Mini 546: House Mafia - Game Over

[curiouskarmadog]

was that an answer?..if I did, what does that tell you about my alignment? When I realized I wasnt putting enough into the game, I did...now it is your turn. When shall we expect some input?

[Erg0]

It's unrelated to alignment, it just tells me that you're unwilling to extend the same patience to others that you expect to be afforded to you. Using a phrase like "soak that excuse" implies that you think I'm being less than genuine in my intent to re-read. I told you what I'm doing, and I'll do it as fast as I can.

[curiouskarmadog]

fair enough...mostly "soak that excuse" implies I dont want to keep hearing the same...when my lack of posting was brought to my attention earlier I gave the game more attention...I hope you follow my lead.

[Erg0]

So what's your justification for pointing at Beep's wagon for the scum?

I'm hijacking your post, Erg0.

Original Roll String: 2d2 (STATIC)

2 2-Sided Dice: (1, 2) = 3

-Albert

Incidentally, is anyone at all curious as to what this was about?

Event randomizer. -Albert

[Erg0]

Ok, quick commentary on team NLU, since that's the easiest place to start.

ckd: very likely town, unless he was bussing amrlx hardcore. I feel like the low number of votes required makes it less likely that scum would bus their buddy in this situation, so he's looking pretty good to me right now.

Adel: Up and down, but her vote was in the right place when it counted. She did hold this up as a talisman to an extent, and I'm still a bit iffy on her pointing at the Beep wagon as scummy after showing support prior to the lynch. Less convinced of her innocence than ckd's, but she's not really scummy at this point.

vollkan/shaft.ed: Naturally more suspicious than the other two because they weren't on the scum wagon, but that's more due to process of elimination than anything. vollkan is tough to read in general, so I'm going to read him in more depth before drawing a conclusion. I had mixed feelings on shaft.ed day 1, so of the former Team NLU he's highest on my suspicion list at this point.

[vollkan]

A review of the previous day/case by me is imminent, given that we now have access to spotting distancing-tells to armlx.

[curiouskarmadog]

so there will be a change in %s now?

[vollkan]

Not necessarily, but there could be. I am still comfortable with my %s last given, since I don't believe there have been any huge aberrations, but it's still important that I am thorough.

[Claus]

A vote count to wake you guys up:

Pooky 2 - TG, Shaft.ed
TrustGossip 1 - Adel

Not voting: Thanatos, CKD, Erg0 , Vollkan, Pooky

with 8 doctors in the team, it is 5 to get rid of somebody!

[curiouskarmadog]

OK I don't forsee myself as having much time today. But my suspicions are on TG and pooky at the moment. I'll probably have to wait til tommorow to get a case up.

for now

vote: Pooky

any reason that pooky gets your vote over TG?

[Adel]

he isn't scum with pooky.

[curiouskarmadog]

I am waiting till I hear from vollkan and thantos before voting...

speaking of which...same crap I gave Ergo..Thantos..when shall we be expecting a post from you?

[shaft.ed]

OK here's my case against pooky. If any of it is a bit incoherent I was doing overnight experiments last night so working on 1.5hrs sleep.

My initial scum feelings towards pooky were largely because he was simply stirring the pot in regards to myself and prior to the TJM. Both of us are somewhat new players that, at the time, were in compromised positions.

Pooky would you like to do something besides fan the flames. These are you last four posts.

shafted def scum now

So many people sitting on the fence with regards to shafted.

WHAT WILL HE DO NOW THAT THE SHARKS ARE CIRCLING AND HE IS BLEEDING LIKE HE IS MISSING AN ARM?

DUN DUN DUN.

Dance for me Shafted,

Dance Baby Dance.

re:Volkan I believe in attacking, I do not fail to see anything.

he is panicking

look at the frenetic posting

omg owned

shafted so scum

And it's not just restricted to me, here are you insights on TheJiveMachine

vote JiveMachine

the time for pettiness is over.

It is time for bilateral action against the common enemy.

His posts added nothing to the discussion and were simply there to rouse others people's feelings.

Following this he goes on to debate vollkan as to whether or not reasons are neccessary for lynching anyone. I found this to be rather silly, not sure if it's a scum tell but certainly is not protown play to lynch people without reason.

