Newbie 1116 -- Game Over

[bigAl]

/confirm

[bigAl]

I don't know about anyone else, but the forums were down all of yesterday for me. So, sorry for not posting I suppose. >.>

Anyway, I'm the IC in this game, meaning in addition my normal goal of eliminating all the mafia from the town, I'm going to help with any game theory or strategy questions as much as I can. The Newbie Guide is a good place to start if you're not familiar with the game. The Glossary can be helpful too. Any questions, let me know. I played a fair amount on here several years back, but this is my first game in a while. This 2of4 setup is new to me, so it'll be interesting to see how the game plays out.

Note that I've already snuck in my first strategy, by implying that my role is pro-town in the previous paragraph. Now you all subconsciously assume that I'm some kind of pro-town guy. But don't you get sucked in! The more critical and suspicious everyone is of everyone else, the better we'll do!

Let's VOTE: cymru96 to start out. Not random.

Anyway, I'm in Mountain time, GMT-7. I'm busy most weekdays but I should be able to post a lot evenings and weekends.

PS. You vote people by typing:

Code: Select all

[vote]someone[/vote] or [b]Vote: someone[/b]

[bigAl]

Did you put bold tags around it? ([b] and [/b])

Gotta run for now but I'll post a response this afternoon.

[bigAl]

Okay, work was rained out today, so I'm back quicker than I expected. Anyway...

@Al, why is your vote on cymru not random?

So a lot of mafia games start out with a few random votes, some idle discussion, chit chat or whatever, and it takes a while before anything meaty comes out. I decided to start the game with a strong provocative vote, and see where it leads. This kick starts the game and now we have something to look at. I voted someone for no stated reason and now I've gotten a response from two of you so far, and that gives me (and the rest of the town) more information. Doing this puts a bit of a target on me, I realize, but at the very worst, I get lynched and everyone tomorrow has a lot of data to move forward (though we're a long ways off from the lynching stage I hope). (I picked cymru96 to vote because he chose not to vote anyone. I'll be the first to admit that this is pretty

arbitrary

, but it's not

random

. It was probably just as a meaningful choice as a random vote, but it leads something more interesting.)

VOTE: bigAL because he's said that he's not necisserily town and then voted for me without saying his reason.

Saying that I'm "not necisserily [sic] town" is not a reason to vote someone or suspect they are a bad guy - it is simply a fact. It is a fact that I simply have a 2/9th chance of being a bad guy - as does everyone else here. That's what I was trying to say in #32 - we're all possibly scum. Grimmjow called it bullshit - I call it logic and strategy. My vote was arbitrary so start with, but I'm happy with where it is now - stating facts is no reason to (try to) vote people.

[bigAl]

So both Grimmjow and cymru96 replied without really addressing what I said. Does it make any more sense now that VisceraEyes has explained it as well? VE seems to get what I'm going for. Still fingering me Grimmjow? Why are you continuing to vote the guy that's providing helpful advice cymru? :)

I have enough experience here to avoid doing something obviously suspicious as Grimmjow and cymru seem to think I am doing, so it wouldn't make sense for me to do so. [IC hat]That's getting into WIFOM territory though, so maybe ignore the previous sentence.[/IC hat]

Also the more I think about it, the more this seems like a lame attempt to find an excuse to be suspicious of someone:

Can anyone else confirm that the servers were down yesterday? They worked fine for me.

I've love to hear from tucah and Workdawg too (though I know he said he be away for the weekend - understandable).

[bigAl]

^^ Good catch JJ Looks like a typo but you never know...

Whew, I missed a lot in 12 hours. Catching up...

How can you call a vote random when you give a reason behind your vote? RANDOM: proceeding, made, or occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern. HEY, IF YOU LIST A REASON, THAT'S NOT RANDOM KTHNX

The method of choosing who to vote in the random voting stage is often not "random" at all in the dictionary sense of the word, but it's still effectively random. You could, for example, pick the the first player alphabetically and vote them - it's not a random selection process but the result is still and arbitrary vote. I'd still consider it random enough to not matter how it was chosen. Same case here.

Even if he voted for someone else without giving reason I woul've voted for him 'cause you can't really say it's not random without giving reason.

I know you can vote without giving reason but it pointless 'cause it's like saying "I know something you don't but I'm not telling." It's stupid.

There are many reasons why someone might vote for someone without stating a reason. A cop with a guilty investigation might vote for someone with little reason so that later in the game, if the cop is killed, the rest of the town can look back and see who they were targeting. I already stated why I didn't list a reason for my vote. If you were curious why I didn't state a reason it doesn't hurt to ask instead of just voting.

You seem pretty concerned about not "appearing" scummy. Should I be concerned that there's a reason for that??

Reading through the thread, I was about to say the same, but VE (and tucah and JJ) beat me to it. It /is/ something a lot of new players are concerned with though.

About browsing the forums and not posting - I often check in and see if there are any new posts when I have two free minutes here and there throughout the day, but won't post a response until I have fifteen minutes to actually sit down and read through thoroughly. That being said, I would like contribution(s) with more content from Zihark.

[bigAl]

Oh, and I forgot to mention, putting votes on lurkers /can/ be a valid strategy, but don't go overboard and lynch someone for it. If it becomes a true problem, it's often better to ask for a replacement than to be effectively lynching blind just because they aren't posting. Of course, not posting does not help the town so a little pressure is alright, but simply voting for lurkers gives relatively little information about everyone's alignment.

[bigAl]

With 7 townies and 2 mafia, it would generally be

very bad

for the mafia if they jump on a lynch real quick at this point. Sure they might get a townie out of play, but that puts a HUGE target on them on day 2 which might be near-impossible to talk their way out of. So one more vote is not a huge risk on its own, but it doesn't hurt to be safe.

[bigAl]

I could see this as not only coaching town players into something to watch for, but I can also see this as coaching a newb-scum buddy into not doing something.

As I was writing that quote, I thought to myself, "I bet someone is going to think that this is me coaching my hypothetical scum-buddy." But I wrote it anyway just to see if anyone would notice. :) Besides, if I were mafia, I would have gone over that with my partner pre-game.

It's past time for sleep though so I'll have to go over my current reads tomorrow after work.

[bigAl]

I wrote a little song about who I thought was scummy...

/offtopic
I tried to write a song, but it turns out all of you guys have really crappy names to rhyme with. I will think on it.

/ontopic
I'll start off with a response to VE's big post and then move on from there.

Interestingly, only three people had [voted] when he posted this

Several reasons to choose cymru. Most importantly, he had posted but specifically stated that he was not going to vote because he didn't have any current suspicions. In some circles, I've seen this as a "I'm going to make sure to do nothing at all that could draw suspicion by voting someone without a legitimate reason." Mostly a very newbie line of thinking, one that we've seen throughout the game from cymru. It doesn't say much about his alignment (seeing as both town and mafia would be somewhat concerned about that), but it's something that stuck out to me enough to warrant a closer look at him.

Grimmjow even calls his strategy bullshit, and bigAl doesn't mind a bit.

No, I don't mind. Grimmjow can think what he wants but I for one believe that it was a valid strategy to get the game going. It seemed likely I would get some support from a couple other players so I let it be.

It's interesting to note that bigAl has yet to remove his vote from cymru96. He must still feel he's scummy. Either that, or knows something I certainly don't.

Just because someone is a new at the game, doesn't mean they can't be scum too. I know that when I started, I tried to play off my scum mistakes as newb mistakes and it worked. I don't feel he's excessively scummy, but a vote there is as good a place as anywhere else right now.

(Gonna grab some dinner, and respond to the rest in a bit.)

[bigAl]

I have basically no feeling on Zihark, Yonzy, tucah, or Workdawg from memory (I actually had to go to the first post to find the list of names cause I couldn't remember the latter three. Looking through their posts I find:

One of VE's accusations of me ("He always appears to be second (or third) out the gates in pointing out questionable acts of others") can equally be applied to tucah - with only five posts (not counting the pregame or double posts), at least three of them are only rehashes of stuff others have said a couple posts earlier.

