Newbie 384: All over 'cept the finger-pointing!

[thedocsalive]

OMGUS Vote: pickemgenius

[thedocsalive]

Lynch minus one early isn't the worst thing in the world, guys. If anyone were to drop the hammer, and pickemgenius showed up innocent, the player who dropped the fourth vote would almost certainly be newbie scum, and a surefire lynch the next day. And there's always the 2/7 chance of him being scum.

Not that I'm condoning putting three votes on people for no reason at all, nor am I saying that it's good play, but I'm just saying that it's not as completely negative as people might think.

Albert, was there any reason for voting Windfish there, or was it just a random that wasn't pickemgenius?

[thedocsalive]

His balance pressure theory tickles me.

I interpreted it as putting some pressure on the person who put pickemgenius at lynch minus one early, though the wording could mean something more or different. I can't speak for him, however.

Also it might not be newbie scum neccessarily, it *could* also be the newbie who has played games elsewhere and is used to fast games.

There are fast lynches, and then there are lynches that are just dumb. A lynch on page three with very little discussion would be a fast lynch IMO. By contrast, a lynch soon after you were at minus one in this game would just have been stupid, and completely random.

To me, it wasn't so much that the lynch-1 vote was "early" on Day 1 but that it was truncator's first vote (and first post in the game) that went immediately to the put someone to lynch-1.

I don't care if it we had been playing Day 1 for a week, if that were truncator's same first post, I'd raise an eyebrow.

I disagree. The part that bothers me was not only that he was put at lynch minus one so early, but also that it had completely no reasoning (nor did any of the other votes). If it was truncator's first post and vote, but if it was later in the game and there were reasons and accusations against pickemgenius, then I think it would be more justified.

Unvote

. I DO disagree with WindFish's thought process, but that doesn't necessarily make him scummy.

[thedocsalive]

Does somebody need to be replaced or this thread is just moving at a chilling pace ?

Everyone has posted, so no one needs to be replaced (I think). I'd say this is going slowly right now, but no slower than a lot of the other games on mafiascum.

[thedocsalive]

I really don't think voting for truncator right now is great for a few reasons. For one, it would put him at lynch minus one. Ironic, right? Secondly, I really don't think the third vote is too scummy. I know it's a risky play, but as I said before, worse things have happened. I feel like a lot of newbie games end quickly because of bandwagons like this: a newer player does something questionable in the first few pages, the rest of the thread ultimately deems it unforgiveable, lynches him, he shows up innocent, and the town's in lylo day two. Granted, there aren't any really strong cases, but I don't think there is sufficient evidence to put a third vote on truncator right now.

Yosarian's reasoning has re-affirmed my vote for truncator. Maybe he was just intentionally probing for some responses, but it does not appear to be very responsibly executed.

It's not a matter of responsibility. If you think he's a poor town player, he's still a townie and you shouldn't vote him. Unless, you think his irresponsible execution implies that he's scum, because it's so irresponsible that any town player wouldn't do it. And as I said, I don't think that is the case.

For now, I think I'll

Vote: notehead

as he is the only player to not post anything of content yet.

[thedocsalive]

I know it's a risky play,

but as I said before, worse things have happened.

I really don't like that wording (see underlined).
Is it just me?

Well, if he placed the vote knowing that it was a third vote, it is a risky play. The pro is that it can generate discussion, and the con is that it runs of the chance of someone accidentally lynching him. That's a risk, isn't it?

I feel like a lot of newbie games end quickly because of bandwagons like this: a newer player does something questionable in the first few pages, the rest of the thread ultimately deems it unforgiveable, lynches him, he shows up innocent, and the town's in lylo day two.

1. How do we 100% sure he's new, and hasn't played elsewhere, and knew what he was doing?

That's a fair point; I don't know exactly how new he is. All I know is that he's a newbie on mafiascum, so it's possible that he's truly new to the game (whereas I know the IC's, Yos2 and I, are sufficiently experienced).

thedocsali8ve: I do appriciate your caution in not putting truncator at -1 just yet. However, just because he's new, dosn't mean we should just ignore anti-town behavior on his part; how else can we figure out his alignment?

Yos2: I'm arguing that his vote there isn't as anti-town as you might believe. It's certainly not typical play, but it's just as likely (if not moreso) to be risky (or, if you don't like that word, questionable) town play than scum play. The third vote itself isn't great for the town, but do you really believe that a mafioso would put on a third vote early, put himself in the spotlight, and hope for a speedlynch?

