's begging the question. Why did your instincts go from scum, to town, to scum?

[hitogoroshi]

Albert is scum. SerialClergyman is town.

When I voted him, it was a combination of self-preservation and a belief that he best filled the role of Albert's scumbuddy. The first point is still true but irrelevant – my self preservation is no longer the best chance for a town win. Several things have happened that have made the second one false.

The first is SerialClergyman's post 947. Calls for my lynch should SC die, and gives scum an easy target (anyone on my wagon) for a nk. At the time I chalked it up to scum trying to put on townie airs, but then SC never brought that point up again. I think that's a big thing to notice.

When he posted that, I honestly considered self-voting for a little bit. The reason is that SC had set up a situation where, if he's townie and we lynch him, scum win. Lynch SC, town flip, NK someone on my wagon, vote me the next day. Let's call this 'the mechanism' – it's the understanding that, if SC is town, the scum win by lynching him because it leads to another misylnch on me. Now, I didn't have quite that confidence to do a posthumous call, so my death would at least not guarantee the death of a townie tomorrow. But I kept the thought and self-vote to myself because I still thought SC had a good chance of being scum.

Now fast forward. It happened so fast it's hard to keep these in chronological order. But look. ABR starts D3 thinking SC is certainly scum. But then the mechanism is installed: and in post 952, only five posts later, ABR suddenly floats out SC's name as scum. By 964, we're equally good candidates for scum. 970, he goes ahead and votes SC.

Now what made his strong town read turn into a vote so fast? Simple: because circumstances had arisen where he could lynch SC without ever stating he thinks I'm town. SC's townie flip would, in fact, give him the ammunition to secure my lynch and win the game. The mechanism has been installed right in front of everyone's eyes, and Albert is ready to turn it on and win.

It's also interesting to note that VPB post 966 says that ONE of us have to be scum. This both validates the mechanism and installs a reciprocal one of mine pointing at SC without my input – VPB is apparently willing to lynch one and then the other of us, resulting in a scum win.

Let me go ahead and do this.

Vote: Albert B Rampage.

This is more or less a death sentence for me. While I dearly hope the town can see my points now, pragmatism tells me nothing will come of it because I've long since been yelling in to the wind regarding Albert. I did not vote for Albert at the start of the day because I knew it would do nothing, and I vote him here knowing it will probably do nothing and with it doing I will be the only viable option for a lynch.

But that's fine. Because the difference is when I go town, my dead hand will not be pointing at the heart of the other popular wagon. I'll be pointing at scum.

Now, of course, this looks on the face of it to be nothing more than another townie directing another mechanism. What's to say my interpretation is right where SC's was wrong? After all, if the town lynches ABR and he flips town we will lose just as much – and not only that, the players will be able to point to me and say, "We lost because of hito." Our loss would have been entirely my fault.

I think the fact that my vote remains shows my confidence in my read. If Albert is lynched tomorrow and flips town, resulting in a town loss, I will be apologetic but not embarrased or ashamed.

Let's assume I'm lynched. SC is more or less confirmed town. ABR could be doing another Reck-level bus, of course, but I just don't see that at all in his interactions with SC. The one switch made sense with a scumbuddy relationship (from 'wanna go? Right now?' to 'probably town') but I just don't see this events with an ABR/SC scumteam. The mechanism is the only interpretation of these events that I can find possible.

And here's the thing – he claimed vanilla. Which means that, should the scum nightkill, they can hit either the basicially-confirmed town or keep trying to mason hunt. Either way, we'll have, MINIMUM, two masons/confirmed towns.

Six alive. Four to lynch.

ABR is lynched. Nightkill.

Four alive. Three to lynch.

At least one confirmed townie. (This is assuming the masons made sure to breadcrumb each other's names – I think this is a pretty reasonable thing to assume.)

I like our odds.

And of course, if we lynch ABR today instead, we're a day ahead of the curve.

Now, who is ABR's scumbuddy?

It's a big list. As I said, I think there's a good chance that with Albert focusing on the 'both scum bussed Reck' angle he was exonerating his scumbuddy. That would mean Vi or Sando is his scumbuddy. I also think there's a good chance that VP is his scumbuddy – although admittedly, this is mostly because of his recent posts (966 in particular) and when I first read his interactions with ABR I had no doubt in my mind that they were not scumbuddies. Still, it's worth considering.

I have no idea on DDD. I doubt Zorblag is scum. I also have a weird gut town read on Sando, which is especially odd because I've been thinking of him as scum for most of the game and I can't tell you where I switched. Well, actually, I can – I like basicially all of his D3 content.

So my personal top picks for Albert's scumbuddy are Vi or VP. But don't let that sway you too much – those are gut guesses I'm floating and should not be confused with my conviction that Albert is scum. Stay loose and follow the confirmed townies and you'll do alright.

And so there we are. Ask me questions on anything I didn't clarify enough.

If you can see my sincerity, if you agree with my reasoning, please - vote for Albert.

If you can't accept the idea that I'm not scum, vote for me.

If you think SC is scum - I would rather I be lynched than SC.

As I said, there's a chance I just lost us the game by setting up the town for an Albert mislynch, but I think the fact that I have no anxiety, no worry about this possibility is the single best response I can give to the question 'how sure are you that Albert is scum?'

[hitogoroshi]

All on my wiki.

[hitogoroshi]

Hmm. That'll be a hard one and I'm not sure anything with Albert-town would at all be 'my theory', but I can mull on it a bit I guess.

And no. Ojanen was in the same nebulous no-read area then as DDD is now for me.

[hitogoroshi]

Nonchalance to the point of non sequitur. I would imagine town Albert trying to rip my theory to shreds, but instead he's just taking refuge in his usual audacity hoping to get everyone drunk on the WIFOM of 'scum wouldn't do that, would they?' and 'look how calm he is - scum wouldn't be that calm, would they?'. Look at D1 - even though charlatan was a player that Albert thought bad enough that he wasn't worth taking with the town, he still went on a master detective kick dismantling the case on charlatan. Now the case is on him and he'd rather just keep up his 'oh look game is over' shtick?

Or, to state my point more rhythmically:

there ain't no defense like an albert defense cause an albert defense don't start

To SC: After thinking about it, one of the biggest things that is making me sure about this is Albert's opinion hop on you. When I asked him for his reasoning, he repeatedly ignored me and, in fact, stated that he's not going to respond to that point. So, a theory with Albert town would have to start with 'Well, assuming Albert is town but had this weird back-forth-back on SC for reasons he refuses to give, as well as refusing to give the reasons why he's refusing to give his reasons...', which, given that you're a vanilla townie and not a mason, is a silly enough caveat I'm not so sure I can make a theory within those bounds.

If for some reason he is a townie, then I suppose there's a chance you could be scum. I'm not sure how that weights the scum possibilities of the others.

[hitogoroshi]

Whoops! Nice catch. That first hyperlink should be "ABR starts the day thinking SC is certainly TOWN." If you follow the hpyerlink you'll see that. So the links are right, but yeah, I was pointing out how SC started TOWN in Albert's eyes and then turned scum.

And I said that it basicially confirms SC as town in the context of my theory. If you think I'm a townie but totally wrong on one or all of my contentions (e.g, if you think ABR is bussing SC) then there's no particular reason to believe SC is confirmed town. That post is written from the perspective of, hito has been lynched and we're reading back on what he thinks, and I think SC is more or less confirmed town.

[hitogoroshi]

So the entire case of SC being town is based on ABR being scum? And vice-versa?

Mostly.