Workdawg has even fewer posts but the one contentful post I've seen from him seems townie.

BigAl- you look mad fishy:p lol js.

Yonzy - could you explain this statement? Perhaps I'm just too old to understand textspeak but I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

2. Whether someone is the IC or not should have nothing to do with whether you suspect them or don't suspect them. Roles are chosen randomly and everyone's posts should be looked at individually and not judged because of their IC status or any other status.

True... but an experienced mafia is less likely to slip-up than a new mafia, which means that a player's experience does matter when considering how suspicious someone is. But yes, we shouldn't assume that there will be an experience player in the mafia group.

[bigAl]

One more minor unimportant niggle:

My first actual game (that I ended up replacing out of due to IRL circumstances, AND IS CURRENTLY OVER) I didn't get a chance to read the qt and discuss things with my buddy beforehand. Just sayin'.

I haven't played a game here in a while (before quicktopic was officially introduced), so I don't know if mafia members can see (but not post in) the qt thread during the day, but I assume they can. Meaning that even if it wasn't a two way conversation, I would have had time to post some advice at least. If I were mafia that is. >.>

[bigAl]

LOL This is kind of funny because you could be trying to prove you're not mafia by showing how you have no idea about QTs. I can answer this as I was mafia in a previous game - the one Grimmjow keeps talking about. Our QT was viewable even during the day when we weren't allowed to post. Anyway, it's a good point that even if both mafia didn't get a chance to post, at least one could have.

That would be mighty sneaky of me, wouldn't it? >.>

[bigAl]

> What is everyone's experience with mafia? How many games have you played? Here or elsewhere, online, IRL? etc.

I played campfire IRL mafia once, really loved it, joined here, played a dozen or so games here several years ago, got busy with life and whatnot. This is my first game in a few years. (See my wiki page for the games I've played here.)

[bigAl]

Ninjad by VE. I'm sure there's some kind of inspirational quote here that would be appropriate... something like "leaders aren't chosen, they're made". That's a bad quote but the point is, whether or not VE wants to be a leader, he has been directing a lot of the recent conversation. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, just something to watch out for when considering everything.

Anyway, I don't think it's out of the ordinary to ask what people think of your analysis, as VE summed up nicely just above.

[bigAl]

Quick note before work: I personally think that cymru's typo is pretty much irrelevant - it might push him 1 or 2% towards scum at most. It was a complicated sentence to begin with.

[bigAl]

As far as I can see, he's not been in any other games on the site. Granted, yes, he may have been in games on another site, but as far as this one goes, he's not been in any other games. So I'm not necessarily willing to buy this one yet.

I must say that your lack of faith in people is... very high. I mean, it's important to be sceptical in a game like this, but pointing out things like the above, (or not believing that the servers were down in #33) is getting my suspicions up. We have to trust each other to a minor extent.

@cy - even though 9 active is probably not going to happen, better to have 5 active people than 4. Don't hesitate to post just cause no one else is.

[stuff about only four active players] This shouldn't bother only me.

For what it's worth, I pointed out the same thing a few posts back.

[bigAl]

@Nobody Special: Okay,

now

can we have a prod/replacement on Zihark? Yonzy been gone for a while too.

[bigAl]

You were also asked your opinion on bigAl, Grimmjow and myself, so at this point I'm wondering which of those 3 you're protecting by avoiding giving your opinion on them.

I'd also like to hear cymru's opinion on this. He seems very hesitant to say anything at all at this point... I can understand being overwhelmed but it doesn't have to be like VE's #104... even a simple summary of your general feelings towards everyone would be good.

Also, thanks NS!

[bigAl]

Al reads the big long posts. Al rereads the long posts. Al blinks. Al starts rereading again...

[bigAl]

First of all, Grimmjow - let's keep personal attacks to a minimum. If you disagree with someone, fine, but no need to call each other idiots. It's just a game afterall. Let's keep it fun. Your abrasiveness makes people less likely to trust you, I think.

@VE sorry for the late response. I can understand the frustration of writing up a big post any then having it ignored. I'll go through it here to start with.

Exhibit A: I admit that I was as confused as Grimm in #59. I hadn't seen Chainsaw defense used as an argument (much) before, but I don't think it really applies very well on page 1. Maybe Grimm is defending his scumpartner Workdawg here, but it looked like more of a mostly-arbitrary vote.

Exhibit C, D is a good point. It can be a lot easier to hide as scum if you get everyone else to post their reads and then just agree with them, rather than going first. Of course that argument works both ways - if there are other scum out there that Grimm is trying to get them to reveal themselves, by not posting his opinion it forces others to not copy him. So, um, I'm wishy-washy here. >.>

Exhibit E: I'm not sure I 100% agree with the "Lynch all liars" philosophy, but either way I don't like purposefully trying to catch people in a lie as an excuse to lynch them. Their play as a whole should be considered and only then decide if they're lynch-worthy.

I'm not calling cy a liar, persay, but I don't have evidence that he's not lying.

This is, as Grimmjow would put it, bullshit reasoning. You can't have suspicions for someone when there is no evidence one way or another here.

Exhibit F: If Grimm is counting one of VE's "oversights/misinterpretations/exaggerations/whatever" as, for example, not understanding what "L-2" means, that irrelevant on VE's scumminess. It's a simple misunderstanding, which was later corrected. I don't see that as bad.

[ic hat]I'm sure most of you all know what the "L-X" means by now, but just in case: "L-X" means that someone is X votes away from a lynch. For example, L-1 means only one more vote is needed before a player is lynched. With nine players alive, that's equivalent to saying they have 4 votes.[/ic hat]

PS. I like your spoiler tag use. It makes things a lot easier to read.

VE and Grimm go on for a while more back and forth, but I think the above covers the jist of it. I think that a Day 1 No Lynch is a bad idea - even lynching a townie gives us more information than no lynch at all. I could tentatively support a Grimmjow lynch, but we still have up to fifteen more days until the deadline so I don't want to rush it. Let's make sure that Zihark's replacement and Dickov have time to contribute first at minimum.

[bigAl]

Also - tucah you promised a post three days ago. Contribute please?

[bigAl]

I would disagree with WD's vote hopping accusations. (Not disagreeing with the fact that VE's changed votes a lot but I am disagreeing with the fact that that is a bad thing.) In most (all?) cases, the vote was justified and backed by reasonable reasoning. People have different playstyles. (I, for example, tend to express my suspicions with words and don't change votes a lot.) Others do. If anything, it shows that VE is not afraid to defend his beliefs.

(In fact, I wonder if post 83 was him trying to make sure his scum-buddy zihark wasn't lynched too early)

I just want to point out that I said pretty much the same thing as VE in #91 and then Grimmjow(!) says it also in #100. But just above, he calls it a good catch. WTF? This doesn't make any sense to me.

I think it's time to
UNVOTE: cy, VOTE: Grimmjow
and see where this leads. Don't want a lynch yet, just want to start to push that direction.

[bigAl]

Today meaning June 16th or today meaning Day 1 of our mafia game?

[bigAl]

Day 1. My efforts are netting town nothing at this point. I'm going to vote for whomever the rest of town decides is the best candidate. I hope it's at least an inactive, but if the town decides that my efforts in scumhunting, encouraging discussion, using REASON to back up my statements and keeping an open mind should be considered scummy, then Mafia has ALREADY won. If I survive tonight, I'm perfectly willing to try again tomorrow.

I'd like to point out that if I'm wrong about something, that would NOT make me scum. Being Mafia would make me scum. Being wrong just makes me wrong. If I'm wrong, tell me I'm wrong. Don't make fun of me. Don't poke fun at my posts because I took time and effort to make them pretty. I think it's funny how when I pointed out that Grimm was being a condescending jerk, he IMMEDIATELY apologizes when no one is on his side...but the very SECOND someone else calls me to the stand, it's back to 'Oh man, what an idiot.'