Next act of the day is the TJM bandwagon to L-1. Pooky is the second voter on said wagon. Note that pooky's vote went on TJM before the incident with me. While he was posting that I was def scum he never moves his vote off of TJM, which is a bit odd to me. Also while pressure is mounting on TJM he maintains his vote there, while the bandwagon forms. vollkan, CDK and armlx all vote (in pooky's defense here I hadn't previously noticed how quickly these votes amassed in real time, he probably wasn't online to posit a defense, may rethink my position with this in mind). This action ties in with his case against vollkan and his vague accusations in regards to TJM/Beep's mislynch, which I'll discuss separately below.

OK so after the TJM near lynch and then the twist, I found it strange that pooky, who very recently had been calling me "def scum" and all that would begin to totally ignore me and try building a rather weak case against vollkan. In order to keep this from turning into the Great Wall o Text I'll just reference post 325. He basically went after vollkan for using percentages, having people ranked too scumy in his percentages, and only analyzing one side for summiness. He sticks with this throughout the entire day even after many people vouch for the fact that vollkan always uses numbers to rank people and vollkan continues his analysis of the other team. This smacks to me of scum trying to remove a power scum hunter from the game.

Next pooky goes off on his Frankly Speaking string of posts. Here he seems to accuse anyone that supported the TJM/Beep lynch, I'm still not quite sure what he was doing here. It felt to me like possible scum avoiding a pretty much inevitable townie mislynch given the prevailing sentiment at the time, followed by a blanket accusation to see if any townie infighting might take off. However, he may just have been upset about the fact that lynching Beep was a poor play, but he didn't realize as such until after the fact and was berating himself as much as the rest of the town. If this isn't the case I don't know why he didn't speak up before the lynch. Anyway my indepth reply to his post is on 550.

All tolled, I feel this warrants some scrutiny. But I do think that I am tunneling on pooky right now. I'll get my TG post up later this afternoon if I'm still coherentish at the time. Have to get back to the experiments.

[shaft.ed]

OK I don't forsee myself as having much time today. But my suspicions are on TG and pooky at the moment. I'll probably have to wait til tommorow to get a case up.

for now

vote: Pooky

any reason that pooky gets your vote over TG?

I feel that pooky has been playing consistently scummy whereas TG had a slip up or two. Also TG seems to be posting a lot more content so the signal to noise favors TG. I voted with someone that I thought to be scummy because I see no indication that TG and pooky to be in a scum group together.

[Albert B. Rampage]

I'm back sporadically, in and out to help Claus.

[shaft.ed]

OK My case against TrustGossip.

Most of my case against TrustGossip has been made recently. I felt he was a fairly solid poster on D1, certainly the best contributor of team LU, but he did tend to follow others leads a lot. I think his pursuit of CKD and armlx following the quick rush of votes on TJM was warranted. I felt it strange that he was voting and unvoting TJM in order to get him to post. Now that he's turned up town I guess that could be considered moot.

Where he starts to get scummy is his play towards Jive after the "twist." This is addressed already throughout my other posts and it basically is summed up by he attacked Erg0 for doing something he himself had done (voting Beep) and he explained that his vote was simply a pressure vote although evidence was quite to the contrary of that:

TG, your MegaFoS on Erg0 for voting after you is just poor play. Your hiding behind the pressure vote is even worse. You do realize that with such small groups your pressure vote placed Beep at L-2. You also realize that it is well within the realm of possibilities that you had a second scum on your team besides armlx. Finally you maintain that your vote was placed in order to get Beep to post:

Oh, so you didn't really

want

to lynch him, you were just leaving your vote on him as we approached deadline in order to encourage him to post?

Did I stutter?

0_o;;

Yet at the time of your confirm vote you clearly were voting because you found him scummy:

When I was asking for replacements, I was envisioning the pot being stirred. I did not foresee the pot tipping over and all the porridge spilling on the floor.

Confirm vote: Beep

L/A still.

Add in the fact that Beep had posted five times on the previous page compared to your zero posts and something isn't adding up. If this wasn't FTA I would be voting with Adel right now.

Recently he seems a bit eager to move things along. Not really caring about the team leader but just asking one be chosen (not that he's the only one). And he's recently been trying to move out of the Discussion phase straight into the "twist" phase.

[Adel]

it is always tricky stating a case against your scumbuddy without bussing him and while sounding sincere. Good job.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

Do you really think I was trying to get you lynched shafted?

If I were, why did I not vote you?

You think my choice of not providing reasons is an active decision on my part?

Why might I choose to not include any reasons on voting you?