If they're both town, then ABR went from 'SC is almost certainly town' to 'SC is the best lynch' in a span of about two pages, with no apparent trigger (since 947 isn't a trigger for a townswitch, just a scumswitch), refused to explain his reasoning when asked, EVEN AFTER I point out why it was such an obviously scum-favorable play, etc. - without a good reason to do any of this. This is apparently what SC believes.

If they're both scum, this is a bus. I don't buy it.

If SC is scum and Albert is town, it's the same thing as both town with Albert, and there's the added bit of SC adeptly faking the behaviors that I read as strongly town.

[hitogoroshi]

That's such a weird little thing to focus on and it's pretty heavily missing the point.

I'm saying that the most logical and likely interpretation of today's events is that both SC and I are town and scum are trying to get a win by mislynching one and calling that as evidence for the mislynch of the other. Your 'one of {SC/Hito} is scum' posts have, whether a conscious scum ploy or a townie thought, contributed to this narrative.

You have to understand the reason I am calling an possible Albert/VP scumteam is not because I think your interactions have been overly scummy. I think Albert is almost certainly scum because of the incredible explanatory power this theory has for his interactions with SC, among other things. When I say there is a good chance for an Albert/VP scumteam, this is not because of associative tells (if I had to pick Albert's scumbuddy based only on his interactions with others, I think it'd probably be Vi) but because of your significant contributions to the pro-scum narrative.

You are, apparently, continuing to contribute in this way, judging by your 'one of them needs to go today' comment.

Do you still think that at least one of us is almost certainly scum?

What would be flipping town make you think about SC?

What would SC flipping town make you think about me?

[hitogoroshi]

I realize that post made me sound more clipped and angry than I really am so let me try again.

VP - forget about the calling Albert's scum partner bit; that can wait. I think there's a fair bit of evidence that this is a situation with a mislynch wagon on each townie. I think that the idea of both of us being town is the only good explanation for Albert's hop. If you don't agree I want to know what your reasons are. Is one of us more likely to be scum than the other? How would each of our town flips affect your read on the other? What other explanation can you think of for Albert's rapid change from SC-is-confirmed-town to SC-is-scum-with-hito?

[hitogoroshi]

I honestly feel that this is not the most logical conclusion. Whether you see it or not, I can see a semi-logical explanation for ABR's switch in stance.

Then please share, because I don't. Have you ever called someone confirmed town based on wagon patterns, and then a page later floated them as possible scum (only after the 'if I'm mislynched, hito is scum' thing got underway), and then a page later voted them, all without ever providing a single whit of evidence for this except for blatantly lying about your interpretation of events? (Albert said that SC's actions count as a bus, even though early in the day he was using SC as the example of 'people not voting Reck when he was lynched are town' and 'I doubt scum would try to start another wagon'.)

Yes, I still think one of you is scum. Your reason for saying ABR is scum does not compute. Him rapidly changing his mind seems to be par for the course, so I don't think that really says much of anything, nor do I think he'd be so sloppy if he was scum.

It's entirely possible to distinguish between different sorts of rapidly changing your mind. Saying, "I thought X was scum, but post Y is making me reconsider" is incredibly different than "I think X is certainly town because of reason Y, but now he might be scum, no wait, actually, he's certainly scum".

As for this being sloppy - I agree. Are you saying that you think Albert is town because he's acting so scummy he can't be scummy? Because doing sloppy, blatantly scummy things has been WORKING for Albert - if it wasn't for my post I highly doubt anyone would have raised an objection. Even great players like Albert can be sloppy if it works for them - and I think this thread is pretty good evidence that it does.

There really isn't. The main piece of evidence you are presenting is that ABR changed his mind about SC. So what? Did you actually stop to think about what may have caused that? Could it have been the meta I provided and me pointing out that DDD was trying to lynch Reck since early in Day 1? Does that make sense why he would reevaluate his scum list?

This isn't about DDD going off his list, it's very specifically about SC going on.

I want you to seriously consider this if you're town. If you think SC is town just because ABR flipped his opinion of him, then it might be time to check your facts again. At this point if SC flips scum, you are going to get lynched very quickly and I don't want that if you're town.

Are you kidding me? This is the situation I'm least worried about. If we lynch SC and he flips scum, we're not in LYLO and there's only one scum left. You can do a lot worse in that situation than lynching someone who is a.) not a mason and b.) totally wrong about everything.

What I'm worried about is that if we lynch SC and he flips town, or if we lynch me and I flip town, the town will lynch the other one the next day. This is the mechanism, and for someone thinks it's pretty contrived you seem to be putting a whole lot of effort into using it. :3

[hitogoroshi]

@hitogoroshi, I've looked at your argument from Post 998 and thought about your mechanism theory. The trouble that I'm having is that I expect Albert B. Rampage to make the sort of switches in his calls that he's been making and I think that you're theory hinges both on that being scummy and calculated rather than being (as seems more likely) somewhat coincidental in it's timing. It seems that it ignores how he's been doing it to others (e.g. Debonair Danny DiPietro and myself) but have I got that wrong? So far as I can tell you're clearing SerailClergyman here based on the only possible motivation from Albert B. Rampage being to exploit one particular, somewhat complicated chain of suspicions.

If both you and SerialClergyman are town then wouldn't it be fairly likely, given that you've been pretty much the only players to be extensively pressured today, that the scum could probably count on being able to go after either of you that was still alive tomorrow anyhow? Why would they need to jump on something SerialClergyman had said in order to get that result?

This is actually a good point that I kinda assumed I got out there but never actually showed up in my post.

It's not specifically about having to jump on what Clergyman said. It's that what SC said made it possible. The reason he HAD to is that he gave a confirmed town read on SC. Now, you'd think that Albert would, out of the two popular wagons, want to lynch his 'someone we should have lynched a long time ago' instead of his confirmed town read. But where would that leave him tomorrow after my townflip? He really couldn't pressure the SC wagon, not with him thinking it's confirmed town. He'd have to go for DDD or Zorblag wagons.

That's why my interpretation of events at the start of D3 was that SC and Albert were scumbuddies - because Albert had set it up to avoid SC.

My mind changed quickly when Albert's did.

Why in the world would he suddenly go for SC? Because while most people could go for the other popular wagon after a mislynch, as you said, that wasn't an option for Albert. He can only really do it with SC first and then hito, because he 'suspected' me all along but uncomfortably cleared SC as town before realizing that he would be our other popular lynch target for the day. That's why he had to make sure he 'thought' at least one of us are scum before either of us flipped.

@SerialClergyman and hitogoroshi, if you were lynched today under what circumstances would you recommend that the town no lynch tomorrow? We've got numbers that suggest that it's a potentially viable plan at some point. Is there any situation that includes your death now which would make tomorrow the time to do it?

Hmm. I don't have any friends and enemies experience, but it seems like giving the scum a free chance to potshot a mason doesn't seem like the best idea in the world. My personal call would be to pocket the no-lynch on the off-chance of a lag spike or what have you so we wouldn't have to scramble for a lynch (though with HeadHoncho's lack of deadlines, this is less of an issue.) Then again, I think it might be nice to use it if we hit LYLO tomorrow - it'll make it one person more obvious who the scum is, and if a mason dies we can at least see their posthumous suspicions knowing they are confirmed town.

VP: The difference is that this change ofopinion is one where he formed an opinion based off of specific, objective evidence, and it's not a gut flip-flop but one where he simply decided to start lying about how he interprets the objective evidence.

Thinking someone is town off of your gut and then switching to thinking they are scum off of your gut is one thing. Thinking that someone is confirmed town because they drive a red car and then thinking they are confirmed scum because they drive a red car is different. The first is a change in opinion. The second is, barring a very specific appeal on why we were wrong about red cars all along (note that my line of inquiry to Albert re: SC was repeatedly and willfully ignored), a lie.