Typically shit like this doesn't bother me, but I feel like I've been playing the best town game of my LIFE. Clearly I'm missing something.

I for one believe VE. This post confirms it more for me, particularly the second paragraph there.

[meta]@VE The reason I left mafiascum years ago is cause I was tired of all the internetjerks being mean to each other. I poke my head back in every couple years to see if it's gotten any better but then I remember it's the internet and it won't. I know personal drama shouldn't come into games but it does sometimes and I guess it's something we gotta live with. I hope that anything I posted didn't offend - my posts like #171 wasn't making fun of your long posts, I was just trying to say, "Hey, I'm still here, I'm still reading, I'm trying to catch up as fast as I can, but don't have a post ready yet." I dunno. I hate to see an engaged player give up like this - now I feel shitty.[/meta]

Anyway, now to decided what to do with all the lurkers...

And this JJ vs Cy thing has been swept under the rug; I've totally ignored it but gotta reread that conversation too.

Moderator Nobody, can we please have a prod or replacement on tucah? Been 72 hours now.

Sigh, not looking forward to having three replacements.

[bigAl]

Okay, several people slipped in while I was writing that. I'm glad VE is going to try at least.

Workdawg's vote kind of came out of left field for me... interesting. Hm.

[bigAl]

(Oops, hit submit instead of preview. To continue my previous paragraph) I wonder if a Grimmjow/Workdawg scumteam would be too obvious/dangerous a play. Were I scum, I would separate myself from my partner more, but with such an inactive town, they probably could nearly pull it off. Kill VE today, me tonight and they would be the only ones voting tomorrow... Maybe I'm getting paranoid.

@Cy you seem dedicated on your JJ vote, but if, for the sake of argument, you have to lynch either Grimm or VE who would you support? I don't see much evidence for JJ (that you've stated) other that stuff about that typo.

[meta]Also, I've been thinking if it would be worth it to divide games into fastpaced/slowpaced categories so that everyone can play at the rate they like.[/meta]

[bigAl]

@bigAl I think that one of VE and Grimmjow is mafia but I don't know which. If I had to come to decision I would read some of their posts and see what sounds scummy.

Well, please read their posts and let me know what sounds scummy. You can't be indecisive forever.

[bigAl]

Spoiler: too town/scum buddy withzihark

"Too Town"

I agree that "too town" is kind of a sketchy descriptor, but I think it's adequate. I certainly don't want to discourage people from speaking their minds, however I feel like a lot of your comments are obvious and overwhelming. Throwing out obvious points in HUGE LETTERS just kinda seemed like you were trying to earn bonus town points. I guess this IS a newbie game, so maybe I should just let that go.

Scum-buddy with zihark

This comment was mostly an afterthought and I find it rather unlikely... but there are certainly reasons for voting him if that is the case.

Firstly, a vote from his own scum-buddy is much more likely to prod him into activity. If he is messing up bad enough that even his scum-buddy is voting him for inactivity, then he should know for sure he's got to get his ass in gear.

It also gives you a history, albeit a minor one, of voting for him that you could try and twist in your favor if he does flip scum later on.

It's a pretty safe move to vote him in this manner so early on when there are few votes on him.

These are several good points, several of which I did not think of myself. I'll think on this (particularly the motivation for having a voting record).

@bigAl

How can you see VE's post 194 (the "I quit" post) as town? He's been BY FAR the most gung-ho player in the game so far. He doesn't get the reaction that he wants and he quits... and somehow this is good for town? I don't see ANY town motivation behind it at all.

I see here a distinction between what's good for the town and whether or not he has a pro-town role. I see his reaction as revealing more of a pro-town alignment than scum. I think, in general, when a mafia is accused of being scummy for poor reasons (in their opinion), they get nervous or worried. When a townie gets accused of being scummy for poor reasons (in their opinion), they get frustrated. When a townie thinks that they have legitimate leads on a player and the rest of the town doesn't see that, they get frustrated. When a mafia is trying to tell people about leads they made up and the rest of the town doesn't see them, they get worried. I mean, it's possible that this is all part of the plan, but I doubt it. Just my thoughts.

Radical new idea: we ask for a modkill on Zihark, Yonzy, tucah and JJ. Odds are, one of them is mafia, and that leaves a nice and active 4 town vs. 1 mafia. <-- For the record, the previous sentence is a joke.

[bigAl]

I think Grimmjow is scum and he is trying to hide it in the feud with Viscera. He is trying to play it off as Viscera being scum but after the insults it seems that he has no basis and resorts to personal jibes. I think that because of this he is scummy. I am not gonna vote for him because I think he and Miss JJ are scum so I stick to JJ.

I think Viscera is a scum hunter and is being targeted by Grimmjow to cover Grimm's scummyness

[next post]
I don't think Grimmjow is scum based upon reflection and I therefore appologise for the accusation.

Damn it, cymru, you were

so close

to having an opnion about someone other than your odd fixation on Miss JJ. Sigh. Do you

really

think that, after 236 posts in the game, the only evidence you can find of scum is that someone doesn't think that your supposed typo is a typo?

[bigAl]

Care to share some reasoning for that? You realize that this puts VE one vote away from a lynch, right? (Unless I missed an unvote somewhere.) You realize that putting someone one away from a lynch is dangerous and not to be done lightly, right?

[bigAl]

To put it gently, that is the worst reasoning I've ever heard. Have you even read the thread?

[bigAl]

And talking a lot is a bad thing? Encouraging discussion helps us pick out the mafia.

Capitalization/punctuation would be appreciated.

[bigAl]

Why did you volunteer to replace into the game if you weren't ready to commit to catching up? I would recommend you ask the mod if you can drop out and start in a fresh game. More fun for you and more fun for us if we don't have to put up with this.

[bigAl]

(Okay, just realized that we're not at L-1 now cause Zihark (aka blue) was already voting VE. Still don't like this though.)

[bigAl]

I'd say how bad an idea it is to reveal your role, but VE has already covered that. However: You have the power to vote! You have the power to read and question and think. That's not boring. Use them wisely.

> I wish i had some kind of power being a normal townie is boring.

This (combined with his "confirmed townie" post earlier) is

almost

so simple a slip that I wish I could believe it 100%. But it would be easy hide as scum behind this - particularly if, for example, the mafia had talked about what to claim in their qt. I'm not seeing that much subtlety in blue here though.

[bigAl]

Well, you've covered most of them already.

Off the top of my head:
1. Don't put people a vote or two away from a lynch without justified reasoning.
2. Don't give the mafia more info than you can avoid (eg. your role).
3. Don't lurk, active conversation helps everyone.

The Newbie Guide and A Beginner's Guide to Being Awesome At Mafia on the wiki have some good reading for more tips.

[bigAl]

Actually, having just found the A Beginner's Guide to Being Awesome At Mafia for the first time ten minutes ago, everyone could give it a read. Lots of good tips in there, even for (supposedly) experienced players like me.

[bigAl]

I agree with blue's theory and I don't think Grmmjov or Viscera are scum.

I don't see blue having any kind of sense of theory at all here. This is not good for him (but I'm still leaning more newb than scum), but especially not good for cymru for agreeing with it.

To illustrate:

In #317:
> ve is a plain and simple "?"
> gj you are scum becuse you are jumpy

#337
> he seams like hes trying to help me somtimes but then he seams scumy when argues with you so i dont know i guess im leanig towards scum if i had to say

#372
> and no ive diecided my vote is staying asking me to unvote seams scumy

#382
> from whats happen tonight i think all 3 of us are town

95% of the filler in there is totally null - it's either chat about how the game works, timezones, drunkenness, playstyles, etc. It's all stuff that a town or a mafia would say equally. Where is this change coming from?

