Mini 539: Game over

[Justin Playfair]

Vote: Ythill

Because it's like an anthill, but with Yts in it. I'm pretty sure Yts would be creepy.

Incognito. I know what movie your black and white avatar comes from. Unless you know mine my avatar has yours at a disadvantage.

[Justin Playfair]

Four folks haven't posted yet. Hasn't been quite 48 hours so not a crisis yet, but hey Northjayhawk, MafiaSSK, Natude, and Apyadg, we're here!

Let's see, confessions. I tend to make very long posts. Trying to get it under control, but I apologize in advance.

[Justin Playfair]

Well, I won't go as far as to vote MafiaSSK yet, but if we're starting to talk let me

Unvote: ythill

MafiaSSk, you say "Great. So now the votes are tied between me and Xtoxm."

I'm just a little curious here as to why you responded in this way. Because it seems by your wording that you're attempting to suggest that it's as odd/unfair that these votes have piled up on you as on Xtoxm. But these last votes you are getting are because of something you did.

Could you explain your reasoning behind placing the third vote on Xtoxm? What was suspicious if you found Xtoxm suspicious or why you chose Xtoxm to pressure if that was the case?

[Justin Playfair]

Ack! Sorry.

Unvote ythill

[Justin Playfair]

MafiaSSK...this is the kind of behavior that could pick you up an awful lot of votes pretty quickly. Want to explain these responses in a little more depth?

[Justin Playfair]

Ythill, I think I do have to take a stab at you.

I look for patterns, and I have questions about the pattern I’m seeing in your posting. Let's begin with your behavior regarding MafiaSSK. In this sequence:

MafiaSSK votes on Xtoxm, calls him a they and says he finds them suspicious
MafiaSSK complains that there are as many votes on him as on Xtoxm, but miscounts
MafiaSSK says he wasn’t suspicious of Xtoxm but instead just jumped on a bandwagon
MafiaSSK says he was lying about being suspicious of Xtoxm but gives no further information

You are drawn to MafiaSSK calling Xtoxm “they” and miscounting the votes, based on a highly suspicious, inaccurate and absolutely WIFOM premise you invented that someone would have to be “uncannily perceptive” to have been suspicious of Xtoxm’s original post. Why do I find this premise of yours so dubious? First let me quote the pertinent portion of your post:

Xtomx’s gender is clearly marked under his avatar. Also, when Mafia whined about the votes being tied, he only had 2 votes to Xtoxm’s 3. Mafia has revealed himself to be less than uncannily perceptive, yet finding honest suspicions in Xtoxm’s post #12 would require amazing powers of perception. Mafia also neglected to post the easy answer to Apyadg’s question. I believe pressure is justified here.

Now you claim to have read this board for two months before playing. In that case you have seen plenty of wagons build over far less than what was in Xtoxm’s first post, an immediate noob claim and taking a quick easy out to avoid participating in the random vote phase. Do I consider that sufficient reason to start a bandwagon? No. But I’ve certainly seen those bandwagons, and pushed by folks who weren’t scum. One might even say they are more likely to be pushed by people who are “less than uncannily perceptive”. So this seems almost like a deliberate misstatement on your part. In addition, given your first post in this thread, claiming that it would take someone uncannily perceptive to discern suspicious intent from Xtoxm’s first post seems possibly self-serving, since the same not uncannily perceptive someone might have seen your post as a reason to be suspicious of you.

And if there is an “easy answer” to Apyadg’s question, given that you’ve stated that finding “honest suspicions” in Xtoxm’s post would require “amazing powers of perception”, what would that answer be? And why would it be an easy answer?

You have cast reflective suspicion back at all three players (Xtoxm, Chronx and Incognito) who questioned you about your posts. Nothing overly suspicious there, the first impulse of anyone being hit is to hit back, but then you also include things like:

I hope you guys are this nice to me when I’m under the microscope.

I think it’s important for us to look at everyone, including me, before we do anything rash. Plus, at this stage of the game, it helps town to be attacking players capable of defending themselves: less likely to lead to a mislynch and more likely to reveal useful information. I hope you will be as amiable when it is your turn.

I’m willing to take my turn in the hot seat if need be.

Which don’t play nearly as sincere when you’ve cast reflective suspicion back at all three of the players who have pushed you at all.

You take your vote off MafiaSSK because he has become “abstract”, which is neither an accurate description of his post (if I am incorrect about this using any conventional meaning of abstract, please explain). You agree with Incognito that looking at the reasons behind the votes on MafiaSSK is a good idea, even while you’re sliding off the wagon, and use the last line of your post to try to direct those questions at a specific target.

You then amend your reasoning for taking your vote off MafiaSSK into being because Incognito obviated the need for an answer to your initial question, even though Incognito’s answers didn’t address any of the possibly relevant suspicions of MafiaSSK’s behavior, only the ones you were pursuing based on your false premise. You also point to MafiaSSK refusing to answer your question as a reason to give up, even though the initial condition you set for removing what you carefully identified as a pressure vote was MafiaSSK answering it. You conclude it with a reading of how some players respond under pressure, which would have been as valid at many other less obviously opportunistic points in this sequence. And you refer to other players who have done what MafiaSSK has done as though by doing this you make your response more authoritative.

To me this looks like false scum hunting on your part, deliberately leading the bulk of the discussion of MafaiaSSK’s behavior away from what might have been legitimately suspicious and down obviously non-productive paths.

Your responses to Incognito, Chronx and Xtoxm look like posing as being more than happy to be looked at while responding to everyone who has looked at you by trying to direct suspicion back at them.

And overall your posts look like they’re laying a veritable carpet of reasons to excuse any behavior you engage in: I’m new! I’ve read games for two months and have an IQ of 143! I may tell you to mind your own business if you ask me a question, but if I do it I’m pro-town!. Let’s look at that bandwagon I was on that I’m not on anymore and got off of for reasons which will evolve as they need to, and let’s start by looking at that other guy!

And to me, none of it looks very good. I don’t like pressure votes. This isn’t one. I might change it if I come to believe what I’ve seen above was early game jitters or if I see someone who I think is more definitely scum. But you have it now.

Vote: Ythill

[Justin Playfair]

MafiaSSK,

Thank you for responding to me. I did look closely at your posts and I did find there was no depth in your answers. Which is why I didn’t immediately accept your change in heart when you put forth your second reason for voting Xtoxm, and is why I asked you for clarification. I will do so again.

If indeed you were lying when you said you had suspicions of Xtoxm, what was your intent behind doing so?

If you were not lying when you said Xtoxm seemed suspicious, what were your suspicions?

And why would you post something “not meant to do anything at all besides maybe try and make 5 years olds laugh if they saw that.”, when you were being asked questions you could presumably easily answer if you chose to?

Thank you for any answers.

[Justin Playfair]

Incognito,

I’m not really coming to Apyadg’s defense here, because the way he removed his vote from MafiaSSK made me suspect he was just looking for a way out from what he felt was an exposed position and therefore I don’t have an argument with the reasons Charter gave for putting his vote on him. But I have to say that in your last post you point at his initial reason for voting for MafiaSSK in a way that I don’t think is entirely fair. You posted this:

This weird, vague post by Apyadg who seems to be reprimanding MafiaSSK for calling someone suspicious without justifying it. This seems ironic to me since in my opinion Apyadg really didn't justify his vote against MafiaSSK either. He merely said that MafiaSSK's actions were "bad" which could basically mean anything.

About this:

Voting without reason is also suspicious, you know, random voting is still ok-ish at this point, but saying you have a reason without justifying it is bad!

Now maybe Apyadg could have phrased this better, but his intent is pretty clear, and his reason is about as good as you’re likely to get for a vote with cause at that early stage of the game. He’s accusing MafiaSSK of voting with a stated cause for Xtoxm without providing reasons. He says it is bad, but it follows pretty logically that what he’s saying is “scummy”.

Now I didn’t participate in the wagon because I’m not a big fan of pressure votes. I think asking questions is better. But I certainly did ask the questions of MafiaSSK that seemed most pertinent to me, and they certainly followed the same path Apyadg took in the post above. Personally I think asking questions, persistently, usually works better than pressure votes, and in this case, with MafiaSSK, that appears to be true, but I also understand that mine is a minority opinion on this subject. Anyway, I disagree with your interpretation of Apyadg’s vote on MAfiaSSK, though the manner in which he removed his vote certainly seems suspicious.

I have read the sequence of posts into which you and Chronx have arrived at your current adversarial position a number of times. In that sequence I only see one aspect of your reasoning which makes me curious enough to raise a question. It is best encapsulated in this post of yours:

With regard to MafiaSSK's actions and vote, I think a bit too much weight is being placed on the random voting phase. So far we've seen reasons ranging from someone not liking Kansas, to something about an anthill, to MafiaSSK's reason of finding someone suspicious, to people choosing not to participate in the random voting phase at all. The point is if a player chooses to participate in the random voting phase it's usually common practice to provide an explanation along with the random vote and MafiaSSK did just that.

Incognito, you miss here what made MafiaSSK’s statement different from all those others. Whereas, for instance, your random vote on me was because there was only room in town for one black and white avatar, a reason no one is ever going to mistake for something serious…

…MafiaSSK said his vote was because he was suspicious of Xtoxm.

Now if you didn’t see this as fundamentally different before, do you now?

By the way, I think MafiaSSK has now answered this as well as he is going to. And I think pressing him further would be as likely to crack an innocent MafiaSSK as a guilty one. But I would still like to hear your thoughts on the above.

For the most part I would like this clarification because the post you made which began this sequence was actually defending Xtoxm because Xtoxm had answered part of Ythill’s false case against MafiaSSK. And much of what you posted through the earlier part of your exchange with ChronX, what I suppose made him suspicious of you, seemed based on your aversion to the Ythill non-case as opposed to the reasons others voted for MafiaSSK.

I’ve liked many of the things you’ve posted, particularly your distrust of the MafiaSSK wagon building so quickly. And I think that first post of the sequence about Xtoxm was spot on. But you’ve also seemed reluctant to accept that there may be valid reasons for others to have voted for MafiaSSK unrelated to those in Ythill’s false case. You’re still questioning Apaydg on them.

On the whole I think ChronX is being too aggressive in his suspicions of you, mainly because I can see how all of your responses could have grown logically from your first post in defense of Xtoxm. But I would be grateful if you could address the two points I raised above.

[Justin Playfair]

Yikes! EBWOP. Make that your third from last post, Incognito.

[Justin Playfair]

Ythill,

I suspected you wouldn’t be able to hold out for long.

@ Justin: Your attack against me seemed to be a severe stretch, but could have been the act of a townie who had convinced himself. My read on you is very MotR but I do want to question a pattern of your own. Though you have accused three people, each of them was already under scrutiny by other players at the time, so your points were likely to have support. This seems scummy. Is it a bad habit of yours?

Hmmm…Ythill, could you point out in my posts where I accused anyone other than you of anything?

Now I would assume the other two people you are talking about are MafiaSSK and Incognito. If I am wrong certainly feel free to correct me. But at no point do I accuse either of them of anything.

In the case of MafiaSSK I certainly didn’t vote for him. I never accused him of being scum. I asked him questions. I continued to ask him questions long after those who had attacked him and voted for him began peeling away, their questions unanswered. And I asked him questions until he answered me.

In the case of Incognito I think it should be clear from an even casual reading of my post that I am not accusing him of anything. I ask him to clear up two points that could lead me to accepting what my interpretation of his posts in thread are. You would have done better to go after me for leading him to an easy defense with this one. I wasn’t doing that, either, I was trying to find out if my reading of him was accurate.

Now, I will ask you to please provide us with the posts where I’ve accused either Incognito or MafiaSSK of anything. If you establish this pattern by providing these posts I would be happy to proceed with a discussion of this pattern you are suggesting.

If you can’t, may I ask you why you made the accusation?

[Justin Playfair]

Ythill,

So…

Semantics again? We don’t have to use the word “accuse” if you don’t like it, but I think it fits. Accusations don’t have to be direct and 982920019 words long like the stab you made against me, and they don’t have to include a vote. I would term even your repeated mention of my “non-case/false premise” as an underhanded accusation. But I digress…

…the answer to my question as to whether you could provide any examples of me accusing anyone other than you of anything was no. Because the definition of accuse, from Merriam Webster on-line, for one of many examples, is pretty definitive:

transitive verb 1 : to charge with a fault or offense : blame 2 : to charge with an offense judicially or by a public process

So, no, you are wrong in your interpretation of what accuse means. And no, you couldn’t find any examples of me doing so. Finally, my referring to the false case you pushed on MafiaSSK, which diverted attention down frivolous paths, was not backhanded or underhanded. I stated it clearly in my case against you and repeated it again later. It is about as direct as it could possibly be.

So we have now reduced accusing players under suspicion to asking questions of players under suspicion. In the case of MafiaSSK I continued to ask my questions after votes were coming off of him, which makes your pattern here rather meaningless. I would also point out again, that it was my asking him these questions that actually finally got him to respond, which I would think would be something all of us would want. Your quotes of me in relation to this consist of me observing that he could get votes quickly if he did not answer (which as I recall did happen), asking him to give a reason for the post in which he responded in what was an odd fashion by commenting that he has as many votes as Xtoxm (not nearly as edifying to his behavior as your seizing on the fact he miscounted the votes, I know), and pointing out that you pointed attention away from his initial vote, his claim that he was only bandwagoning, and his statement that he lied and toward your concerns, that he called Xtoxm “they” and miscounted the votes.

So, no pattern there in any regard. I kept asking him my questions after votes were coming off him, so that takes away from your supposition that I only ask questions of players under current pressure. I asked these questions until I actually…hmmm…got answers, which yes, is a pattern of mine, and nothing that you posted comes close to being an accusation of any kind.

In the second case, that of Incognito I asked him questions that would allow me to be sure of what I think I made pretty clear throughout my post to him, that he was being made to seem a defender of MafiaSSK and an attacker of those who voted for him based on a sequence of events that actually began with him defending Xtoxm for answering your “they” question. My post sought clarification of the only two points which I found at all inconsistent with my interpretation. I was trying to give Incognito a chance to explain his thinking outside of the confrontational environment which had arisen between him and ChronX. Remarkably, this too seems to have worked.

So in short, thank you for inviting me to discuss whether I beat my wife everywhere I go, but I think I’ll let you show anything even close to real evidence that I am beating her here, first. You have not supported an initially silly statement. If you want to take another whack at it, be my guest.

[Justin Playfair]

All right, I’ve been rereading the thread. And I hate to come back to this, but the response to Xtoxm answering the question as to why MafiaSSK called him “they” still nags at me.

In post 29 Holden says this:

My point is that he tried to explain something that he had no reason to trying to explain. Ytill brought up a question about MafiaSSK's grammar which MafiaSSK should have been able to answer on his own. The was no reason for Xtoxm to jump in and say anything. Even if I am almost certain I know why someone did somehting I want THEM to explain it so I can see their line of thinking. If by some odd chance MafiaSSK had made a slip (not likely in this case) Xtoxm gave him an easy out.
At least now there's a minor reason for the vote because there are few good reasons to jump to someone's aid at this point in the game.

Ho1den, as the first and most vocal person to comment on Xtoxm answering for MafiaSSK about “they” (and there doesn’t seem to be much inconsistency here, as you shortly after moved your vote to Incognito for a more comprehensive version of what you had voted Xtoxm for) I would like to ask you the following question: What possible answer to the question Xtoxm answered could have given you valuable information about MafiaSSK? I’ve tried to imagine one and I just can’t do it.

Was your vote a policy vote on Xtoxm, purely designed to frighten him away from answering any more questions? If so was it wise to do so with such a forceful argument and 2 votes already on Xtoxm? I suppose I’m curious about this because I didn’t really see this as “jumping to someone’s aid” and I can think of a good reason for Xtoxm to have answered this question, if only to have swept away an irrelevancy. At this point I would have thought Xtoxm might have logically followed this with a ‘by the way, MafiaSSK, why do I seem suspicious’, but if you could I’d like a bit more explanation of your thought process through this phase, especially since in post 51 you point out that Xtoxm has now answered for MafiaSSK twice and in the same post you take your vote off him. One more question, here. What did you see as the possible suspicious motivations for Xtoxm answering for MafiaSSK, if any? If so, does your later vote on Incognito arise from the same or similar suspicion?