And saying you'll 're-evaluate your flips in LYLO' is a bit of a cop-out. You've before stated that, if I flip town, SC is almost certainly scum, and your stated reasons for this make it pretty clear that you'd feel the same in the reciprocal scenario. Do you still believe this? If not, then what would be your interpretation? I don't like that multiple people are basicially saying, "With an SC or hito townflip, my reads tomorrow will be

a mystery.

"

(For the record - I know I haven't given my reads if SC flips scum. That's because I am almost certainly the best lynch candidate tomorrow if SC flips scum, and probably the only reason I'd live is scum trying to save suspicion of me for the LYLO mislynch.)

[hitogoroshi]

Albert you're kind of proving my point there.

What you're saying is, in essence, is that you thought SC was town and then some people thought he was scum and then you did too. The problem is that you didn't think SC was town because a lot of people thought he was town. You thought SC was town because he was not voting for Reckoner at the end of D2, and because you highly doubt scum would try to mount a rival bandwagon out of nothing.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Sando thinks SC is scum. VP thinks SC is scum. But why do you care? That doesn't change the fact that he got off the Reck wagon.

You're trying to show that you had a continuous flow from town to scum reads on SC (though your quotes doesn't show the improbable speed.) But that's not at all what I'd suspect from a townie - because you thought SC was town for DISCRETE reasons.

And speaking of those reasons:

But Albert, I thought you were 100% certain both of Reck's scumbuddies bussed.

SC did vote RECK for a good part of the day, he just unvoted at the last second.

Which is saying: 'SC did bus Reck.'

Now let's look back a couple of pages from that:

Thinking back, Sando is town much for the same reason Serialclergyman is. Vi is town because Vi is town.

To be clear, 'much the same reason serialclergyman is' is 'people not voting for the scum are obviously town?'

Yes hito, RECKONER was bussed by both his partners, one of which was yourself.

Unvote, vote hitogoroshi]

That's you saying that 'SC did not bus Reck.'

Translation: you were so busy breadcrumbing a continuous change of opinion on SC (and doing it fast, before the momentum died) that you forgot that your read on SC was for a decidedly discontinuous reason.

As for you saying 'if SC flips town I'm not going to blindly gun for hito the next day' - well, obviously you're not going to do it

now

because I pointed out what a great move it is for scum. But let's look at what you said just eight posts before I pointed it out:

"So hey Zorblag, what's up with your life man?"

I wish I could ask that. But I am too modest to assume that we already have both the scum in our hands. One? Sure. Two? Remains to be seen. I remain humble despite the apparently clear path and purpose laid out before me. My cynical nature coming out? We shall see, my friends, we shall see...

'One? Sure.' As in 'I am sure we have one of the two scum.' Now tell me, Albert, if you have one of the two scum in {me,SC} and SC flips town, who are you lynching the next day? When you say 'I'm not sure we have both scum, but I'm sure we have at least one' that HAS to mean 'they might not be scum, but at least one is' which means 'if SC flips town, lynch hito the next day.'

That's not misrepresentation. That's taking you at your word.

[hitogoroshi]

Okay, Albert. I'm having a hard time agreeing with a lot of what you said - not the least of which that a grown man can have a sugar rush to the point of needing to take back their words. ("I'm sorry, officer, it was the sugar - you know how it goes.")

But I'm willing to admit that it's not impossible to believe. And combined with SC's town read of you (this post is assuming we lynch SC and he flips town: if SC flips scum we're playing a bizarre, palette-shifted, upside-down version of this game where everyone has a goatee [unless you have a goatee already, in which case you have a SPIDER] and nothing I say here is particularly relevant) I think I'm willing to at least entertain the hypothetical that you're town.

So, let me ask this question assuming you're town:

Let's assume SC has been lynched and flipped town. You said you don't have the imagination for this scenario, but try. Who do you think the two remaining scum are? Preferably give both what you'd think if I was nk'd and what you'd think if I wasn't nk'd.

[hitogoroshi]

who needs imagination when you have ms paint

[hitogoroshi]

Hey DDD, same question that's been permeating (in various forms) to the others - what would my townflip make you think about SC, and what would an SC townflip make you think about me?

[hitogoroshi]

So your case on hitogoroshi is that xRx is extremely predictable, essentially.

Yes, not the greatest I know, but Reck's consistency as scum certainly unsettled me.

HOWEVER.....

I've been isoing hito to look at things more from his side in relation to the Reckoner wagon, and I came across this little gem:

Notice what happened here. Reckoner was at L-1, and then suddenly these two slipped off of the wagon (and let's be honest, THEY were specifically what made the Reck wagon seem less popular and possible today.) They did it by 'gunning' for each other, but now ABR seems to have forgotten SC entirely and SC has been doing his damndest to suck any energy from the ABR wagon while he's sitting on it.

This is actually kind of an interesting point, but we seem to be seeing a different story from hito today with regards to these two (ie, ABR is the grand schemer trying to get SC).

It's possible he forgot about this; I know I did. hito, thoughts on SC-ABR scumpair?

I actually did address this earlier, but with how big my posts have been lately I can't really fault you for it. Basically, at the time of my voting SC I did still believe in an Albert-SC scumteam, because Albert confirming SC as town via his 'both scum bussed' theory worked really well to let him not have to comment on SC. However, his recent actions have made NO sense. While this could be a high level bus, I severely doubt it, and I think Albert's quick switch to SC-is-scum is probably proof enough they aren't scumbuddies.

Now, I will say on the other (third?) hand that hito did sort of play the "Reck's big time scum" card quite awhile yesterday without voting. It gives me a bit of pause, but it is plausible that it came from town.

As I said, I had nothing against a Reck wagon but I don't like having a one wagon day most of the time - which I think is justified here, seeing all the content that prolonging the day brought out.

Hito, can I get your updated thoughts on Sando?

I don't know. I have a gut town read on him but that doesn't make any SENSE.

Let me pick at one of his recent posts so I can try to articulate. I also missed a question aimed at me in this post so I'll disgress to answer it when it shows up.

Yes, I if nothing else happened right now, and Serial was lynched and flipped town, all things being equal, I'd gun for Hito tomorrow. But I'd gun for Hito if he flipped scum as well... I don't like linkage cases, and I think you are both independantly scummy, and independantly the scummiest players in the game at the moment, by far.

This is exactly what I thought the scum would be doing, and a lack of linkage cases is exactly what I think scum are going for.

Considering that you and Serial are saying that each other is town, it seems unlikely that scum will turn around tomorrow and say 'zomg Serial was pushing Hito, and Hito was town, Serial is obv scum!'. Be funny if they tried though.

Which misses the point that we were going for EACH OTHER when the two wagons swelled, which is the situation I believe scum were trying to exploit. I do think they would have said 'serial was pushing hito, hito was town, serial is obv scum' (or more likely they'd hit SC first) prior to 998. That was the POINT of 998.

So where the hell am I getting my town read? I don't know, and perhaps we should just ignore it. Maybe it's because I'm more inclined to look for scum among those who expressed a 'lynch both' sentiment prior to 998 and are now expressing a 'lynch one, then everything I think is a mystery stop asking' (hi albert, hi vpb). I'm calling it because it's there, but I can't think of why except that perhaps I see the most sincerity is his attacks and less of the 'no real preference between the two' that's permeated the thread.

Now to your question, Sando:

Hito, you've said you don't think I'm scum, if ABR isn't scum, what about your theory? Can anyone else be the scum setting this up?