[bigAl]

Intestingly enough, cy supports blue's theory, but blue himself doesn't. That's a new one. Again, a minor point against cy.

and if it wasn't for the not knowing how the QTs work to balance it out I'd have [Al] as a total scumread

For the record, if I were playing against myself, I would call my "not knowing how QTs work" post total crap, as far as being pro-town goes. It's like blue posting that he's a townie, except that he's very new at this and doesn't know any better, while I've played a bunch of games - I

do

know better. Sure, it's an IC post, it's about strategies on how to play the game, it's a

useful

post for getting the town to think, but I'd consider it a null-post on scumminess. It does not particularly clear me personally. I'm honestly surprised that anyone would read anything townie into that, and that more people weren't suspicious of it. Only JJ points it out, and VE mentions it, as far as I can find/remember. To me, that's a small point for JJ - someone looking for scum rather than just floating along.

One of my concerns against BigAl comes due to the way he's playing this game. It mostly comes down to one or more of:
[...]
-'Pressure-voting' without giving the target anything to work with besides the vote.

I've only voted twice this game, and I think I did give reasonable things to work with. The first vote (cy) was effectively part of the random voting stage, and I think that's been pretty thoroughly covered in thread. My vote for Grimmjow is in #191. Looking back at it, there are fewer direct accusations there than I expected, but I still quote some things in that post and in agreement with VE in #186.

Finally someone agrees with me about cy (VE in #418). I've been saying this for 6 pages now... cy has no opinions on anyone. [Admittedly four of those pages are pretty skimmable.] Still, his lack of opinions is definitely not helping.

SCUM
Miss JJ (Overly defensive even in passing:)

And then there's the game with me - sure, I was mafia but that alone is no reason to think I am in this game.

I don't know if JJ is scum or not, but I certainly don't think that this is evidence for it. What she says seems only logical.

Maybe I'm getting paranoid.

This whole game is about being suspicious/paranoid. I don't see how this is bad thing.

[ic hat]blue, if you want to FOS someone, use the bold tags

instead of vote tags[/ic hat]

Also, looks like JJ has just recently posted in another game. If you're busy, fine, but check in at least please and let us know.

[bigAl]

It was being discussed though, back on page 6 where the JJ quote comes from. My point was that she was /not/ being overly defensive, as you seem to think so - the only evidence you gave for her being scum was being overly defensive. I'm disagreeing with the fact that you call it overly defensive, not with the fact that she might be scum based on a previous game.

Also, asking a cop to investigate someone... perhaps because this would prevent someone else from being investigated, such as yourself. Telling power roles what to do is almost never a good thing for the town.

[bigAl]

"like not wanting the IC to be lynched unless I'm really sure you're scum" - This rings town to me. The rest... still a bit questionable, but makes some sense in context. My point is that, if a cop feels like they can best use their investigative powers on me, then fine, do it. I'm not trying to get out of an investigation at all. You are, potentially. There's a difference there. I didn't miss the disclaimer, but the suggestion was still there, and still somewhat suspicious. Not like a I'll lynch you suspicious, but like an add another 3% to my scumdar suspicious. It's really not all that uncommon a tell - the more the mafia direct the town's actions, the worse the town will do.

[bigAl]

I am also slightly suspicious of Cobblerfone and Tommie because I didnt trust yonzy or tucah cause they were lurking.

I wouldn't so much call it lurking, so much as call it forgot about the game. I don't see this as a scummy behaviour. They stated that they had real life stuff briefly, and then stopped posting.

UNVOTE: Grimmjow, VOTE: Cymru for not contributing any suspicions for pages and pages, and then finally contributing illogical ones.

Mod: considering the number of replacements, would you be flexible on the deadline at all? Maybe one extra week?

[bigAl]

(catching up in progress - but first:) You CAN vote for yourself, but it is not any townie would ever want to do. Blue, YOU know your own alliance, so why would you want to lynch yourself?

[bigAl]

There are (rare) legitimate reasons to self-lynch as scum. If you're sure that the lynch is inevitable, a scum might want to vote himself because that denies the town information - if he doesn't self-vote then the town gets to see who the last vote would have been, gets to discuss night actions, plans for the next day, etc. This ONLY helps scum though - Blue should unvote if he wants us to believe he's a townie.

[bigAl]

Also, I find it interesting the Al just pops in long enough to comment on Blue's self-vote, but says nothing about anything else in the game. As an IC, I'd expect him to be a bit more active, especially if he's trying to seem town...

As I said in my previous last post, I was in the middle of catching up on the day's posts, when I saw the VE saying you can't self-vote, and thought I'd jump in with a quick rule correction. Then I had dinner, more work stuff, etc. Content is coming soon (ie. later in this post.) I have a busy job at the moment (no internet there) so I can only post evenings - I think I made that clear at the start of the game. I'm not "trying to seem town", I'm just trying to find scum. No need to hide what ain't there. :)

Anyway. A cymru lynch makes me... nervous. And yes, I know I'm voting him at the moment. My thoughts- if he flips town, what does that give us? We know that he didn't like JJ for questionable reasons. We know that most everyone that has talked about him wants him to post more definite opinions on people. The only thing that could really distinguish the remaining live people from each other is whether or not they thought his "typo" was legitimate or not. And his role doesn't really even matter much for that - if someone thinks it's a typo, they still think it's a typo whether he's scum or not. There's also the consideration of whether he's currently helping the town (as either scum or town) - currently not much. I guess it makes sense to - when you see several people as equally scummy - lynch the one that's the least helpful to the town. Of course this is all a big

if

he flips town. If he's scum, that's great, but doesn't give a lot of info about his partner.

Compare a cy lynch to say... Grimm. Or Workdawg. Or VE. Or myself even. All of these people have been supported or accused by several others, with several heated debates on both sides. When the lynchee flips, we get a ton of new data to see who supported or attacked them. Of course, I wouldn't propose a VE lynch over a cymru lynch, cause I think VE's looking pretty townie. But just saying that if we're choosing between two sketchy people, let's consider how much the result will help us.

Then there's Blue, who, while he looks relatively townie to me, also looks terribly inexperienced/terrible at mafia, and is a dangerous loose cannon. Blindly following someone else is dangerous no matter how townie VE looks - this could be giving the mafia three votes. Considering that we'll need only four to lynch tomorrow (assuming lynch/nightkill), that's a little too close for comfort. Even if VE is town, a second opinion would be more useful than a double vote, I think.

Al I'm hesitant about because if he is town, we'd loose a potentially good player

If Al is mafia, they'd lose a potentially good player. @everyone that's not lynching me because they don't want to lose the IC - note that an experienced player can help the mafia just as much as they can help town.

Okay, because people keep adding new posts in the thread since I started writing this, I'm going to cut it off here and start a new post. Cause I realize that in this long post, I've said incredibly little about anything specific.

[bigAl]

Oh yeah, I was going to mention regarding cy - I'm still voting him. My (and others) repeated questions/requests for his opinion have gone largely unanswered, so I hope a couple votes will get him in gear. I'm thinking about 55% scum at the moment, but there's so little there it's hard to base anything on.

[bigAl]

I love earning town points by accusing myself of possibly being mafia.

[bigAl]

Ah, so Cobbler, does that make you /in for a speed mafia night? Same goes to Al.

Meaning this game or meaning a separate quick game? Cause I don't think it's a good habit to get into to post 5 pages a night. This sums it up nicely:

Note that you can go too far with this - there is such a thing as posting too much. If other players are having a hard time catching up on the discussion because of the immense volume of posts that flowed in while they were away, it will hurt those players' contributions as well as your ability to read those players. It is possible to use this as a tactic as scum, but it has a tendency to result in inactivity replacements/modkills as the other players prefer to just let the game go instead of reading it all and trying to make sense of it.

Better to have a few, concise, well reasoned posts than a slew of garbage. Either way, can't stay up a ton later tonight but I'd be down for a quicker game or two with ya'll another night.

[bigAl]

You have not done this. And you have been online multiple times since you posted this, so I'm calling you out for lurking.

Dude, it's been two hours. I'm working on it! Give me a chance here. Lurking is not not posting for two hours.

[bigAl]

Also, I have posted at least twice since then, so you can't even call that lurking - I have been contributing to the conversation at hand.

Also, I explained why I'm still voting him in #524.

Pre-post-edit: It would catch my attention?

