# De'endee Mafia **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [July 6, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052 "2011-07-06T16:30:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 54
**Author:** ![LightFoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e8cbc/32.png) [@LightFoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LightFoot)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1061 "2011-07-28T02:24:30Z")
RE: knowing if you had been targeted (this quote feature here picks my nose) > [@ShadowFacts](#): > > Someone else said something similar to this earlier, but I can’t remember who and I don’t want to go back and track it down. Anyway, this sentiment makes no sense to me. \*\*septimus \*\*came within moments of being lynched yesterDay, and only avoided the noose with a last-minute vote switch that was sure to be controversial. It makes perfect sense to me that Scum would skip him and assume that there was a high probability of him being lynched today. Why bother killing him when he’s garnering tons of suspicion and likely to die the following Day? Another point I’m not seeing addressed around here is when I had a scotsman type (twice= not here) role the mods WOULD NOT tell me if I had been targeted. If that is common here I would not know. Not supporting anything really just trying to interact when I have the time ---
**Author:** ![MentalGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/439d5e/32.png) [@MentalGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MentalGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1062 "2011-07-28T02:29:45Z")
I did a reread of posts by Red Skeezix, stanislaus, TexCat, and choie last night. It did seem that Red cherry picked one post by ShadowFacts to use as basis for a vote, but that was really the only thing I saw suspicious by him. I know he has intentionally used lurking as a scum strategy before, but he has not posted at all toDay, so he seems to be absent entirely instead of lurking. I don’t really buy into the case on choie. She has mentioned being a new player often, but it does not seem nearly as much as Jan protested she was Town. I don’t really remember all the other points against her by Pizza, but I remember as I was reading that I did not really find it all that convincing. TexCat’s voting of Ed partially based on previous suspicions that she had not mentioned does seem odd, but based on the timing of the vote and the fact that scum apparently killed Ed last Night, I am having a hard time seeing a scum motivation for her vote (though I do need to go back and review this again, I may be misremembering exactly what happened). stanislaus is the one I find most suspicious, but honestly, it is based almost entirely on the fact that I know his case against me is wrong so I find it contrived. If I had to put a vote on one of these four, it would be stanislaus, but I am not going to now. I haven’t really seen anything from any of these players that has me thinking they are definitely Town, but I feel my votes are better placed outside this group for now. ---
**Author:** ![LightFoot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e8cbc/32.png) [@LightFoot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LightFoot)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1063 "2011-07-28T02:33:30Z")
Response to comments earlier… when/if I have a concrete result I will call for a Vig … The search feature baffles me, do we know if we even have one?.. That vote count is looking very attractive to me about now I’m not sure that I won’t be on the road EOD and want to effective in my investigation and myvote ( although my vote will not be as informed as I would like) ---
**Author:** ![MentalGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/439d5e/32.png) [@MentalGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MentalGuy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1064 "2011-07-28T02:33:31Z")
> [@ShadowFacts](#): > > Someone else said something similar to this earlier, but I can’t remember who and I don’t want to go back and track it down. Anyway, this sentiment makes no sense to me. \*\*septimus \*\*came within moments of being lynched yesterDay, and only avoided the noose with a last-minute vote switch that was sure to be controversial. It makes perfect sense to me that Scum would skip him and assume that there was a high probability of him being lynched today. Why bother killing him when he’s garnering tons of suspicion and likely to die the following Day? You are correct, and while I can’t remember exactly what I was thinking when I wrote that, I do seem to be taking the existance of a vig for granted. I do still feel that lynching him toDay is the best play. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Skeezix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/aca169/32.png) [@Red\_Skeezix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Skeezix)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1065 "2011-07-28T03:18:24Z")
well, you guys have been busy, just chatting it up. meanwhile, i’ve been stupid busy, and haven’t had much of a chance to play. I need to review the day more closely, see if anything jumps out. But at this point: **vote septimus** Your claim seems tailored to your actions of late yesterday. It’s pretty convenient. Also, it seems trivial for a scum player to fake, if they don’t think there is a vig in the game (there’s no guarantee that there is). Also the power is a strange one. I feel like every so often someone claims to be either a Town aligned Bomb or a Bulletproof townie. It’s just that in ~ 40 games played, I’ve seen 1 bomb and 2 bulletproof town players. It’s just not that common. So to put it simply, I find the vote manipulation to be a very scummy action, and the claim hard to swallow. Second up, ShadowFacts: I didn’t think both you and Silver Jan could both be scum, and since Silver Jan turned out to be town. The points I raised against you yesterday rise up to the surface. **vote ShadowFacts** > [@Red\_Skeezix](#): > > You spent enough of day 1 thinking that pizza was town that you felt the need to distance yourself from that position today. > > You say you think Kelly is leaning town at one point, but keep your vote on him anyways. > > You try to take both sides on whether Lightfoot should reveal results. I see some possiblities for this: > Lightfoot may not understand implications, so you are trying to encourage good play. > > You are trying to defuse your own attempt to change Lightfoot’s mind. > > Side note: Personally, I am of the opinion that Lightfoot should reveal results on the outside chance that Lightfoot is scum, and gets caught in a lie. Posting results at end of night seems to alleviate this. Especially since I believe there to be third parties in this game. In a game with no third parties, it’s possible for scum to claim cop, and give truthful results. It’s much harder if there’s third parties floating around. I do however, think that Lightfoot’s claim is unlikely if Lightfoot is scum, since it would be a very risky play indeed. > > You have made a couple of posts which the entire point seems to be to make yourself look more like town directly (as opposed to indirectly, by simply doing townie things). You have gone far enough to imply that both doing what you suggest is pro-town, and suggesting what you suggested is also pro-town. Third up, InnerStickler: > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > It would be great if we had a known scum and a suspicious player, other than that, I’d prefer to avoid lynching two players at the same time. Strategy Post. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Well, if we’re wrong on both counts, we’ll burn through 50% more town. Strategy Post. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Unless it’s an egregious slip, I tend to suspect the player pointing out the slip more so than the player who made it. > > I’m not going to vote a second time, I think, unless I’m pretty darn sure. Too bad Pleo isn’t playing, the two votes and frozen would mess with him bad. What? > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I think I can safely say that Normal did not use Charisma as a dump stat. Fluff. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > [oog]Turns out there’s no internet at the family vacation spot so I will be offline more than I thought until Tuesday. I’m looking for Starbucks as we speak though, so I shouldn’t be gone totally![/oog] OOG > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I’m back, he said sotto voce. > > Lightfoot’s claim is ill-considered from another perspective in that if there is a doc in this game, they are paranoid and so can only protect her at the expense of preventing her role action. I know this because I suffered through having to make that decision with Astral in the last game. It’s not a very fun impasse to be at. > > [color=blue] **Vote Silver Jan** [color] > > She’s rubbing me the same way she did in the last game and she was scum so I see no reason not to suspect the same here. > > I disagree with skeezix’s case on shadowfacts on principle, in that I agree with Shadowfacts wholeheartedly. I am in no way swayed by, “I’m voting for so and so for the same reasons as yesterday.” It’s lazy. If you want to persuade me to vote for someone, take the 5 minutes to make a link or two. Especially here where we can’t have individual threads for each day and night. Vote + No Case. Just she feels like scum from the last game. He wants others to justify their votes with links and persuasive reasoning. He feels no need to do the same. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I’m wiling to go along with it for a little bit. I only read the one thread on the other board, but this seems pretty par for his course and if he can get results, then I’d be grateful for it. The noncommital wait and see approach towards pizza. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Yes, if there is a doc, there is a possibility that they are paranoid. Clarification. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Yeah, I even went back and looked at Silver Jan’s posts and I don’t see any posts from her Today with more than the one vote for choie so I’m not sure where she got the Silver Jan is locked in from. Exposition. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Go to bed. Day doesn’t end for 22 and a half hours. Fluff. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Town or scum, when you start babbling, it’s a good idea to take a break and come back with a rested head for the last 24 hours. Fluff. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I find myself agreeing. A townie move would have been to vote for self-preservation in the hour leading up to the end of day with a role claim as well. This stinks of machinations. You think septimus > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > holy crap, that’s totally understandable. > I hope your dad has a speedy recovery. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > I still had a free vote Yesterday and I was around. I’ll bet I wasn’t the only one. I don’t know why he thought if he posted at the EOD he’d only be talking to Ed, Pizza and Normal. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > In my experience a scotsman is immune to one kill attempt, be it a night action or a lynch. I would think it weird for someone to claim scotsman but only be protected against a night action. > > If the scum aren’t particularly worried that a detective will find them via game thread means, they’re just as well off to block the detective and go after other players who seem more dangerous to them from an analytical point of view. Strategy, and musing about what scum might do. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > This statement just makes me more suspicious. Scotsman roles modconfirm the player. I would expect a bulletproof role to be the same or to at least be alerted if they are attacked. This is the strongest statement I think you’ve made the whole game. Thoughts: Inner Stickler is staying under the radar, he’s posting but not taking positions. His case against Silver Jan was undefensible. Even his statement about Pizza was wishy washy. He’s a strong candidate for scum. I still want to review TexCat, but that will have to wait till tomorrow, cause now I’m tired. ---