[vollkan]

Review of Behaviour Surrounding Armlx

armlx to anyone

0: joins LU
2: Random vote Erg0
3-4: Weirdness re: TG's hamster. First says it is a scummy ploy. Then says it is too cute.
9: Votes Adel until she explains why she thinks scum are in LU
11: Interesting post for a few reasons:
1) He says to TG that non-commitment is "the most scummy thing you can do" (TG had just stated that he wasn't committed to a team). However, he then says that his gut says TG is pro-town. The swipe on TG is dodgy and weak (Why is not being commited to a team scumm?) and he proceeds to deny the attack's strength. This gives a whiff of distancing-style to me.
2) He adds, after the TG comments, that "Neither is Ergo." No explanation given. I wouldn't expect scum to say this about a scumbuddy (ie. no element of distancing).
3) Goes 80% on both Adel and shaft, with no explanation - these were tied for his second place, with CKD in #1. Second-place suspicion is a common place for scum to put their scumbuddy (a manifestation of "FriendofScum"). The fact that armlx gives two might suggest that he is playing his cards safely so that, should his #1 suspicion target get invalidated, he can bump another townie to #1 place. Thus, what I am saying, is that I think there is a good chance that one out of Adel and shaft may be scum.
4) He gives me a 20%. From my perspective, this is blatant buddying-up.
5) 60% on Pooky. I don't get a read on this figure.
6) Gives CKD 40%. Bizarrely, he then votes CKD - despite having given Adel and shaft.ed 80%, and Pooky a %60.
12: Confirms that the %s were his feelings that people were scum - confirming that his numbers don't match his suspicions.
Describes Erg0 as "very pro-town". Thinks TG is pro-town based on instinct. Thinks Pooky is playing as per usual but says something is "different". This attack is rather vague and also gives a sense of distancing.
13:
Shaft - Thinks his posts are large, but not too significant content-wise. He calls this "Very scummy" but also stresses that it is mostly instinct. What I find interesting about this is that armlx uses strong language ("Very scummy") to attack what isn't a damning scumtell. In other words, it looks like a conscious effort to appear to suspect shaft.ed. Another distancing-tell.
Adel - 80% for causing confusion. Thinks this is too high and will probably drop it. This is similar to his attitude to shaft.ed, with one difference - that he makes the point that he will drop it. I'm not sure what to make of this, since the declaration of intention to drop makes it seem more likely that he might fear being attacked for holding undue suspicion of Adel.
Vollkan - Says it is primarily instinct and a teeny bit that I diverged from Pooky.
Dean - Pro-town for a general vibe
14 :Explains that he didn't like Adel's BWing or latching onto his reasoning
15: Says shaft.ed "tries to appear relevant".
16: Says his read on me is 90% based on instinct and thinks my divergence from pooky is a town-tell
17: Hops on TJM wagon
18: Switches over to shaft.ed. First on the wagon. I don't get much of a read on this. Given the mounting pressure on shaft.ed, it makes sense for a scumbuddy to jump on to the wagon asap. It also makes sense for scum to jump on townshaft.ed asap. Ultimately, this is null for me.
19: Gives his new %s:

Shaft: 80%
Jive: 60%
Pooky: 40%
Adel: 40%
Karmadog: 40% (if Pooky is scum, number increases)
Dean Harper: 20%
Volkan: 20%
TG & Ergo: 0%

The some of the formerly scummy (Adel and Pooky namely) moved down as we have real lynch targets to go after now. List is mostly in order of scumminess for the people I actually find scummy.

We now know that TJM was town, so this is a case of my "scumbuddy in #2" idea not being the case. The three people at 40% is interesting. It's not inconceivable that he might have a buddy in the lower %s as well (rather than distancing both partners).
21: Is sticking with shaft.ed for now, but stresses that TJM is rising. Looks like setting himself up to jump over.
22: Attacks TJM
23: Swaps over to TJM
24: L-1. Makes attacks on Adel for BWing, but thinks he (sic) has shown enough insight to remain, though is rising towards shaft.ed. Pushes hard against TJM.
28: Says all the scummy people are on NLU
31: Says CKD's reaction to TG's vote deserves "noting". Nothing further added. Another feeble swipe.
32: Another big analysis -
Shaft.ed - Less scummy, no explanation as to how specifically/
Vollkan - Continues with me as pro-town
CKD - Says his reaction was excessive
TJM - Same thing as CKD. Says he would rather lynch TJM than random. Interesting that he gives the same reason for both, but he only expresses lynch-interest on TJM.
Pooky - Productive but aggressive. Will wait to pass judgment.
Dean - lurker
TG -town
Erg0 - lurker
Says he would vote for TJM right now

37: Some more -
shaft.ed - vague attack. I don't understand it
Voll - Protown and should not be lynched
CKD - Attacks as throwing his vote around and over-reacting.
Pooky - Being pooky
TG - protown
Adel - Crossing the line between chaotic and scummy.