[bigAl]

> Then why keep your vote on cy at all? If his lynch gives us NO information whatsoever, then why are you still keeping your vote there and, in essence, pushing for his lynch.
I never said it would give NO information whatsoever. Obviously, a lynch will confirm at least one person - the person who was lynched. There's things that can be learned from it. I'm not pushing for his lynch, I'm pressuring for him to contribute. I also said that I'd rather him lynched than some other players, so that's better than nothing.

> As far as your "posting twice" goes, you've only posted once.
Three times, actually: #524, #526, #534

> It takes 2 hours to formulate a post?
Yes, it does, when your employee calls in sick for tomorrow and you have to spend an hour rejuggling the work schedule, and you have laundry to do and other stuff is going on. Forgive me for tabbing over to the game every half hour to take a two minute break from work to see if anyone posted. And then taking an hour to read the thread and make notes.

> Especially when I had mentioned a potential speed mafia deal tonight.
Especially when I said I couldn't do any speed mafia tonight (in #534). This is a forum game - if you want speed mafia, join the AIM chat. You can play half a dozen games a night there.

I don't see your case against me holding much water if you're trying to convince the others that I was lurking on purpose.

/this is grumpy, tired Al signing off for the night. I'll try for more analysis tomorrow. (I never promised more posts within a particular timeframe. I know the deadline is coming up soon but sometimes life happens. I'm doing what I can.) Sigh.

[bigAl]

wait it takes 3 weaks for one lycnch?

No, it takes 3 weeks for one lynch. >.>

[bigAl]

anybody that dosnt have there vote on me or cy should change their vote too one of us

Who decided that we are only going to lynch one of cy or blue? Why are the both of you resigned to this?

[bigAl]

fos Blue

He unvotes as soon as there's suspicion on him and the two of us are getting the most attention and he then votes for me maybe to take pressure off him.

This is the first time cyrmu makes a decision, and it seems logical at least. Somewhat of an easy target, but still... progress.

Grimmjow gives me bad vibes. Has most of the game. He's gone from "I'm going to be extra suspicious of Al cause he's IC" to "I'm hesitant to lynch Al cause he's IC", back to voting me again in #559. I don't like his reasons for voting me in #559 (and #565) - my supposed "lurking", my illogical logic - it seems like it's stretching. I'm pretty sure that my accusations aren't OMGUS here.

@Workdawg, what has he done to make you think he's the mostly likely townie so far?

---

Blue, cut out the textspeak. I had to read this sentence four times til I figured out what the hell "copel" means. You don't need to write elaborate paragraphs, but

please

use periods at minimum.
> also ik no im pretty spamy but im always like that i dont have compostion skill to sit and write copel paragraphs it bores me

Also, I'm going to a concert tomorrow night so my posting time will be limited tomorrow.

[bigAl]

Coming to the party late, but reading through Workdawg's posts, I don't see much/any of this "thread padding" (I'm assuming this means just non-relavent filler content?) that the Fonz is talking about.

Regarding Cobblerfone's vote for Fonz: Saying you are suspicious of someone without saying why

can

be beneficial to scum. If say, your scum partner got lynched, you can go back and say "hey look, I thought this guy was scum a long time ago". But he doesn't have to provide any legitimate reasons to why he's scum that might tip of someone else. That being said, I'm agreeing with Workdawg on this one. Why not ask him his reasons?

All will be revealed on day two. Unless I'm killed, but it won't matter if I am.

And if you are killed, don't you think that it would be better to share your reasonings now, while you can? Why hide stuff? That can't be good for the town.

Damn it, cut out the contentless posts, Blue. No need to bump a thread that's less than an hour stale. :(

[bigAl]

Sigh. Should we put him out of his boredom? I'm not reading scummy on blue but this is not helpful. (For the record, I say no. If you really don't want to play blue, you can drop out, but don't ruin the game for the rest of us.)

Again, cy is using the easy choice, and using reasoning that I just pointed out two posts back.

[bigAl]

Okay, process of elimination here.

Probably not scum:
- VE - I've covered him elsewhere and still seems a reasonable conclusion.
- Blue - too blatant to be scum?
- BigAl (obviously :) )

Leaving:
- cymru96 - I can't help but think that cy is not ignoring our repeated requests with some kind of malicious intent behind them. It's not a good thing to draw that kind of attention as either faction so I see it as kind of a wash there. Most of his actual contributions have been pretty easy conclusions to come to (a lot of OMGUS votes, etc.) - not a lot of original ideas. I could say he's not trying to hunt scum, but from what I've seen from him, I'm not sure I'd expect a ton of scum hunting either way. Hard to say.

- Tomie Uzumaki

Yonzy

- Gut feeling is bordering somewhere between 'slightly scummy' and 'can't really remember anything about TU'. Time to reread his posts. In general I feel like most of his (his, right?) posts are good in theory but weak on the examples - for example:

-Most post from Workdawg are easy to summarise. They were either to tell about his absence or about what events have happened.. Why the latter is scummy this time? I ask everybody to look back at post 99. Can anyone tell me what his stance is against Cym in general? I know that he disagrees with the attacks against Cym, but what is his opinion about Cym? And Cym is just an example here. You don't see anything about anything he has seen as scummy.

In theory, good point about not seeing anything as scummy. However, I disagree that he doesn't talk about his stance against cy. I think he makes it pretty clear in the infamous post #99 that he doesn't think that his "typo" is a big deal - meaning he finds nothing scummy about that as I read it. I know you said it's just an example, but it's a poor example in my opinion.

- Grimmjow - I've spoken on him for a while before. To come back to.

To do (when I'm less heat-stroky/asleep - tomorrow morning, I promise I'll stop putting this off!):
- Cobblerfone

tucah

- Workdawg
- The Fonz

Miss JJ

Unvote

Just a quick check:

My point against Workdawg about him not scumhunting applies for a big part to Viscera as well. You can see it in her first posts already. She questions Grimmjow’s RV, which she later admits that she can feel he thinks his reason was valid, though she sees it as defending Workdawg. The first part means that she can see why he’s questioning Yonzy, so the conclusion she’s making doesn’t add up.

Are the "she"s/"her"s here referring to VE? Cause the only girl in the game is (was) JJ, right?

BTW, I can't find any of the Fonz's previous games.

Ironic that you can't find the games of the guy with more than everyone else here combined I think (over six thousand posts) :)
http://mafiascum.net/forum/search.php?s ... or_id=6932
http://mafiascum.net/wiki/index.php?title=The_Fonz

[bigAl]

Someone unvote please - we (or at least I) have more today this day.

[bigAl]

This could be 2 things.
1-He's scum and is trying to get people to unvote him, as bigAl said.
2- He's town and suspects someone else so wants people to unvote him.
OR
bigAl and blue are scum and Al is trying to cover him by getting people to unvote.

Or, he's town and doesn't give a @&#% about playing anymore. I never said he's scum - in fact just the opposite- he was one of the two people that I had on my town list.

[bigAl]

Anyway, continuing my list:

- Workdawg: When player A votes for player B, and I think that player B is town, my first instinct is to assume player A is scum. Bad habit, I think - I'm trying to look at the reasons they voted them and check if they are reasonable first. Workdawg's voted VE first (later cy and blue). The "too town to be town" argument might be legitimate if all they are doing is providing advice (don't put people at L-1, etc.), and not doing any real scum hunting. A kind of active lurking while appearing helpful. That being said, I don't see VE doing this - he gives a lot of advice but he's not afraid to vote and cast his suspicions as well. He doesn't like VE's "I'm quitting" post - I agree with Fonz here that I saw this as townish, not scummy as Workdawg did. Later, he says, "I find it A LOT easier to defend myself than to find scum." - if you do good scum-hunting, you shouldn't have to defend yourself much. Defending yourself too much always makes me suspicious.