[Justin Playfair]

Apyadg:

Something about your explanations during the time you were defending yourself for taking your vote off MafiaSSK bothers me quite a bit. In post 92 you say this:

I see little reason to keep a vote on someone unless I think they should be lynched at that time. He'd had several votes on him, so I don't think he'd have felt under much "pressure" just due to my vote, if several people had unvoted him.

And you expand on this in later posts, and give credit to Ythill’s argument in post 57 for convincing you. Which is fine, as you say in post 60:

I am going to unvote him, but I want to make it very clear that I still think there's a possibility that he's scum, and it's going to take a lot to knock him down my list of suspicious people (especially as he's the only person on it above the base level), I unvote him purely upon agreeing with Ythill's point from his last post.

Except that in post 47, made roughly 12 hours before post 60, you already said:

On the bright side, we've got the game going! I don't think it's a particularly good idea to lynch him based on this; he'd have to be the single worst scum player in the entire world - But his play, whether scum or town, has been awful, he's already admitted to lying to the town, and bandwagon jumping, for no reason at all, it doesn't bode well for him really.

And left your vote on him. Since your statement here clearly makes the point that you already didn’t think it was a particularly good idea to lynch MafiaSSK based on his play to that point, using Ythill’s post as justification for taking your vote off MafiaSSK looks very strange.

The only thing that changed between you saying that it would be a bad idea to lynch MafiaSSK based on what you interpreted as bad play at 3 in the morning on the 8th and you taking your vote off MafiaSSK by being convinced that it was a bad idea to lynch MafiaSSK based on bad play at 3 in the afternoon on the 8th was that there were no longer as many votes on MafiaSSK.

Now I may be misinterpreting what it was about Ythill’s post that convinced you, but you seem to have already expressed that opinion.

By post 70 you write:

And I realised, as I stated, that there's a good reason tonot lynch him.Accepting a good argument != scummy

And by post 92 you’re actually quoting Ythill’s post as your reason and claiming:

I see little reason to keep a vote on someone unless I think they should be lynched at that time.

But in your post 47, once again well before Ythill’s post, you had already said:

I don't think it's a particularly good idea to lynch him based on this; he'd have to be the single worst scum player in the entire world –

And kept your vote on him. Please explain this seemingly very opportunistic contradiction.

[Justin Playfair]

Welcome, Shteven. Glad to see you. And if there’s a game you need a replacement in, I would be happy to return the favor.

Second. I am grateful you’ve replaced into the game and I certainly don’t intend to use anything you say here against you elsewhere.

About your first few posts. I agree with you about the silliness of Northjayhawk’s sustained attack on Ythill for suggesting that people were not likely to be scum. The only situation where I can see it having even the faintest, most limited utility would be in the case of someone who believed they were going to be lynched before nightfall and felt the need to get out some information. Even then, not much. It strikes me as an OMGUS counterattack. It could certainly be seen as a panicky first time scum reaction, although by the time he quit it seemed to me that maybe Northjayhawk was just uniquely unsuited to play this game in any capacity.

I have a somewhat different take on ChronX than you do. You mention his drive-by attacks on Ho1den above but not those on Incognito. In both cases they seemed to me designed to place the player on the defensive in a manner where they have very little solid to answer, and therefore make themselves seem more defensive. Ho1den didn’t rise to the bait, but Incognito did and ChronX pushed him in a way that made me think more of someone trying to work a player into being lynched than someone trying to find scum. I was hoping to see if ChronX would continue his attack on Incognito after Incognito answered my questions to him, but unfortunately ChronX had stopped any meaningful posting by then. In any case, I have a somewhat less benevolent view of ChronX than you do.

About MafiaSSK: Sure, he might be scum. But his behavior has been so bad as to be largely indecipherable. And a mislynch is a mislynch. The only time they seem permissible to me would be when they would point an absolutely damning finger of guilt at another player. And I sure don’t see that here. I mean, what have you got if you lynch MafiaSSK and he does turn up town? A little more suspicion of Apyadg for holding onto the wagon until he found a slippery way out? A little less of Xtoxm for answering those questions? A little more of ChronX or Ho1den for reacting most forcefully to the people who sort of defended him? If you can see more I’d be happy to know it. And I know you didn’t say we would gain information from a mislynch of MafiaSSK, but if you’re suggesting a mislynch wouldn’t be that bad in this case I think it has to involve more than the shallow nature of MafiaSSK’s play, and I’m not seeing what real information we get.

I am curious to see a more complete explanation on your read of ChronX and a little more on why you might be willing to accept a MafiaSSK mislynch.

[Justin Playfair]

Ythill,

I want to start this by saying that you haven’t cost this game a player. I haven’t made it past my first day of any of the games I’m in and I’ve already been called retarded, silly, imprecise, defensive, a “last poster”, nitpicky, a liar in all four I think, a twister of words, and, perhaps most unkindly, not funny. Northjayhawk’s leaving had everything to do with him and nothing with you. Nothing. Quitting a Mafia game because someone called you a liar is precisely the same thing as quitting a football game because someone tried to knock you down.

It is partly because of the Northjayhawk incident that I am not making more of this:

@ Justin: I think it might be a good idea for you and I to reread our spat. I may have confirmed a scumtell on you but that doesn't mean you are mafia. Certain key pieces of damning evidence are missing from a complete case against you, such as signs of partnership between you and the others I suspect. Though I understand that it is not an argument, I assure you that I am town, and wonder if you, through honest contemplation, can find the holes in your own case.

Since the day you posted it I’ve been debating with myself whether it was fair to even comment on it, because I could see how I might make this kind of post in the immediate aftermath of Northjayhawk’s quitting, if I were you. But to break down what Xtoxm didn’t about your post, your reference to our exchange as a spat suggests a less than serious scumhunting intent on your part, your expressed reasons for considering me less suspicious are nonexistent (because needing to try to establish hard links between players as a day one condition is bizarrely overreaching…you’re just linking maybes together and inferring guilt by other unconfirmed suspicions) and the whole tone is so conciliatory. I won’t include with the former you assuring me you’re town, because although I know a lot of people take that as some kind of huge scumtell, I don’t. It’s always struck me as either lazy or opportunistic scumhunting when people jumped on it.

And your answer to Xtoxm in 147 makes me feel even more uneasy over pushing you on anything in that post. It includes two bits which to me seem far too suggestive of a particular mindset not to take into account:

I'd left that discussion with something like "haha you have confirmed a scumtell"

and…

a conflict-based relationship between us would be counterproductive left as is.

Which to me read quite plausibly as “Didn’t you just see that guy quit the game because he said I was so mean?”.

Even allowing the above, though, I can’t take you up on your offer. I still think you worked to mislead the town with your initial actions toward MafiaSSK. The results of your actions spun suspicions about others that in my mind were based on faulty premises and made legitimate inquiry more difficult. You have consistently cast suspicion more than built cases, been vague in both your questions and suspicions in a way that allows you to take advantage of whatever answer you get, and not committed to anything in a way that would keep you from saying you meant something else later. And that plays to the carpet of all-inclusive excuses you laid earlier, and they didn’t have to be preemptive for you to lay them as cover for whatever behavior you engage in.

And to this end I have to point to a couple of the things you posted to Northjayhawk:

First this, from post 98:

I never inferred that you not responding to #19 was suspect, nor that I thought your #39 was in response to it. In fact, one of the things scummy about #39 was that it was “unbidden, off-topic.” Simply put, you interjected it into a conversation about something else entirely, as if to slip it in quietly. I wouldn’t defend what Xtoxm did, but it was pretty harmless coming from a claimed n00b early in the game, especially since he was personally involved in the questions.

I don’t like your active lurking, your defense that relies on a misread of my accusations, or the fact that you’ve skipped three of four questions directed at you.

Well, the only problem with this is that what you’re saying isn’t really true.

Here are your questions, from post 83:

@ Northjay: You have made only two posts. Your #16 was the first of two “random” votes I called out suspicions on (in #19). Your #39 was an unbidden, off-topic justification of that “random” vote. In this post you don’t remove the random vote or defend it as such, but instead register a weak argument in favor of it by repeating what Ho1den had already said in #25 & 29. I’ll quote #39 below for reference. Why did you feel the need to justify your vote? Why have you not addressed the other topics in this game? Do you have other reasons to think Xtoxm is scummy? Is he still the scummiest in your opinion?

Here is Northjayhawk’s answer:

Ythill: I didnt bother replying to your first mention of three random votes, because it appeared obvious to me that my random vote (#2) had no possibility of suspicion at all. I did not read it as a question towards me, more like a comment or unspoken question directed at the one who cast the third vote. I ALWAYS go to random.org in every game I play (research me if you want) to pick my first vote. Before I actually post the number, I do check to see if it would be a bad random vote (e.g. your random would be the third vote on someone in a 7-player game). In a 12-player game, a 2nd random vote might be mildly valuable to test for an overreaction, but hardly something that needs to be justified in itself.

My 2nd post was not in response to your post at all, I had basically ignored and forgotten about your comment by then. The explanation was necessary because I reaffirmed my random vote as no longer being random along with an explanation, and I would expect everyone to justify their votes and share their thinking whether asked for or not when there is the slightest whiff of suspicion on their target.

Someone who is only reactive to accusations over a few day/night cycles would start to look scummy to me, most town players would actively look for scum at least occasionally without needing to first be asked to explain their votes and suspicions.

As for the reason itself, it should be clear. Whether someone thinks that a question against someone else is a good one or not, I cant think of any value to the town at all (and a lot of potential harm) to answer for or feed them a good answer.

This would appear to me to answer three of your four questions. He reiterates his reason for voting Xtoxm (crummy reason to me, but he does it) and by doing so pretty clearly indicates that this is still his reason. Maybe I would have prodded him a bit by saying something like “So then there isn’t anything else?” but going from this into just accusing him of not answering looks like hunting a victim more than trying to determine if he’s scum. He is very direct in explaining why he felt the need to justify his vote, and the fact that he is still choosing to vote Xtoxm should be a pretty clear answer as to who he finds scummiest. The only question his post doesn’t offer his thinking about is why he hasn’t commented on anything else in thread.

I mean in my mind there was even a pretty big suspicious statement in his answer to test him on, this:

Someone who is only reactive to accusations over a few day/night cycles would start to look scummy to me, most town players would actively look for scum at least occasionally without needing to first be asked to explain their votes and suspicions.

Which almost reads as Northjayhawk saying “can’t you see my post 39 was made so that I give the bare appearance of being involved”. But you don’t call him out on this, or ask directly for clarification of his answer about Xtoxm, or ask for clarification for the part of his defense “that relies on a misread of my accusations”, which given your mentioning of your post (19) in your own post could very easily have been an innocent misinterpretation. You instead announce as a given that Northjayhawk was evasive and unresponsive, as though by saying it you can make it true.

Then, when he does respond, you do this in your post 114:

Digging yourself deeper here. I’ve read both of your other games. I’ve seen you post more earlier and with much less to go on. Why the lie about your playstyle? Note that since your other games are ongoing, it is not appropriate for us to argue the specifics of them, which is why I’m being vague. Anyone who is curious can go read for themselves.

At this juncture, I don’t see you clearing yourself with an argument. We should probably move on to other topics. As I’ve said, I see no reason to convince others of your scumminess at this point. We still have lots of information to gather before anything like a lynch, and that means there’s still time for you to start playing like town.

So you accuse Northjayhawk of lying based on a meta that “it is not appropriate for us to argue the specifics of”. Nice. Kind of hard for him to defend himself on this, huh? No matter what the truth is. Because he’d probably have to use specifics for that. And you point out that no matter what he says he can’t clear himself. So you make this last, completely unfair attack, then try to make it the last word on the subject by saying nothing Northjayhawk says can matter and it’s time to move onto other topics.

Can you see why I have a hard time believing you’re town? So I’m sorry, I can’t take your offered hand of peace right now. Because this isn’t a spat to me. You have engaged, from almost the opening bell of the game, in what seems like very suspicious behavior to me. I have, and will continue to, look at other people. But you’re still the person I find most suspicious.

[Justin Playfair]

A minor thing, but I’ve been rereading the thread a lot.

On the 11th Disciple Slayer posts:

I'm here if anyone wants to ask me any questions.

He is asked a few questions but does not respond. On the 13th Incognito posts this:

@Disciple Slayer: You've been asked a number of questions from different sources now that you have yet to respond to. I'd like for you to become more active in the thread now so that your posts aren't as retrospective as they have been, otherwise I'm tempted to call you out on lurking. It seems like you've been avoiding scrutiny because you haven't been around to garner it.

And just over 30 minutes later Disciple Slayer responds:

Posting will commence on the 18th. I've got a busy weekend and a flight immediately after.

It is now the 23rd and Disciple Slayer has not posted. With the time of the year it could be nothing, and the quick response to Incognito when Incognito called him on not answering questions as he’d said he would could certainly have been a coincidence. But I thought the timing was interesting enough that it was worth pointing out.

I would also like Apyadg to answer my question about the seeming inconsistency in his behavior regarding taking his vote off MafiaSSK.

Sorry, but picking the bones here now. The town’s starting to feel pretty lonely.

[Justin Playfair]

Ythill,

Thank you for your response. I repeated my earlier points because you asked me to look at my early case against you again. I was pointing out those bits which still bother me the most. As for the “invisible evidence”, that was in the post I don’t intend to ask you anything about. Since you addressed that post to me I felt I needed to respond to it, but I don’t intend to refer to it again, and I stated my reasons why.

Now as to the meta. I have read Northjayhawk’s posts in his other two games. I will not comment on them because there are replacements coming into both those games as well. I will say that it is my belief that one might want to take into account the level of posting a player did during a specific time frame as opposed to a specific phase of the game, as their external situation may have a great deal to do with their level of posting. Another possible factor would be the level of involvement someone may have in a specific game at a specific time. I really do see this as an unfair attack, because from my reading I see a perfectly acceptable defense to this attack which Northjayhawk could have only mounted by being more specific than is possible. And to this end, I would strongly recommend that anyone who is interested read Northjayhawk’s posts in the other two games he was in, from the beginning to the end of his involvement. For content and for time frame.

Now onto your suspicions. I have some questions for Shteven right below but first I want to ask why Incognito makes your number two slot. I have a pretty benign reading of Incognito and would be interested in your reasons for seeing him in a different way.


Shteven,

Accusing Ythill of tunnel vision seems odd. (By the way, I did not suggest Ythill had tunnel vision in respect to Northjayhawk. I suggested that he made an aggressive accusation that I believed was unfair and then tried to cut off discussion of it, leaving the implication that Northjayhawk was scum while trying to rob him of the chance to defend himself…this is not tunneling, and Ythill has attempted to shape his other exchanges in the same way, finishing them with a dialogue-ending ‘and that’s why you’re scummy, so let’s move on’).

In your discussion of Ythill tunneling you mention his behavior regarding MafiaSSK. I’m curious about this, because nothing Ythill did regarding MafiaSSK makes me believe he ever had even the least intention of pursuing MafiaSSK in any serious fashion. I mean Ythill not only took his vote off MafiaSSK early, he did it before MafiaSSK had even answered any questions involving his behavior. And Ythill has accused several players, including me, and not tried to push any of his cases to completion.

So could you give a little more form to your accusation of tunneling? Because I just don’t get that one.

And this:

You also have a disturbing trend of trying to get one people's good sides by pointing out how fair and noble you are. Now, I've done this once in a current game of mine, but after I did, and was rightly called for it, I admitted the mistake and I'm being more careful about doing it again. Let me quote some of yours:

Followed by:

It's starting to get old. I find it odd that ChronX called Incognito for it, but no one's pointed out Ythill doing it to a far greater extent.

The contradiction in Ythill’s behavior I found interesting was that he invited suspicion and then always included a counter punch back at the person expressing that suspicion, which seems to be a possible defensive scum tactic. And I did call him on this. It was nothing at all like what Incognito did, or what he was called out for doing.

I’m always curious about morphing attacks, so could you explain in more detail why you think what Ythill did equals what Incognito did?

Finally, this just bothers me, because it’s a point that there seems to be general agreement about, and I feel totally in the dark about it.

Also, I'm going to throw in an IGMEOY @ Incongito. But this will be more for day two and beyond.

Okay, I’ve reread all of Incognito’s posts in isolation, read them in thread, and I’m just not getting the high level of suspicion about him. So I’d like a bit more about Incognito, if you don’t mind. And more than anything I’d like an explanation of why “this will be more for day two and beyond”. We’re on day one, we don’t have a consensus, so why wait?