Zorblag or VPB (the later of which actually saidif hito flips town SC is almost certainly scum', though of course now he's saying he would re-read with a townflip) have both expressed the viewpoint that could have set this up.

I think there virtually HAS to be at least one scum among Albert, VPB, and Zorblag (not exactly a definitive list, I know) and it's strongly possible both are.


Also PSA for everyone (and I know Vi in particular was looking forward to it :p): this game just completed a few hours ago and I can now say that I officially have scum meta. Not sure how much help this'll be to anyone - I basicially just played as townie as I could in that game so it's probably not much different than normal - but since that's my first scum game I figure I'd announce this right away for anyone who wanted hito scum meta.

[hitogoroshi]

Yeah, I know that's your thinking, hence why as a townie I think your reasoning is bad. Scum avoiding a linkage makes little sense, you can't say 'I will lynch x today and y tomorrow irrespective of flips' and expect people to go along with it. .

That's kind of ignoring the elephant in the room that people DID say that and everyone WAS going along with it, and as far as I can tell, you still are.

[hitogoroshi]

I don't have the time to make a more formal post or to look for questions posed to me because I've got class pretty soon, but let me say something quick before anything drastic happens.

It looks like SC is going to be the lynch. Now, it seems he's prepared for it, but I want to point something out. We are in some kind of game twilight zone where we have someone who is willing to be the mislynch that sends us into LYLO (usual disclaimer of, if SC is scum lynch me I'm wrong about everything etc.). He's doing it because we both realized the undercurrent behind events and are trying to put the game on track. It's just cheapening the whole damn thing to say 'well if SC is town we can think about that later.'

If SC is going to be the lynch today, I want to hear some actual, serious speculation about what it would mean if he flips town,

before any lynch happens

. If someone is willing to die for what it would say about the gamestate you do not get to dodge the question and defer it until after the scum can chat about it in their QT.

[hitogoroshi]

I suppose I should get my thoughts down in case I get night killed. This has been a very long and largely frustrating day, but for all of the failures this day isn't going to end with me being a knock-in-and-scum-win mislynch tomorrow and I can take some measure of pride in that.

At least one (and possibly both) of Albert/Zorblag/VPB pretty much has to be scum, I think. Hopefully there's one mason among that group and they can try to piece it out. In particular I don't know why no one wants to think Albert is scum - if I die, please, at least PRETEND to give a bit of thought on the idea, for my sake.

Even though I am still staunchly convinced SC is going to be a mislynch today, I can't help but think that Sando's case isn't scum motivated. I don't know why and my gut isn't exactly the most reliable thing in the universe, but there it is.

I still have no read on DDD, and for whatever reason this doesn't fill me with a sense of impending dread. I guess that's also a gut town read? I'll probably ISO him tomorrow if I'm still around and try to get a bit more definitive.

As for Vi...well, while I can easily see scum-Vi just trying to grab my support by paying lip service to the theory, what the hell, if you're scum it worked. If I'm killed tonight I'm glad to know there will be at least one person in the town who knows where I'm coming from.

I understand why you're all voting SC now. If he flips scum - well, I just a giant ass of myself and it's a good thing that you guys were there to cover for me.

I don't think he's flipping scum, though. And on an SC townflip - hopefully that'll give the town out of the hole that I couldn't myself. That's all I'm really after, whether or not I'm there myself.

[hitogoroshi]

I love how you catch that grammar problem and not the much more grievous error in that last post (which I have just noticed and subsequently immortalized in GIMP)

I understand why you're all voting SC now. If he flips scum - well, I just a giant ass of myself and it's a good thing that you guys were there to cover for me.

[hitogoroshi]

Obviously I'm gonna need a lot of thought to try to get the idea of Albert-mason in my idea of the gamestate. The first thing I'm wondering is why both Zorblag and Vi are alive. I suppose maybe Sando and ABR dropped some huge mason tells that I just dunced out and missed, but barring that I have to wonder why the scum would want to leave two players who virtually no one has expressed interest in lynching alive.

If they're both town, then DDD and VP are the scum. Could they count on Zorblag to get me? Probably. So this isn't a 100% unfeasible scenario or anything.

If Zorblag is scum, and Vi is town, then it's basicially scenario one only with 'could zorblag and {DDD, VP} count on {VP, DDD} to get me?

If Vi is scum and Zorblag is town, that's a bit iffier. If she's scum with VP, they'd probably be going for DDD. If she's scum with DDD...probably DDD would try to get VP to vote me, and Vi would have to hammer. Or they could try to get me on VP.

If both Zorblag and Vi and scum, that's the worst. They could have Vi hammer me like I said before, or try to get me to vote DDD or VP. (Or pass me entirely and get VP or DDD to vote for the other).

[hitogoroshi]

I think I'm happiest calling you town, Vi. The reservation I have doing this because it's primarily in your interactions with me (that is, the worry this is just my self-centered viewpoint) is mitigated by Albert also calling you strong town.

If I walk in with that assumption, the scumteams would be:

Zorblag/DDD
VPB/DDD
VPB/Zorblag

which means that what I should be working on doing is finding the least probable of those associations, because if I can find one grouping that I'm convinced isn't a scumteam then the person not in that grouping is scum. It's not a foolproof system because a.) it obviously doesn't work if Vi is scum and b.) there's nothing to say the two scum aren't good at distancing, but I think it's a great place to start.

Let me make up a quick bit of notation here: two names in [bracket's] will be the scumteam I'm discussing the feasibility of and name 1 > name 2 will be describing names 1's interaction with name 2. This should be kinda obvious but may as well get it down.

Let me start with [Zorblag - DDD].

For DDD > Zorblag, there's Iso 22, Iso 33's 'Nothing of importance to say'...and that's it.

For Zorblag > DDD - generic question in ISO 6, call out of his playstyle in ISO 9, ISO 10's "I don't disagree with VP on DDD (hey VPB, could you let me in on what exactly he was agreeing with? It's hard for me to tell because I wasn't there.)

His ISO 14-16 are interesting. He points out that if Vi wanted to vote DDD for lurking, her previous votes don't make sense in that context. This makes sense both as a townie trying to nail people to viewpoints and as a scum trying to point out the weakness of a case on a buddy; I'm unsure which one makes more sense.

ISO 19 is just a general call out of DDD. But ISO 23 says he has no interest in lynching DDD. It also shows his first major swipe at Reck, and I'll admit I didn't remember it being so early. (What I'm saying here is that everyone should look at ISO 23 and look at when it happened, because it's easy to forget these sorts of things.)

ISO 27 says he's still not interested in lynching DDD, and still not interested in giving reasons.

Doesn't bring up DDD again until D3, at my prompting.

And then, nothing.

Y'know, that's kinda weird to me. The early game is DDD, DDD, DDD, DDD. And then suddenly he decides to stop mentioning him (to make the mason suspects he's avoiding less obvious, if I'm reading his post right) and that ends up being what, three silent days?

This is wonky enough that I'm certainty not going to say it's a scumpair I can't see happening. However, I'll admit that after seeing how early his case on Reck started I'm not so sure I can really see Zorblag scum. It feels far too easy to say 'VPB and DDD are the scum' but that's what this chain of reasoning seems to be leading up to.

I have other things to do right now but I'll look at [VPB - DDD] next when I get here.