- The Fonz

Miss JJ

: I tend to agree with a lot of what the Fonz is saying here. He's perhaps overly sure of himself, but makes decent points. "Seriously, Workdawg is noncommittal scum, guys." is aggressive but makes the point. Most of #712, I agree with - "OVERLY DEFENSIVE? Brilliant, scum sighting right here.", "See, the way he flipped his shit looked incredibly town to me.", "Directing power roles is scummy.", etc. I'm sticking with a tentative "not scum" on Fonz here.

UNVOTE: Grimmjow, VOTE: Cymru for not contributing any suspicions for pages and pages, and then finally contributing illogical ones.

This is scummy. Whether someone's suspicions are logical or illogical, especially in a newbie game, isn't often that relevant a consideration. Some people are just dumb. In this case, his suspicion on Miss JJ is a common form of newbie town paranoia- 'That player said I did Y because I was scum, but actually it was an honest mistake, so they're scum for trying to make me look scummy for an honest mistake.' Town newbies often assume the explanations for their actions are obvious. OMGUS, based around the complete inability to realize that just because you realize your actions were a result of one thing, that a player looking at it from the outside in good faith can't come to a different conclusion.

This was a "hey, try to contribute something useful to the town" vote, not a "let's lynch you cause you're scum for being illogical" vote. No different than VE's #66.

No, taking positions while giving reasons is a perfectly acceptable style of play. The converse of voting without laying out your reasoning is giving your reasoning without committing to a vote - IE, not putting your money where your mouth is, a form of active lurking.

I realize that I do this a lot but it's how I do it - I don't think it's active lurking if I'm still making it clear who my suspicions are even if I don't vote them.


- Cobblerfone

tucah

: (to do after I do some yardwork for a while)

[bigAl]

I know this is old news now but I happened to be looking through Miss JJ's old posts and realized something here. Despite cymru96's repeated claims that JJ thought that he was scum, that's hardly true at all. I've isolated everything JJ said on the subject:

#84: HUH?

#87: Cymru needs to come back and explain not one, but two posts now. Maybe this will help to get him talking.

UNVOTE: VOTE: Cymru

. Newbtown who can't articulate or newbscum who slipped - either way I can't just let this go.

#114: Okay, first some to say about the Cymru slip/typo. Yes, it could very well have been a typo but I found it interesting to note some of the responses to it. [talking about various

responses

, not about the typo itself] At this point I have read Cymru's explanation, which is plausible, but I think reactions to his slip/typo are far more interesting than the slip/typo itself.

How on earth do you get "I think he's scum" out of that? She says clearly it's plausible that it's a typo. I count 38 posts for cymru, of which 15 of them are (at least partly) about how JJ is scum. I wonder if there are ulterior motives here.

Reading through Cobblers posts now.

[bigAl]

Okay, Cobblerfone. Has some "gut" feelings about me. Later, suggests power roles to investigate/jail me - like I said before, don't like that. Later hints that a cop should claim if they get a guilty result - something I think should be avoided if possible. In #500, he says he's read a bunch of iso's but still doesn't have any suspects. Supports a workdawg vote but later takes it somewhat back. Later: votes Fonz for not stating reasons. Fair enough. (Yes, a lot of this is IIOA, but it helps me get the game straight in my head. I suppose I could post it to notepad instead, but it doesn't hurt to share, does it?) In general, I get a negative feeling here.

I'm doing this from memory, but it seems like Workdawg is creeping up on everyone's scum list lately.

pre-post-edit:

Everyone seems to think that cymru is town and blue is new and impossible to judge

Switch those two and I agree. Fonz also said that blue is town, not impossible to judge.

[bigAl]

I

really

don't see this as admitting as scum... yet you choose to vote him despite how close he was to a lynch. FOS

[bigAl]

@cy - any thoughts on #723?

(For the record, I had also PMed the mod for a blue replacement yesterday.)

[bigAl]

You're exaggerating the difficulty of reading on a phone. I've done it before, and it's certainly harder than on a normal computer, but it's not 'impossible to see who posted what.'

This is BS in my opinion - everyone has different phones. I know that on my (old, cheap) phone, while it does technically get internet, it's basically unreadable for any site not specifically designed for phones. Tables get screwed.

I'm not sure how I feel about the "fluff" argument either. Workdawg's posts after #99, like #132 for example: some reasonable thoughts on people, and then the RQS question of how much experience people have. I don't think that that's a filler question - knowing that someone has never played mafia before is an important fact to help judge between newbie/scummy things.

Then we move on to #189, where he votes VE. Don't like the "too town" argument. I don't like the vote flopping argument - but he says that it's mostly because of the unvote. He elaborates more in #198:

As Grimm pointed out, "I'm just going to vote town and hope for the best" is a glorious copout and is EASILY the scummiest thing I've seen so far in this game. It let's you actively lurk (scummy) by saying "I'm done scum hunting" and then if we lynch town, you can try and avoid accountability by saying you were just following the rest of us.

Although I thought that VE's "giving up" post sounded very townie to me, ^this^

does

sound like a reasonable argument. We later clarify the distinction between "not good for the town" and "scummy" - something WD was not considering at this point.

That brings us up to #216 - gotta go for dinner, more later.

----

Vote: BigAl- You havent really done much for a while and I have nothing that makes me say town and I get some scum vibes.

Any specific vibes or just general vibes?

Cy is big on the OMGUS votes - a hard habit to get over.

[bigAl]

(carrying on) Later, #445, Workdawg votes cy right after I do. Bandwagon vote, sure, but reasonable I suppose. VE joins in shortly later.

[A lot of self-defense.]

As a semi-related side note... people who are throwing out "town points"... I'm not sure I like that so much. You are essentially giving scum feedback about what kinds of things YOU consider to be town. If I were scum, I would make note of what people are doing to earn "town points" and try to mimic those things.

This seems pro-town advice.

After a few of self-defense posts, we get to #770. This seems like a reasonable case to me, mostly. I disagree about the start of "The The Fonz Situation" bit, but agree that Cobblerfone's vote in #760 seems opportunistic to me.

Overall, I'm feeling better about Workdawg. Now, who to lynch instead? Gut feeling says Cobblerfone. Gotta get to bed for tonight though - more later.

[bigAl]

Okay, so we're at two for workdawg and two for cobblerfone and six days to go. I'm going to be all indecisively-scummy here for a sec and say that either way, I like this choice far better than a blue vs. cy lynch.

Grimmjow has been quiet lately - thoughts on workdawg?

[bigAl]

The thing that cobbler said about getting tired of the day seems suspicious... are you just trying to end it to take the pressure away from you?

I also approve of this. That vote didn't ring well for me either. Cobbler can't seem to make up his mind. I know we need to make a lynch in the next few days, but "I'll do what everyone else is doing" isn't a good excuse.

Also, a lot of people seem quiet lately... I understand that real life happens sometimes but I'm always a little bit sceptical when people stop posting right before the deadline - it allows a lynch they're hoping for happen without incriminating themselves. Just an observation.

Cy is big on the OMGUS votes - a hard habit to get over.

I don't really see this so much as and OMGUS vote as it is a "let's put a little pressure on him" vote along with newbiness and his "scum vibes." Are you trying to down-play a potential townie's opinions and attempts to play the game, sir? That seems scummy to me.

I dunno - I point out that his argument doesn't hold much water in #723 and a couple days later he switches to me for mostly unspecified "vibes". Maybe I'm using OMGUS wrong, but it seemed a bit retaliatory to me.

[bigAl]

Let's not start that again. :(

Third on the bandwagon, here I come. Directing power roles, flip-floppy votes, lack of any solid suspects for a while. The last couple days have confirmed it more for me.

Vote: Cobblerfone

L-2.

[Only

sixty six

sixty five more posts to set the record. Let's not try to.]

[bigAl]

Fair enough cy. I don't object, but it would be good to hear from Tomie and Fonz before the day is out.

[bigAl]

So in light of the fact that my predecessor effectively roleclaimed, I find it important at this point to ask everyone what their read of this player slot is.

Based on blue's play, I think he's likely town. Based on Zach's play... we'll see.