Anyway, any answers would be appreciated.

[Justin Playfair]

Well. Things have picked up.

Okay, Ythill. First, the claim is too early. It almost looks like you were planning it all along and just couldn’t keep from pulling the trigger any longer. Three votes? I don’t consider it a certain scum tell, but it seems either the result of panic or pre-planning.

Just for consideration, here’s one possibility other than you being normal scum in a panic or a townie making a strangely unforced claim, though I think it’s far-fetched. Just not so far-fetched that I don’t want to comment on it.

You’re not a vig. You’re a serial killer. You make your declared kill (and this would play into the brand of scumhunting you’ve done, where you only seem interested in proving that you’re really suspicious of someone, not trying to prove their guilt to town), then simply refrain from killing again until endgame. You coast on your proven cred as a one-shot vig, able to mislead town as you will with little chance of serious suspicion coming your way. You could even try to reverse scumhunt, never closing hard on who you think is scum, to make yourself a less attractive target for a nightkill. You make sure you’re not the most attractive target for scum on the first night by pointing out that your action will happen anyway (so, since you’re a one-shot and since if you have targeted town they know that, and if you’ve targeted scum the scum would be dead anyway, what’s the point?) and afterwards you hope to keep them so hooked on your busy hunting of town that they’ll want you to live. I wouldn’t imagine it would keep you alive to endgame, but then you could always reverse yourself at some point after night one and ask for the doctor’s protection as a proven townie.

The only possible downside I could see is that if you happen to announce you’re going after a scum on night one the scum might kill you night one just based on your success as a scum hunter. Or you might get killed later by scum as a seemingly proven townie, but this claim followed by your kill would put you in a better position to eventually ask for protection, if protection was still available, so you might believe your risks of being nightkilled are less even with this claim than the random chance of being night killed combined with the very real chance that you were going to be lynched day one.

As far as your chance of being the day two lynch because scum would refrain from killing on night one just to make you look like scum, that seems like a real false possibility to me, this one raised not with you as a serial killer but with you as just plain old scum. Whatever you are, why would scum decide that making you the most likely (but not assured) day two lynch would be worth not taking their very certain night one kill? Would you mind explaining why you think that would be the best scum strategy, because it seems like the dumbest to me, unless you think that as a “confirmed townie” you would get protection on day two or thereafter. Otherwise they could kill you anytime they wanted.

For now I’m going to

Unvote: Ythill

But rest assured, if the scum “have an excellent strategy” and don’t kill night one, I will not be swayed an inch with any argument about how those brilliant scum put you in the hot seat. That last bit seems scummy in a way that is absolutely laying the carpet for your day two defense, and it would have been an absolute deal-breaker on this claim for me, if I didn’t also feel it was possible (and sorry for what I’m about to say) that you have such a high opinion of yourself that you think the most brilliant strategy would be the one that counters your brilliant strategy, as opposed to the one that would do the most certain good for the bad guys.

As for the other, we don’t know what the roles are, so it would be as likely, I guess, for you to be a serial killer as a one-shot vig. But would it be as likely for you to be the serial killer AND come up with this idea AND for me to think of it? I don’t have that high an opinion of myself. Probably close, though.

But on that score, even if two bodies hit the floor tonight, I’ll be keeping an eye on the cases you make. So far the only one that has even come close for me (sorry again), was the one on Shteven. I’ll get into what I think of your case on Incognito and do a run-down on my other suspects directly, though in this case directly will likely be close to 24 hours from now.

At the pace this game is suddenly moving we may have a couple more claims by then.


Hey, welcome Kuribo and Claus!

[Justin Playfair]

XtoXm,

Ythill could be wrong and still be the vig. Him killing town would not prove him scum. Just wrong. If two bodies hit the ground tonight, and one is the person Ythill said he was going to kill, whatever their alignment, Ythill is on more solid, if not absolutely solid, ground.

[Justin Playfair]

XtoXm, bread crumbing his role, if that was what he did, doesn't prove he planned this precise stratagem on page one. It just proves he bread crumbed, although that doesn't mean it is his true role. Could it have been in preparation for exactly what he's doing here? Yes. Does it follow that it would have to be? No.

[Justin Playfair]

Incognito,

Two things, though I'm not sure the first is still relevant after Ythill's post 229. And Ythill, I'm somewhat flummoxed by what you've posted there.

The first would be that Ythill's fourth strategy ONLY works if his eventual victim is town. Otherwise it doesn't work at all. I took that as a given, but after Ythill's response I guess it wasn't to him, which is really very strange. I mean, if the eventual victim is scum then scum have no reason at all for not killing someone. Conversely, if the victim is scum Ythill comes up blameless on a no-kill by mafia regardless.

Ythill, did you really only realize that when Incognito brought it up, as seems to be indicated in post 229? Because that really seems to indicate that you know he's innocent, or if Incognito is not your eventual target that you suspect you'll be killing town. I mean, you really hadn't considered that?

Incognito,

The second thing. I think Ythill in post 229 is suggesting that the elaborate bussing would be his killing of you. I looked all over the Wiki to see if mafia could night kill their team mates, but I couldn't find the answer.

[Justin Playfair]

All right. This takes precedence over another of my long posts about who I suspect, but let me assure you this is just a reprieve, not a commutation.

For now:

First point: does the slip up Incog hypothesises seem like a realistic mistake? Meaning, if I am forward-thinking enough to lay out this elaborate "carpet," does it follow that I am short-sighted enough to miss such an obvious hole in the plan? Second point: the "doc protected" plan seems much more viable if I am scum, so what's the point of me asking the doc not to protect me? In Incog's theory, wouldn't that be entirely counter-productive? As scum, I should have asked for doc protection.

First:

Meaning, if I am forward-thinking enough to lay out this elaborate "carpet," does it follow that I am short-sighted enough to miss such an obvious hole in the plan?

Well, let me pose a different question. If you put the work and forethought into your plan as presented, does it logically follow that you would miss this possibility as town? See, this is a sword that cuts both ways, and I think this edge is sharper. Because if I was you and I did what you’re doing (and I don’t think I would) I think the idea of killing two scum on one day would be so big in my eyes that I’d scarcely be able to see anything else. Lynch/vig and cripple the bad guys for the whole game. And I think if I was in trouble when I revealed my plan I would be very aware of how a good vig kill would redeem me. I might not post it, because it sounds too much like pleading for a chance, but I sure wouldn’t have been caught by surprise when someone asked me a question about it. Because being surprised about it makes it seem as though you never even considered what the ramifications would be if you hit scum. And yes, that is a very big tell.

Second:

the "doc protected" plan seems much more viable if I am scum, so what's the point of me asking the doc not to protect me? In Incog's theory, wouldn't that be entirely counter-productive? As scum, I should have asked for doc protection.

As scum you wouldn’t need the protection. As a scum pretending to be town you would know that you might well get it even if you asked not to be, as the only claimed role. Plus, if you’re mafia you don’t care who the doctor protects night one as long as it isn’t your selected vig target. Your kill would be the mafia kill. And since you’ve presented yourself as a one-shot vig you could even make a fair pass at a case about not getting whacked yourself, even if the doctor didn’t decide to protect you no matter what you said. And if the doc did protect you, as the only claimed role, and you were about to get fitted for a noose day two, you might even manage to find out who the doctor was along the way, if the doc felt he had to claim to clear up why a second kill didn’t happen/why you aren’t dead. It’s not a perfect play, but given the situation you’re in right now it’s a better play than asking for the doctor to protect you.


Now, for the rest of you, here is why my vote is off Ythill:

If he’s mafia it doesn’t matter whether we lynch him today or not, mafia will kill someone tonight. If he’s mafia planning on announcing who mafia is going to kill, that person will be no more dead than if his partners decided who they were going to kill in secret.

If only one body hits tonight, then it is my hope that tomorrow will be the last day Ythill spends in town. If he is scum he is as dead tomorrow as he would have been today, and we have the chance to catch another bad guy today, if we can remove some of our focus from this one discussion. If he should turn up, after being hung, to be town, then we will have still had today to hunt for another scum and scum will have only made a kill tonight they would have anyway (maybe a different person, but still one town). So a Ythill mislynch today or tomorrow would be the same, in this one respect, as a Ythill righteous lynch today or tomorrow: In either case the town will be in the same position going into night two.

What could go wrong with this that would be detrimental to town? Well, basically the things I pointed out in my previous post, that there is the off-chance that Ythill could be an SK or the possibility that only one person dies tonight and Ythill finds some way to squirm off the hook on day two. In the first case we just have to keep our eyes open for the rest of the game. In the second, well if we, collectively, are that stupidly gullible, then we were probably going to lose anyway. Of course, it would also be detrimental to town if Ythill is the vig and kills town, but is anybody really willing to lynch him on the grounds of not trusting his judgment?

On the other hand, Ythill may be telling the truth. And if he is we have an opportunity to:

1. Find out with a reasonable degree of certainty that one of the players is not scum.

2. Get two scum in one day. Or at least have two chances of getting one.

And those are pretty big pluses. There’s another possible one, too, though it’s one I really don’t want to go into because if scum hasn’t thought of it I’d rather not tell them.

All that said, Ythill, I still think this was a bad play you made, and a bad play that benefits you more than town even if you are town. I’m not going to mention the ones it is too late to correct, but here’s two things you still could do something about:

1. Since you’re telling scum who you’re targeting, if you do end up targeting town they know who they don’t have to bother killing and you’ve all but given them two night kills. Stop putting who you’re going to kill in your posts. It may be too late to undo this damage, but what say we give it a try? Now that you’ve claimed one-shot vig, if we only find one body in the morning, whether you told us you were going to kill that person or not, you’re still in trouble. And if two bodies show up in the morning you’ll still get the benefit from it. And town would get a lot more if you didn’t outright say who it was going to be. How about we make the scum guess who you're going to kill? It would pretty much take the no-kill option out of play, because there would be no percentage in foregoing their night kill when you might, for all they know, have honed in on one of them. Proving your claim in this way may be important to you, but it is harmful to town and helpful to scum. If you absolutely can’t resist bread crumbing it in some way please do that instead.

2. You have made every case you make and every suspicion you cast throughout the rest of day one a potential weapon in the hands of town's enemies, even if you take the death list out of your posts. Please consider this in everything else you say today. And please, no more mentions of who you think is really town until today is over. No need to call out the scum’s play for them, all right? Not if you’re a vig, anyway.

Incognito,

I don’t like anything about Ythill’s claim. At best it seems a claim designed to benefit the claimant at the expense of the town’s greater interests, and at worst it seems absolutely scummy. But for town as a whole the possible benefits of leaving Ythill unlynched going into tonight outweigh the possible risks. If I were you, staring down the barrel of his gun, I am not at all sure I wouldn’t be reacting with the vehemence you’re showing. But lynching Ythill today would not be the best play for the town, and you have to put the town in front of yourself. Easy for me to say, since it’s not me we’re talking about getting killed by him? Yeah. Sorry about that. And I think the best thing you could do now wouldn’t be to either attack or answer Ythill, but to spend your time and energy hunting for scum among those players not named Ythill. It’s the very best thing you could do for town, and my guess is it is also the way to have the best chance of being alive in the morning.

Now, unless something dramatically new comes up involving this claim I am going to try to do some hunting. Because even if Ythill is scum, he’s not here all by himself.

[Justin Playfair]

All right. I have a much longer case on Disciple Slayer than the below. But I’m trying (and failing) to make these shorter. And although there are suspicious things in Disciple Slayer’s earlier play, his last post is the one that makes me as absolutely suspicious of him as I am, so I am only going to address that here. If anyone wants the first part of this analysis, though, I would be glad to post it separately.

Everyone’s commented on this one:

I am perplexed. I have no idea what to do any more. Mass RC, anyone?

Since everyone’s piled words on top of this I won’t add to them. But here is Discple Slayer’s last post, and I don’t think anyone’s given it the attention it deserves. Which I think is a lot.

Well, what we could do is this: have the doc randomly protect you or Shteven, while the cop (if any) can investigate Ythill tonight. I haven't been getting any pings on my scumdar from Ythill, although his vig claim and what happened afterwards completely threw me off my game. I don't really know what to do at this point.

In what possible way could this plan help town?

Ythill’s claiming he’s going to make a one-shot vig kill night one. He gave us his two most likely targets of that time. If two people die night one Ythill is probably town. If one person dies we would probably lynch Ythill on day two.

Disciple Slayer here puts forth a plan that would:

1. Give a 50/50 chance of robbing us of Ythill’s possible vig kill.
2. Waste the doctor’s protection for night one (if we have a doc) on the two people least likely to be targeted by scum, unless that scum is Ythill.
3. Waste the (possible) cop’s night one investigation on Ythill, who would be proven just as innocent as the cop could prove him if two bodies are found in the morning.
4. Put at least the (possible) cop in the position of having to reveal his own role on day two to clear Ythill.

Now if there is any possible pro-town interpretation of Disciple Slayer’s plan I would be very grateful to hear it. Because to me this plan equals:

Waste the vig kill.
Waste the cop’s night 1 investigation and set him up to be killed on night two.
Waste the doctor’s night one protection by having him block the vig kill so scum has a clear killing field.

If there’s another way to read this please provide it to me. Because even if Disciple Slayer suspects Ythill is scum (which he says he doesn’t, even in the post where he proposes this scheme), and he wants to try to block what he thinks will be Ythill’s mafia (not vig) kill, is it worth making the potential cop and perhaps even the potential doctor reveal their roles on day two to do so?

Anyway, Disciple Slayer, any explanations you can provide would be appreciated. You’re my number one right now, but given the amount of votes already on you I want to give you a chance to respond before I decide about mine.

[Justin Playfair]

Bless you, Incognito. You are the first person who ever asked for one of these when I offered (except for Shteven in a game where I was hunting him to the ends of the earth, to make me take a break). Yeah, that same one where he was a doctor.

Anyway, here it is. Disciple Slayer. It breaks oddly at the end because of course that wasn't originally the end:

Nine posts total here. In his first post he takes up the notion of not random voting and points out he will be too busy to do much of anything else until the 9th of December.

On the 10th of December he posts this:

VOTE: APYADG

Because something seems off about you. There was no way MafiaSSK's initial vote could have been a serious one. Come on, who finds someone suspicious at the beginning of the random voting stage? That was obviously a joke vote. You look like you're trying to find something to cling to, like you're trying to build a case on nothing. Secondly, if he's still the scummiest person in the game to you, why'd you remove your vote? Is it because it doesn't really matter to you who gets lynched, as long as it isn't you or your scumbuddies?

So a quick dive into the scum hunting pool, just long enough to vote Apyadg. Not a really horrible reason for the vote, but he seems more suspicious of Apyadg’s original vote on MafiaSSK than he does the oddness surrounding Apyadg’s behavior when he took it off. Jumps on Apyadg hard, but I suppose that’s Disciple Slayer’s style. This seems too strong to me for the evidence Disciple Slayer provided, but it’s nothing ChronX, for example, didn’t do more of.

Some people have mentioned the “obviously a joke vote” bit, and that bothers me some too, because it was as good an early tell as anyone would be likely to give that early in the game, and Apyadg’s initial reactions are exactly the sort of activity that moves the game into serious territory. And it did, with MafiaSSK shedding additional early game scum tells that could reasonably have kept votes on him for awhile. But as Incognito pointed out, this may have come from Disciple Slayer commenting well after the fact of the behavior.

On the 11th Disciple Slayer calls (I suppose) me and Ythill grammar Nazis and posts that he is watching the thread and will be available for any questions.

On the 13th, after Incognito mentions that Disciple Slayer is getting questions but not answering them, Disciple Slayer points out, about 30 minutes after Incognito posts, that he will commence doing so on the 18th.

On the 26th, three days after I pointed out the possibly curious timing of Disciple Slayer’s post on the 13th, Disciple Slayer posts that he is now available for those questions. Nothing possibly curious about that timing, but Disciple Slayer doesn’t go back to find the questions himself, he asks them to be restated.

And this is curious, because of what comes next.

Ythill is nice enough to repost some of the questions for Disciple Slayer. About an hour and a half later Disciple Slayer responds with this:

Thanks, Ythill.

Apyadg just seems confused. He doesn't seem like he knows what he's doing. I'm going to UNVOTE him for now, pending my reread.

Player summaries will be posted after my reread.

I still think MSSK's vote was a joke vote.

I was fairly busy then, and my schedule kept changing. I have enough time for a quick reread and player summaries, then I'm going to be away 'til after new year's.