[hitogoroshi]

hitogoroshi, did you have any strong guesses for who the masons were? I ask because it's interesting that with your initial post today you seem to be assuming that the scum didn't which seems a bit unlikely to me. For what it's worth I have been thinking about the masons for most of the game and Sando's flip didn't surprise me too much based on what I'd seen; I don't know that he would have been my first guess but he certainly wasn't a bad one based on everyone's interactions. Once he was a mason I was pretty sure it had to be either Albert B. Rampage or Debonair Danny DiPietro as the third (I could rule out you, Vi and VP Baltar from strong negative interactions alone.)

I suppose I never thought about "if Sando's a mason, who's the third?" in that dead spot from D4 to D5. Now that I think about it, it does make more sense that the scum targeting Albert thinking he was a mason. I'm still not sure if the Sando targeting was noticing a mason - though come to think of it, perhaps Ojanen's mason flip confirmed a line of thought that meant the scum had all three mason's pegged at the start of day two. I wonder what that would mean, wagon-wise...? Would they try to hold off on a mason lynch and wait for the night kill, or try to get the masons lynched right away?

Also now that the drama is ongoing I'm going to switch the order a bit and do [DDD-VP] later to factor in their interactions.

So it's [VP-Zorblag.] VP posts a metric shitton and it's going to take a lot of time for me to get through that (as well as motivation; I'm tempted to forgo comment on the ISO's entirely) but I can at least get Zorblag > VP done quick.

He has a slew of posts at the begining regarding VP's interactions with Albert. Then silence until VP makes it on his no lynch list in ISO 20. In ISO 26 he says that he's with VP on why we should vote Reck, and in his next post he says VP is his strongest town read.

After that his mentions of VP are mostly 'I agree with''s or 'I don't understand suspicion on'.

Unsure of how to call this one. Guess I will have to look hard at VP > Zorblag after all.

[hitogoroshi]

Hey, sorry about that drop-off. I was in a car most of friday and saturday and this is a hard game to causally pick up. I didn't V/LA because my other game is in night and I *thought* it'd be a shorter trip than it was.

I agree with DDD that after mulling on it, the scum seeing mason-tells is more likely than finding other reasons why Zorblag/Vi are alive. While I agree that it seemed very odd at the start of the day, it's what makes the most sense, I think.

VP, I know this is a bit late, but I'm a bit curious as to your thought process behind this:

I think I will try to do Troll next since if I was committed to DDD scum, my gut says Troll is his most likely partner.

I'm not really feeling the wallposting so much any more and I think I'm kind of missing the forest for the trees. It feels as though I'm missing some piece of information that would put this all in place and I need to be trawling the thread trying to find it (one scumteam I don't think is plausible, one missed associative tell with Reck, etc). Apologies if you'd rather see another giant block from me but that's not what I'm doing at the moment.

[hitogoroshi]

Sorry for my lack of posting. It's spring break and I've had friends over for days, and it's hard for me to tell them "go hang out alone in the basement, I'm posting in a mafia game!"

Let's hit the questions quick.

**Side question for hito, have you felt intimidated by this player list at all during this game?

Not particularly. I replaced in to this game specifically because of the great player list and flavor text, but that hasn't (at least consciously) ever really translated into being intimidated.

For hito: I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this question already, but could you describe the difference between your scum meta and your Town meta? (Yes, of course this is an uncomfortable question!)

Well I only have one game of scum meta, and I tried to play as closely to my town meta as possible in that game. I think the only difference I can really divine is that I was a little more certain in my scum game than I usually am in town games. Of course, most of my lynches in that game were policy or single-slip lynches that I would have been more certain than usual on as town so I don't know how relevant that difference is.

As for who I think the scum are - I'm still willing to call Vi town, so it's more of a matter of who I think the townie is among DDD, Zorblag, and VP.

Here's a question for you guys - when DDD unvoted SerialClergyman D3, how inevitable was an SC wagon looking? I still think scum were looking to chain mislynches (even though my top candidate for scum was actually just doing lord-knows-what) and both Zorblag and VP had the 'lynch either' mentality. DDD expressed a strong preference for me over SC later in the day - but that's kind of what I would expect IF the scum thought that SC was getting lynched and I was not.

We are in an odd hair-trigger situation where the order of things is important to find scum, but (of course) we can't all wait for someone else to act.

I think the next thing I'm gonna do is look at the recent flare-up between VP and DDD. If I don't think they're scum together, that's a strong justification to vote for Zorblag.

[hitogoroshi]

Okay I feel I have to defend myself a bit here. Yes, I deserve a certain amount of flack for daring to coin a phrase like the mechanism, and yes, looking at Albert's actions is what got me thinking about it and he's obviously not scum. But you said 'If I had been town in your situation I probably would have just assumed SC was scum' and well, I guess it's a good thing you weren't in my situation, because I have zero doubt how this would have ended if D3 had finished with SC and I pointing fingers at each other.

Scum would have liked to chain mislynches on the two of us in either direction. I pointed out this tactic and realized it meant that SC was almost certainly a townie. SC was in a similar position and could see the same things happening. After calling it out in thread and hammering the point home, we at least reached the point where the mislynch of one of us helped to defend the other, instead of accuse. I don't see how any of this is ridiculous. D3 ends with me and SC pointing finger's at each other, and I flip town - would you have lynched anyone BUT SC next?

Also, speaking to Vi and VP about that last game, let's remember we were all town there, and the scum was the polite one sitting in the corner. It's still a little hard to accept that Zorblag's actions against Reck were a bus, but after that initial improbability it's pretty easy to see Zorblag scum.

As for his buddy, it's interesting. VP is the more logical buddy because it seems that the largely passive Zorblag would have a more active partner. But the actions today really make me think VP is town. He's been posting content into a void of a game, and I think if scum were doing that they would be trying a lot more to push a point of view instead of just posting their musings, as VP is here. The interpretation that makes the most sense to me is that VP is a townie, and the scum are basicially waiting for him to strongly suspect a townie so they can agree with him. I know I'm a townie, and I think Vi is a townie - so the fact that no one is saying much when he is suspecting DDD and Zorblag is kinda telling.

[hitogoroshi]

I wasn't sure how to interpret Zorblag's walls at first because DDD is the most lynchable person right now and so I could see easily see this being a scum-motivated crusade. But the complete silence from DDD changes the tone of things. I know most people don't get as emotionally invested in their games as I do (and are probably better players for it) but even while being burned out on sculling isos and content walls I can't imagine being so apathetic about the day's proceedings as DDD has been without being scum. It's going to take every townie working together to lynch scum, and quite frankly at this stage I can't see DDD being one of those townies.

DDD, if you're a townie, realize that the two of us have to agree with both each other and the other townie and hit a scumbag, and that's kind of a tall order without you here.

[hitogoroshi]

Hey hito, what is your response to Troll calling you "sophisticated scum"?

Apparently I'm easy to read as scum, so there's that. Without trying to sound too much like a jerk, my two scum games were games the town lost more than I won, and I personally I don't think I'm all that good as scum - but neither can I provide specific meta of 'hito derping out as scum.'

This isn't necessarily true.
In practice there is overwhelming pressure to bus if things start to go south. (or maybe that's just me)
Then again, in most games people don't lay their thoughts out as methodically as we have.

I suppose if there's going to be a game with a lylo bus it'd be this one.

@hitogoroshi, why couldn't Debonair Danny DiPietro simply not have had a chance to get to the game since I made my posts? It's not as though there's been a huge explosion of content from anyone since I got my thoughts out there. Speaking from personal experience this game I can say that there are certainly times when I've been away from the game that have nothing at all to do with the game itself. Why assume that couldn't be the case for Debonair Danny DiPietro during this relatively short stretch of time?