**Author:** ![Astral\_Rejection](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@Astral\_Rejection](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astral_Rejection)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1066 "2011-07-28T03:56:16Z")
Septimus (6): Hirka T’Bawa [885], Inner Stickler [888], Stanislaus [893], gnarlycharlie [959], Mental Guy [968], Red Skeezix [1065] TexCat (5): Normal Phase [1007], Suburban Plankton [1014], Septimus [1023] ShadowFacts (3): Hirka T’Bawa [885], Askthepizzaguy [1030], Red Skeezix [1065] Suburban Plankton (2): TexCat [1018], Weedy [1044] Choie (2): Weedy [923], Normal Phase [1047] Normal Phase (2): Choie [930], Septimus [1009] Mental Guy (1): gnarlycharlie [959] gnarlycharlie (1): Mental Guy [968] Stanislaus (1): Askthepizzaguy [988] With these votes, Septimus would be lynched. Day ends tomorrow, July 28th at **5 pm central time.** As always, please check for errors. ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1067 "2011-07-28T05:29:18Z")
**unvote: stanislaus** Though, I actually place him higher presently than **vote: Suburban Plankton** But Stanislaus has effectively no chance of being lynched since everyone has panned him as a suspect. Now, since we have less than a full day and I actually have a day off I will get to expressing my thoughts and doing a review on **septimus stanislaus suburban plankton TexCat ShadowFacts** Presently I disagree with septimus as a lynch. ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1068 "2011-07-28T05:42:58Z")
For easier reference, I’m going to post the unmolested quote wall for each person in a separate post. Then I’ll offer my thoughts. Feel free to do the same, feel free to copy/edit and paste into your own analysis. TEXCAT > [@TexCat](#): > > Stanislaus, I’m not sure I followed all of your double vote worries and shifting theorems. I thought that once you put down your second vote, you were locked in and couldn’t shift. Plus, here we are not forced to use our second vote, are we? I, for one, am going to be reluctant to lay down that second vote without being pretty darn certain. > [@TexCat](#): > > I had to laugh at this. I thought at first that we were all agreeing with the uncontroversial statement that Normal is scary. > > And I certainly agree with the welcome for USCDiver! > [@TexCat](#): > > At least this sheds some light on that entire conversation that Kelly and Ed had about handshaking. Are you claiming vanilla town, Kelly? Or are you trying to claim that you are a mason of some very odd sort? > [@TexCat](#): > > None of this rings true for me. You heard the term “handshake” somewhere, but you don’t quite remember where. You quiz Ed about it. You notice that your PM did not match the sample in OP. You quiz the mod about it. He points you to rule number 8 in the OP. And somehow you missed rule #13 in the OP? It was a few after rule number 8 and just above the sample PM. > > And you thought this handshake attempt was your best defense, in spite of Ed saying that moderators almost always try to prevent handshakes? You obviously put some thought, time, and research into this. It’s a pity you missed rule 13. > > **Vote: KellyCriterion** > [@TexCat](#): > > The odd thing to me about Scathach’s death is that his alignment was not revealed. This makes me believe that we probably have third parties amongst us. If there were only scum and townies, then why bother hiding alignment? This is particularly true if we assume that Scathach was the scum kill. I’m thinking he might be a third party kill. It might make more sense for a third party to have a janitor. > > I didn’t see anything in the OP about third parties, but the sample win condition “_all_ threats to the Defenders of De’endee” leaves the possibility open. > [@TexCat](#): > > Unless there is a third party, scum already know the alignment. And town would have a pretty reasonable assumption that scathach was town. Why have the mechanic of hidden alignments without a third party? > [@TexCat](#): > > Huh? I guess all of these words were just a bunch of hooey. Seems to me that you have pretty severely limited your options now, PizzaGuy. Willing to to consider other alternatives? Uh, huh. Need time? Four days left in Today, but I guess you chose not to use that time. Care to tell us why exactly were you in such a hurry to lock in your vote? > [@TexCat](#): > > I am a little concerned about the coziness I see in the posts between **septimus** and **choie**. > OMGUS votes haven’t worked out for you in the past? And yet you, PizzaGuy, choie, and Silver Jan seem to be caught in an endless OMGUS loop. Scum try to act agreeable? Hmmm, looks like you might be working on that one. > > The original post that septimus liked, raised my eyebrows: > > First the newbie card, then the excuse for being quiet. When she talks about “the innocent town folk on my team”, it seems a little too much to me. Particularly when one of her reasons for voting Silver Jan were Jan’s constant proclamations of towniness. Then the pre-excuses for the “crappy rationale-less vote”. Not much to like for me. What in particular did you like about it, **septimus**? > [@TexCat](#): > > I stand corrected. In fact, I remember your reluctance to vote for Kelly after he FOS’d you. You are not a OMGUS voter, you are a OMGUS votee, one of Silver Jan’s many. Sorry that I lumped you in with the OMGUS voters. > > ```auto > > I think I may have been the first one to mention 3rd parties. LightFoot, I'm not sure I understand what you are looking at/for? > > ``` > [@TexCat](#): > > I believed Silver Jan’s claim yesterday after Normal backed it up with her own. I still believe it toDay. I think her play style of OMGUS voting and towniness proclaiming is not pro-town, but I believe her. If she just claimed to have some method in her madness and a way far better opinion of herself, she could give PizzaGuy a run for his money. > > I was suspicious yesterDay of Ed. When Kelly tried to handshake, I thought WTF, didn’t he have this whole discussion of handshaking with Ed, and didn’t Ed tell him that it wasn’t possible in this game. When I got ready to vote for Kelly and actually looked back at the posts, I discovered that Ed didn’t mention that fact at all. [Posts starting here and continuing a little ways.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14015929&postcount=218) He certainly jumped on Kelly after the handshake attempt, but did little to prevent it. Was he setting Kelly up? > > ToDay, I have not liked the way that Ed has chided Silver Jan at every opportunity, but seems to be waiting for someone else to make the case and start voting her. Since I think Silver Jan is town, this looks to me like scum Ed is looking for an easy town lynch. > > None of these reasons are definitive, but my gut is telling me that Ed is scum. > > \*\*vote: special ed \*\* > [@TexCat](#): > > I was sure that Ed was scum – particularly after the Silver Jan flip. It seemed like he spent most of the day yesterDay, pointing out her scummy ways and then ended up not voting for her. I was ready to vote him again toDay. > > I am not sure what to make of Septimus’s claim. It’s certainly has some advantages as a fake scum role. No need to explain why the scum aren’t killing you at night. No way for the town to prove the role, except by lynching. I don’t find his last minute vote unsettling. I was, unfortunately, unable to get back for EOD, but had I been around, I would have expected Septimus to change his vote to save himself, whether he was town or scum. > > I agree that it seems unlikely that both Choie and Septimus are scum. PizzaGuy, you’ve made a case on both of them. I’d like to hear your opinion. > > edited to fix quote > [@TexCat](#): > > PizzaGuy, you can add my rolling eyes :rolleyes: to your case on me. Good grief, you’ve gone from some one who voted with no apparent reasons to the Berlin wall of words and charts. What caused the drastic change? > > I’m not sure that I disagree with your stance on Normal: > However, I find most of that statement to be more true about you than about her. > > Yes, I am generally a quiet player. I pop in and add my two bits when I see something of note, whether or not that’s worthy of a vote. So, yes, I’ve come in to “cluck my tongue” at you a few times. Surely that’s not a surprise; you must think some of your actions worthy of a tongue cluck or two. > [@TexCat](#): > > I was responded to your point about Ed being dead and Septimus still alive. I found Ed to be a particularly strange choice for scum. > > Yes even at 6:59 and 55 seconds. I think self-preserving votes are a null tell. > [@TexCat](#): > > I didn’t say there might not be 1000 different motives for scum to kill Ed. I’m sure you could come up with a dozen without breaking a sweat. I just said that **I** found it a surprising choice because I had thought he was scum. And that is exactly why I did not vote Septimus yesterday, because Ed, after pushing Silver Jan all day, suddenly voted for Septimus. From my obviously wrong point of view, that tended to make me lean town on Septimus and scum on Ed. > > It’s easy to argue that my case on Ed has flaws _now_. Is there some reason you didn’t point this out yesterday? > [@TexCat](#): > > Ugh. Not following, but still voting? > > Some good points? Yes, well obviously, my case against Ed had flaws, namely that he flipped town. Why exactly doesn’t it seem genuine? Because I assure that it was. > > Huh? Didn’t a lot of us vote Kelly? In fact, a plurality? You, yourself voted Kelly, saying I assumed that “different tactic” was a comment on his handshaking attempt. So you’re voting me for doing the same thing you did? > I don’t believe I used the word