I believe there's no such thing as a "confirmed" townie (short of, say, a dead cop with an investigation result) - overall VE still rings town to me but he's going down a bit. No need to ask to put someone at L-1 at this point (for example) - only four days left. This seems wishy washy.

[bigAl]

I have never seen a game with so many divided opinions. Like I said before, I see the page 8 stuff as VE pro-town.

Any last words Cobbler?

[bigAl]

I'm already voting, so can't hammer.

[bigAl]

Then why make it sound like you were going to hammer?

Because I didn't want someone else to hammer first without your last chance.

@cy Basically what workdawg said.

Someone

has to do it eventually, there's no avoiding that. I actually often find the third or fourth vote more suspicious than the fifth one precisely because scum try to avoid the "suspicious" hammer vote. Of course, scum also know that, so it's all WYFOM. Shrug.

[bigAl]

Bah, sorry for my absence so far - I was half way through a post last night when internet died. Trying to remember what I wrote.

@VE - If you are referring your "sniping power roles" comment to reason for NKing someone... then obviously that would also make sense... though N1 it would be a total shot in the dark unless someone was dumb enough to reveal their power role. I had no idea of Tomie's role, other than leaning a bit town on him.

Tomie's role may have been a shot in the dark for the scum, but they can use the process of elimination to decide who they think

is

vanilla townie (*aham* blue) and then kill someone else.

I think Zach's hammer vote was okay - the game had been stagnating for days at that point.

Also, I wrote up a bunch of stuff about Lynch-or-lose, thinking we were down to 5 people. Now I realize that newbie games are played with 9 (instead of 7 people when I started on this site) so we have one more day leeway.

I'm worried about Fonz - not cause he looks scummy (far from it today) - but because I think he has the skills to avoid our suspicions. Mostly town vibes today from him though, as well as Zach.

The question is... who's his scumbuddy, Zach or Wordawg?

Why just those two, and not, say, me? Or Fonz? Just cause VE mentioned them?

[bigAl]

There's a lot of things that you find very obvious, VE. It may be obvious to YOU what your alignment is, but definitely not to the rest of us. Especially not obvious to me what cy's alignment is.

[bigAl]

you [Fonz] haven't really posted much in the way of suspicion of bigAl

I've been up there for a while on Fonz's radar (as far back as #628, #712, #778 etc.). It makes sense considering that Cobblerfone is gone and Workdawg already had a bunch of suspicion on him.

As far as Workdawg and VE...

The early game VE looked incredibly town to me. Lately VE has getting my suspicions up, but not high enough to overcome my early game feeling (yet). In #923, for example, you say you have no suspicions of cy, but also accuse him of having baseless accusations in the same breath.

Workdawg - I disagreed earlier with a lot of the accusations against him, and nothing in his three posts on D2 has changed my mind on that lately. Still give him a 75% town. He's asking good questions.

Top suspicions (mostly through process of elimination), in no particular order: cy, Grimmjow, Fonz.

[bigAl]

I assumed that was because (s?)he was pointing out that it's one m, not Tommie as blue tended to write. For that matter, how do you get doc from an m?

cy might be taking a stance, but I don't like his reasoning. Fonz has his reasons and I'm sure we'll hear about them soon enough.

[bigAl]

It seems a bit, devious (for lack of a better term, I guess) to imply that bigAl knew his choice of wagons would be on "the town one." At the time, no one (except scum, of course) knew the alignment of either. Subtly implying that bigAl is scum, are we?

I wouldn't call it subtle... I would say that by his argument and vote, he is saying that he thinks it's likely I'm scum, not implying anything.

About how I "seem to have dropped workdawg suspicion pretty much entirely" - it was never fully there. I had some minor points in #722, but after a thorough read by #787, I said that he was looking more townish to me.

Scum generally aren't suspicious of their partners, so if you agree with someone else's suspicions, that can mean that they are more likely to be the same alignment as you.

[bigAl]

You want to know why I think your act was scummy- You come back on day two with a vote without resoning which is suspicious in itself. You would have been questioned so you decided to make a vote and then stall for time to think of a reason.

Cy: with Fonz's 6000 posts and dozens of games, there's no way that he was just stalling to think of a reason. Why put a vote out there when he could just keep quiet and not have to come up with a reason to begin with? It's not a vote without reasoning, it's a vote without stated reasoning. Even if he were stalling for time, now that he's explained his reasoning (which seemed valid reasoning to me), why are you still thinking him suspicious? He explained why he withheld info - to gauge reactions to the vote.

[bigAl]

Cobbler was an unknown alignment only if I'm town. If I'm scum, he

is

a known alignment (to me).

Some math to illustrate:

Assume for the sake of argument that if I'm scum, I would only vote for a townie (never my partner).
Assume for the sake of argument that if I'm town, I would vote for a random alignment.
Assume for the sake of argument that one of the two wagons was scum.

Chance at the start of the game is 2/9th I'm scum.
Chance of me being scum (judging by my town vote) is:
(2*2)/(2*2 + 1*7) = 4/11

Of course the real game is a lot more complicated, but it's not a crap argument guys.

[bigAl]

Sorry for the absence guys, various work emergencies have reduced my mafia time last couple days. Should be back now.

Anyway, to respond to the last 48 hours.

I agree with Zach about arguing about a point which isn't paticularly useful and variable based on how you would read a statement.

Would is be worth putting Al at L-1 to get some answers?

This is the most pro-town post I've seen from cy all game. Making me (re)consider him.

Can anyone really say they're happy with his contributions this day phase?

What's really happened this day phase? Mostly: Fonz doesn't like my vote which turned up town. Workdawg and Grimm don't like Fonz's phrasing. Lots of back and forth about this and that.

At this point, I feel like Workdawg is distracting the town with semantic arguments. Fonz (unfortunately) has a valid point against me. Despite him being wrong about me being scum ( ), he is doing good scum hunting and I'm seeing him as more pro-town lately. I disagree about the accusations that he was phrasing it to "make me look scummy"; he was just saying that he thinks I look scummy. I don't like how Workdawg/Grimm are ganging up on Fonz for this.

[bigAl]

I see a big difference between asking to put someone at L-1 after three weeks and thirty-some pages of discussion, compared to one week and a couple pages. Shrug.

(Gotta run to work now, more this evening.)

[bigAl]

Damn it, I'm having trouble making any kind of decisions here. (I may be considered the IC, but I never claimed to be any good at this game...) I'm going to look at voting patterns here for a sec and see if that leads to anything. Particularly for cymru96, Grimmjow, Workdawg and The Fonz (top suspects).

Some of the major cases among these people:
Fonz->Workdawg
Grimmjow->cy
Workdawg->(cy)
cy->JJ (aka Fonz), Workdawg, Fonz again

So Grimm is the only one who hasn't been voted for by these four. Of all the possible combinations, the only ones that remotely make sense are:

WD + Grimm
Fonz + Grimm
(WD + Cy)?

Looking at Grimm's contributions today - his most significant post is a case against cy - the easy newb target? Most of his points are old ones too. Also the whole thing about whether Fonz was intentionally misleading everyone about how scummy I was - I don't like his support of Workdawg there, further increasing the chances of a WD+Grimm scum team. That, combined with my bad feelings from yesterday, is enough for me to

Vote: Grimmjow

I don't think, however, that placing a pressure vote is very effective when another player asks if the vote is there with the intention to lynch... If you say "no, I"m not really intending to lynch this guy" then there's really no pressure, is there?

I think of "pressure votes" more as "I'm prepared to lynch this guy if he doesn't do x" rather than "I'm not going to lynch this guy".

[bigAl]

Responding to Grimm's points (but not necessarily directed specifically at Grimm):

@Al: What, pray tell, is your evidence against me?

Like I said, my evidence:
1. Making a case against cy: easy target, old reasoning. Easy for scum to say, "well look at his record, he deserved it" if he flips town.
2. Saying Fonz is intentionally misleading people to think I'm scummy. This seems like it's stretching to find a reason to be suspicious of someone.
3. Stuff I've mentioned on D1 (eg. #186). Things like looking too hard for crappy reasons to lynch people (lynch all liars, etc.). It wasn't bullshit reasoning then, though I admit that most of my accusations were a couple posts back from my vote so that might not have been clear. (Sorry if I missed your response at the time.)