And this is curious, because apparently Disciple Slayer has changed his mind entirely about Apyadg.

What made Disciple Slayer do this?

Apyadg’s last post in thread was on the morning of the 11th. It is the evening of the 11th, hours after Apyadg’s last post in thread, when Disciple Slayer said he was ready for any questions and issued his opinion on grammar Nazis. In this case it is the grammar Nazis statement that is most important, because this indicates that Disciple Slayer was still reading the thread. And in the post above, in reply to Ythill, Discple Slayer indicates he hasn’t done a reread yet since he has returned.

Maybe Disciple Slayer had thought about it while he wasn’t posting. It’s a small thing, but another one that adds to the impression that Disciple Slayer may have been lurking instead of gone.

Disciple Slayer has yet to give us player summaries, just this:

I think most of the vocal people here are just townies arguing with each other. Only Shteven/NJH has really pinged my scumdar. My bet is that he's scum, with his buddies hiding in the shadows.

This was accompanied by a list of the players in the game. Why? To give the impression of doing more than he had? And as far as hiding in the shadows, who has done that more comprehensively, from the game’s opening bell to the present, than Disciple Slayer?

[Justin Playfair]

Incognito,

If you would, could you explain in more detail your links between Disciple Slayer and Ythill? Because my reading of Disciple Slayer’s plan only really works, in my mind, if Disciple Slayer knows Ythill is town.

I’ve gone through all the possible scenarios (I hope), doc/cop, doc/no cop, no doc/cop, no doc/no cop and all the various possible scum false claims, and I come up with just a handful that would end up taking the heat off Ythill. And in fact, unless scum was willing to expose themselves by making a false doc/cop claim, to lynch Ythill the real doc/cop could just keep their mouths shut. So it doesn’t even work very well as bussing what Disciple Slayer might see as an unsalvageable buddy in order to do some claim fishing.

On the other hand, to clear Ythill on day two, with the scenario Disciple Slayer has sketched out, there would almost certainly have to be at least one claim made.

I only really see two possibilities about Disciple Slayer’s scheme:

1. Disciple Slayer hasn’t really been paying any attention to the thread at all and just wants to post something now and then to keep his hand in.
2. Disciple Slayer knows Ythill is not mafia.

If it’s the first it doesn’t tell us anything about either of them, and Ythill will either be cleared or indicted by the morning’s discoveries. If it’s the second it’s the best evidence I’ve seen so far that Ythill is town.

By the way, the only scenarios that could help Ythill in Disciple Slayer’s scheme, so far as I can see them, are:

No cop/Doc: Ythill guesses who the doc blocked correctly. Tells town. Doc confirms. (best case scenario for Ythill/DS scum. saves Ythill, outs power role)
No cop/No doc/Scum doc: Clears Ythill.
No cop/Doc/Scum cop: Scum Cop clears Ythill, Ythill guesses who doc blocked correctly.
No cop/No doc/Scum cop: Clears Ythill.
No cop/No doc/Scum cop/Scum doc: If scum are both stupid enough to make both these claims and lucky enough to get away with them, well, we aren't going to win anyway.

Because any competing claims would, I think, default to a Ythill lynch, just to clear up the competing claims. And in that case two scum would go down, day two and three. And the four scenarios above are the longest of long shots among the possibilities. Even the one false claim/real claim scenario that wouldn’t immediately result in a lynch of the false claimant, after checking Ythill…

Cop/no doc/Scum doc: Cop detects Ythill/Scum doc confirms Ythill.

…would still result in a Ythill lynch followed by some suspicion of the doc. It would also result in some suspicion of a real doctor, in that scenario, if the doctor decided it was worth speaking up. And the scenarios that work for scum are extremely high risk, requiring either a correct guess on who a real doc protected from Ythill or scum to make a false claim that might immediately be challenged, with a Ythill lynch as the obvious and nearly infallible method of finding the truth.


Anyway, my reading is that if one believes Disciple Slayer's plan to be scummy as opposed to inattentive, Ythill is not mafia. But I could certainly be missing something.

[Justin Playfair]

Apyadg,

Next up on my list of suspicions. Plenty has been said about how his vote went on MafiaSSK and how his vote came off. I didn’t and don’t have any problem with Apyadg’s vote for MafiaSSK or his reasons for it. They wouldn’t have been mine but they seemed well within the bounds of townish possibility.

And the way Apyadg slunk off the wagon, though it would have bothered me a little, wouldn’t have him nearly this high up my list, either. No, the bulk of my suspicion of Apyadg comes from the absolute contradictions in his own claims about why he came off the MafiaSSK wagon.

Post 47:

On the bright side, we've got the game going! I don't think it's a particularly good idea to lynch him based on this; he'd have to be the single worst scum player in the entire world - But his play, whether scum or town, has been awful, he's already admitted to lying to the town, and bandwagon jumping, for no reason at all, it doesn't bode well for him really.

Post 57:

I’ve seen this opinion all over these boards and disagree. A mislynch is always bad for town, but can be acceptable if it reveals information. Lynching for bad play, however, makes it way too easy for wagoneers to justify their votes later. IMO, at this stage, the best strategy for dealing with Mafia is to ignore him while we examine others. It’s not like we’ll be short on evidence if we want to string him up later.

Post 60:

I am going to unvote him, but I want to make it very clear that I still think there's a possibility that he's scum, and it's going to take a lot to knock him down my list of suspicious people (especially as he's the only person on it above the base level), I unvote him purely upon agreeing with Ythill's point from his last post.

Post 70:

And I realised, as I stated, that there's a good reason tonot lynch him.Accepting a good argument != scummy

Post 71:

In other words, MafiaSSK had went from an L-2 situation to an L-4 situation where he was nowhere near being lynched. If you still felt that MafiaSSK was the scummiest person above your baseline, then I don't see any reason for you to unvote him and place him at L-5 when keeping pressure on a person you consider scummy might be to your own benefit if you were town.

Post 92:

I see little reason to keep a vote on someone unless I think they should be lynched at that time. He'd had several votes on him, so I don't think he'd have felt under much "pressure" just due to my vote, if several people had unvoted him.

In post 47 Apyadg explicitly states that he does not think it would be a good idea to lynch MafiaSSK based on his actions.

In post 60 Apyadg cites Ythill’s post 57 as his sole reason for removing his vote from MafiaSSK.

In post 70 Apaydg states that he realized, because of Ythill’s post 57, that there was a good reason not to lynch MafiaSSK, and that accepting a good argument was not scummy.

In post 92, replying to Incognito, Apyadg says he sees little reason to keep a vote on someone unless he thinks they should be lynched at the time.

There are lies in here. There have to be.

Because in post 47, before Ythill’s post 57, which “convinced” Apyadg that it would be a bad idea to lynch MafiaSSK, Apyadg said he didn’t think it would be a good idea to lynch MafiaSSK. And yet in Apaydg’s post 70 he says, explicitly, that he realized because of Ythill’s post 57 that there was not a good reason to lynch MafiaSSK.

Because in post 47 Apyadg says it wouldn’t be a good idea to lynch MafiaSSK, but he keeps his vote on MafiaSSK until post 60, when he uses Ythill’s post to justify removing his vote. And then in post 92 he tells Incognito that he sees little reason to keep a vote on someone unless he thinks they should be lynched at the time.

All of the above simply cannot be true. I can’t in good conscience put a vote on Apyadg when he isn’t here to have an opportunity to explain his actions. I explained this a bit in an earlier post where I was hoping for an Apyadg answer, but I wanted to lay it out fully here, since I am outlining my current level of suspicions against others. Apyadg is number two on my list at the moment. But it is still extremely fluid. Regardless, if Apyadg should return to us, I will want him to explain the above.

[Justin Playfair]

Ythill,

I can’t even tell you who I want to lynch at the moment, much less who I want to lynch and who I want killed beside. I have varying degrees of suspicion toward an awful lot of folks right now. I’ve already covered two, and will take a look at hopefully one more tomorrow. At the moment, though, I’m waiting for answers from my first two. And my third may be changing, which says something for my level of certainty. I’m sorry, but right now you’re going to have to put my name with Kuribo’s on your bad list, because I can’t give you the answer you want.

[Justin Playfair]

Incognito,

The thing is, if we have those power roles they wouldn’t have to speak come morning to hang Ythill. Their silence would imply their absence or their consent with events taking their natural course. If either of those roles are in fact present in town, they would have to be in the hands of very clumsy folks in order for a guilty Ythill to force claims.

The only thing I could think of which would make either have to claim over a guilty Ythill would be if scum made a false claim after deciding to risk that there was no one with such a role. I really do think this would logically lead to the scenario I outlined in my last post where mafia would be decimated.

Do you have some reason I am missing for why a doctor or cop would have to claim on morning two if Ythill’s wrong guess or a cop’s investigation proved him guilty?

But you see, if Ythill came up innocent, the cop or doctor would almost certainly have to claim to clear him. Which could lead to the more dire possibilities. Which is why I think the plan looks so bad. Maybe I’m not explaining it well, or maybe I’m missing something.

A scenario that might reasonably link Disciple Slayer to Ythill with this play is possible, but only if you suppose that the game has a godfather and Ythill is him. But in that case, to have gotten to the spot where he is, Ythill would have to be one of the dumbest players in the world. Putting himself of his own volition into a situation where the normal course of events would kill him, and where to have any chance at salvation town would have to adopt an extremely scummy course of action. And however suspicious I have found Ythill’s actions in this game, which is plenty, I don’t think he’s that.

Incognito, I want to ask you a couple questions. If given your preference, would you still prefer a day one lynch of Ythill? And how would finding two bodies in the morning impact your suspicions of him?

[Justin Playfair]

Ythill,

I could buy most of your reasoning in clearing Apyadg, although I think it’s a little…WIFOM. And I’m sorry, I insist on using WIFOM in the manner intended by the great Wallace Shawn (okay, the great William Goldman, but Wallace Shawn said the words). But I just don’t see any way to get from what he writes in post 47 to what he writes in post 92. I could maybe be persuaded enough to believe you changed his honest opinion enough to get him to take his vote off MafiaSSK, but I can’t believe your single post changed his whole view on leaving votes on players unless he was actively driving for a lynch. Especially since nothing in the post of yours he refers to addresses that.

I mean you’re welcome to believe that he really still wanted to lynch MafiaSSK when he wrote post 47, but in that case he was lying about his purposes then. Either way he needs to answer this himself, assuming he ever returns to us. And if he doesn’t, which at this point seems increasingly likely, this is probably a lost case regardless, except as background on his replacement.

One other thing:

Think about how this exchange with Kuribo began. It started with you asking for every player to tell you who they thought you should kill during the night. This was the genesis of the entire exchange.

I didn’t call you on this, because, God help me, I think I’m starting to understand how you think. Maybe from being so suspicious of you for so long, and being forced to confront the prospect that you might be town. But I can see two possible non-scum reasons why you asked for people to do this. I won’t point out what I think they could be now, to preserve whatever value they may have left, but if anyone wants to hear my guesses morning two, and I’m still here to tell them, just ask.

Here’s the thing, though. Neither of them were the reason you would have honestly asked this question, which would have been to gain a consensus from town as to who you should kill. And asking for that is suspicious, because we didn’t choose to kill two people on one day’s knowledge, and trying to force the rest of us to become a part of that choice, which on the face of it is what this request was doing, can also be seen as a way to make us complicit in its results. And asking in the way you did certainly could have given the impression that you wanted the day finished quickly. I mean to get to the person we would want to see you kill at night we would have to first arrive at who we absolutely wanted lynched.

And this is a problem. And maybe it’s only because that pistol’s heavy in your pocket, but you’re playing, if you’re not scum, like someone who is investigating by himself in a town with sheep and wolves. Town has to work together to win, even knowing the bad guys are among us, and secret strategies are not the best way to do this. By their very nature they attempt to misdirect, and since to be effective they have to seem to serve one purpose while actually serving another, they will often seem scummy. And someone is likely to call you out on it at the time you bring it up, even if they don’t intend to lynch you today, because accepting it in silence would imply consent. Pointing out seemingly scummy behavior is town’s job.

No reason to reply to the second part of this. I’m not voting you again today, and I just wanted to point out how your dust-up with Kuribo was born. And thank you.

[Justin Playfair]

Kuribo,

About this:

That said, I can't think of any conceivable reason you'd want to lead the town to believe you're scum by intentionally dropping scumtells. The scum already know you're not one of them if you're town, so there's no point in trying to fool them.

I think you got caught out with some minor scumtells, you made a still-unverifiable claim, and now you're trying to explain away your behavior. As I said, a townie shouldn't be dropping scumtells intentionally to mislead the town. (Since as I said before, the scum can't be mislead)

There is a school of thought that those who are thought most clearly town make the most attractive candidates for a night kill. And that if one has a power role one should not appear “too town” in order to protect that power.

I don’t particularly believe in this school of thought, for reasons which, at the moment, should be quite apparent. But there is that strategy out there.


Incognito,

Thank you for your answers. And thank you for the information about Apyadg.

[Justin Playfair]

Claus,

First let me thank you for calling me timid. My play has been called many things, but timid hasn’t been one of them. If you would be so kind could you give me some examples of my timid behavior? Or of not wanting to dirty my hands?

I know why I discussed possible false claims in this game, given the situation in which we have found ourselves, but I would love to read the three games you mentioned where this was done by scum. Would you mind directing me to those games?

Thank you for any information provided.

[Justin Playfair]

Claus,

Let’s start with this:

How about the fact that even though you are one of the most active posters in the thread, you have only one serious vote in these 15 pages?

XtoXm has made 60 posts and has voted once, for MafiaSSK. Unless I’ve missed something his vote is still there, though MafiaSSK has barely been with us through the last 10 of these 15 pages. You posted this about him:

Xtomx: I like his play. He seems direct with his accusations and his defenses. His vote follows his opinions, and his opinions are consistent. Also, he does not verborrage

I’ve made 31 posts. Can you explain this seeming contradiction in how your opinions of others are formed?

Then this:

You say he is acting odd. You even say that you're unvoting Yth because of this. But you never vote him.

About this:

Well, I won't go as far as to vote MafiaSSK yet, but if we're starting to talk let me

Unvote: ythill

MafiaSSk, you say "Great. So now the votes are tied between me and Xtoxm."

I'm just a little curious here as to why you responded in this way. Because it seems by your wording that you're attempting to suggest that it's as odd/unfair that these votes have piled up on you as on Xtoxm. But these last votes you are getting are because of something you did.

Could you explain your reasoning behind placing the third vote on Xtoxm? What was suspicious if you found Xtoxm suspicious or why you chose Xtoxm to pressure if that was the case?

Now we can start with:

but if we're starting to talk let me

Unvote: ythill

Because see, I think to any fair reading this would make pretty clear that I was taking my vote off Ythill because serious discussion was beginning. I mean, with that being my actual words and all. Instead you choose to try to morph that into me taking my vote off Ythill because I was so suspicious of MafiaSSK.

And you link this to me then not voting MafiaSSK. Which at this point is kind of funny, because first you suggest my words don’t mean what they say to suggest that I unvoted Ythill because I was so suspicious of MafiaSSK, and then you use this interpretation to suggest that it was suspicious that I didn’t vote MafiaSSK.

What makes this particular argument of yours even more interesting (and the reason I quoted my whole post above) is that this post began a series of posts where I demanded answers from MafiaSSK which eventually lead to something none of the votes on him did. Actually, two somethings. I got his OMGUS vote (probably for being so timid), and he eventually actually answered some questions. Some people believe votes are a good way to get answers. I believe questions are the way to get answers and votes are for when I believe I’ve heard enough.

Onto this:

Your post number 7 is a mess. You question Incognito and mention Apy - saying that you want to defend him but you can't? The only think I can make from this post is that you're not taking a position regarding Incognito or Apy.

Yeah, I can see why you didn’t quote any of this post. I won’t bother to quote it all, as it’s rather long, just enough to make clear that you’re blatantly misinterpreting its content:

I’m not really coming to Apyadg’s defense here, because the way he removed his vote from MafiaSSK made me suspect he was just looking for a way out from what he felt was an exposed position and therefore I don’t have an argument with the reasons Charter gave for putting his vote on him. But I have to say that in your last post you point at his initial reason for voting for MafiaSSK in a way that I don’t think is entirely fair.