38-43: Pushes against CKD. He seems to be very aggressive (armlx) but never votes/FoSes.
44: After I asked why CKD using profanity was at all relevant, armlx says it reflects aggravation. Says he won't meta CKD because " don't typically meta on usual scum tells unless I've seen that person act that way in many games I have been in"...stupid. He only uses meta advice when he's been in a game.
46: After I again reject this, he reiterates that he believes scum will over-react
48: Votes CKD
52: Hammers Beep

Analysis of others to armlx shall follow soon.

[Erg0]

Obviously vollkan and I do the same thing when analysing lynched scum. I looked at others' talk about armlx first, with the following results:

TrustGossip:

Starts with minor suspicion of early wagoning, then reates armlx as neutral in 246. In 329 he finds armlx barnacle-y, giving him a "heavy FoS" pending lurker prods. Pushes for some answers in 351, and unFoSes in 354, agreeing with armlx's assessment of ckd's overreaction. Sticks by this in 372, but then says in 385 that he "wouldn't mind armlx going", which seems very inconsistent with his recent posting. This rings alarm bells for me.

curiouskarmadog:

Consistently goes after armlx hard for most of the day - I have difficulty believing that this was bussing, unless he genuinely intended to get armlx lynched from the start of the day.

Dean Harper/Thanatos:

Nothin'

vollkan:

Mildly critical of armlx early on, gives him a 70% in 281 and criticises his case on ckd later on. FoSes armlx in 376, but never really looks like voting him. Pretty neutral read overall.

Pooky:

One mention, in post 328 when he calls armlx "total scum" at the height of his wagon. Not very useful on its own.

Adel:

Follows armlx onto early wagons, but switches to voting him right after the twist - she says at the time that she's basically following ckd's hunch. Actively pursues him over his claim that he was using the same tactic as her (I doubt that he would associate himself back to his scumbuddy this way). Doesn't particularly look like bussing to me.

shaft.ed:

Talks about armlx quite a bit in the early part of the game, almost always in the company of others (often Pooky). His statement in 266 that "Scum getting those [lynch-1 and lynch-2] confused tend to behave less rationally", which doesn't quite ring true to me. In 269 (just after ckd puts the lynch-1 vote on) he posts a fairly strong analysis and says he'll wait for vollkan to post on the subject before he votes. vollkan puts armlx at 70% in 281, but shaft.ed is missing for a bit and likes armlx better in 348 and 403. Promises a case on armlx a couple of times, but it doesn't come before Beep hammers. Apparent reluctance to pull the trigger after early suspicion is a concern.

Based on this half of the analysis, TG and shaft.ed look like armlx's most likely buddies. Pooky is mildly suspicious based on the lack of talk about armlx prior to his declaration that he was scum. Others are at neutral or townish. I need to do the other half to draw full conclusions, but I don't expect any major surprises (hopefully it will fill in some information on a couple of players).

[TrustGossip]

TrustGossip:

Starts with minor suspicion of early wagoning, then reates armlx as neutral in 246. In 329 he finds armlx barnacle-y, giving him a "heavy FoS" pending lurker prods. Pushes for some answers in 351, and unFoSes in 354, agreeing with armlx's assessment of ckd's overreaction. Sticks by this in 372, but then says in 385 that he "wouldn't mind armlx going",

which seems very inconsistent with his recent posting.

This rings alarm bells for me.

Could you please refer to the posts that the bolded section refers to?

[Erg0]

Sorry, that wasn't phrased very well - by "recent posting" I meant posts immediately prior to your statement in 385. In other words, posts 354 and 372.

[Erg0]

Ok, part 2 of my armlx retrospective. I've skimmed vollkan's comments above, but I'm trying to do this independently of his opinions as much as possible. Post numbers in this case come from isolating armlx's posts.

TrustGossip:

armlx calls him town all day, with the same reasoning all the way through - that he gives the appearance of having no additional knowledge from the start of the game. Only blip is his early avatar related non-vote, which he cites in post 26 as one of his deliberately scummy actions. No evidence of distancing here, straight down the line all the way.

curiouskarmadog:

Puts him at 40% scum early on (and votes him in the same post, weird), then goes after him for overreaction in 31 and continues this for the rest of the day, though he never votes him until after he's already lynched. The tunneling on ckd looks like a classic scum push on a townie, and I doubt he would have risked throwing a vote on his buddy after he'd been lynched, since losing two scum on day 1 would have been disastrous.