Furthermore, you followed up stating later that you felt that the L-2 and L-1 votes are more suspicious than the hammer vote. Note that you put Cobbler at L-2.

The L-2 and L-1 spots are where I often look for scum - however

someone

has to vote at L-2 eventually or the day never ends. Make of that what you will.

[bigAl]

Al, are you really the MOST suspicious of Grimmjow? Like, in 41 pages of material, you literally refer back to the last 2 and one other post on a page in the teens somewhere as the most compelling case you can muster?

In that I'm at rather much of a loss for suspects, yes, I am most suspicious of Grimm. I'd put him at 55% scum, with everyone else in the 10%-45% range. Call me indecisive scum if you want, but it's true. I was mostly only addressing stuff that had come up on D2: so it's not 2 points in 41 pages, it's 2 points in 5 pages, (~10 posts for Grimm). I don't think that's out of line.

Grimm covered this, but if Cy really is the easy newb target, then the person most guilty of pressing on his newbish rather than scummy acts is you.

I was never for supporting his lynch. True, my vote was there for most of the day but I later discouraged the blue/cy choice for a lynch because I didn't think they were overly scummy. I spent a while pushing him to contribute with better reasoned posts, but not pushing to lynch him.

The problem for you here is, I'm not scum, and while Grimmjow is the weakest of my town reads, i find both Al-Workdawg and Al-Grimmjow more likely than Grimmjow-Workdawg.

So you're saying that I'm not totally out to lunch on a Grimm suspicion? If I get lynched today and flip town, what's your next best guess for scum pairs? (Good question for everyone for that matter).

OK, so you've got four top suspects out of six players that aren't you. This says to me that VisceraEyes is one of your stronger townreads. He was coming under strong fire earlier today, why didn't you go to bat for him?

As I said in #935, I think he's pretty town from early play, neutral from later on. It's mostly been Zachrulez who's been pushing for VE (if I recall correctly), who I also have pegged as town (mostly from blue's play). I'm guessing it's probably town vs. town here then, so expanding that argument further means that scum can sit back and let the town fight it out. Not good.

Do we have to jump to a claim the second someone gets to L-1? I'll claim tomorrow if everyone still wants me to.

[bigAl]

Al, I find it interesting that your only significant post today was against me, complete with a vote. Yet when I turn around and post my defense, you say nothing about it. You do, however, speak to someone else. Are you trying to avoid having to deal with my defense, and instead use someone else's posts on me so you don't have to deal with what you are actually talking about, namely how scummy you find me? Do you just not feel like it's a good case and if you actually had to deal with my defense/scrutiny that you'd come off showing your true colors? It's also interesting to note that last night I posed a question to you, yet you logged on this morning and didn't respond to it at all. I also think it's interesting that someone asked for your claim, and I even turned around to ask for one as well, and your response was "Do I really have to?" That reads incredibly scummy to me. Like you're trying hard to not have to come up with a claim. There's only one case that I can think of that I would immediately believe your claim, but would still scrutinize your posts to see if it were true.

You started your response post with "Well, VE said most everything I was going to", so by responding to VE, I figured I was also responding to you. Not all your points perhaps but still. The reason I didn't post this morning? Cause I had about thirty seconds to read the thread before I left for work. I said from the start that I can mostly only post evenings/weekends.

As far as not wanting to claim - this is not scummy. If I claim, everyone will know my role (including the scum out there). If I don't claim and you guys lynch me, everyone will know my role anyway. If I don't claim and we manage to find a better target for today instead, then the scum has no info going into the night. Better for us. It's not like coming up with a fake claim would be difficult to do as scum here (especially with ~75% of the town vanilla townies), so I'm not just stalling for time to try to come up with something. What "case" are you talking about here?

So to answer your question:

So let me get this straight: You're voting me based solely off D2 and a hunch during D1? You're completely ignoring all of D1 in your decision here?

I'm not ignoring it, I just didn't mention it much at the time. Ugh, I don't have the energy to slog through all of blue's chatter again tonight so I'm going to save it for the morning.

[bigAl]

Since you asked, I read through Grimm's iso again and picked out some day 1 suspicions:
- Excessive application of "lynch all liars".
- "I do not in the slightest believe that was just a typo", and casts suspicion on VE for believing it is a typo.
- Excessive application of "lynch all liars". (again) - accusations against cy even before there was any evidence of lying
- Excessive accusations against VE ("MULTIPLE oversights/misinterpretations/exaggerations/whatever") for a very minor mistake.
- Long, emotion-filled posts that end up hiding most of the meat of the content (which is kind of no good anyway)
- "Good catch" on VE's "don't vote Zihark until he posts more"

Then we have a bunch of fluff posts with blue.

That brings us up to Grimm's first hundred posts, gotta run for now. I'll finish reading the rest of day 1 tonight.

[bigAl]

Meh, I'm always leery of 'I didn't really mean it' defences. You were voting him most of the day - that means he was the guy you most wanted to lynch. If someone else was scummier, then vote them. To spend most of a day voting someone and then say you didn't really suspect them just makes my scumdar scream.

I voted him to prod some activity, and then failed to find any strong suspects so I never bothered to change my vote. Anyone can look back and see that it wasn't like I was harping on his lynch the whole time my vote was there.

I'm not going to answer this. Nice attempt, though, to get me to tell you what I thought so that you could then say "yes, that's true, I'm not scum!"

I wasn't attempting anything tricky here - just asking. I'm a vanilla townie.

So I think we're looking at either Viscera/Grimmjow, Workdawg/Grimmjow, or Workdawg/Cymru inthat scenario. I'm pretty confident Zach is town in all scenarios. Workdawg is the individually scummiest, and in two of those three combos, then it's a question of whether Grimm's possibilities of being in more scum combinations is stronger than VE's greater individual scumminess in terms of who is second suspect.

This seems reasonable, if you throw in a "Fonz+Grimm/Workdawg/cy", which obviously Fonz isn't going to suggest himself.

If it comes down to lynching me or someone else, I'd support a cy, Workdawg or Fonz lynch (assuming I don't get the support for Grimm I'm hoping for). Come on guys, if you look at my play overall - I know I've been terribly non-committal this day but I honestly didn't realize that it had been two weeks since the day started. Been a busy couple weeks. When the issue first came up I was about to post "hey, it's only been five days, so what if I haven't voted yet" but then I checked the date and turns out it was two weeks ago. I'm not scum trying to avoid scumhunting here, it's just poor play. /me's desperate last defense.

[bigAl]

Well, if you're around cy - same question as I asked Fonz: when I come up town after you guys lynch me, who do you think the scum pair is? (of course, preferably you don't lynch me.)

(I'd think that would be a useful question for everyone.)

[bigAl]

Okay. So thinking out loud for a sec here. I'm gonna flip town in a couple days here, lacking any major changes in the town's attitude. I think pretty much everyone has cast suspicions at me at this point - but two of you six know that I'm going to flip town. VE is off on workdawg at the moment, Zach and Grimm think that a VE/Al is possible (which obviously won't be true when I flip town). cy says WD/Al. Fonz says Al/WD and Al-Grimmjow. I'm looking at who might be protecting their partner by suggesting a scum team that couldn't possibly exist. Workdawg is the strongest thread here, with VE a minor second. Cy is the first (and only) to suggest Fonz lately, I think. Hm, what a mess.

I should point out here, that, if I were scum, my partner would have had to turn on me by now. I would almost agree with Zach/Grimm's theory that VE could be my partner, if it weren't for the fact that the base assumption that I'm scum is wrong.

[bigAl]

(Bah sorry guys. Go town!)

*dies*

[bigAl]

Bah, I played terribly, sorry town. VE sure had me convinced though - and I only started to suspect cy near the end. A deserved win.