See, I’m not coming the Apyadg’s defense because his behavior when taking his vote off MafiaSSK seemed suspicious to me. But I wanted to ask Incognito a question about why he was making a comment about why Apyadg initially voted for MafiaSSK. But this is good, because it leads you directly to this:

In your post number 12 you question Apy pretty throughly, and call him oportunist, but don't even FoS him. So what do you think of Apy? Scummy or not scummy? If I say that you think that he is scummy from this post, you can come and say that I'm overstating things. :-/

I’m not even going to bother quoting this post, or my later restating in more detail of my points from it, or my final response (to this point) to Ythill on the subject. I will just ask this question: Does anyone else in town have any doubts as to whether or not I am suspicious of Apyadg?

Claus, your alleged suspicions in regards to my behavior toward Apyadg are completely manufactured. You’re saying, in short, that if, at the end of a post where I make clear exactly what my suspicions are of Apyadg, and exactly why I have them, I don’t vote or write fos at the end I can later somehow pretend I didn’t write all those other words.

And then there is this curiosity from you:

On post 13 you say that you have a "less than benevolent" view of CronX (me), but you never questioned him before. So we can't even use your questioning posts to know who you suspect. The post about MafiaSSK is just as bad. "A mislynch is a mislynch"? Argh.

No, you can’t use my questioning of ChronX. But you can use my words, clearly stated, in thread:

I have a somewhat different take on ChronX than you do. You mention his drive-by attacks on Ho1den above but not those on Incognito. In both cases they seemed to me designed to place the player on the defensive in a manner where they have very little solid to answer, and therefore make themselves seem more defensive. Ho1den didn’t rise to the bait, but Incognito did and ChronX pushed him in a way that made me think more of someone trying to work a player into being lynched than someone trying to find scum. I was hoping to see if ChronX would continue his attack on Incognito after Incognito answered my questions to him, but unfortunately ChronX had stopped any meaningful posting by then. In any case, I have a somewhat less benevolent view of ChronX than you do.

So I said a bit more than that I had a less benevolent view of ChronX than Shteven. I gave reasons for my suspicions and made absolutely clear why I was suspicious. Once again, if you can’t tell I’m suspicious of ChronX by the above it’s because you’ve decided you’re not going to. You know, though, if all I’d said was my view was less benevolent that would have been pretty unclear.

Oh, same with that MafiaSSK bit. Because quoting just a little bit more of this might have given the impression that I was giving a clear response as to why I thought Shteven’s notion that a mis-lynch of MafiaSSK wouldn’t be that bad.

About MafiaSSK: Sure, he might be scum. But his behavior has been so bad as to be largely indecipherable. And a mislynch is a mislynch. The only time they seem permissible to me would be when they would point an absolutely damning finger of guilt at another player. And I sure don’t see that here.

But if all I’d said was a mislynch is a mislynch? Yeah, that would have really made your point.

Now onto the listing of fake claims. My reason for listing them was to rebut what I saw as Incognito wanting to somehow create a connection between Disciple Slayer’s asking for a plan that would force town power roles to out themselves to Ythill. I couldn’t see how Disciple Slayer’s plan would profit scum if Ythill was scum with Disciple Slayer. What I listed seemed necessary to me to show that.

But I find much more interesting the two games you sent me to.

Didn’t expect me to read them, did you?

Because in mini 504 most of the players were discussing fake claims, not just Draux. The game was so specialized in its roles that it demanded it. I won’t comment on those still alive, but Seteal, Night Light, Y and Kilroy also speculated about false claims, on day one, before the claims were made. They are dead. They were town. Funny old thing, you not mentioning that.

And what would be the difference between my bringing up false claims and those of Shaft.ed and Aioqwe? Hmm…could it be that they were both trying to talk the town into making mass role claims? Yeah, it sure was.

Kind of important details there, don’t you think, Claus?

[Justin Playfair]

Apyadg,

Thank you for your answer. My primary question is this. If, as you say in your explanation:

I wasn't entirely sure whether SSK was scum or not. It seemed to me that he was playing very badly, but that would have been true were he scum or town. I was leaning towards scum due to the outright lie to the town, but was not really sure of myself; what justification did I have for really believing he was a bad scum player instead of a bad townie?

Then why did you post this? Because if you were leaning toward MafiaSSK being scum why would you come right out and say:

On the bright side, we've got the game going! I don't think it's a particularly good idea to lynch him based on this; he'd have to be the single worst scum player in the entire world - But his play, whether scum or town, has been awful, he's already admitted to lying to the town, and bandwagon jumping, for no reason at all, it doesn't bode well for him really.

Because in this post you do more than express uncertainty. You say you do not think it would be a good idea to lynch MafiaSSK.

My second question, given your defense, is whether post 92 is or is not representative of your true opinion on gameplay.

[Justin Playfair]

Hmm…

Claus,

Do you REALLY want to start discussing other games in this thread?

Umm…you brought them up.

Your read of those games is wrong. And biased, as you read them wanting to prove the point opposite to mine.

I invite any interested players to read them for themselves. They are Open 44 and Mini 53. Based on what I’ve seen so far in this game, I’m almost sure at least one player, and quite possibly a couple of others, will. I’m comfortable with what they’ll see in them.

Regarding your defense of my "timid" comment, I think you are making my point. Reading your quoting of yourself and the comments in your last post, I see the names of SSK, Apydog, Shteven, Cronx, and yet your vote during most of the game was firmly planted on Ythill. I see you as a butterfly, regarding accusations.

So your point is that I voted for the person I was most suspicious of but continued to scum hunt elsewhere? Okay.

The "myslinch is a myslinch" point that I did is correct, even in context - I criticize you BECAUSE you think that myslinches are always bad to the town. That line is often used to paralize the town, and I have a problem with that.

Well, I didn’t say they were always bad. But I do have a strict interpretation of when they are not, which I stated. But this issue is now you having a different philosophy of the game than I do. Okay. Just out of curiosity, when do you think mislynches are beneficial to town?

And are you REALLY trying to argue that Xtomx is more verbose/less direct than you?

I can’t even argue that Shteven is more verbose than me. I’m only left with Ythill on that score. But that isn’t the statement I was replying to. It was this:

How about the fact that even though you are one of the most active posters in the thread, you have only one serious vote in these 15 pages?

And 60 is a lot more than 30. And my vote came with a complete case and much gnashing of teeth from both me and the person I put it on. While XtoXm’s came early on an easy target and stayed there without any real additional input. For that matter, XtoXm has had some posts that were vague enough other players needed clarification as to what he meant. So the contradiction in your opinions on your initial pbpa still stands.

In short: I argue that you are not positioning yourself, and in response you try to draw me into a semantic war. You want to discuss the details of the posts with me, because you can't really argue with the one, simple, direct point that I make. Please!

Nothing in anything I have posted to you involved semantics. I posted my own words from thread to answer unquoted and minimally quoted points you had raised.

As far as wanting to describe the details of the posts, let me lay this out for you:

You wrote a pbpa with an unsupported accusation of me.

I asked you to give some examples.

You brought up my posts to support the accusation you made in your pbpa.

I quoted those posts to show that they do not support your accusation.

Because you see, if you can’t find evidence in my posts to support your accusation, then there is no basis for the accusation. You are still welcome to make it.

But, that’s the thing, and you’ve done it twice in this post. You seem to want to get to make the accusation and not have it defended against.

I mean you bring up other games and accuse me based on them, then get upset when I reply to you about them. You give your views on my posts, and then when I quote them to show your views are incorrect you act like I’m somehow cheating by defending myself.

I don’t know about positioning myself, which sounds like a rather scummy way of describing the forming of opinions, but I have expressed my opinions clearly throughout the thread. And by the cases I have made it should be clear to anyone reading my posts that Disciple Slayer is currently my number one suspect, and that Apyadg is my current number two. The later might fairly be arrived at by me saying Apyadg was currently my number two suspect. So your final bit in this post…

Instead, how about putting your money where your mouth is, and telling us your current read on the players?

…is just as inaccurate as all the rest of it. I would prefer to wait to vote for Disciple Slayer until he has had a chance to address the points raised against him. I have not liked Apyadg’s response to my case against him nor his recent odd statements concerning scum hunting, most especially considering the fact that he seemed capable of both attack and defense earlier in the game. I might well vote for Apyadg if we do not hear from Disciple Slayer or if Disciple Slayer presents us with a compelling explanation of his actions (which I doubt he will) and Apyadg continues to be as present and unresponsive as he has been. However, since we are looking at possibly three kills today (a lynch and two night kills) I would really like to make as sure as possible that we get at least one of town’s two possible kills right.

I am also concerned about moving forward too quickly when two players (charter and ho1den) have not been with us for the majority of the game and a third (MafiaSSK) has barely been with us since getting into some initial hot water. I am suspicious enough of Disciple Slayer that I am willing to entertain reasons for lynching him before he has had a chance to answer the accusations against him, but they will have to be extremely compelling in order to convince me. Moving the game along will not be that reason, not at this point anyway. I’m in no exceptional hurry to get to night. I can’t think of a single reason why anyone who wasn’t scummy would be.

Claus, your attack on me has been bizarre and illogical enough that I’m tempted to consider it scummy, but I can’t shake the suspicion that you only skimmed my posts when you made your initial pbpa and have since been trying to justify a poorly informed opinion.

[Justin Playfair]

Ythill,

In the game I was in with Shteven there was no differentiation between the corpses left by a vig, the mafia and a serial killer. That was the first time I had been in a game with an SK. Hopefully there will be different methods here, as that would remove all doubt.

[Justin Playfair]

XtoXm,

Oh, this:

Ythill, I think you are acting very suspicous.

And after being asked how, responding with this:

@ Justin: I think it might be a good idea for you and I to reread our spat. I may have confirmed a scumtell on you but that doesn't mean you are mafia. Certain key pieces of damning evidence are missing from a complete case against you, such as signs of partnership between you and the others I suspect. Though I understand that it is not an argument, I assure you that I am town, and wonder if you, through honest contemplation, can find the holes in your own case.

This

And there was this:

I'd be happy to go along with that...if you die and your mafia, then Ythill is twlling the truth, if your town, we can lynch Ythill.

Which in addition to setting up a false premise, also led you to have to clarify your position with this:

No, I want to lynch mafiaSSK today. This will have no effect on what Ythill said. Ok so he could be vig and be wrong. But if he kills you at night and you are mafia we know he is telling the truth

And finally this, which is still sort of ongoing:

If DS is the way votes are going I'll be happy to swap my vote.

And although I side with you on this one, as you’d already posted:

Top suspects
#1 SSK
#2 DS

I would participate in a lynch for those 2, at this point.

It did leave room for misinterpretation.

Mind you, XtoXm, I am not making a case against you based on any of the above. Except for not being willing to go into more detail with your first accusation against Ythill I don’t find any of them particularly noteworthy in determining whether you’re town or scum. That one could have been a case of trying to lead the town without involving yourself, basically shouting “hey, look at this post” so others could then carry the ball.

But in terms of judging Claus’ initial pbpa, where he accused me based on my having a vote on Ythill for what he judged too long, although I was one of the most active players in the thread, and on what he tried to morph that attack into, which was my not being direct, it is instructive. Because in the same initial pbpa he said that he found you direct and that your vote followed your suspicions.

Because your vote has followed you to only one location, and it has stayed there throughout the game, in spite of the person on whom that vote was cast being mostly absent. And you have made statements that later had to be clarified. That is less a commentary on you than it is Claus. You did not misrepresent what you have done. He did.

[Justin Playfair]

Thank you, Shteven, for trying to keep the thread going while we wait for answers/replacements.

[Justin Playfair]

Okay, guess I’ll weigh in on this.

First on the meta. I’ll never say never, but I haven’t used a meta attack yet and I don’t like them much when other people do. I accept it’s part of the game, but it doesn’t seem pure to me somehow. Maybe as I play more I’ll change my mind. In this specific case I think it’s pretty useless, and I say that being about as suspicious of Apyadg as I could possibly be. If you only have one other game to go by, and Apyadg flaked in that one after he came under pressure, and he flaked in this one when he came under pressure, the only thing you can say for sure is that he flakes under pressure. Even if he’s scum in the other game it wouldn’t tell us anything meaningful about his behavior here because you don’t have a control case. In my opinion this, if it has any impact on our deliberations here at all, works ever so marginally in Apyadg’s favor. If he’s flaking out in other places then there’s every possibility he’s just a flake.

Still think he’s a bad guy, though, for the other reasons.

Now onto Disciple Slayer. I would really like to hear something from him before placing my vote. I am particularly reluctant about the possibility of lynching anyone before they have a chance to claim. But I doubt even that would turn me to Apyadg as today’s best choice at this point. In consideration of Ythill’s post above I’m going to wait until tomorrow before I place my vote.

[Justin Playfair]

Well, this makes it at least seem like we need five replacements?

You know, I’ve considered it scummy to this point when someone posted lynch the lurkers, but I think I’m beginning to appreciate the level of frustration that gets you there as a player. This is two of the four games I’m in that have been effectively halted by folks dropping out, and I just got killed in a third, so I’m down to one functioning game at this point.

And you can’t effectively find scum when half the town is missing. Sure, I think Disciple Slayer is scum. I didn’t want to lynch him without giving him a chance to speak in his defense, but if he’s never coming back to do so, then how, even if we do get a replacement for him, do we hang onto the very specific thread of what he had done to this point in the game? We don’t, that’s what.

I don’t want to abandon. Shteven and I were just in a game that was abandoned, and it sucks. I’m having fun, and I’m specifically having fun playing with the mix of people who have been doing the majority of the posting here, Incognito, Ythill and Xtoxm, and the three folks who have been kind enough to replace, Kuribo, Shteven and Claus.

Unless we were extremely lucky, the number of modkills that would have to be done if we don’t get replacements would likely unbalance the game in one direction or the other so badly it wouldn’t be worth playing. And if we really do need five replacements in a batch I suspect we won’t get them.

I don’t know if four is much better, but I’m willing to take the small leap of faith required to make it that number. He was my number one anyway, so…

Vote: Disciple Slayer

Maybe if we’re lucky the bad guys will be nice enough to take the number down to three. At this point all of us who are here have thrown so much suspicion back and forth at each other that there’s at least some hope the scum might reason that a replacement for one of the drop-outs could come in looking more town than any of us. Tempted to ask Ythill to use his possible kill to take out another, but I think all his top suspects are among the present, and the vig kill is too potent a weapon to use for random brush clearing. I wouldn’t have voted out a random no-show either, and so I can’t ask Ythill to use his kill, if he has one, in that way.

Anyway, there’s my two cents. I’m going to look for a game or two to replace into now, in an attempt to accrue some good karma.

[Justin Playfair]

Let’s take a look at Claus’ Christmas list.

If we look at the three people on Claus’ scummy list who posted after he made his initial naughty and nice list we see a marked difference in tone between how he responded to me and Incognito and how he responded to Apyadg. We have to be careful reading too much into this, because both Incognito and I came back on him some, which may have spurred his later attack posts, but his second post to Apyadg is still worth noting because it was so different in tone:

Welcome back to the game! I agree with the others that asking which subjects you should reply to, and which are already "closed" don't look good for you.

If you were asking a honest question, I feel that the best way you could return to the game is, instead of concentrating in specific episodes, to write what you think about the different players, and point out who you feel is scummy. That will give us a good "snapshot" of your position, and probably will allow you to put your thoughts about the game in order as well.

Compared to his other actions toward people he found “suspicious”, this seems remarkably gentle. It could have just been his way of not getting into a fight with another player. In itself it doesn’t raise my suspicions of Apyadg, but it doesn’t lower them either.

As for MafiaSSK and Disciple Slayer, it was/is easy to be suspicious of either of them. I’m not sure how much the appearance of either of them on his list can tell us at this point.

Unlisted: Ho1den seems an odd choice for unlisted because he was considered so town by others. It’s hard to draw absolute conclusions here but to me this may be just one more tiny bit of evidence suggesting Ho1den is town. Kuribo is in here, too. I may be somewhat biased because I have a pretty town read on him myself, but the tone Claus used in relation to Kuribo makes me think he was trying to set him up for later attacks.

As for Claus’ nice list, the inclusion of Ythill, at this point, seems pretty obvious. No reason to cast suspicion in his direction if you’re planning to kill him later. Putting charter in nice while Ho1den was in unlisted bothers me but I get all wifomy whenever I try to figure out what it would mean. It could be trying to make a scum buddy seem more innocent. It could be a case where he figured a clean initial read on charter could always be overridden by a “scummy” revelation his replacement would make, but that the initial clean read would provide cover. Just not enough there.