Dean Harper/Thanatos:

Basically just complains about his lurking a couple of times.

vollkan:

Puts him at 20% scum early, in 37 he just says that voll's passed the day 1 test and only talks to him about the overreaction tell after that. Pretty much left him alone all day, which could be a sign of buddying with someone he was worried about.

Pooky:

Puts him at 60% early on, but forgets him once he starts after shaft.ed. Following Pooky was the other deliberately scummy act that he claimed in 26 (I don't actually see where he did this). Drops him along with vollkan in 37.

Adel:

Votes her early, and puts her at 80%(!) in his first list, despite unvoting her at the same time. By post 19 she's down to 40% because he's found a "real" target in shaft.ed. From around post 24 he tries to paint her as scum for doing much the same thing he claims to have done, which doesn't strike me as a particularly good scum tactic. Eventually decides she seems pro-town based on her changing styles, possibly because he was close to lynch and she was one of the voters.

shaft.ed:

Puts him at 80% scummy in 11, says in 13 it's for posting without content. Pairs him with Jive when voting him in 18, and continues this association until switching to Jive in 23 (without mentioning shaft.ed in that post). Doesn't mention him again until post 32, where he says he finds him less scummy now that he looks at him again. Comes back to him in 37, saying that he now realises why he thought he was scummy in the first place. The big push followed by a long silence followed by the flip-flopping is not a good sign.

Conclusions: Based on the two analyses, I suspect armlx was taking a different approach with each of his buddies: distancing from one and buddying up with the other.

shaft.ed is the obvious suspect for the distanced scum, since ckd seems way

over

-distanced and Jive/Beep is dead town. The other scum is likely one of TrustGossip, vollkan and Pooky, all of whom he never really attacked in any serious way. His swingy attitude towards Adel seems to indicate that he was likely trying to get her onside (due to her vote on him) rather than putting distance between them. The wildcard is Thanatos, who's given us almost nothing to go on either way to this point.

Most likely scum goes first.

Vote: shaft.ed

[TrustGossip]

Sorry, that wasn't phrased very well - by "recent posting" I meant posts immediately prior to your statement in 385. In other words, posts 354 and 372.

I don't see how my clarifications on why I voted CDK would be related to my not-minding an armix lynch. I came to my case on CDK independently of armix, I feel most people forget this.

I suppose I am coming to understand the consensus that I am a scumbuddy with armix.

This is how I understand what is construed as scummy in my play so far.

1. My vote on Beep!
2. My echoing of Pooky's sentiments on Erg0
3. My sentiments on CKD's actions mirroring that of a revealed Mafia

1. I was working on a variety of ways to make Jive talk. I was aggrieved at Beep!'s hammer and then subsequent explanation of not understand game mechanics. I failed to see how not having a good grasp of the game would also compel someone to hammer. Yes originally it was a vote because I found him scummy. Pressure was designed to make him say more than his cursory re-read impressions. I didn't think it was possible for him to be telling the truth about his vote. I was in error.

2. I was away for Beep!'s lynch. I reacted without considering the possibility that my scum-to-neutral impression of Erg0 would be unaltered given his second vote. I thought it was a scum quicklynch and did not bother to check timestamps or any of the more appropriate actions going into Day Two. I was in error.

3. CDK constantly asked me whether or not I thought overreacting was scummy. I thought this was annoying because it was basically asking me if I echoed armix's theories. I found his particular sequence of posts after my vote as an anomaly at that current stage of the game. If I pushed the CDK case more than what would be considered "appropriate", I suppose it was more for a case study on CDK's character. I don't really know. I suppose it was re-OMGUS in a way.

I really doubt this will convince anyone of anything. In fact, I know plenty of people who would say something along the lines of, "Why is he giving such a verbose defense when he isn't even close to lynch yet?" I just wanted people to know my thoughts on the matter and on my own actions. Given the reasonings stated by other players, I can clearly see where people would find shadows from the light of good intentions.

[Erg0]

Unfos: Armix

Thank you. I also agree with your assessment of CKD. It was the first time in the game I've used my vote as a weapon in scumhunting and I believe I fished out a satisfactory result.

This is post 354. Although some of the post is about ckd, the context is of you agreeing with armlx and withdrawing a prior FoS on him - hence, you're giving a favourable opinion on armlx in this post. Your case on ckd may be independent of this opinion, but you definitely are giving an opinion on him here.