snuggling at the time, but yeah, I pointed out what I thought was suspicious behavior. I didn’t think it was vote-worthy at the time, and didn’t later, so yeah, I didn’t harp on it. > > Here we can really tell that you are not following along closely. I voted Ed, in part, because he chided her all day, and did NOT vote her. > Huh? Do you have a different definition of snuggling? > Wow. That’s a lot to do all at the same time, isn’t it? Lay low AND stir things up? And yeah, I don’t take strong positions on things I don’t feel strongly about. > > But guess what? This post has made me feel strongly that you are a Lord of Slaughter. This post has scum bandwagon vote written all over it. First, the I haven’t been following along closely excuse. This is a scum excuse for a vote. There was no hurry to get a vote down, unless you just wanted to bandwagon, trying to get the momentum to roll my direction. Second, the mischaracterizing and falsifying my positions to make me look some how scummy. Not a good sign. Using my Kelly vote which was the same as yours, as a reason? > > \*\*Vote: Suburban Plankton \*\* > [@TexCat](#): > > This is irritating. “That’s not what I said here.” It is what you said. It’s a quote from you. I guess you meant to say that you were more focused on the timing rather than the reasons for my vote. Since you have the reason entirely wrong. I didn’t invent that; it’s in your quote. > [@TexCat](#): > > Septimus, I don’t think your arguments really hold together very well. If you think that Normal and/or Pizza are scum, why would they bus me? For the town cred? Because they are under pressure? Normal’s pressure came from Pizza. I guess you think he’s bussing her too? Pizza was under a lot of pressure the first couple of Days, but seemed to survive without bussing anyone. > > Isn’t it more likely that a scummy Normal and/or a scummy Pizza latched onto an innocent townie that looked like an easy lynch? Or that two innocent townies, Normal and Pizza, found that I looked scummy, made the case and voted me? > > There all kinds of reasons for scum to bus their teammates, but I have found that they don’t start cases on them very often and without good reason. Often when it looks inevitable, scum will add their condemnation and vote, but rarely do they throw teammates under the bus just for the hell of it. > [@TexCat](#): > > And do you think defending yourself is a scum tell? Or being quiet is a scum tell? I haven’t noticed much concrete from you either Weedy. This vote just looks like a bandwagon to me. > > The vote on pedescribe was not effective? Do you think he is still scum? Do you think I am scum, or just a convenient or effective? vote? ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1069 "2011-07-28T05:53:37Z")
STANISLAUS [Lots of snipping required to fit in one post; use the quote arrows to see full post and context] > [@Stanislaus](#): > > So that said, I’m going to > > **vote pedescribe** > > “Slips” like saying “all townies” instead of “all my fellow townies” are just not a reliable scum-tell. Every game seems to have half a dozen of these a-ha! moments that turn out to be nothing other than poor phrasing. What is more reliable is that scum love jumping on them, because it saves them having to make a real case. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > You’re obviously not familiar with the search function. > [SNIP by ATPG] > > If pede wants to come back and explain why it’s much likely for scum to use the phrase “all the townies” rather than town, I’ll read with interest. But all I’m seeing now is lazy opportunism. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > Yes - once you’ve put down your second vote you can’t change either vote. So I’m assuming that people will only make a second vote towards the very end of the Day. Which I think will encourage bandwagoning. > > You’re right that we don’t have to second vote. I was a little too overcome with SS Incorrigible trauma to see that at first. It’s a point worth stressing - as it locks your vote in, you have to be very sure about both cases before you do it. > > …Or people will dump their second vote on the lynch leader in the last few hours. My concern is simply that if we plan on doing that, it will force an earlier time limit on when people have to claim. And anything that encourages multiple claims in a Day has the potential to be damaging to Town. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > I agree that this is the logical way to do it. But I genuinely doubt whether a group of rugged individualists such as us can make it work. For example, if the lynchleader claims Cop 5 mins before a genuine, mod-enforced Dusk, then tough. More fool them for waiting so long. But if someone claims cop 5 mins before a player-enforced “Dusk” then are we really going to ignore that and pile votes on them? I’d like to think we would have the discipline to stick to our own rules but as we have limited enforcement mechanisms it’s going to require a degree of self-control that, to put it mildly, hasn’t always been evidenced in other Mafia games. > > If want to go for this, I’m in - but it requires total commitment from everyone, in all eventualities. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > That’s what? **Pedescribe** ’s unvote is a null tell: > > If he were Town who’d made a bad vote and got called on it, he’d unvote. > If he were Scum who’d made a bad vote and got called on it, he’d unvote. > > If you found it scummy when he did it, it’s still scummy now that he’s retracted it under pressure. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > I find Normal’s case on Kelly very interesting. I admit that I had a response to the request for cites, but I put that down to aggravation with the search process and didn’t want to fall into OMGUS style thinking. > > However: the reasoning behind the FOS was the same pede used; the “lot of effort just to get me to remove a FOS” line smacks of an overestimation of how much others are focused on his play (typical of self-conscious scum) - in fact, as my vote suggested, I was focused on pede; the attempt to compliment me while equivocating on my alignment looks like both snuggling and fence-sitting… > > **unvote pedescribe** > **vote Kelly Criterion** > [@Stanislaus](#): > > I don’t think you’ve really addressed ShadowFacts points here. Even if you thought you were the first to actually vote, you were taking your lead in who to vote for from two other players - either of whom, as you’ve acknowledged, might be scum setting up an innocent townie. But not only does this not give you pause, you’ve claimed that their suspicion of Koldanar was a big factor in your choice of him. > > I can see that you’ve got a well-developed theory of scum-hunting, and it’s consistent with your actions so far. But your confidence in Normal and Scathach’s honesty reduces my confidence in you. How worried were you that they were guilty, and you’d be kicking off a wagon on someone innocent? > [@Stanislaus](#): > > It’s late here and I don’t have a lot of time so quickly: > > I’m a bit worried by the sudden rush to Silver Jan. They’re by no means baseless votes but they’ve come pretty close to saving Kelly. My quick count suggest Kelly is now on 9 and Silver Jan on 7, so we’re not that far from a tie. > > Also, would all the people who are now rushing to second vote just because they can, please stop. I’m going to call out USCDiver in particular: you voted for the vote leader and the runner up. This has made _absolutely no difference_ to the eventual lynch. > > Confused and fraught though recent posts have been, I haven’t seen anything to make me change my vote. And I certainly haven’t seen anything to make me put on a second vote, because as discussed at length earlier, _they should only be used with exceptionally good reason._ > [@Stanislaus](#): > > Lightfoot, I think your decision to out yourself was a very risky one. > > [SNIP by ATPG] > > One other thing I wanted to comment on: Pizza, you do know that not only was your idea of late pile-on voting discussed at length and rejected yesterDay, but that one of the major advocates of the plan was Septimus? Had you even done a cursory review of his posts? > [@Stanislaus](#): > > I understand that bandwagons make things easy for scum - I think the most successful Days for town are the ones that end with a Scum and a Townie in close contention for the lynch lead, precisely for the reasons you give. > > [SNIP by ATPG] > > I think the best way to generate the kind of situation we want (i.e. close contention between suspects, at least one of which is actually Scum) is to put more effort into making cases on more people. We’ve a tendency to let one or two cases develop and then coast. We need to all contribute a bit more to the creation of suspects - if we can get three or four plausible cases going, then the problem of bandwagoning should solve itself. And of course we’ll have a better chance of bringing scum under scrutiny. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > With that [my last post] in mind, here’s a quick [it wasn’t quick] look at special ed: > > First game post: > > [SNIP by ATPG] > > So **vote special ed**. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > Well, yeah. Either you were questioning him because you thought his votes for Red then Koldanar were worth exploring in a “Hmm, there’s something a touch scummy about this” kind of way, in which case the rapidity with which you backed off any suggestion of that is kind of milquetoast, or you were really just having a cheerful little tete a tete with him in which case it’s a somewhat banal conversation. It seemed like you were posting for the sake of posting, not because you had any great point to make. > No, no, no. I see why you stopped the discussion of the vanilla PMs. I see that your contribution was carefully couched to avoid that, either from yourself or anyone else. Except that simply by keeping asking questions you kept the topic alive, and your warning about revealing details of PMs only came - alas! - after a couple of people arguably had. You’re smart enough to have seen the danger early on, so I’m wondering why you didn’t make a big deal with your first post on the topic to warn everyone of the risks. And the little suspicious part of me that won’t ever let me get truly close to anyone says it’s because you wanted to give people a chance to slip up before stepping in with your big pro-Town warning. > I have to go now - time and tilde wait for no man. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > Yeah, well, that’s because… I mean obviously you would… balls. > > **unvote special ed** > [@Stanislaus](#): > > I’m not any more convinced by the Silver Jan case than I was yesterDay. > > [SNIP by ATPG] > > On balance, I’m leaning slightly town on Pizza. It’s tough, because not having played with him I have that itchy feeling that I might be being suckered, but I think that most of what he’s done to raise my hackles has been due to play-style rather than any pro-Scum behaviour. > So who does that leave? > > I didn’t like USCDivers’ votes before, and I don’t love his fairly unreasoned, non-scum-hunting vote for pizza now. But I really don’t like Mental Guy’s case on gnarlycharlie. Gnarly did a good job of refuting it, and the fact that Mental’s case can be so easily reflected back on him makes me wonder if there’s an element of transference: > > **vote Mental Guy** > [@Stanislaus](#): > > Today has been unexpectedly busy for me and I’ve basically run out of time. (It’s getting late here now.) I was hoping to review septimus, but I’m not going to manage that now - or go over the new Shadow/Normal cases. So I’m going to leave my vote where it is, which is a bit lame but to move it now would just be going off half-cocked. > > Sorry guys, I got caught up in unexpected stuff at work and at home, which has left me a bit squeezed. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > Well, I kind of feel spared the need to review septimus at this point. > > In fact, my biggest concern about tomorrow is that it’s too much of a foregone conclusion. We will need to actually play the game, not just drift. That, or we hammer quickly and move on, but I’d rather not do that if there’s a chance to get some proper play in. > Lightfoot, I haven’t picked up any breadcrumbs from your posts. In terms of when to tell your results, while I appreciate Pizza’s inclination to gamble I think he’s missed two important wrinkles: the possibilities of a scum roleblocker and a paranoid Doc. > > Whether or not there’s actually a Doc, the possibility that there is one will make Scum think twice about killing you. So from that perspective, the gamble on you surviving the night is at least 50/50 (failing to make an NK is a big deal for scum, after all). If they’ve got a roleblocker however, they get to stop you \*and \*make an NK. And you’d be effectively neutered from this point on, or at least until we find the roleblocker (who could be next scum we lynch - hi septimus! - or the very last one). Equally, there’s the possibility that we do have a Doc who will also block you. That’s tougher, because they have to make a decision each Night about whether to save you or let you work, but it will probably cut down your effectiveness. > > If you keep schtum just now, then: > If you’re killed, we lose your N1 name plus all the investigations you would have made from N2 onwards. > If you’re blocked then you can reveal your N1 name come Dawn; then we’ll have to take each Night as it comes and see if you get any more results. Either it’s scum blocking you, in which case you probably won’t get any more names very soon or it’s a Paranoid Doc, in which case it’s down to WIFOM. But the chances of you building up a group of names will be smaller. > If you’re neither blocked nor killed, then you’ll have two names to give us, and we’d probably expect to get a third and maybe fourth before you revealed. > > If you give us your result now: > If you’re killed, we get one more name from you than we would have done. > If you’re blocked, there’s essentially no difference. We’d still get the name, and you’d still be hamstrung one way or the other. > If you’re neither blocked nor killed, then we’d have one name out there and you could work on building up a group of confirmed town to reveal later. Except that the person you name would become a scum target, and that would make the presumptive Doc’s job a little harder. > > …and having written that out, I see that the risk of blocking doesn’t actually effect whether you should spill a name toNight - you can just tell us in the morning if you are blocked. I’m not going to delete it all and summarise though - people can read it through and check my logic. But I think the decision on whether you give us a name toNight or not is just a question of attitude to risk. Personally, I think just the possibility of a Doc gives you a pretty good chance of avoiding an NK so I’d keep quiet just now. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > Crap. Didn’t consider possibility of scum strongman. That is the absolute worst case. But even if you give us the name we’d still only get one confirmed town, who probably wouldn’t survive to the end game. > > It’s still about your attitude to risk. We can’t even guess at the odds of there being a particular role, so trust your own judgement. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > I’ve got a certain amount of sympathy for septimus’s point that he wasn’t about to argue his way out of locked in votes. It’s true as far as it goes. But he’d spent the whole day in close contention for the lynch - he should have made his position a lot clearer before the very last minute. I know I said power roles should try to argue their way out of votes first, but I didn’t even see him do that very much. It looks like he was always planning to wriggle out at the last minute. > \*\* > vote septimus\*\* > [@Stanislaus](#): > > [oog] Glad your Dad’s recovering well, gnarly![/oog] > > Normal, I was nodding along with the bulk of your last post to septimus, right until you got to your conclusion. I think he’s scum. > > septimus has: evaded the case against him; gone out of his to way to manipulate the vote to save himself; produced an unverifiable roleclaim. (Particularly the way he not only doesn’t know who attacked him - common with Scotsman roles - but doesn’t even know if _he’s used his power_). These are all strong scum traits, but I can see how you could tag them as PFK. For me the most damning thing is that scum evidently didn’t feel the need to attack him.\* If he were not scum, and had gone to such lengths to save himself, why would they not target him? Either they’re astonishingly paranoid or somehow didn’t think he was the most likely town power role out there. > > But on a more general note, after I got fooled by a PFK claim last game, I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of trying to separate out PFKs. On sheer numbers, you’re more likely to find scum than PFK and there’s a bigger downside than upside to letting your suspect live a few Days longer. (E.g in this instance, if septimus is a scum blocker we lose N Days of results from Lightfoot). “Kill 'em all and let the mod sort 'em out” is my new motto. > > \*Unless they did and someone else killed special ed? But down this path of empty speculation lies madness. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > OK, I had this half-finished before I had to leave work last night so I’m going to finish it off now before I address Pizza’s vote on me. > > [SNIP by ATPG] > Third time he clarifies the septimus case. This could be a townie just trying to keep everybody on the straight and narrow, but given my own suspicion of septimus I find it suspicous in it’s own right. If septimus flips scum, I will find this vote-worthy. > > So in sum: Lots of equivocation, lots of protests about how little he knows about scum, lots of condoning of lynching people for being suspicious or noisy. Some defense of septimus which I am quite suspicous of, but will wait for a role-flip before judging. > > I am voting for septimus; if I were to use a second vote, it would be on Mental Guy. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > It’s my experience with a PFK _claim_: Zeriel’s. I was suckered by it, whereas if I’d stuck with thinking of him as a wrong 'un, I might have actually contributed to a successful lynch. (I realise that this case is different in that septimus hasn’t claimed PFK - rather you’ve concluded he is through analysis: my position is still that it’s better to lynch someone you think is anti-Town now than try to distinguish between the two flavours). > > Mainly, of course, I do think he’s scum - but the possibility that he might be PFK doesn’t make me hesitate to lynch him. > [@Stanislaus](#): > > Suburban Plankton - I’m not very convinced by this case. Looking over your posts about him, it seems a lot like you were blowing off steam about people complaining about your playstyle. Yes, he shouldn’t have suggested it’d be OK to lynch you even if you were town - but is that subtle scum manipulation or just his honest reaction to your playstyle? He’s not the only one to do so - IIRC, you yourself said at one point you’d be a good lynch candidate, just because too many people were focused on you. I’m not sure that differs too much from what SP was saying. The core argument you have against him seems to be that he reasoned badly, therefore he’s scum. I agree that scum are essentially forced to reason badly by virtue of making cases that they know have false conclusions, but town are perfectly capable of reasoning badly themselves. > > ShadowFacts - similarly, most of Normal’s case against him boils down to “Bad reasoning ==\> scum” e.g. “Weird isn’t scum” (indeed!) “bad criticism of another player” “conclusions drawn are too facile”. Equally, there’s quite a lot of “Town wouldn’t do that!” e.g. consider voting for pedescribe, ask Lightfoot to reveal. Town will do all of that and more. The points about being overcautious and ducking a direct Q from you are more persuasive, but not enough to convince me to vote. > > TexCat - I find this case more convincing. Suburban’s analysis of her as coming in to say something that makes waves before dropping back out of sight does seem to fit the pattern of her posts, and is plausible scum behaviour. Ditto her avoidance of the tie-break vote despite having made a case against septimus. I’ll have to think about it some more but she might be edging ahead of Mental Guy in my suspicions. ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1070 "2011-07-28T06:00:28Z")
I am voting for choie and Texcat, not choie and Suburban Plankton. ---
**Author:** ![Weedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/weedy/32/301_2.png) [@Weedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weedy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1071 "2011-07-28T06:01:45Z")
Maybe that should be in green \*\* I am voting for choie and Texcat, not choie and Suburban Plankton. \*\* ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1072 "2011-07-28T06:03:38Z")