[thedocsalive]

Albert, you appear to be stirring something up out of nothing down this path.

Yeah, I agree here. Yos' "defense" wasn't an overreaction; he merely pointed out that he did indeed post in the game.

[thedocsalive]

All that said, I wouldn't have a problem doing it again.

This last statement from your quote is an interesting point. So overall you're happy with what has happened as a result of that vote, even though a lot of the discussion involved suspicion and questioning of you?

[thedocsalive]

Docs, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Yos in this game so far ?

I think his playstyle so far is relatively similar to what I recall about him (I haven't played in awhile before this game, though), and I think your case against him is farfetched (as I previously said). So I guess those are the first two things. The first one doesn't really count, since I don't know enough about his playstyle to use that unless something were blatantly different.

And yeah, I don't think he was as defensive/quick to react as you were saying he was. I understand the basic argument that players should defend themselves when attacked (as Yos said), and I also understand the argument that overdefensiveness is scummy (as you're implying), and I don't really think Yos was overdefensive.

[thedocsalive]

Busy tonight and tomorrow, so I'll read and post either tomorrow night or the next afternoon.

[thedocsalive]

Back, but I don't have too much to add. It's good that notehead was replaced and that Llamahunter posted.

And while we would all like to hear truncator's response to Yos' questions, it doesn't mean the game has to be at a standstill while we wait for him to do so. Most notably, Windfish has posted the least during the whole thing. While I wouldn't lynch him for that alone, I do think it's suspicious how little he has posted throughout the game. Other than the discussion about the phrase "pressure balance," I think we have very little content from Windfish, which is bad.

I'll

unvote: notehead/Llamahunter

, and

Vote: Windfish

.

[thedocsalive]

I suppose it feels like a long time that I went without posting. (I felt the same when I called out for a prod when notehead went AWOL for several pages even though it was over a weekend in earth-time.) I did pre-excuse my lack of activity by being busy with out-of-game business. So while I understand that my failure to post during the Yosarian/truncator q&a interchange may have disappointed you, I think I've demonstrated signficant pro-town vigilance, posting a lot previously to my going-away post. (Even disregarding my grammar-correcting triple post. )

Yes, it can be partially attributed to the subjective what "feels" like a long time. And overall, in terms of quantity, you have posted sufficiently that I can't criticize it.

While I wouldn't lynch him for that alone, I do think it's suspicious how little he has posted throughout the game. Other than the discussion about the phrase "pressure balance," I think we have very little content from Windfish, which is bad.

3 of 24 posts on page 1.
2 of 24 posts on page 2.
4 of 24 posts on page 3. (2 if you neglect the triplepost)
2 of 24 posts on page 3. (1 of which is notifying I'll be away.)

So I don't think my participation rate has actually changed drastically. If what I've posted has been devoid of useful content, I'll work to improve that.

Yes, I was arguing in terms of content throughout the game. Before your most recent posts (looking back to where I was arguing), you had the bit about pressure balance, a post against Albert's case on Yos, but not much else. The argument I have here is purely subjective however, and it may be that you actually had good content based on how brief the game had been running at the time. Maybe it just seems to me like you didn't post as much content as others, and maybe it's that others didn't post much content as well, but you stood out to me for whatever reason.

What do you think could be accomplished/would happen if somebody put a third vote on truncator?

We would probably clamor for a roleclaim, he hopefully would claim, and then we'd evaluate that before moving on with lynching him or looking elsewhere. Yes, it would probably create more discussion, as you said.

Theoretically, I guess truncator wouldn't have to claim if he were put at L-1 until he thought there was significant risk of his lynch.

But that's exactly the point of L-1: you ARE at significant risk of lynch.

If you're town, you need to actually defend yourself and answer questions. Don't try to pull a "I'm not going to defend myself on purpose because then we'll see who lynches me and that'll show who the scum are!" thing. That dosn't work, because if you look scummy and refuse to answer questions about your actions, then anyone, town OR scum, WILL vote for you, and so who votes for you won't give the town any information. In fact, if a pro-town person keeps doing that, scum are likely to just sit back and watch as you tie the noose around your own neck. Not only that, I see scum try to pull the "I'm acting scummy on purpose!" defense all the time, so the fact that you're doing it dosn't give me a lot of confidence in you.