Well part of it is simply the idea that he couldn't find a single thing to do besides wait for you. It's also that's he's been away for three days without any V/LA notice or anything of the like. But it's mostly just that DDD really hasn't seemed to care too much about this game, and each quiet minute makes it feel more unlikely to me that he's feeling the same pressure to lynch scum that I am.

Also, on an unrelated note, do you have any reaction to hitogoroshi having finished Mini 922 as scum and not bringing that to our attention in the thread quickly as a means to double the scum meta we would have to work with for him? Personally I don't think it's relevant on it's own; I've glanced at the game and I don't think that his play there is particularly similar to his play here and I don't think that sort of reporting is valuable as an alignment tell anyhow but you apparently felt it was a good thing for him to have done with his other game.

My reaction is to let hito answer that himself, as per my previous post.
I will note that posting the previous game was more impressing IMO because it was his first scum game (unless I'm mistaken, I don't think hito plays offsite).

Yeah, I don't play offsite and I rushed to post that first link because it was my first time ever being scum and I figured you guys would want to see that so you had some idea of what hito-scum had ever looked like. Vi had also mentioned wanting my scum meta in a previous game. I didn't post the second link because I can't imagine anyone here thinking 'Man, if only I had MORE MAFIA to read right now.'

[hitogoroshi]

Well.

I went to Nebraska from MN right after my last post here (I didn't mention the V/LA because of it's brevity.) And I've been thinking about this situation the whole time and I'm still not sure.

I had the huge feeling that DDD simply was vaguely waiting for someone else to commit, but then he jumped in and threw down the first vote of the day. So I've been mulling on that.

The one thing I think we can safely avoid is the idea of 'Zorblag wasn't quicklynched, DDD must be scum." This has been a slow, steady town and I think a hasty quickvote to L-1 would be easy to recognize as such.

Vi, VP, how likely do you think it is that DDD and Zorblag are actually scum busing each other?

If those two aren't busing, the buddy situation is one of these:

1) Zorblag-scum's buddy is VP. VP has called Zorblag his second choice for scum after DDD. They win with a DDD mislynch.

2) Zorblag-scum's buddy is Vi. Vi has called Zorblag her top suspect. Either she will follow through and bus, or find a reason to mislynch DDD for the win. With a bus, she'd probably leave me alive and get me to mislynch DDD or VP.

3) DDD-scum's buddy is VP. VP will either find a reason not to follow through on his stated suspicions on DDD and try to mislynch Zorblag for the win, or bus DDD and do something after that. I don't know who he'd leave alive, honestly.

4) DDD-scum's buddy is Vi. Vi has given a town read on DDD. They win with a Zorblag mislynch.

I wish I could say I had a really good idea where I'm leaning, but I don't. There's also a blind spot in that I have no real experience with the idea of lylo busing. The two big things now are figuring out the possibility of double-busing (yes, that also makes the lynch trivial because we hit scum either way, but I'm going for the whole scumteam with this analysis) and seeing if voting patterns knock out at least one of 1-4 in any way.

I know deadline is close and I wish I had something decisive right now, but I can't help but feel there's something lurking in the voting patterns that I can combine with how the accusations solidified to win this.

If someone has a bit of time, I'd really appreciate a quick little reference of the times any of the living players voted for each other. I know that's a lot to ask for but it's also a lot to do and if anyone has a framework or anything in their notes I would be a happy hito.

[hitogoroshi]

@hitogoroshi, should I take it from your last post that you're not opposed to Vi on a scum team anymore? Is it just that Debonair Danny DiPietro and I are now so clearly opposed that's caused that or is there anything else that you're not mentioning?

Vi is still my strongest town read, but I'm out for completeness. I started barring Vi from all scumteams because it was a place to go. However, I then found out it was difficult to say 'there is no way either of these two are a scumteam' at that point in the day. Now, with more suspicions being aired, it's easier to see who the mislynch targets would be for certain scumteams - a post like 1290 simply wouldn't have been possible to make at the beginning of the day - and I no longer need the crutch of excluding someone from my analysis. I can mentally handle running the possibilities that include Vi as scum, and I intend to. Now, my opinion before looking at the connections is that a Vi scumteam is unlikely - but whether or not I think Vi is scum with X or Y is completely separate from whether or not I think Vi is scum, if that makes any sense. This is a chance for me to challenge my own reads.

I do think we're more likely to find the scum pair than a single scum. There is also the factor weighing on my mind that, as the player that the town has the least desire to lynch, I'm the most likely nightkill. This is why I don't want to just find one scum - while in some cases it's unnecessary effort to look for the scumteam before the lynch, here it seems finding the scumteam will be how I find the scum, and settling for just one stands a high chance of making me the nk who didn't do a damn to help in lylo 2.

I will say that I probably need to give everyone's reactions to Reck a good re-reading and add that in my analysis. I personally don't know of any significant tells to look for in people's interactions with masons and I think incorporating that information would lead to confirmation bias more than anything.

I'm about to go take a nap because I am a lazy college student, but let me preview my thoughts a bit so I'll be motivated into finishing them as soon as I wake up. If Zorblag is scum, he bussed Reck, and he bussed Reck early. Generally, scum like to be at odds with each other, and I think Zorblag's super early bus would make the most sense with Vi's lack of desire to lynch Reck. This would be a point for theory 2. However, I also need to look back and see if DDD or VP expressed any opposition to Zorblag's case on Reck before a Reck lynch seemed so popular (that is, D1) and changed after - that'd be a pretty fair bit of weight for them being buddies in my mind.

[hitogoroshi]

Troll's first big shot at Reck was post 531.

Before I read past, let me prep what I think reactions would be to not deal with confirmation bias. (This is mostly for my sake, you guys have no way to verify I'm doing this post in order.)

If I was scum, my first instinct would be to complete ignore talking about Reck. However, it's easy enough for a townie to ignore Reck so this isn't too strong of a scumtell. Otherwise, I'd probably go for the general rule of not doing what my scumbuddy is, and attack Zorblag for his argument on Reck. I would not want to loudly agree with Zorblag that Reck is scummy because a D1 double-bus of Reck just makes no sense to me, and scum generally (again, in my experience only) don't like to parrot each other.

Posts after Zorblag's anti-Reck thingymajigger.

VP's response is to agree with Zorblag's case but not actually hop, citing a preference of charlatan. I could see VP doing this if Zorblag is town, by prepping himself for a bus tomorrow, but I don't think Zorblag-scum and VP-scum would begin to foreshadow a bus D1. Point against Zorblag/VP.

(Digression: In the vein of Whose's Line is it Anyway, the points do not actually matter. I won't actually summing the points for and against as numbers, it's an indicator of my thoughts but not all are weighted equally.)

Vi attacks Reck's post but ignores Zorblag's points, and doesn't seem to want to convert to a lynch. This strikes me as really weird, and while Vi's actions might mesh with Zorblag's D2 as potential scum (one bussing, one stay off of the wagon) it doesn't make too much sense here that she'd want to attack her scumbuddies posts for fun but not mention acting on it. Point against Zorblag/Vi.

DDD didn't post at all for the rest of that day! I was about to call him on it but then I looked at Vi's unofficial vote count. And...think I found a thing.

DDD was voting Reck really, really goddamn early D1. Pages and pages before Zorblag's accusations. Could this be a bus? Yeah - in a twilight zone of a game, with both Zorblag and DDD voting early, I can't throw that out. But both of them? BOTH OF THEM, bussing their scumbuddy TOGETHER, well before any pressure?

Really don't think I believe that. So hey, I don't need your opinions on those two lylo bussing each other any more.

I'm almost certain DDD and Zorblag are not scum together.