The other two are more interesting. I found Ythill’s initial attacks on Northjayhawk to be pretty opportunistic and not entirely fair. And when Northjayhawk flaked here he flaked everywhere, which argues that he might be just a flake. Shteven hasn’t raised any overtly red flags for me with his play, and Claus’ one line assessment of Shteven doesn’t seem that far off to me. A town read on Shteven may have seemed safe to Claus because Ythill was circling Incognito at that point and Shteven wasn’t getting any attention from the rest of us. But it might also have been Claus’ way to try to subtly push Ythill away from a Shteven night kill. Claus didn’t seem the subtle sort to me, though.

What bothers me about Claus’ read on Xtoxm is that it basically misrepresented Xtoxm in nearly every aspect of his play while also labeling him as a solidly town player. My own read on Xtoxm has been pretty middle of the road, but given what Claus posted and what we now know about Claus I do want to ask a few questions.

Xtoxm,

First, there is the false conclusion you reached about what to do in the event of Ythill killing Incognito. Even after being corrected about your thought that an innocent Incognito dead by Ythill’s hand would prove Ythill scum, and after seeming to acknowledge that you understood this, you returned to posting the same basic statement again. Here’s the sequence:

I'd be happy to go along with that...if you die and your mafia, then Ythill is twlling the truth, if your town, we can lynch Ythill.

No, I want to lynch mafiaSSK today. This will have no effect on what Ythill said. Ok so he could be vig and be wrong. But if he kills you at night and you are mafia we know he is telling the truth

If he is scum I think it's a bit of a stupid plan cos if you die night one and come up town i'd just be pushing for Ythill's lynch until he's lynched.

Could you explain your thinking during this sequence of posts?

I’m also curious as to why you only posted…

This

…in response to why you felt Ythill’s call to me to reassess our positions on each other was suspicious. The above really does look like putting a neon sign over a player you thought was weak and then stepping back to let others make the kill. Could you explain why you never elaborated on this post, and why you gave such a non-specific reason for your first expressed suspicion of Ythill?

[Justin Playfair]

Well,

First, I guess I should comment on the claims.

Considering everything that has been said by everyone I can’t see an angle from which Incognito’s claim is likely to be false. I wish he hadn’t made it today because after the events of last night Incognito himself was one of the least likely lynches for the day and I don’t think we would have gone after MafiaSSK as a top suspect based solely on his previous activities. I just hate MafiaSSK suddenly reappearing to say “uh-huh, that’s right” but given the angles I don’t think it diminishes Incognito’s claim.

That leaves me, Xtoxm, Apyadg, Charter/Gorgon, Shteven, Ho1den and Kuribo as possible suspects. I’ll leave it for others to comment on me, but here are my (I promise very brief) thoughts on everyone else:

Kuribo. I think his play has been solid town. He was suspicious of Ythill, who turned out to be the vig, but then so were most of us, at one time or another. I think he hit Xtoxm a little too hard on Xtoxm’s being willing to shift his vote from MafiaSSK to Disciple Slayer, but I think the impression he has of Xtoxm that led him to jump on it is based on fairly compelling and suspicious elements of Xtoxm’s play. Among the non-claimed Kuribo seems cleanest to me.

Ho1den. And let me say that I hate that my next most townie person hasn’t been here for so long. I had some questions about Ho1den early in relation to his behavior around Incognito and Xtoxm. He answered my questions well, though, and his suspicions were spread out and well thought out. I didn’t like him deciding who I was more interested in between Incognito and Xtoxm, and that was just one of a couple cases of him deciding someone else shared his suspicions in a way that seemed designed to add weight to his case. It’s a pretty small thing, but it, along with his long absence and some lingering not quite content feelings I have about his initial reactions to MafiaSSK/Xtoxm/Incognito keep him out of my least suspected spot.

Shteven. Ultimately, the really bad thing in Northjayhawk’s play wasn’t what Ythill came after him on. It was the OMGUS attack about Ythill’s list pointing out targets for scum. It was just so desperate, almost to the point of being hysterical. I’ve liked almost everything Shteven’s posted, with the exception of his defense of his changing position on the possibility of a MafiaSSK lynch, which still seems a little slippery to me.

Charter. Really not that much to go on here. Charter coasts behind other players a couple times, and you could interpret some of his posts as backing what looks like the strong dog in the fight instead of honestly forming opinions. I don’t like the way he swore me up early even while ignoring the case I made which made him swear me up. I don’t care for the maybe-maybe nots he delivers on MafiaSSK, Northjayhawk and Incognito, nor that he had to be prompted a little to even give those.


Xtoxm. Holding on too long to the serial killer idea. Holding on too long to the lynch Ythill if he kills Incognito and he comes up town idea. Holding on too long to his vote on MafiaSSK without ever poking around too much elsewhere. His desultory attack on Ythill, and I mean all of it, not just the “This.” post. And the fact he had to be prodded into making it at all. “Scum pair”. His too quick and whole-hearted acceptance of all the claims and Ythill’s post-mortem reasoning. I don’t like any of the previous. But all of it seems as likely to be the result of a new player getting his legs as scumminess. Based on the evidence in thread I don’t feel like I have any choice but to put him in this number two slot, but I’m not sure that he’s not here by default, because I don’t have more to go on with Charter and Ho1den.

Apyadg. I like his reasoning for, and his defense of, his initial vote on MafiaSSK. I hate everything else he’s done, and have pointed it out often enough that I feel like pointing it out again here would amount to spamming. Put me in isolation and they’ll be easy to find.

Vote Apyadg

Let’s see if he comes to visit again if he gets close to lynch.

[Justin Playfair]

Kuribo,

You stated earlier that you believed that MafiaSSK could be a mason with Incognito, but not scum. Have you changed your mind about this?

[Justin Playfair]

Kuribo,

Okay, now I’m a bit confused. You say:

No, I said that if Incog is telling the truth (and a mason), then Mafia would likely be his true partner. If Incog is lying and scum, then Mafia is likely not his partner.

What I said in a nutshell is that if Incog is scum instead of Mason, he probably hasn't outted his partner.

I don't believe the claim because it came with nearly no pressure and very early on Day 2. There was absolutely no strategic reason for him to not only claim, but also to out his partner. (If he has done that)

But given this, since MafiaSSK has now confirmed that he is Incognito’s partner, wouldn’t that mean that following the reasoning above you should now believe the claim?

If not, could you explain why your thinking on this specific part of the equation has changed?

MafiaSSK jumping in out of nowhere to confirm the claim would have made me more suspicious of it, but I have a feeling I may have been reading too much into your original post on the matter.

And are you still around, Incognito? You haven’t posted since January 29.

[Justin Playfair]

Kuribo,

This does seem a pretty big jump for a vote. Do you have anything else that makes you vote Shteven? Because he's been making this same assumption throughout the thread.

[Justin Playfair]

Sorry, been a bit busy rl and trying to get my ducks in a row for the game I replaced in.

A couple of quick thoughts.

Hjallti,

I sort of agree with what Kuribo said about Ythill making it onto Claus' nice list, though I'm not sure why it matters much at this point. I think instead of being absolutely confident they could night kill Ythill, the real point was that a look at the landscape would have told Claus that there was no way he could have pushed a successful lynch on Ythill day one. So it probably didn't hurt to slap someone he knew was town on his nice list.

Jester,

Welcome to the game. As a game warming present I am pleased to:

Unvote

I'm not letting go of the behavior of Apyadg, but my current vote was on him for the most part to see if I could bait him into making another appearance, so I don't think it's appropriate anymore.

[Justin Playfair]

Ack,

It's depressing how often I do that.

Unvote

[Justin Playfair]

Well, we’re certainly speculating about a lot of power roles here, aren’t we? Telling the cop what to do, wondering if a nurse tried to protect Ythill or a role blocker kept him from making a kill. Seems like we’re almost assuming a serial killer in some quarters.

Sorry, but this doesn’t help us find scum, and I’m coming closer and closer to Kuribo’s position that there is something more than a little suspicious about the endless speculation.

First up. Ythill killed Claus. Why do I say this with near absolute certainty? Well, as Incognito already pointed out, here’s why:

Woot! Go town!

That’s not the death post of someone who had his one and only kill role blocked. Ythill probably shouldn’t have thrown in the Woot!, but he did and I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t there. And if someone can come up with some other reason for his ebullience, give it to me and maybe then I’ll reconsider.

Now about it being “odd” that Ythill ended up targeting Claus. It’s never seemed odd to me, but I didn’t post about it before because it seems pretty evident from his last post. In that last post Ythill points out that there are clear connections between me and Incognito. And in fact I wasn’t very suspicious of Incognito the first day. I thought he was a cop, which doesn’t say much for my powers of deduction. Ythill also thought that either Claus or I had to be scum because of his case against me and my responses to him. So he killed Claus, I would guess, because he thought that if he did so and Claus was town he’d given the town their next two lynches. It would have been the best “wrong” choice he could make. And of course if he killed a bad guy he got rid of scum. If he was wrong and killed Incognito or Shteven it would have given town much less to work with. Important to remember though, that just because Ythill, based on his posts, may have thought all this it doesn’t mean he was right about the implications.


Hjallti,

I’ll be interested in what you have to give us when you come back on your feelings about players and their actions as opposed to speculation about what roles might be present.

[Justin Playfair]

Shteven,

Also, I've got a proposal. It seems like half of us are ready to swear by Claus' list, and the other half think it's useless. I'd like to see people start making cases based on what he said, rather than what group their target was in.

The first part of this seems an odd overstatement. Maybe you’re just annoyed with the discussion of Claus’ list, but I haven’t seen anyone willing to swear by it. And I don’t think anyone has said it’s entirely useless either. As for your proposal I would be happy to take a turn looking at Claus’ naughty and nice cases.

Naughty List: Apyadg, MafiaSSK, Justin Playfair, Incognito:

Claus hit at me hard for a variety of reasons. I discussed possible fake claims and he said he’d seen scum do that in other games. I was timid and I was seeking to paralyze the town. Finally he tried to present the way I was defending myself as scummy.

Claus goes after Incognito pretty hard too. I noticed that Claus downplayed the way ChronX had attacked Incognito. At the time it seemed, like a lot of Claus’case against me, the product of not really reading the thread. Some of ChronX’s attacks were backhanded enough that skimming might not have made it clear. ChronX threw in a meta-attack at Incognito, in the same way he did on me.

Claus on MafiaSSK: In retrospect something along the lines of “this guy could be easy to lynch sometime”.

Claus’ treatment of Apyadg is extremely gentle, given his handling of me and Incognito. Even after Apyadg made his extremely terrible post about scum hunting, this is what Claus posted:

Welcome back to the game! I agree with the others that asking which subjects you should reply to, and which are already "closed" don't look good for you.

If you were asking a honest question, I feel that the best way you could return to the game is, instead of concentrating in specific episodes, to write what you think about the different players, and point out who you feel is scummy. That will give us a good "snapshot" of your position, and probably will allow you to put your thoughts about the game in order as well.

Claus called Kuribo and Ho1den “unlisted”. But given what he said about them, and especially given his subsequent behavior toward Kuribo this feels to me more like two more naughtys. Damns Kuribo with faint praise about his initial list and then goes strangely overboard with his WTF reasons. Has little to say about Ho1den that would define a serious intention on his part but still overplays a little the possible suspiciousness of what most would call asking questions or placing a vote on someone for pressure.

Claus has almost nothing to say about Charter, but still puts him on his “nice” list.

Claus puts Shteven on his nice list for “playing solid” and being “explicit in his position regarding other players”. There are no subsequent words from Claus on the topic of Shteven.

Claus says that Xtoxm is direct, consistent, and true to his opinions. He states that he likes Xtoxm’s play.

My take on Claus’ words against those other than me.

The case against Incognito and the dirt on Kuribo look like they had serious intent to me. And he goes after Kuribo for circling in on Xtoxm.

Hard to tell about Ho1den.

Charter and Shteven are more interesting, because given the kind of attacks Claus was making on others there was certainly enough in their posts to fling some dirt their way.

Claus’ gentle post to Apyadg, with its passive “I agree with others” and subsequent coaching seems more odd. Kuribo wasn’t even on his naughty list and he went after him a lot harder than this, and for far less reason.

Xtoxm. Well, I had already pointed out the strange misstatements about Xtoxm in Claus’ description of “nice” Xtoxm. I won’t do them all again here because of the already formidable length of this post. Put me in isolation and you’ll be able to see them. On the whole, now that Claus is dead, his statements swearing up Xtoxm seem almost too clumsy and obvious to trust as proof that Xtoxm was scum. But this seems the strangest “nice” entry, based on the justifications given for it.

Before I go farther, though, I would like to see what some other folks think about the specifics of what Claus wrote. And I want to ask you a question, Shteven. My posts to Claus and Xtoxm about what I saw as the inaccurate contradictions in Claus’ opinions about me and Xtoxm were just sitting up there in thread. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then, so it seems quite possible that you weren’t thinking about that discussion when you made this request, but since you’re under a little bit of pressure right now it might be possible that this was your way of wanting to move it elsewhere. So could you give us your version of what you’ve requested from the rest of us? And could you explain more fully why you decided to make this specific request (not a request for us to move onto other topics, but a request to make cases based on what Claus posted) at this time?

[Justin Playfair]

Jester,

About your questions to me. Yeah, I am mostly suspicious of everybody. But I’m a little curious about the notion that I’ve positioned myself to go to war with anyone at any time. My behavior on day one led Ythill to suspect that Incognito and I were scum buddies, and I’ve barely done more than ask Kuribo to clarify his position on something. Certainly I went pretty hard against your predecessor and Ythill, I sure made a case against DS, here on day two I’ve been more suspicious of Xtoxm, and I can see where it could be construed that I laid the groundwork for an attack against Shteven, but I’ve barely taken a pass at Charter/Gorgon or Ho1den/Hjallti. In my defense neither were here very much until replacements. In a greater sense (and especially clear, I know, if you’ve metaed me) I do tend to suspect everyone, and sometimes (though I don’t think in this game) it diminishes my ability to effectively scum hunt.

Oh, and I’m not the SK, nor do I think it’s likely we have one. We should know for sure tonight, though.

Just a couple things about other things you’ve said:

You mention a couple times that you found Ythill’s clearing of Ho1den to be odd. But since we now know Ythill was town why would you characterize it this way as opposed to baseless or perhaps incorrect or something along those lines? Or do you see some possible ulterior motive in Ythill’s statements regarding Ho1den?

I also noticed Hjallti skipping day one and almost commented on it, but I can’t figure a reason why this would benefit scum in general or a scum-Hjallti in particular. Given the kind of neutral and technical opinions Hjallti evinced about day two it seems unlikely he would have felt forced to give any real conclusions about day one behavior either, so I rejected the thought of him not wanting to be pinned down to a position. So odd, yes, but if you have a scummier interpretation of this I’d be interested in hearing it.

Earlier you suggested you would be writing something about Xtoxm in your post #3. What happened that made him fall off your scum list, if he did?

Thanks for any answers.

[Justin Playfair]

Shteven,

I don't see any cohesive case against Kuribo here. I haven't been willing to join in on his or Jester's cases because they don't seem nearly as compelling to me as the ones against XtoXm or Apyadg/Jester (emphasis on Apyadg) but this looks like unmitigated OMGUS, and combined with your OMGUSy reply to Jester it just smells bad. If you hadn't done the same sort of thing to others (including me) when you were being attacked in the first try at the New C9 I think I'd be voting for you now. Instead, I'd really like to see a real, substantive case against Kuribo, if you have one. And I just finished rereading him again, so I'll be curious as to just what it is. Kuribo's attacks against you have been overreaching and aggressive in a way that suggest someone looking for scum tells in everything someone does once that someone has tweaked his suspicions. But so have his attacks on nearly everyone he's gone up against, and you found him town enough until you were their object.

Thank you.

[Justin Playfair]

Incognito,

You're absolutely sure that MafiaSSK is your mason partner, right? And please, I know how things can make it hard to post for awhile, but I, for one, would really appreciate your participation today.

Given this recent turn I'm going to do an analysis on Kuribo in isolation, because I'm really not feeling this. I'm sort of about to be lynched in another game, though, so it may not be until the day after tomorrow (though I'll shoot for tomorrow).