Sorry to just say this after such a long quote, but ^^QFT. I was going to say something like this, but Yos said it very well. As far as I can tell, truncator still hasn't answered Yos' questions:

If you wanted a reaction from him, or from others, if you wanted to scare him or shake him up to see what he would do, then why not make a bigger deal out of it?

I could see a pro-town person intentioanlly trying a risky play just to shake things up and see how different people respond, but if you were trying to shake things up, why make it look like a meaningless random vote instead of making it more clear that you were bandwagoning?

You claim you knew what you were doing, and claim that you would do the exact same thing again, so if you could explain to me WHY you would do it the same way again it'd help me understand your thought process.

While I felt okay about truncator earlier, his recent failure to respond to these questions bothers me.

[thedocsalive]

Sorry for not posting daily, guys. I'll post tomorrow.

[thedocsalive]

I'm not sure what's so "inconsistant" about Albert attacking me, getting a defense from me, liking my defense, and then not attacking me anymore.

Indeed. While LlamaHunter clarified his point in his last post, I really don't think there's much of a case there. It's not inconsistent when player A is suspicious of player B, then trusts him and agrees later. It's inconsistent when A is suspicious, then trusting, then suspicious, then trusting, etc., or when a player will flip-flop on the same exact point without anything changing in between. In this case, the change was Yos' posting and defense. I think LlamaHunter is really reaching with that case there.

In terms of my own suspicions, I'd have to go by process of elimination. I never liked the truncator case too much, I think Yos has brought up good points throughout the game, I don't like the case against Albert (though his aggression has surprised me at some points throughout the game), so that leaves LlamaHunter, pickemgenius, and Windfish. At this point, I think I'll

unvote: Windfish, Vote: LlamaHunter

to help the pace of the game. Couldn't hurt to have someone else with two votes and something else to ponder.

Also:

Could an IC explain how Day 1s (in C9 games) typically arrive at a lynch? It seems like there's always too little information until there's a lynch and kill and then to look back at everyone's behavior from Day 1, but it appears difficult to make progress to that first lynch without so little to go on.

Well, it always seems like there's little information on C9 D1s...because there is. In normal games, which start with night, there's a nightkill or two that give the town some information and some springboard for discussion. Normally, C9s struggle getting out of the random phase. Here, we had the third vote by truncator to help us with that at least. In terms of getting to a lynch, it's either very quick for the first possibly suspicious action (i.e., if we got carried away voting truncator and strung him up early) or very drawn out (like today is). The latter means that the town is being rational and willing to think a day through (which is very good!), but at some point we need to come to a consensus and move on. Unfortunately, a mislynch here almost certainly puts us at LyLo tomorrow, so we want to make sure we maximize our chances of lynching correctly, while not dragging this day out excessively. Balancing those two extremes is what makes a good day one in C9 so long inevitably.

[thedocsalive]

Hi guys, I'm here, sorry about the absence. I'll post tomorrow afternoon (about 12 hours from now).

[thedocsalive]

WindFish raises a good point, truncator and pickem could be scum. Also, now that pickem is the first vote on truncator, that helps avoid suspicions (he was the 2nd to vote him at the beginning of the game). However, pickem has been pretty consistent with his suspicion of truncator, so its a scenario that's staying at the back of my head at best. I think it's likely that the drama's just a result of truncator being frustrating.

I find a pickem/trunc team pretty unlikely based on this. If it were the case, then, to their credit, pickem would have been throwing his partner under the bus since the first page, and that's a very risky play. This is especially unlikely when you consider the C9 setup as well; all the scum needs is two mislynches to win (in most cases).

Considering this, to thedocsalive, do you have any suspicions regarding pickemgenius or WindFish? Over in post 152, you mentioned by the process of elimination, they were left over. Personally, I can't find too much to say about either of them, and you had your vote on WindFish for a little while, so do your suspicions of him still apply?

I'm not sure about my suspicions. Again, I'm judging so far mostly based on play that I perceive to be pro-town, leaving other players as scummy. Granted, this isn't particulary efficient, but I've generally been getting more pro-town vibes from certain players. As for pickem and WindFish, I'm pretty torn on pickem. He's probably been the most consistent player, which I consider to be pretty town, but his suspicion has been of a player who I have thought to be town throughout most of the game, which makes it more scummy. My earlier vote on WindFish was pretty weak, so I couldn't say I'm still suspicious of him based on that reasoning. In any case, I'm going to do a full re-read tomorrow and post suspicions based on that.

[thedocsalive]

After re-reading, I'm somewhat suspicious of WindFish.