---

Here's something I feel like trying. It goes off of the same principle of differences, but this time applied to one person. With three scum, I feel pretty safe in saying that the scum don't want to put their two buddies in the same category on their list. It's nothing definitive but it's a little psychology back-door I can try.

SCUMMEH:
charlatan
PorkchopExpress
DDD

PRETTEH SCUMMEH:
VP Baltar
Sando

NEUTRAL:
Amished
Ojanen
Albert B Rampage

TOWNEE:
Zorblag
Vi
SC

There's a point against Zorblag/Vi. Not the biggest point, but a point.

Speaking of Reck's thing, let's remember what he died with: 'lynch DDD or VPB after I go.' Normally I'd call the difference thing again, but this action was ENTIRELY for WIFOM purposes (seeing as we're obviously not listening to him if he's scum) and the fact that DDD pointed out the 'one on, one off' idea that is usually true in a case where it'd be self-serving it makes me want to call this a point for theory 3. Again, a small point, but I'm willing to exploit every little thing.

Now taking suggestions for new avenues of attack, but even without suggestions, I'll have more tomorrow, hopefully at a reasonable, pre-dinner time.

[hitogoroshi]

@hitogoroshi, I've been drinking pretty heavily tonight but so far as I can tell from the pair analysis you're doing everything that you found in the first section you did (looking at how people reacted after I expressed suspicion of xRECKONERx) that you're using as a point against them being my partner could also be used as a point against them being Debonair Danny DiPietro's partner as well. As you noted, he was on the xRECKONERx case even before I was. That's actually been something VP Baltar has brought up previously (I'm thinking the beginning of the day today offhand) which I'd think you should be aware of prior to that last post.

I'm all for you looking through pairs of partners but I also want you to come to conclusions in the process. If you're going to argue that pairs are the way to go then you have to be able to get results from looking at them more than you would individuals. Right now it feels like you're wasting time.

My awareness of the issue was on the level of 'all of Zorblag, DDD, and VP bussed Reck'. I didn't realize that DDD's bus was so much earlier than yours, and I think that part of it is that it's one to hear it summarized and quite another to hit 'page back....page back...page back...there??'

As for feeling a waste of time, well, right now I'm running with it and getting things. If it looks like I'm not coming to conclusions that's because I'm not at the moment. I'm entertaining each argument separately; the conclusion comes when a lot of arguments end up agreeing. But this is not a 'case' where I know in advance what the arguments will end up agreeing on. That's one of the major reasons I want pair analysis - because my biases are going to factor in to this much, much less. It's hard to forget your scum reads even when they end up being ground in bad logic, but it's very easy to forget your suspicions for pair analysis, and I'm doing my hardest to do just that. I'm going to bury each little thing without remembering what I buried before, and then when time demands it (two, three days with this deadline) I'm gonna dig them all up and ask who I should be voting for.

But you're absolutely right that I should have back-clarified when I saw that DDD was so early. That post really was strictly in order and I got a bit distracted looking at Reck's thing. I should have done an analysis at DDD's vote the same way I did one at your argument. They won't be the 'same' points as the ones that apply to you, but they will certainty be worth examining. Let's do that now.

DDD 413 is his vote on Reck. Same general formula as before - scum would most like to ignore this, kinda like to oppose it, and be really hesitant to agree right then and there.

VP's first post after DDD's vote is a battlewall on charlie that briefly turns to Reck. He expresses hesitance to lynch off of just Amish's tell. (Side note to Zorblag: this is why it's not quite as easy as 'everything used as a point against them being my partner is a point against them being DDD's partner.) I want to call this a point for DDD/VP scumbuddies because "I don't want to lynch off of just this, but I'm not completely against it like you're saying." However, this is a bit colored because charlatan did misquote him pretty hard and his anger is, I think, anger that would be there as townie just as well as scum. Still, VP's statement boils down to 'I'm not voting Reck now but if it becomes a full wagon I probably wouldn't mind' which is a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too for scum - but one diffused because town-VP has a good reason to be saying that in the same situation.

Vi didn't post for quite a while after. Of course, I'm not suggesting this lurking was game-related, but it's still something to frame your thoughts that this isn't necessarily related to DDD's vote in any way. And yet, this is the same thing as with Zorblag's. Her first content post after DDD's vote does a lot to undermine Reck's credibility but doesn't follow up with a vote. It's all of the awkward-killing-your-friends interaction of a bus without the actually 'hey lookit lynched a scum' happiness of a bus. I don't see any incentive for Vi-scum to follow up her partners bus vote by pointing out scummy things that Reck has done without ever actually jumping on his wagon.

And yet, as soon as I typed that, I can kinda see a possible incentive. If Vi-scum points out scummy things Reck has done, then that also serves to bolster the legitimacy of DDD's vote on Reck. And while I say she didn't follow through with the bus, I'm realizing that I forgot about our double-day. Reck was taken to L-1, disarmed, and then lynched later. I say Vi didn't bus because that was true in the end - but she DID put Reck to L-1, and who's to say that wasn't an unrealized and subsequently abandoned bus? (And how much does this apply to Vi's response to Zorblag?) Null points while I mull on it.

As for Zorblag, I did give my thoughts on that already. If Zorblag and DDD are scum together than they are so far beyond the levels of thought I can muster that this is all a waste of time anyway.

Hey hito, realistically speaking there are only two people getting lynched Today. Now that that's out there, do you think you would do better going for individual reads?

Not at all. The strong possibility that only one of two people is realistically being lynched is exactly what's powering my thoughts right now. There are only four possible teams, and two of them are either busing or have to about face their suspicions to get the mislynch. I think it'll be, in this case, EASIER to pick the scum by picking them both.

Thanks much for the vote count analysis.

[hitogoroshi]

Vi's vote count thing:

VPB -> Vi (36) - Day 1
Vi -> PCE (41)
Vi -> PCE (297)
Vi -> DDD (312)
PCE -> DDD (373)
--Day 2
Troll -> hito (917) - Day 3
VPB -> hito (950)
Vi -> VPB (1077)
DDD -> hito (1093)
--Day 4
DDD -> Troll (1276) - Day 5

Anything to divine from this? Vi's DDD vote in 312 isn't anything I see scumbuddies being afraid to do to each other. And then, aside from Vi > VP (which I'm not considering here) not any until DDD's vote today. How significant is that, I wonder? None of the possible scumteams (Vi/VP, Vi/DDD, Zorblag/VP, Zorblag/Vi) have bussed, except for Vi's 312 which doesn't count. Would scum who hadn't voted each other yet be inclined to do so in lylo? I'm thinking back and I remember people thinking that the scum reaallly wanna bus. And the opposites thing I think would apply here - scum that bussed one partner could very well feel tricky by reporting strong town on the other. A point for the straight scumteams (the ones trying to win today) and a point against the bus teams (with one scum trying to win tomorrow).

Expanding on a thing. I think with what's happened I can't see VP NOT voting for DDD today. So let me look at this, the 'if busing' part of my analysis:

DDD-scum's buddy is VP. VP will either find a reason not to follow through on his stated suspicions on DDD and try to mislynch Zorblag for the win, or bus DDD and do something after that. I don't know who he'd leave alive, honestly.

Who'd he leave alive? Vi would probably have to be his mislynch, and Zorblag would be the one he tries to sway. I'd be night killed.

What are the odds of that happening? I'm not really feeling that. I think VP scum with DDD would have tried to get Vi on a Zorblag misylnch. The bus doesn't feel too natural to me here, especially when it seems so much harder than the straight win, and it's a pretty strong blow to the idea of a VP/DDD scumteam.