[Justin Playfair]

The promised reevaluation of Kuribo. Let’s start with the first line of the first post of substance Kuribo made:

First off, you guys should know that I tend to be very aggressive.

And this little bit of self-meta has proven to be absolutely accurate. Does this mean that Kuribo’s aggressiveness is a town-tell? No. But it does give perspective to what might otherwise seem somewhat reaching attacks Kuribo has made. This is part of a replacement recap post. I liked it a lot at the time, and I still like it, though events have proven nearly all of Kuribo’s conclusions wrong. Why do I like it? I was thinking the same things, especially about Ythill and Northjayhawk.

Kuribo posts this almost immediately. And I like it.

EBWOP- Actually, replace Ho1den with SSK in that top four. SSK is way scummier than Ho1den.

This may be a play style thing, but as someone who tends to suspect a lot of people, and who often on second or third thought disagrees with his own lists even before much additional information has come in, this makes me feel that Kuribo’s suspicions are honest. It’s an unforced change, and it is supported by his previous, lengthy post.

What follows this is a string of posts revolving around Ythill. And this has been mentioned as evidence against Kuribo, but it just doesn’t play that way. There’s a very simple, one-line reason why, clearly posted by Kuribo:

My gut tells me he's lying, but it also says Disciple Slayer is scummier and we can sort Ythill on Day 2.

So Kuribo is being suspicious of Ythill, and pushing his suspicion aggressively. But if he was doing it in a scummy fashion he wouldn’t be willing to sort it out on day two, not when he would know that Ythill wasn’t scum, that there was every chance we would be looking at two bodies in the morning and Ythill would be largely safe from any sort of day two bandwagon.

Now, alternatively, if Kuribo was scum planning on killing Ythill on night one he wouldn’t have pushed Ythill’s lynch, but then why all the suspicion? This just doesn’t play very cleanly as scummy behavior whichever direction you look at it from. The best Kuriboscum cases that could be pushed from this interaction is that he was looking for an opening on Ythill but was content to do him during the night, or that he didn’t want to seem to be accepting Ythill’s case too easily. But that’s pure WIFOM, taking what seem on the surface as town reactions and just deciding they are skillful scummy ones.

There is the incident of the “false quote”. This is an easy gotcha’ on Kuribo, but the fact that he overstated what Xtoxm had said seems perfectly in line with his other play. He ran with one possible interpretation of what Xtoxm had said. Are there possible scummy motivations behind doing this? Sure, and it makes sense to keep them in mind. But was his reaction perfectly plausible as town? Yes.

But then comes a rather peculiar change, beginning with this:

And as for your second question, I've had a bit of an epiphany about you, and if I'm right, you'd be smart to just let it go for the time being.

This ends a rather lengthy period in which Kuribo had been pursuing Xtoxm. Shortly thereafter Kuribo votes Shteven, his only given reason being that Shteven assumes the number of scum in the game.

One reason this is odd is that Shteven did this before without attracting Kuribo’s attention. Another reason this is odd is that when I asked Kuribo what his other reasons were he answered, in part:

Then, as Xtoxm (who I've disagreed vehemently on many occasions with) pointed out, Shteven and Claus didn't seem to interact with one another--- and for that matter, I've noticed that when they did, it was a bit "in passing:"

But Kuribo had already posted this, in answer to precisely that charge against Shteven:

But lack of interaction is a null-tell.

So this appears to be a direct contradiction.

Kuribo also points out as suspicious a post Shteven made in which he said that not too much store should be placed in Claus’ naughty and nice list. But he references this post from Shteven:

As for looking over the list, it's a good idea, but I'd go about it a slightly different way. Scum usually hinge their bets on such lists; so it's likely the the other scum are spread out on the list. Focusing on just the nice or just the naughty won't help much.

Which seems like pretty good, even self-evident, advice. So just a few questions:

Kuribo, how do you justify going from calling the lack of interaction between Shteven and Claus a non-tell to using it as one of your reasons for suspecting him?

What was the epiphany that led you to no longer suspect Xtoxm?

What about Shteven’s initial statement about Claus’ list which you quote above seemed scummy, if, as you later said, you didn’t believe that Claus would have placed his scum all in one section?

Even with these questions, however, I am puzzled by the votes on Kuribo. I like his answers to Hjallti, and I like the way he called out Jester on the possibility of allowing a mislynch of MafiaSSK. His attack on Shteven is no more aggressive than the attack he made on Ythill even while stating that he didn’t intend to push for a lynch on day one, or on Xtoxm. I’m not sure what to make of MafiaSSK’s vote on him, and Shteven is OMGUSy enough in general that I’m only a little suspicious of his vote, but I don’t like Hjallti’s vote at all.

More as soon as I can, sorry about the length (again) and thank you, Kuribo, for any answers.

[Justin Playfair]

Hjallti,

Nearly every post you’ve made since you entered has rung alarm bells for me.

Just a few things:

Suggesting that a (theoretical) cop use his investigation on a (reasonably acceptably) claimed mason is directing the (theoretical) cop’s actions, even if you include a caveat. What town purpose do you believe would be served by using the night two investigation on a claimed (and confirmed by claimed partner) mason?

Can you in any way justify with pertinent quotes the following statement with Kuribo’s actual actions?

Asks fot Xtomx to claim SK. This is really unhelpful for town and distracting. kuribo is in my eyes the one that continues the discussion about SK and is distracting town here

This also bothers me quite a bit:

@kuribo, could you clearify why you treath the two statements allow so different (zie comments regarding 7-10)?
"Never claim unless as last resort"
"A not counterclaimed power role should not be lynched"

Because Kuribo pointed out that day two would sort out Ythill. He was not pushing for a day one Ythill lynch. You even quote Kuribo’s post about this later and morph lynching the power role into attacking the power role. By that same token I also broke the rules above on day one, probably worse than Kuribo did, but you haven’t found my doing so strange.

If Shteven turns up town a lot of people are probably going to be looking pretty closely at Kuribo tomorrow. But what you’ve done today is exactly what I would expect you to do if you knew Shteven was town, setting up his accuser for tomorrow. So if we are making a bad lynch, Hjallti, it won’t be Kuribo I look at first.

[Justin Playfair]

Some quick thoughts, just in case.

If Shteven comes up town tomorrow grill Hjallti and Jester. They both coasted behind a bigger target today, Jester behind Kuribo, Hjallti behind Shteven. And please take a very close look at Xtoxm, because this would have been the second mislynch for which he was the primary cheerleader.

If Shteven comes up scum don’t reflexively jump on Hjallti, because I don’t think a scum Hjallti would be clumsy enough to play as he has today if Shteven was his scum partner. This is a little tougher, but Gorgon might be a good place to look first.

If both MafiaSSK and Incognito are alive tomorrow and Shteven is town…

If there is a cop out there, maybe tomorrow night’s investigation should be one of them.
If there isn’t a cop, town mislynches again tomorrow, and MafiaSSK and Incognito are still alive the following morning, it might be time to reevaluate Jester’s notion of stringing up MafiaSSK. At the very least, the intact pair of them should not be allowed to make it to endgame.

Hopefully none of the above advice will be necessary.

[Justin Playfair]

So, Shteven,

I hunted you as hard as I’ve ever hunted anyone in the first try at the New C9. And it was for pretty much the same sort of scum tells that you’re showing here. And you were the doctor. But even so, there are some things you have done over the last part of your defense that I can’t quite add together to make four.

I'd like to rate your comment as flamebait, if the forums supported that feature. But I'm really starting to wonder if scum would be so ballsy as to keep making such antagonistic, obviously questionable statements. Maybe it's just how you play, as Justin reminded us, you did claim to be aggressive from the start. I'm not certain who our scum are, but right now I'd be comfortable with a Kuribo or Xtoxm lynch, and since the deadline is a mere two days from now, I'll leave my vote on you unless Xtoxm's wagon takes off.

See, the whole of your case against Kuribo seems to be that he’s suspicious of you in ways you don’t like. I don’t like some of them either, but if you look at patterns they are in line with his previous play and it is hard to see his previous play as having benefits for scum. In fact the only things either you or Hjallti have put into play against Kuribo are either extremely questionable interpretations of past events or based on him coming after you. Now this may be a play style issue, but I don’t discount all return attacks on accusers. I do, however, largely discount return attacks on accusers that are based pretty completely on the fact that they are accusing you.

I also absolutely hate the last line of the above quote. What this says to me is that you’ll move your vote to whoever gives you the best chance of surviving. I appreciate that when you’re on defense the way you’ve been it can be difficult to find the time or energy to scum hunt, but that doesn’t excuse what I see in that last bit. It seems to portray the most opportunistic survival strategy, and that just doesn’t play as town behavior to me.

And here’s the thing. Even though you got pretty OMGUSy against me in the new C9, you never got to the point of casting a vote on me. In this game you’ve thrown votes back at both Ythill and Kuribo. I didn’t really pick up on that day one with Ythill because I was so suspicious of Ythill it made sense to me that anyone would vote for him. But now it’s two in a row. And the thing is, neither of them went as hard against you here before you voted them as I did there.

Well, as Kuribo doesn't seem to be getting lynched, I'll make a last ditch attempt to suggest Xtoxm.

Vote: Xtoxm

If this seems scummy, keep in mind I have 100% confidence that I'm the wrong lynch.

Even then I’m not sure I would be willing to pull the lever without this last jump to Xtoxm. Because there’s no way to identify you switching your vote to him as anything but looking for an acceptable target. It does seem scummy to me. Maybe you’re just a selfish townie, but at this point I’m having a hard time believing it. Being 100% sure you’re the wrong lynch is no reason to jump your vote to someone based on them being an easy target.

I’m not going to hammer you now because I’ll honor Incognito’s request that Jester be given a chance to chime in, but I’ll be checking the thread again before deadline.

[Justin Playfair]

Well, here’s how I see it.

We have seven people left in town and (probably) one scum. We lynch wrong today, the scum night kill goes off, and we have five people left tomorrow. We lynch wrong tomorrow, the scum night kill goes off, and we have three people left and a clear lynch or lose. Everything below operates on the idea that we have only one scum left:

We have two claimed players (Incognito and MafiaSSK) who I don’t think any of us are willing to lynch right now. If I’m wrong about this someone please correct me.

We have one claimed player (Gorgon) who is currently absolutely unconfirmed. I want to hear Kuribo’s input on this claim before I go too far down the road as to whether I believe it or not. But I do believe this:

If Gorgon’s claim is not countered (and the only one left who could do so is Kuribo) it would be foolish to lynch Gorgon today. Here are the reasons why:

If Gorgon is a cop he is most likely dead tonight. And we are then guaranteed to have at least one (at that point, if one of the masons is the next night’s kill, absolutely confirmed) mason in the final three. This is a clear benefit to town. If we lynch Gorgon today and he is the cop scum could kill our two masons, should they survive that long.

If Gorgon is not killed:

He stands a one in three chance of coming back with a guilty verdict tomorrow. If we lynch based on his investigation we win, no matter what happens. Either Gorgon found scum or Gorgon is scum.

This likely means that a GorgonScum would come back with an innocent tomorrow. There is a two in three chance that a GorgonCop would anyway. But here’s the thing:

If we only have one remaining scum, the person Gorgon finds innocent is innocent. Because either Gorgon is scum or Gorgon is telling the truth, and if Gorgon is scum the person he clears is (if there is only one remaining scum) town.

Now if scum doesn’t kill a power role there’s a one in three chance Gorgon comes back with another investigation on a dead man. In that case I think we would have to lynch Gorgon, but we’d already be guaranteed of a mason in the final three.

If no power roles die and Gorgon comes back with an innocent it’s as good as a guilty. We lynch the non-claimed who wasn’t found innocent. If he is innocent we lynch Gorgon at the end.

In short, there is considerable possible gain in not lynching Gorgon today, and managed correctly, there is almost no possible downside. Unless, of course, you’re scum and have only two night kills left with three claimed roles.

There are two things that keep the above from being foolproof, of course. One would be the possibility that we have a godfather, which would make a GorgonCop impotent. The other would be that we have four scum, which is theoretically possible. The Wiki mentions three or four scum in a mini. And our situation, with a doctor, a vig, two masons and a cop, might just warrant four scum.

But here’s the thing:

What makes it seemingly possible that we could have four scum in this game is ALL of the above power roles. If Incognito and MafiaSSK are not masons would it make sense to have four scum in a game with only a cop, vig and doc? By the way, that question isn’t rhetorical. If anyone here has experience with a four scum mini please tell us what the balance was like. It doesn’t seem likely to me that would be enough to warrant four scum, but I’ve never been in a four scum mini.

And, if we have two more scum who are NOT Incognito and MafiaSSK then two out of five of the rest of us are scum. If we came to believe this to be the case we would be back to trying to find scum the old fashioned way, because we couldn’t dare to put any trust in anything Gorgon said tomorrow. The question we have to ask ourselves then (and hopefully one someone who has played more than me can answer) is whether two masons, a doc and a vig would warrant four scum.

So the decisions we would have to make tomorrow, would be, at worst:

Do we believe four scum are likely in a game with a vig, a cop and a doc? This would mean we would have to look closely at Incognito and MafiaSSK.

Do we believe four scum are likely in a game with a vig, a doc and two masons? This would mean that we could trust nothing Gorgon tells us, or use any of the above strategies, because Gorgon, if we lynched badly today, could tell us pretty much anything he wanted to tomorrow.

Either way, though, if there is no counter to Gorgon’s claim, I see no town reason to lynch him today. The worst thing leaving Gorgon alive today would do, so far as I can see, is make us decide tomorrow if we really believe there may be four scum in town, and under what conditions.

Oh, and I may be wrong about something above. I did this reasonably quickly. If I am just point out where.

[Justin Playfair]

Although, here is a thought I just had:

Should Shteven's casual certainty that there were only three scum in the game provide us with more certainty that there are in fact three scum, and Shteven made a scummy slip?

Or does it make it more likely that there may be four, and Shteven was repeating the other to try to lead town in that direction?

The only reason I don't completely accept the notion that it was a slip is that Shteven repeated it on day two, even after getting his ears boxed for saying it on day one.

[Justin Playfair]

Interesting. That would also suggest that we may well have a cop, though. Which means that if there is no counter claim to Gorgon, he may well be telling the truth.

Just out of curiosity, when did you find the game you've outlined above?

[Justin Playfair]

What a funny old game:

If Incog is scum, I'd bet dollars to donuts that MafiaSSK is not his partner.

If not for this statement by Kuribo I would have gone after Kuribo yesterday for his attack on Shteven.

Oh my. You know, it worked out this time, but you sure can read the thread too hard.

[Justin Playfair]

Incognito,

About this:

If Incog is scum, I'd bet dollars to donuts that MafiaSSK is not his partner.

I thought Kuribo was bread crumbing he was the cop yesterday. Not just donuts, but also such an absolutely confident opinion about MafiaSSK, almost like Kuribo knew. So most of the way through the day I’m thinking Kuribo’s attack on Shteven is just horrible, but I didn’t feel like I could let Shteven get anything started back on Kuribo because I’m convinced he’d be driving the lynch of our cop. Which means being wrong about one thing kept me from being wrong about another.

About other things (though I guess folks might want to judge anything I say by how perfectly inept I was about the above):

At this point, given the set-up Incognito listed above, the game Gorgon previously played in, and the fact that Ythill’s night one kill wasn’t blocked, I think we have to assume we have a godfather. We may not, but I think we have to play as though we do. Which means a large part of what I listed in my post above about strategy is irrelevant. We can only proceed on what Gorgon reports tomorrow if he brings back a guilty, and in fact, if he’s breathing to report anything tomorrow it seems to me it is almost certainly evidence that we have a godfather (or that Gorgon is scum). And the fact that a now confirmed scum was one of Ythill’s most likely vig targets seems to almost certainly mean there is no role blocker. I mean, you let him make his kill but also kill him? That makes sense which is non.

This means that some actions, like Kuribo leading the lynch of scum Shteven or Hjallti defending Shteven, have a bit less weight than they otherwise would.

First Kuribo. It might make sense for a godfather to bus his only remaining scum buddy. It polishes his town credentials nicely and of course if we have a cop he doesn’t have to worry about an investigation outing him, because he’ll come up innocent. Here’s why I don’t think this plays. Day two seems too early to bus for this purpose, especially if there is just one scum left. At the time Kuribo made his move on Shteven, not only was he not under any pressure but he put himself in more danger by doing so than he would have by not. To me Kuribo’s actions don’t seem reasonable as scum, not even as a godfather.