[quote="WindFish]Yosarian's reasoning has re-affirmed my vote for truncator. Maybe he was just intentionally probing for some responses, but it does not appear to be very responsibly executed.

It's not a matter of responsibility. If you think he's a poor town player, he's still a townie and you shouldn't vote him. Unless, you think his irresponsible execution implies that he's scum, because it's so irresponsible that any town player wouldn't do it. And as I said, I don't think that is the case. [/quote][/quote]
Looking back, I think this is a decent point. You can't vote on players on things like responsibility, which generally don't indicate alliance. You vote for them based on what might make them scum (scum tells, town tells/vibes from most other players but not him, etc.). This was the first thing to catch my attention.

The part of the game where I question WindFish's content early on (posts 97, 120) seems correct after a re-read. We didn't hear a lot from him early on, it seems. While this is pretty subjective, I got the same feeling re-reading that part of the game.

Also, WindFish's post 135 is essentially the same as LlamaHunter's case that he tried to make on Albert, which was deemed pretty weak.

But WindFish's post 179 seems very well-thought out, and I agree with much of it. I'm somewhat suspicious of him based on his early play, but I don't think it's worth it to try to rally a case against him before this nearby deadline.

I still stand by truncator's initial third vote not necessarily being a very scummy play, but a lot of his later actions have raised suspicions. His quick, massive OMGUS vote on LlamaHunter was unjustified (yes, I realize I have been suspicious of LlamaHunter too, but I dislike the way truncator has voted). He hasn't justified any of his posts as much as anyone else in the game, he's been very wishy-washy and constantly flipping votes, and I don't like the give-up attitude (you'll see, watch the third/fourth vote on me, etc.).

Unvote: LlamaHunter, Strong FoS (would be a vote if it wouldn't be a lynch vote): truncator

truncator should claim. Three votes, an FoS, others expressing suspicion of him, and a looming deadline are against him.

[thedocsalive]

FoS: Albert

for reckless behavior at the end of yesterday, and even moreso today.

[thedocsalive]

There is always the possibility of Llama being scum gambling for a quick win here. If so, he would have to be scum with Albert, because normally with this gambit the scum claims cop with a guilty on an innocent, not the other way around. I can't imagine Llama being scum with any of the three he did not claim to investigate, as it puts his partner at too much unnecessary risk.

I'm especially inclined to consider the case where Llama is lying, since right now the scum must be Llama/Albert or Yos/pickem from my eyes, and I've generally had confidence in Yos and pickem throughout the game. But as I said, I'd expect Llama to claim a guilty result if he were scum going for the quick win, so I'm a bit torn here.

Albert, are you still sure about Llama being scum, since I can't imagine a scenario where he's scum with anyone other than you?

[thedocsalive]

Unvote

, doc I'd rather you place your vote first for me to hammer.

Um, this is a pretty strange request, given that this isn't some game where hammering someone gives you some kind of night power.

I agree with Yos' recent posting, and I believe his doc claim over pickem's, making pickem definitely scum. Though it does remain possible that pickem and Yos are a scumpair working hard to distance each other, I think that pickem and Llama is more likely right now.

Vote: pickemgenius

[thedocsalive]

I'm not sure how Albert was confirmed innocent without LlamaHunter being considered innocent and cop for sure. Remember, it WAS possible for both pickem and Yos to be scum claiming doc, and I may have considered counterclaiming doc myself against both of them had Albert's views been a little different. As it were, I had to basically agree with him to ensure the pickem lynch.

Yes, Albert made a mistake in his read, and Yos and I were the scum. But it's certainly not something that was incredibly stupid or impossible to understand. Yes, to Llama and pickem, the strategy of lynching me, protect Llama and investigate tomorrow was infallible, but it's not so given that the cop wasn't truly confirmed. Breadcrumbing isn't strong, as it's pretty safe to do even if you're not cop. In fact, scum could almost always breadcrumb both cop and doc in a newbie setup, and just point to either when falsely claiming later as they please. I've never seen a case where someone caught a breadcrumb prior to it being mentioned, let alone where one caught someone falsely breadcrumbing.

And yes, it cannot be counted as a win for yourselves, Llama and pickem. Granted, Yos and I failed to read and/or kill the powerroles (though Yos suggested Llama, and I thought he might be suspicious enough to be the D2 lynch, so I spoke against that >_>), so the town had a pretty strong grip on the LyLo situation. But a win is a win, and a loss is a loss. Well played everyone!