[hitogoroshi]

Hey, DDD, who do you think is the most likely buddy for Zorblag-scum?

[hitogoroshi]

It's late at night and I checked this and for some reason I thought DDD already had a vote (and that Zorblag put him to L-1) but that's not what happened and those few paragraphs I wrote were a waste of time.

I'll get in here tomorrow when it's not so late, but in the meantime, please, no one else vote anyone, mkay?

[hitogoroshi]

Vi, whenever you come back, I want to know your thoughts on this:

Expanding on a thing. I think with what's happened I can't see VP NOT voting for DDD today. So let me look at this, the 'if busing' part of my analysis:

DDD-scum's buddy is VP. VP will either find a reason not to follow through on his stated suspicions on DDD and try to mislynch Zorblag for the win, or bus DDD and do something after that. I don't know who he'd leave alive, honestly.

Who'd he leave alive? Vi would probably have to be his mislynch, and Zorblag would be the one he tries to sway. I'd be night killed.

What are the odds of that happening? I'm not really feeling that. I think VP scum with DDD would have tried to get Vi on a Zorblag misylnch. The bus doesn't feel too natural to me here, especially when it seems so much harder than the straight win, and it's a pretty strong blow to the idea of a VP/DDD scumteam.

[hitogoroshi]

What it comes down to is that I'm gaming with friends and checking this thread in between posts, and since I'm feelin pretty safe in the scumteam I'm calling I don't want to rush a post calling for someone's death (but neither is there any other post I really need to make).

Rest assured that a.) I have reached a conclusion and b.) yes, there was a reason I'm not saying it in thread, and you guys can probably figure it out but I'm gonna be gaming for a few more hours yet so by all means, continue on, because I'd like the two scum to continue to post and keep digging.

hito, I do agree with Vi that you could give us some kind of a solid indication of your voting intentions. Today could end with someone not voting, so I'd like to hear everyone's main intention.

Okay, I'm the one guy people trust (to varying degrees). Think on reasons why I would want to avoid telling anyone who I want to vote and you'll probably see where I'm coming from (and maybe even the scumteam I'm gonna call out).

I'll do it before I go to bed, rest assured.

[hitogoroshi]

So Bad at Mafia.

Considering IIRC you and Troll are the last ones to go to sleep by time zones, don't delay.

Normally it'd make me bad at mafia, yes, but every rule has exceptions. In this case, being in the unique position of everyone's strongest town read gave me an interesting sort of power. After all, if you're scum, you want to try to mislynch with the person who everyone is calling confirmed town. So, what if that townie doesn't tell you who he wants to lynch? That's when it gets interesting.

Humans are risk adverse, and I think as the day drags on longer and longer scum would be more and more willing to bus their buddy if they didn't think they could get the mislynch. But here's the funny thing.

As said, we're discounting Vi/VP scumteam because if that was the case this game would just be an elaborate practical joke. For reasons I've already given, I highly doubt this is a crossbus. So one of Vi and VP also has to be scum. But since I've been sitting on my opinions, I think a strong dynamic of this day has been whoever the scum out of Vi and VP is gauging the other's interest is a mislynch.

And with that, the final countdown.

The idea of a VP/DDD scumteam is just silly, silly, silly. Too easy to get a Zorblag misylnch. There's also the reasoning I gave earlier that scum probably at least opened this day trying for a straight win - any bussing would, I believe, be a later consequence as the potential targets faded away. VP opened DDD in a situation where it would have been a little too easy to cite uncertainty and test the waters.

Let's look at the two possible Vi teams.

Either she's scum with Zorblag, or scum with DDD. She opened with Zorblag as her most possible, and DDD as her second-to-last preference. But let's think about Vi/Zorblag for a minute. In addition to the little points I found against it:

Vi attacks Reck's post but ignores Zorblag's points, and doesn't seem to want to convert to a lynch. This strikes me as really weird, and while Vi's actions might mesh with Zorblag's D2 as potential scum (one bussing, one stay off of the wagon) it doesn't make too much sense here that she'd want to attack her scumbuddies posts for fun but not mention acting on it. Point against Zorblag/Vi.

Here's something I feel like trying. It goes off of the same principle of differences, but this time applied to one person. With three scum, I feel pretty safe in saying that the scum don't want to put their two buddies in the same category on their list. It's nothing definitive but it's a little psychology back-door I can try.

SCUMMEH:
charlatan
PorkchopExpress
DDD

PRETTEH SCUMMEH:
VP Baltar
Sando

NEUTRAL:
Amished
Ojanen
Albert B Rampage

TOWNEE:
Zorblag
Vi
SC

There's a point against Zorblag/Vi. Not the biggest point, but a point.

But beyond that, there's just the nature of it. Vi would have had to open bussing, and counted on VP the townie to 'sway' her to vote for DDD instead of her scumbuddy. I don't like that.

A passive Vi and an active VP makes more sense in the other direction. Vi/DDD. Vi opens putting down DDD as second-strongest town, for fairly safe reasons. But VP doesn't want to lynch Zorblag, he wants to lynch DDD. Vi could hold out for me trying to lynch Zorblag - but I've been silent. With the day wearing on and the arguments against DDD looking stronger and stronger, Vi decided to just soft-bus DDD, while leaving her options open in case I barged in voting Zorblag.

If you can't tell, this is the philosophy I subscribe to. However, there's the open question of VP and Zorblag being a scumteam. VP in that situation would be trying to convince Vi of DDD's guilt for the mislynch, and there's the chance that he is succeeding in this endeavor. There are two major factors that have driven me away from this one. The first is that, simply, I think the arguments on DDD are more convicing. The second is more specious. I simply don't see Vi as the player that would fall for that sort of argument, to go for DDD when the main person arguing for his lynch (even moreso than Zorblag, in my opinion) is also easily the strongest candidate to be his scumbuddy.

So my plan is to first lynch DDD, and then, lynch his scumbuddy, Vi.

But I'd like to let this sit in the thread for a little bit before I vote off of it. VP, you're the townie here, so lemme know what times you'll have working for you tomorrow and we can plan to do this at a reasonable time tomorrow.

VP, one last point: The blind spot I'm leaving here is Vi/Zorblag. I think it's much less likely than Vi/DDD, but it still isn't completely out there. If you could quick give your thoughts on that scumteam, that'd be much appreciated.

[hitogoroshi]

Hey hito, when I said "So bad at Mafia", I was actually referring to the BaM group.
Both of your gambits ITT were Awesome enough that I asked SpyreX if you could be in, and he said "Hells yes". In other words, it was a compliment.

Oh. Thanks!

I don't really have much in the way of post-game to say. I said everything on my mind throughout the thread. I got some things right and some things wrong and I learned more about mafia, and that's really all you can ask for.

I think I really need to start taking notes when I play games. While being vague and inconclusive helped the last day, I think I was too easily influenced by the most recent posts over and over again and that lack of consistency really robbed my suspicions of any pressuring power.

Also giving that I adeptly pointed out my blind spot without bothering to check it (should have voted Vi, since I found Vi/Zorblag more plausible than VP/{Zorblag, DDD}), it should come as a surprise to no one that I'm a bad driver. >.>

[hitogoroshi]

I dunno, I think that if I had been lynched D3 and my townflip really had gotten suspicions off of SC, that would have given the town better odds here.

While I definitely agree that being confirmed town doesn't make you confirmed right, I do think that there are situations where your lynch can be preferable to someone elses, and I do think this was one of them. It's a rare situation but it happens, and it's worth pointing out when it's there because, like Vi said, it's an even rarer situation for scum to be in.