Hjallti. This makes perfect sense if we believe Hjallti suspected there was a cop. Hjallti would know Shteven was scum, and by defending Shteven he had a fair chance of pulling an investigation onto himself. If he is a godfather he would come up innocent and have a pretty good chance of going all the way. My main problem with Hjallti is this, though: After my pointing out that if Gorgon’s claim is true we have three claimed power roles and only two night kills left, what does Hjallti immediately do? He suggests a no-lynch. So we can have more information from more investigations.

Hjallti, please explain to us why a no-lynch would be more helpful to town than to scum.

Now onto our only other non-claimed (other than me). Xtoxm. Three new things here. One, Xtoxm reacted like a scalded cat to Gorgon’s claim. He tried to force an immediate lynch on Gorgon. Two, in trying to do so Xtoxm championed a strategy that he then backed with a meta that proved it was a bad strategy. Three, Shteven switched his vote off Kuribo and onto Xtoxm, but he only did so in extremis, and when it would have been very unlikely that there was time enough for votes to move even if there was the will in town to do so. And when this strategy was challenged Shteven didn’t respond. That might have been a matter of the time that was left, or Shteven giving up, but he had been rather fast and persistent in defending himself previously.

In reverse order, this is how much I suspect the three unclaimed players who are not me. I’m not going to vote until they’ve had a chance to speak and others have had a chance to weigh in, though. Votes have been flying around a little too furiously for my tastes so far today.

[Justin Playfair]

First, Incognito,

My questions to you on day one were largely to gain some clarification. I had a pretty town read on you, and because I did I didn’t like the direction things seemed to be going. I wanted more on ChronX before I went after him, and also wanted to see if I would be included in his attacks after letting you clear yourself in a non-confrontational situation. ChronX instead vanished. Actually think I might have already outlined my thinking during this phase earlier.

About lynching me. There is a worse idea, which would be lynching Gorgon, but it’s still not a great one. And it’s especially bad if tomorrow you’re planning on coming back and lynching Gorgon, because that would possibly buy scum (and I’m still thinking we’re talking about either Hjallti or XtoXm) a trip to the final three.

Since he has entered the game Hjallti has been gunning for me one way or another, either with me as a serial killer (or some other non-town aligned person?) or me as inscrutable. He hasn’t actually been able to point to anything scummy I’ve done, but he has repeated endlessly how hard I am to read until it does appear to have gained some traction. And just what does “hard to read” mean?

Well, if Hjallti could point to me playing the way I am here in a game where I turned out to be scum it might have some meaning, though even then it wouldn’t mean much, unless he could point to games where I was town and played differently. As it turns out, I’ve been in three games which are over, was town in all three, and played the same way in them as I have here. (This includes my near total absence from the site for this last week or so, which was unfortunately beyond my control). So what “hard to read” means in this context would seem to be “I want him to be scummy, but he hasn’t done anything scummy, so I have to pretend he’s unreadable and therefore can’t be trusted”. If that’s a good enough argument for you, then you should probably go ahead and vote me. But keep in mind that you’re accepting this very specious argument from the same guy who suggested a no lynch right after a third power role claimed, attacked Kuribo from every possible direction while Kuribo was firing at Shteven and finally directed Gorgoncop’s investigation for tonight.

And more on the idea of the no-lynch. What good does one more unconfirmed suspect being alive in town do for TOWN in the lynch or lose? It makes possible a tie that would create another no-lynch and another night kill that could remove whoever the most problematic townie was for scum. It leaves one extra suspect to further muddy the lynch or lose waters. I mean I understand clearly the value for scum. But if someone has a compelling town reason for a no-lynch, please tell me, because I don’t see it.

Xtoxm has voted for me even though he claims he doesn’t think I’m scum. He also tried nearly hysterically to get Gorgon lynched from the moment Gorgon claimed cop. He was also the person Claus loved so much he described Xtoxm’s play style in ways that could not possibly describe Xtoxm’s actual play.

Both are doing the same basic dance. Let’s lynch someone today and get it out of the way so we can get to night and come back to lynch Gorgon tomorrow. One of these two is probably town playing into scum’s hands. One of them is probably scum. Trying to stack lynches is just one more scummy behavior they’re both engaging in. And acting as though we just need to get a lynch out of the way, and there’s no reason to actually find scummy behavior or in any way make or build a case is, in my experience anyway, usually the behavior of scum who don’t want anyone looking too hard at actual actions and interactions in the game.

If we’re going to lynch someone, it might be a better idea to lynch someone who’s actually engaged in scummy behavior, or someone whose closest link to known scum wasn’t having one of them try to get him lynched and the other describe him in the same “middle of the road, impossible to read” way that Hjallti has been doing.

However, if you do lynch me today, do not come back and automatically follow these two to a lynch of Gorgon tomorrow. If Gorgon is alive tomorrow he may be the last scum, but he may also (and I tend at this point to think more likely than not) be a cop. The previous game Incognito referred to makes me far from certain that we don’t have a cop and a godfather in this game. And knowing I’m not scum I have to regard both Xtoxm’s and Hjallti’s easy attitude toward “just lynching somebody so we can get back tomorrow and lynch Gorgon” as extremely suspicious. It’s a free pass to a final three with two other unconfirmed players. I’m not saying you should accept Gorgon’s claim on faith, but you need to consider it, and you need to look elsewhere in a way no one has yet today. And if you do lynch Gorgon, and he is a cop, you must not simply accept his investigation. Gorgon living to tomorrow and dying as a cop is an almost certain guarantee that we have a godfather.

All that said, I will:

Vote: Hjallti

for now, because I can’t make his no-lynch idea work as benefiting anyone but scum. Sorry for not defending myself much, but no one’s actually pointed to anything for me to defend myself for.

[Justin Playfair]

Xtoxm,

You go crazy to lynch Gorgon as soon as he makes his cop claim. As soon as I make the argument that we shouldn’t lynch him immediately you would rather lynch me than Hjallti, even though throughout the game you’ve claimed to believe I’m town. On the morning after I posted that we needed to take a long hard look at Gorgon’s cop claim, you vote him in your first post. He ends up dying and turns out to have been a cop. Now on the morning after you charged through lynching our cop you vote me, without even an ounce of discussion, and assume that there must be a godfather. Then you try to hurry Kuribo into hammering me.

This would be the third day in a row that you have tried to rush town to an immediate lynch without any discussion. Yesterday you had no interest in thinking about whether or not we had a godfather. Today you place an immediate vote on me, not only assuming we have one but also assuming, without even taking a look around, that it must be me.

And I understand your thinking completely. First, between me and Kuribo, who would seem more likely to make a quick decision and cast a quick vote that would end the game? Yeah, that would be Kuribo. Second, who has been more openly suspicious of the way you’ve been playing these last few days? Yeah, that would be me.

Here’s the thing, Xtoxm. If Kuribo is scum he could have just won by hammering me. There is no reason on earth for a scummy Kuribo not to have already voted. And there was no pro-town reason for you to come in to today and cast an immediate vote on either one of us. Because no one but scum could have that kind of assurance. I’ve had a town read on Kuribo and a scum read on you for almost the entire game, but I wouldn’t have just voted you as soon as the sun came up. You’ve claimed a town read on me for most of the game and you voted with no explanation whatsoever.

Vote: Xtoxm

It’s in your hands, Kuribo. I know you’re town. If you weren’t I wouldn’t be alive to post this.

[Justin Playfair]

Yeah, Claus, but it was your attack on me day two and Shteven convincing me to kill Ythill night one that had the most to do with scum winning. The only thing I'll claim in my favor was deciding to stick Jester in as a night kill, but even that almost backfired horribly when Gorgon claimed cop. Here I was, absolutely convinced Kuribo was a cop, so convinced that I had argued he was town in every situation. And suddenly there are three claimed power roles, only two nights to kill them in, and only two other guys left I can makes cases on.

And sorry, Gorgon. I hope you change your mind.

[Justin Playfair]

And thank you, Incognito.

Truth is, though, I think town was packed in this game. Kuribo getting Shteven was just brilliant. An absolute disaster, like a bolt of lightning. Same thing with Ythill killing Claus. You played your mason claim extremely well, demonstrated by the fact that once you made your claim neither you nor Mafia were ever seriously considered for lynching. And when you came up with that game of Nano’s I wanted to scream. Jester was good, too, and the main reason I killed him was that I had no idea which way he would jump the next day.

Something just happened when town got so far ahead. I don’t think it had much to do with me, though. In fact, I would reverse what you said in the game. Town probably deserved to win this one.

[Justin Playfair]

Wow, a lot of commentary.

Shteven, thanks, but I really think it’s hard to find scum tells on me because I can’t quite figure out how to think as scum. Incognito quizzed me earlier about something I had done and I realized I wasn’t trying to be tricky when I handled it. I legitimately thought the things people were bringing up about Incognito were bs, so when I tried to blunt them I was acting as town. Likewise, when I was giving Ythill advice about how to play vig. It seemed really obvious to me that he should do certain things. Those things didn’t benefit scum, but they just seemed so obvious I had to say them. Same thing really with getting Hjallti lynched. A no-lynch was a bad idea for town. Favoring it was a scum tell. You just have to forget you’re scum for a little while.

In bizarro reverse land, Kuribo going after you was the one sequence I felt like I didn’t play basically the same way I would have if I was town. I would have gone after Kuribo much harder for his suspicions, because I didn’t think they were all that sound. But since I knew you were scum and I knew they were sound, I didn’t do it. That was the one sequence I was afraid of being called out on, which was why I covered it with the cop thing about Kuribo, which also, fortuitously enough, was true.

As for the kills:

After Shteven died my first goal was to make sure no scum hunting block developed. I could see the possibility of that with Kuribo and Jester. I killed Jester because I didn’t have a feel for Jester but felt sure Kuribo was a good player. Incognito had been my first choice, but he was too openly in my favor, and then claimed mason to boot, so I couldn’t take him. Ythill had already done me an incredible favor, not just by setting out conditions for me being scum that temporarily made it hard for anyone to come after me, but also suggesting me as a good candidate for investigation.

So on the morning after Shteven died I had a cop read on Kuribo, the two masons to whack the next two days, and Hjallti and Gorgon to get lynched before the finale with Xtoxm. Shteven had already suggested Xtoxm as the best candidate to try to keep around for a possible endgame, so I can’t claim credit for that.

Then Gorgon claims cop and I was absolutely certain I was dead. There was no percentage at all in Gorgon claiming cop at that point unless there was four scum in town, and who was really going to believe that? He was guaranteeing a loss by scum if he was scum, and then Incognito showed the game Nano had been in to boot. I was completely out of ideas. I defended Gorgon’s claim to some extent, because I felt I had to. But now I figured I was in a positionof having to push consecutive lynches on some combination of Hjallti and Xtoxm just to get to endgame. And once people started scum hunting that was going to be tough, especially with me pushing two bad lynches in a row. It would have been a complete circus trick for me to try to go after Kuribo at that point, way too obvious, and besides I needed him anyway.

Except the scum hunting never happened. In spite of the probabilities town got so sure that Gorgon was scum that even though I was able to convince them not to lynch him that first day they chose not to use that day for scum hunting at all. They ended up nearly random lynching, so I only had to poke Hjallti ever so gently to get the noose around his neck. And then (even though I had written up an eloquent defense of Gorgon, arguing that he shouldn’t be rushed to the rope—in case I needed to point to it the next day), Gorgon was lynched before I posted at all, and we were in lylo. And I got to get there clean, while Xtoxm was just filthy.

Worst moment was killing Incognito when I did. I would have much rather killed Mafia first, but Incognito would have picked up on it, Kuribo would have picked up on it, and I would have hung.

[Justin Playfair]

Xtoxm,

Not only that, but I wouldn't have had a chance to finally coax that innocent investigation out of Gorgon. Mind you, thanks to Incognito I was having to argue that we probably had a godfather by that point, but since no one else was, and since I still got the innocent, it didn't hurt. Especially with you being so kill crazy on Gorgon.

On the other hand, if you'd managed to bull through a lynch on Gorgon on the day he claimed I'm pretty sure it would have been you in the noose the next day. Now what would have happened after that, with Hjallti and Kuribo, is the question.

Kuribo,

Not scared, exactly, because until that point I didn't think there was any way I could win. When all the votes moved so quickly it certainly shocked me, but really, the way the day was starting to go, even though the votes were on me, was what gave me my first real hope. I figured I could move votes by resisting just a little bit, and with the way folks were acting at that point I figured that might be my ticket to a final three with you and Xtoxm.

I was most scared of you at that point, because of what you'd done with Shteven. But that was exactly what made it hard for me to believe you would ignore all the evidence in thread against Xtoxm to vote me in lylo. You might have taken that kind of chance earlier, while you had time to fix it, but with the game on the line I was sure you wouldn't take a flier on a gut feeling.

The really good players I've seen in this game tend to be sort of careful. It's why they're so dangerous. But in this case I thought I could use that against you. I never felt safe, though, until you cast that last vote. What you did with Shteven was just this side of supernatural, and even with as plainly scummy as Xtoxm was I never felt quite sure you wouldn't pull the same trick again.

[Justin Playfair]

Xtoxm,

Not played badly. Played scummy. There's a difference. Your suspicions throughout the game were pretty darn good. But even as town you have to play some defense. And that's what you didn't do.

There was no percentage in pushing so hard against Gorgon after the claim. Not for town. Then there was really no percentage, once it became clear Gorgon wasn't going to get lynched that day, in just saying we need to lynch somebody instead of jumping back into scum hunting.

You switched your view on me at the most convenient time for me, right after I had argued for Gorgon's life. Put together with your view on Gorgon as opposed to your easy acceptance of the earlier claims and your previous consistently townie read on me, that was made to order.

Remember, the rest of us are outside of you looking in. What we saw was Xtoxm going ballistic to lynch Gorgon after he claimed. Xtoxm not caring to scum hunt that day, just wanting to get it out of the way and get to tomorrow to lynch Gorgon. Xtoxm voting Gorgon before Gorgon even got to report his investigation. Gorgon turning out to be the cop. Xtoxm coming back the next morning and voting one of two unconfirmed townies with his first post, then asking the other, without providing evidence, to hammer him. By the way, that was a total misread on Incognito's personality, too. Incognito had already shown he was not the kind of guy who enjoyed being told what to think or do.

From the outside looking in these are the behaviors of scum. If Kuribo and my positions had been reversed I would have had to vote for you, too. In lylo you just can't afford to skip all that stuff above, because most of the time you will lose by doing it.

Only one part of Mafia is identifying scum. The rest is winning the votes of others onto your side and presenting yourself in a way that keeps you from being a target. The good thing for you is for most people it's the identifying scum that's the hard part. The rest is easy once you get the hang of it.

[Justin Playfair]

Ythill,

Not surprised you figured that out. I noticed that whereas when I'm town I seem to think I'm able to find scum (based on not much evidence that I have a clue), in this game I was careful as an elderly mouse. It's going to be a lot harder to figure that out in the future, though, because I'm starting to figure out just how inept I am at actual scum hunting.

Hjallti,

You are one of my favorite people to play with, and I think you're an awfully good player. It's always tough replacing in, but you are hard to lay a glove on and a great counter puncher. If town hadn't become so fixated on Gorgon there was no way I would have gotten you lynched. Kuribo, for one, clearly hated the idea, and he was leading town at that point. If you have a vulnerability I think it's musing out loud in thread about various play possibilities. Your strengths are far greater, though.

[Justin Playfair]

Jester,

I hadn't seen enough of you to be sure if you would move on instinct alone. Which I couldn't afford, you know, being scum and all. I was pretty sure that in endgame Kuribo wouldn't. I needed not just a player who I thought would examine the evidence, but one I felt sure wouldn't, with the game on the line, go against it. With Kuribo I felt I had seen enough of him to be fairly certain of both. You may have too, but I hadn't seen enough of you to be sure.

And I had to get rid of one of you. No how no way no matter how many masons were in town I felt certain one of you had to die the night after Shteven hung. Killing you deprived town of some of its leadership and energy while not drawing a specific line to me. Killing Kuribo would have drawn more attention to the Shteven lynch and the possible lines from Shteven to others, where I thought I had some vulnerability. There were a lot of reasons that played into it, really. But the final through-line was I needed someone who would examine the evidence and feel compelled to go with it at the end, and of the two of you I felt more sure of Kuribo.