shadowfacts > [@shadowfacts](#): > > i agree with this case, and want to emphasize the part that i see as the most damaging: \*\*kelly \*\*demands examples (in an fairly aggressive way), then blames \*\*stanlislaus \*\*for going through all of the “effort” of providing those examples. Don’t ask for cites, then use the fact that someone provided them to try to smudge them further! Not cool. > > **unvote > vote kellycriterion** > [@shadowfacts](#): > > uncontroversial, yes. Obvious, certainly. And yet some people still did not seem to get the memo. Perhaps there should have been a few more repeat posts about justifying votes. 😛 > > a bit more directly, i find **askthepizzaguy’s** vote here to be terrible and his follow-up explanation even worse, as others just above have already outlined. I need to review the case against **kellycriterion** (where my vote currently sits) to see which actions i like less before i decide if i will change, though. I’m at work right now and squeezing in this game between meetings. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > **askthepizzaguy** , i’m getting a sense of your defense and we’ve had “stir the pot” type players on these boards before (most notably, imo, peekercpa). So my suspicion of you is starting to lessen with your explanations. However, i still can’t quite get over this contradiction that **septimus** pointed out earlier. You said: > > Allow me to summarize the problem i see with your explanation: > > (paraphrasing) > > 1. I prefer to lead cases as opposed to following others. (ok, no problem). > 2. I tried to lead with **skeezix** , but nothing was happening. (ok, no problem). > 3. **kelly** was getting enough heat, so i wanted to put pressure on someone else. (ok, no problem). > 4. So, vote **koldanar**. (problem!) > > if you haven’t figured it out yet, the problem i see is that your actions pretty much directly contradict your words in the same post. If you don’t want to follow others, why did you follow the case against **koldanar**? To use your own explanation, “[you] have no idea if [people accusing **koldanar**] are guilty, and if they are, then the odds are poorer that i’d be wagoning a guilty person, just by virtue of the fact that the evildoers are not as likely to point fingers at their buddies.” > > i’d like to hear your explanation for this. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > just read through the most recent posts. I don’t have time for a full analysis right now, but wanted to throw my $.02 in that **kellycriterion’s** behavior is reading like a flailing newbie right now. The question is: Flailing newb town or flailing newb scum? I’m leaning town, actually. I’m going to re-evaluate my vote when i read more carefully at lunch, but for now i thought it might be useful to put my current state of mind on the record. > > I should also mention that my other suspect so far was **askthepizzaguy** , but i find his answers to my (and others’) questions plausible. Despite his obvious mafia ego :p, my suspicions of him have been mostly alleviated for the moment. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > **silver jan’s** vote on **romanic** bugged me, so i decided to use my lunch to do a review. Sorry for the wall of quotes, i think it’s easier to see the whole picture this way. Note: Votes have been bleached, some quotes have been snipped to stay on topic. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > well, i know my memory is not as sharp as it used to be, but i do recall there being a role reveal… Sometime in the recent past. Oh yeah, here it is! > > 😉 > > so, we are either dealing with a game mechanic whereby we get role reveals for lynches but not for night kills, or some kind of power was at work to disguise **scathach’s** role. (or some third crazy option i can’t think of). I’ve never heard of anything like that kind of game mechanic and i think “sadly, there isn’t enough left of him to identify” points to some specific thing happening, so i say the smart money is on option 2. > > The shitty part of this, of course, is that (possible investigators notwithstanding) we know nothing more right now than we did after **kelly’s** reveal. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > i’m also going to make a request to all: When referring to previous cases from previous days that you are following up on, please \*\*quote \*\*or \*\*link \*\*to the posts in question. \*\*atpg \*\*does a summation (and expansion) of his thoughts from yesterday, but without context, it’s not compelling. Yes, i could (and may still) go back and check it out, but i believe it is incumbent on the person making the case to show me all the evidence and convince me. It’s the pro-town thing to do, and i think you in advance. 🙂 > > **atpg** , in this post, your case against \*\*septimus \*\*seems particularly vague - it’s all about his wording and level of certainty. If you want to convince me or anyone to vote for **septimus** , i suggest you tell us exactly what he said that tipped your scum-meter. You know, with quotes and stuff. If you’ve already done this, that’s cool, just link us to it. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > i’m obviously not as good a player as you think i am :d so allow me to explain my thoughts. The following assumes **lightfoot** is legit. Scum already know who is town (or not scum), so revealing the good alignment that she discovered give scum little to no useful information, and gives town a big whopping confirmed player we can trust. The downside, as you’ve explained, is that it paints a target on that person, who might be an important power role. I admit that i had not thought that through fully (see my first sentence). > > Despite that, i _still_ think it’s more of a benefit to reveal. Scum will have to choose who to try to kill: “confirmed” townie who may or may not be a power role? **lightfoot** , who may or may not be protected by a doc? Tough wifom. > > The downside to not revealing, of course, is that if **lightfoot** is killed, we get nothing. Absolutely nada. We’ve handed our seer over to the scum for no benefit. That’s a pretty big downside, imo. > > And all _that_ said, i’ve long been an advocate of “trust your power roles.” they presumably have more info. So, i’ve made my opinion known, but **lightfoot** should play it how she sees fit. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > do you just reflexively vote anyone who has suspicion on you, or what? :dubious: > > I’ve been chewing on what to do about you for a bit. I moved my vote off of **kellycriterion** yesterday because his reaction to being vote leader, while not wise, felt townie to me. So i looked at your posts and ended up voting for you. I felt as good about that case as one normally can for day one. But your reaction to gathering votes felt similar to **kelly’s** reaction, and i began to have doubts. But it was late in the day and **kelly** was clearly going to swing, so i didn’t remove my vote, figuring i would wait to see what you said today. > > I’m not encouraged so far. First, you haven’t posted anything until now, which makes me think you’re keeping your head down and lying low. (not a townie thing to do). When you finally come in, it’s only to place a lame omgus vote on **choie**. You did a similar thing yesterday, voting for **normal phase** because she said you “pinged” her. Your reasoning: “i am definitly town in this game so all normal has on me really is from metagaming…” ugh. I gave you some credit, though, because you came back and unvoted, realizing that was a bad vote. But now you’re back doing the exact same thing! > > **vote silver jan** > > (and just to follow my own excellent advice, [here is a link](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14021896&postcount=360) back to my case on silver jan yesterday.) > > i am considering using my second vote to get the attention of some people who are not posting, but i’ll try some regular encouragement first: let’s go people, it’s tuesday, and some folks have no posts at all today. Lame! > [@shadowfacts](#): > > neta: > > Also, i am increasingly convinced by the case against **askthepizzaguy** and his excuses are less convincing today than they were yesterday. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > if i may quote **special ed** : Bah. > > That’s a simple request for people to engage in pro-town methods of voting. You \*might \*(and i emphasize might) have a case if that’s all i ever posted, but i’ve got plenty of analysis, votes and “concrete opinions” on record in this game. Unlike some other posters i could mention. Crap vote, in my not-biased-at-all opinion. 🆒 > [@shadowfacts](#): > > what, do you think you are darth vader? > > :d > [@shadowfacts](#): > > gods help me, but i have to admit that **pizzaguy’s** analysis of **silver jan** was pretty convincing. \*\*normal phase’s \*\*addition to that analysis also makes sense (despite the fact that she is gunning for me). I still don’t think **silver jan** is playing well, but that is not by itself scummy, so > > **unvote silver jan** > > in related news, i am completely conflicted about **pizzaguy**. He’s had at least two blatant examples of his actions contradicting his words. Normally, i would vote something like that damn quick and be pretty confident about it. But i can’t quite pull the damn trigger. The bandwagon that he’s on right now feels like an easy “lynch the loud” train and his participation is solid, even if i disagree with his methods. He’s driving me crazy, to be honest, but despite it all i am leaning town on him. I don’t think i’ll vote for him today. (that said, i do think his case on **septimus** is really weak). > > Which leaves me with…no votes right now. Back to the drawing board. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > so, in your opinion, i should have voted for **atpg** based on what i stated in that post? > > Also, was it just that one comment you were talking about, or are there more? (you seemed to be making a more general comment about my posting). > [@shadowfacts](#): > > ok, i took a look at **pedescribe’s** contributions to the game to date. Here they are: > > I went into that search with the impression that \*\*pedescribe \*\*was lurking pretty badly, and was considering placing a vote to encourage more participation, but upon review he has contributed more than i recalled. > > I did notice a couple other things, though. First, he “vows” not to use his double vote on day one, but then promptly uses it on \*\*atpg \*\*on day two. This locks him onto someone i would consider an easy target for scum (assuming \*\*atpg \*\*is town). Slight scum read there. > > Second, he voted for\*\* silver jan\*\* on day one (she ended up in second place), but has had absolutely nothing to say about her today, despite the fact that she is/was vote leader. Of course, he can’t vote for her now that he locked in his vote, but there has been no comment at all, which seems a bit odd. Possibly distancing himself from the lynch? Impossible to say right now, and only makes sense if \*\*jan \*\*is town, but not out of the question. > > So, not much of a case, but i’d like to prod a response so: **vote pedescribe** > > what changed your mind about the double voting? > What are your thoughts on **silver jan** today? > > Neta: I screwed up the coding in that spoiler box somehow so it blends quotes by \*\*pede \*\*and **np** , but i can’t figure out how to fix it. Sorry. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > i don’t have time to rebut all of your errors 😛 about me, but i wanted to talk about this, since i’ve been trying to engage you about it for a while. Let’s review the sequence of events from earlier today: > > [snip by atpg] > > ouch. > > So, despite the fact that i am practicing exactly what she preached and avoiding piling on **pizzaguy** , she finds it a scum tell. Why? In my mind, from the beginning of the day, she has interpreted (just about) everything i’ve said as suspicious. She’s fitting my words to an _already established_ conclusion, rather than evaluating me objectively. From my perspective, this could be a townie exhibiting poor play, or a scum trying to make a case out of nothing. Given \*\*np’s \*\*experience, i tend toward the latter. > > And since she prefers it this way, i will put my money where my mouth is: > > **vote normal phase** > [@shadowfacts](#): > > you’re welcome. It must have been driving you crazy all day, me not rising to your bait. That must be why you’ve had to resort to increasingly ludicrous arguments, such as calling red skeezix’s review of me (you know, the one that caused him to _unvote_ me) a “really excellent” case _against_ me. You jumped all over that like flies on shit. > > Now you’ve had to go so far as to blatantly lie: > > [snip by atpg] > > there is a reasonable explanation for me not voting atpg, which i have already posted, and i know you read it. Here it is: > > If you would take off your scum-colored-glasses for a second, you might realize it. His play-style is pretty crazy, sometimes he seems scummy to me, sometimes he doesn’t. I’ve updated my thoughts about him as the game has progressed. There’s nothing scummy about that, but feel free to keep fucking that chicken. :d i know you seem to be a “lock in until lynch” kind of player, but some of us are willing to revise our opinions of players as new information arrives. > > Gotta run to a meeting now, but i hope to get back to the rest of your “case” before the end of the day. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > i’m sorry i was not able to get back to the game at end of day yesterday - i got creamed at work and was wiped by the time i got home late. It’s looking like another monster at work today, and i haven’t had a chance to catch up, so don’t expect to hear much from me until the weekend. If anyone cares. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > [oog] sorry i have not been posting, everyone. I’ve been laid up with a stomach bug that just won’t go away, unfortunately. I will be back and participating as soon as possible - i promise before the end of the day no matter how i’m feeling. Sincere apologies! [/oog] > [@shadowfacts](#): > > hey everyone, i am back in health, catching up at work and obviously have a lot to catch up here as well. Sorry i had to be absent for so long. I’m going to have to post as i go along here since there is so much for me to read, so don’t be surprised if i comment on something from a couple days ago… > [@shadowfacts](#): > > i have begun the long slog of catching up. The first thing i feel compelled to address is something from the np/me fracas at the end of the day yesterday. It’s probably old news at this point, but i don’t want to leave it hanging, particularly since i have been accused of dodging. > > To recap, np said this about me (among lots of other things): > > I responded: > Needless to say, i was feeling pretty confident there. 🆒 Then hirka t’bawa and np responded by quoting my pedescribe vote. To review: > > I have to admit, that upon review that comment is a little wishy-washy. I challenged np to find one example of me being wishy-washy, and there it is. Oops. That said, looking at all of my votes, i don’t think that \*any \*reasonable person could possibly conclude that i am “constantly disavowing your first [vote] even as you place it.” > > more to come… > [@shadowfacts](#): > > ok, i’ve caught up to the \*\*septimus \*\*role claim, and based on the claim i will say that his last-minute voting is a null-tell. That is, i can see a town motivation for it, and a scum motivation: > > Town motivation (assume he is not lying, duh): Septimus is a power role and sj had claimed vanilla. Better her than him, even if she is town, which he does not know. Additionally, his power is one that is best kept secret, so claiming is something he would want to avoid if at all possible. I played a similar true scotsman role here before (though i was immune to first lynch, too) and i can definitely see the mindset. > > Scum motivation: Survive another day, natch. > > So, i say null-tell. This by itself is not cause to vote, imo. > > (sorry again if this is old news at this point). > [@shadowfacts](#): > > ok, i’m up to **atpg’s** case on \*\*choie \*\*(post #905): > > I admit that based on the sheer volume of words, i read quickly, but i don’t see enough there to vote for **choie**. Too much of the case is based on “tone,” which is impossible to rebut because tone is in the eye of the reader. (his original case on \*\*septimus \*\*was similarly “tone-based,” if significantly shorter :)). **choie’s** “i’m new” repetitions certainly have gotten old, but i’m not seeing the play-acting and insincerity that \*\*atpg \*\*is. No vote right now on \*\*choie \*\*for me. > [@shadowfacts](#): > > someone else said something similar to this earlier, but i can’t remember who and i don’t want to go back and track it down. Anyway, this sentiment makes no sense to me. \*\*septimus \*\*came within moments of being lynched yesterday, and only avoided the noose with a last-minute vote switch that was sure to be controversial. It makes perfect sense to me that scum would skip him and assume that there was a high probability of him being lynched today. Why bother killing him when he’s garnering tons of suspicion and likely to die the following day? ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1073 "2011-07-28T06:19:53Z")
suburban plankton > [@suburban plankton](#): > > it didn’t match **kelly’s** : He is an ‘npc townsperson’, and you are a ‘mage’. > > [snip] > > what possible reason do you think gender might make a difference? > [@suburban plankton](#): > > no, you are the ‘mage’. \*\*kelly \*\*is the ‘npc townsperson’. If either of you were controlled my the dm, it would be him, not you. > > At this point, i’m not sure if you’re confused about rpg terminology, or if you are having trouble because you edited your pm before posting it and can’t keep your story straight. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > you do know you’re not the vote leader, right? > [@suburban plankton](#): > > if you can’t make a case against **koldanar** , then why are you voting for him? You already had a vote down on **pedescribe** , so you there’s no way you “had to” vote again… > > I agree. > > **vote silver jan** > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i did make the cardinal sin of posting as i was catching up with the thread, and placed that vote before i saw \*\*normal’s \*\*post 425. I’m still considering whether or not i wish to change my vote at this point, because that’s not the only piece of **silver jan’s** behavior that is bothering me. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i’m voting for you. That’s not an fos. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > the fact that she keeps voting and unvoting, with some poor reasoning (her vote on **romanic** ; omgus votes on \*\*normal \*\*and **pedescribe** ; the completely unexplained vote on **koldanar** ). > > The repeated “innocent litte-ol’ me” tone in her posts. > > The fact that she didn’t know the vote count. > > All of which can be explained by her being a “new player”. Or not. > > What was it, then? > [@suburban plankton](#): > > fyi, i will be out of town all weekend, returning some time sunday evening, so i will miss the start of day. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > \ > > **lightfoot** , what made you include this line? > > If you are town, then it stands to reason that you would serve ‘the greater good’. > If you are scum pretending to be town, then again it would be a given that you would take such a position (or claim to). > The only reason anyone would have to explicitly state such a position is if they are a 3rd-party, and are trying to ‘make a deal’ with the town for their continued survival. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > well, they certainly weren’t obvious to me. > > [snip] > > i have found your play in this game to have been contradictory, inexplicable, and just plain bizarre. I think it has definitely not been pro-town…i’m just not sure if it’s intended to be anti-town or not. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > so the scum have a roleblocker, then? When did you discover that little tidbit? > > And where does the doc claim come from? Or should that have read cop? > [@suburban plankton](#): > > and we’ll all get accused of ‘mudslinging’ 🙂 > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i’m \*fairly \*sure that \*\*ed \*\*was speaking in the hypothetical…but with **ed** , one can never be quite certain. Scum roleblocker is not a big stretch, but it’s also not the most common role around. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i could vote once for each of you, if that would help… > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i’m not sure i’m interpreting this correctly, but if you have something to say about **koldanar** , then by all means don’t let this stop you. > > Whatever role \*\*koldanar \*\*has, it;s not going to change just because he isn’t around to post anymore. Whoever takes over for him will have the same role, and will have to answer for all of \*\*koldanar’s \*\*actions. So it benefits nobody for you to be silent just because he won’t be around to personally address your points. > > It might seem a bit cold, since he won’t be able to ‘defend himself’, but that’s how it goes sometimes. > > If i’ve completely misinterpreted what you meant, then ignore everything i’ve just said. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > **vote silver jan** > **vote choie** > > because they both seem to be trying to one-up each other with their “i am just a poor sweet avanilla townie, who could never hurt a fly” routines. > > I’ll admit it’s unlikely that they are _both_ scum and both taking the same approach to the game, but there’s still plenty of daylight left. > > I still think \*\*normal’s \*\*case against \*\*shadowfacts \*\*is a bad one, but it’s not enough to cause me to think he’s scum. > > I think **askthepizzaguy** , if he is as townie as he claims, might help out the rest of the town by actually doing some analysis. > > I think \*\*ed \*\*might be a clever scum skillfully maipulating the rest of us, but that’s only because i _always_ think that of **ed**. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > not that you asked, but i personally would rather read a number of consecutive posts, each addressing a single player of thought, than one long post addressing multiple topics. I just find it easier to read, and easier to refer back to if necessary. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i don’t see where this sentiment is coming from at all. > > [snip by atpg > > as i say, my gut feeling is that he’s town, but a part of me wants to see him lynched anyway, because i don’t want to implicitly approve of his playstyle by allowing him to continue it. And whether he winds up town, scum, or 3rd-party, i’m afrain that he has painted himself such an attractive target that we will ultimately learn nothing from the votes against him. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > **askthepizzaguy** , > > you obviously don’t care for my playstyle; i can’t fault you for that. And while i disagree with much of what you have to say in your last post, i’m not going to address most of it, because we’d just end up in a battle of “you suck!..nuh-uh, \*you \*suck!!”, which won’t help anyone. But there are a couple items that need further explanation. > > 1.) how exactly does it sound like i have a partner, and who would that be? > > 2.) so you think it’s 30% likely that i’m scum, which apparently is enough to earn a fos from you, and this “approaches the level” of suspicion you have for **septimus**. So exactly how scummy do you feel he is? 35%? 40%? Since you place two irrevocable votes on him quite early in the day, i rather thought you might be at least better than 50% certain of his guilt. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > “approaches the level” in quotation marks in order to indicate that i was quoting you; that is; using the same phrase you had previously used. > > When i want to express some vague unspoken suspicion, i generally use ‘scary trailing ellipses’… > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i’ve had the time to go over a few players’ posts in detail. Briefly, > > [snip] > > **vote texcat** > [@suburban plankton](#): > > just out of curiosity, why \*\*septimus \*\*necessarily? You could achieve the same result by voting for **askthepizzaguy**. > @ **choie** , by my count, **silver jan** is voting for you and for **ed** , so she is not ‘locked in’. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > “a perfectly adequate psychological case” > > what exactly is that supposed to mean? We’re supposed to be hunting down and killing scum here, not discovering out how they really feel about their parents. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > **askthepizzaguy** , > > do you want to know why i didn’t respond to the bulk of your accusations against me? I have some time now, so i’ll tell you. > > [snip] > > i’ll say it again, i believe you are town. But i think your behavior has been largely anti-town up to this point. Perhaps it’s all part of your master plan, and everything will become clear down the line. If that’s the case, i’ll acknowledge that when it happens. Perhaps it’s just ‘culture clash’. I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter at this point. Now, if there’s anything else you’d like to address about my play so far, i’d be interested to hear it. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > 1. no, that’s not correct at all. If i wanted you dead, i would have said so, an i would have voted for you. What i did was point out behavior which i felt was not in the best interest of the town. > 2. that argument was “your behavior is distracting and liable to cause emotional reactions in other players, neither of which are pro-town.” > 3. this is incorrect on a couple levels. First, one of my votes was on silver jan, so it did directly help to “decide the lynch”. Second, it is not necessary for a vote to “attempt to decide the lynch” in order for it to be a ‘good vote’. I place my votes on people i think are likely to be scum. Sometimes i share the majority view, and sometimes i don’t. > > I would like to know what it is that i am avoiding blame for. What is it that you think i have done for which i should be blamed? > [@suburban plankton](#): > > \*\*septimus \*\*does have a point regarding the end of the day. When **normal placed her second vote on him, silver jan** was still leading the voting 6-5. Fifteen minutes later when \*\*ed \*\*changed his vote, no claim was going to make any difference, because all 6 votes on him were “final”. > > If he is a town power, then keeping silent and double-voting **silver jan** _might_ have been the correct play. Claiming was not going to move any votes off of him, and would have made him a target last night. If he’s the vig or a mason, then that would have provided wifom for the scum, which wouldn’t have been so bad, but if he’s the doc it would have been very bad indeed. > > Of course, if he’s _not_ a town power, then he’s been a very naughty boy. > > In any case, i can’t see a reason to delay a roleclaim at this point. Either \*\*septimus \*\*is going to be the presumptive lynchee so he’ll have to claim in an attempt to save himself, or we will lynch someone else and the scum will kill him tonight, since he’s pretty much claimed non-vanilla, and it won’t matter anyway. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > \*\*askthepizzaguy’s \*\*case on \*\*choie \*\*is worth a closer look. I had similar feelings about her on day 2, and had voted her at one time, but i later decided it wa no longer worthy of a vote. I need to go back and figure out why i thought that. > > Regarding **septimus** ’ claim, i’d call his role ‘scotsman’ rather than ‘bulletproof’. I’ll admit i hadn’t considered that as a possibilty when he was hinting at his role. I find his late action less justifiable given his current claim than i did when i thought he was claiming a more ‘active’ power. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i’d guess a combination of 1 and 2, assuming you yourself are being truthful, but i don’t think that a paranoid doc is necessarily implied. If the scum have a roleblocker, then it makes perfect sense they would assume you are being protected, block you, and shoot for the doc elsewhere. In my experience, a scum roleblocker is more common than a paranoid doc. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i guess it would be some sort of ‘limited scotsman’ then. I’ve seen a fair variety of ‘kill-immune’ related roles, so i don’t find the role itself to be hard to swallow. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > what i meant was this: > > The scum would quite possibly have not tried to kill you, considering that they apparently have a roleblocker. You would be the most likely target for a doc’s protection, so you would likely be a wasted kill attempt. But with a roleblocker, they can keep you from acting and ‘shoot blind’ in an effort to find the doc, or some other town power. So i said it was a combination of point 1 (scum have a roleblocker) and point 2 (scum figured you would be protected). If not for point 1 they might have taken a shot at you anyway, hoping that the doc would protect someone else, or that there is no doc in the first place. But with a roleblocker they were free to target someone else, safe in the knowledge that you would be unable to act anyway. > > [snip] > > something that concerns me about this issue is this: The ‘snuggling’ was originally pointed out by \*\*texcat \*\*in [post 600](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14040873&postcount=600). Since that point, a number of people have commented on it and several have voted based on it. But \*\*texcat \*\*hasn’t mentioned it again. In fact, the only time he has mentioned either of them was today when he said > > "i am not sure what to make of septimus’s claim. It’s certainly has some advantages as a fake scum role. No need to explain why the scum aren’t killing you at night. No way for the town to prove the role, except by lynching. I don’t find his last minute vote unsettling. I was, unfortunately, unable to get back for eod, but had i been around, i would have expected septimus to change his vote to save himself, whether he was town or scum. " > > it bothers me that \*\*texcat \*\*opened up this can of worms and has since done nothing but sit back and let others discuss the issue, to the extent that the two players he was ‘concerned’ about are now the leading suspects. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > what has he done today that says “town”? He’s certainly spent a great deal of time doing statistical research, but to what end? He has provided us with scads of data, but how is that “townie”? It’s just _data_; there is no relative ‘good-or-badness’ to it. > There is no evidence at this point that we have a vig. We’ve had three deaths in three nights. As for the scum not targeting him; given the reaction overnight to his last minute vote i can see the scum figuring that town would do their dirty work for them. > > The fact that he does not know if he was targeted is a bit troublesome, but if in fact he was _not_ targeted, that would explain his ignorance. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i was beginning to wonder if you were going to express any opinion on the matter, or if you had succumbed to exhaustion after all that. I was a bit worried after you started hallucinating about people walking on your ceiling 🙂 > [@suburban plankton](#): > > see, the problem is that i can never tell when you’re joking, and when you’re not. I guess that means you’re doing it right 🙂 > > but my issue here was more with \*\*mentalguy \*\*than with you. If he was leaning scum on you at the beginning of the day, i fail to see how the posts you have made today should have changed that opinion. There’s nothing necessarily \*wrong \*with what you have posted, but i don’t see anything that’s objectively \*right \*about it either. > > All of the ‘data dump’ posts are neutral when it comes to scum hunting. I’ve seen plenty of town players collecting and sharing data for the benefit of the town, but i’ve seen plenty of scum players doing exactly the same thing. So when \*\*mentalguy \*\*says that your hard work makes you seem less likely to be scum, i can’t agree. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > i’ve been very busy at work today, so i haven’t been able to follow the thread as closely as i normally do, but i’m going to step in and > > **vote texcat** > > \*\*normal \*\*has some good points about \*\*texcat’s \*\*case against **ed**. I agree that it doesn’t seem genuine. That combined with the **septimus** /\*\*choie \*\*kerfluffle that he started and then walked away from, lead me to renew my vote. To sum up, > > he votes \*\*kelly \*\*on day 1, calling in to question \*\*kelly’s \*\*attempt at handshaking, which had already been addressed by the mods in the rules. > > On day 2, he makes his post about \*\*septimus \*\*and \*\*choie \*\*‘snuggling’; something which he never addresses again, despite everyone else putting in their 2 cents on the topic. > > Later in day 2, he tells us that he was suspicious of \*\*ed \*\*on day 1, despite the fact that he never mentioned it at the time..and since \*\*ed \*\*is voting for **silver jan** , who he thinks is town, he votes **ed**. We’re not sure why he thinks silver jan is town, because he has also never mentioned this before. > > Day 3, he reminds us that he thought \*\*ed \*\*was scum (in case we thought he voted \*\*ed \*\*for some other reason?), especially after \*\*jan \*\*flipped town (to remind us that he always believed in her). He says that it’s unlikely that \*\*septimus \*\*and choie are both \*\*scum \*\*(which apparently means his suspicions about them ‘snuggling’ were in error?) > > \*\*texcat \*\*seems to be laying low, trying to stir things up, but not willing to take any strong positions on anything. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > did he? That’s news to me. > > The only thing i know about ed’s alignment is this: > > Did you read something different somewhere? > [@suburban plankton](#): > > you do have a point here though: > > That’s what i get for trying to squeeze in my thoughts during a busy work day. Your statement that \*\*septimus \*\*and \*\*choie \*\*are probably not both scum is in no way inconsistent with your accusation of ‘snuggling’ earlier. > > My point that your a scummy person who brought up the idea, stirred up trouble, then never addressed it again still stands, though. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > one more thing: > > That’s not what i said here. You told us, on day 2, that you had been suspicious of \*\*ed \*\*the previous day. Except you had never mentioned any suspicion of \*\*ed \*\*on day 1. You voted for \*\*ed \*\*because he had been chiding **silver jan** all day long, and you thought she was town. Except you had never commented on **silver jan’s** towniness before that post. > > You seemed to be inventing your thoughts on people on the spot in order to support the cote you were making. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > yes, you quoted me. But your response did not address the argument i made. I could actually be partially to blame here, because it occurs to me that i used an ambiguous “he” in my post: Something which i try to avoid for this very reason. Look at what i posted again: > Now replace all occurrences of “he” with “texcat”. You then get > > “at the time” here meaning “on day 1”; that is, you never told us you were suspicious of ed during day 1. You only mentioned it on day 2, by saying “i was suspicious yesterday of ed” > i wasn’t focused on the timing of your vote. I was focused on the fact that the arguments you used to support your vote (you had been suspicious of \*\*ed \*\*since the previous day, and you thought **silver jan** was town) were things that you had never mentioned before that post. It appeared to me that you needed to invent a reason to vote for **ed** , and you did so on the spot. > [@suburban plankton](#): > > let’s see…there are 16 living players in the game at the moment. We have so far identified 0 scum. So there are most likely at least 4 scum still in the game. So pick any 4 players at random; how many do you think will flip scum? > > I personally think your statement is correct: That there is at least one scum in the group you named, and i am voting for her. But statistically speaking your statement would be correct for any group of 4 players you happened to pick, so it really doesn’t mean much. ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1074 "2011-07-28T06:30:04Z")
Well assembling those quotes took an hour. Now I have to read them, analyze them, comment, and make a judgment? I think I’m slowly convincing myself to just vote randomly. I’d probably have the same chance of success, and, no migraine. ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1075 "2011-07-28T06:53:45Z")
Oh look at that, because I can’t quote a post with quotes and have the quotes intact, I’m just going to have to put links and blurbs. Let’s start with **[TEXCAT](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14073220&postcount=1068)**. [SPOILER] > [@](#): > > Stanislaus, I’m not sure I followed all of your double vote worries and shifting theorems. I thought that once you put down your second vote, you were locked in and couldn’t shift. **Plus, here we are not forced to use our second vote, are we? I, for one, am going to be reluctant to lay down that second vote without being pretty darn certain**. I get a vague feeling here that TexCat could just be saying this to “sound townie”. > [@](#): > > Vote: KellyCriterion A lynched townie results. > [@](#): > > The odd thing to me about Scathach’s death is that his alignment was not revealed. This makes me believe that we probably have third parties amongst us. A bit of “stating the obvious” syndrome here, and a hint of acting. > [@](#): > > Huh? I guess all of these words were just a bunch of hooey. Seems to me that you have pretty severely limited your options now, PizzaGuy. Willing to to consider other alternatives? Uh, huh. Need time? Four days left in Today, but I guess you chose not to use that time. Care to tell us why exactly were you in such a hurry to lock in your vote? Already mentioned this, but this smacks of making Pizza look bad so TexCat looks good. “Care to tell us…” question feels more rhetorical than anything else. **Doesn’t feel genuine.** > [@](#): > > I am a little concerned about the coziness I see in the posts between septimus and choie. > > OMGUS votes haven’t worked out for you in the past? And yet you, PizzaGuy, choie, and Silver Jan seem to be caught in an endless OMGUS loop. Scum try to act agreeable? Hmmm, looks like you might be working on that one. A lot of smearing going on. Tossing suspicion on a whole lot of peeps, some of whom I know are townie, others I am leaning. I don’t like this. > [@](#): > > ToDay, I have not liked the way that Ed has chided Silver Jan at every opportunity, but seems to be waiting for someone else to make the case and start voting her. Since I think Silver Jan is town, this looks to me like scum Ed is looking for an easy town lynch. > > None of these reasons are definitive, but my gut is telling me that Ed is scum. > > vote: special ed I don’t think special ed was scum. > [@](#): > > I am not sure what to make of Septimus’s claim. It’s certainly has some advantages as a fake scum role. No need to explain why the scum aren’t killing you at night. No way for the town to prove the role, except by lynching. I don’t find his last minute vote unsettling. I was, unfortunately, unable to get back for EOD, but had I been around, I would have expected Septimus to change his vote to save himself, whether he was town or scum. > > I agree that it seems unlikely that both Choie and Septimus are scum. PizzaGuy, you’ve made a case on both of them. I’d like to hear your opinion. I feel my cases on both of them are wrong. And if I’m wrong about that, we’ll know about septimus soon enough, I think. I don’t want him surviving the game if we can help it, not unless LF scans him. Choie, I think I was thrown by her obvious talent and her abusing crutch of being a newbie. I think I am biased towards her as such, and saw her as dangerous. That doesn’t necessarily mean she got the scum role, it just means I see her as a formidable person who will be very tricky to read or even lynch due to her rhetorical power. I feel TexCat could be trying to keep the focus on septimus and choie, as it will take a while to uncover their alignments and it will cause damage to the town in the process if they’re both townie. septimus being townie is a horrendous lynch especially. I doubt TexCat’s motives are pure here. But I am not firmly convinced the guilty explanation is the correct one either. > [@](#): > > PizzaGuy, you can add my rolling eyes to your case on me. Good grief, you’ve gone from some one who voted with no apparent reasons to the Berlin wall of words and charts. What caused the drastic change? This was a huge sidestep of my case against her. I think her defense amounted to pretending it didn’t bother her and ignoring it. That’s scummy. > [@](#): > > Some good points? **Yes, well obviously, my case against Ed had flaws, namely that he flipped town.** Why exactly doesn’t it seem genuine? Because I assure that it was. This is the part that worries me. I have \*\*doubts \*\*I’m right on TexCat because it did seem like a real mistake, and not the “PIS” kind of mistake. Just a mis-remembering. I suppose scums will make mistakes too, I just find obvious ones to be more likely to be townie not paying attention blunders. > [@](#): > > Septimus, I don’t think your arguments really hold together very well. If you think that Normal and/or Pizza are scum, why would they bus me? For the town cred? Because they are under pressure? Normal’s pressure came from Pizza. I guess you think he’s bussing her too? Pizza was under a lot of pressure the first couple of Days, but seemed to survive without bussing anyone. Well, I can state for the record TexCat and I are not both Lords of Slaughter. 😉 As for Normal, doubtful but who knows. I don’t care for the septimus wagon anymore and of the four people I’m leaning, TexCat has some things which make me doubt it is her. That said, I also get a sense that she could be playing in a way that is rather deliberately avoiding analysis cases. She was under the radar and nobody was really pushing her to talk, voting for her, or anything. I very much like that she’s now being considered for a lynch, but even I’m not completely sold yet.[/SPOILER] I’d take \*\*TexCat \*\*over **septimus** , for the information it would reveal. But I’d rather go **Suburban Plankton** over **TexCat** , or \*\*ShadowFacts \*\*or **Stanislaus** over **TexCat**. Right now I’d rate her 4th on my list of 5. Some things rub me the wrong way, others make me doubt it. ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1076 "2011-07-28T07:27:44Z")
And **[Stanislaus](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14073238&postcount=1069)**: [SPOILER] > [@](#): > > “Slips” like saying “all townies” instead of “all my fellow townies” are just not a reliable scum-tell. Every game seems to have half a dozen of these a-ha! moments that turn out to be nothing other than poor phrasing. What is more reliable is that scum love jumping on them, because it saves them having to make a real case. I’d agree with this. > [@](#): > > If pede wants to come back and explain why it’s much likely for scum to use the phrase “all the townies” rather than town, I’ll read with interest. But all I’m seeing now is lazy opportunism. Yeah, I’d agree with that. > [@](#): > > If you found it scummy when he did it, it’s still scummy now that he’s retracted it under pressure. _nod_ > [@](#): > > unvote pedescribe > vote Kelly Criterion The reasoning beforehand reads as trying to push votes onto a scumbag. > [@](#): > > I can see that you’ve got a well-developed theory of scum-hunting, and it’s consistent with your actions so far. But your confidence in Normal and Scathach’s honesty reduces my confidence in you. How worried were you that they were guilty, and you’d be kicking off a wagon on someone innocent? This quote comes after he follows Normal’s case on Kelly. As such, I don’t really see a self-conscious vibe. > [@](#): > > It’s late here and I don’t have a lot of time so quickly: > > I’m a bit worried by the sudden rush to Silver Jan. They’re by no means baseless votes but they’ve come pretty close to saving Kelly. My quick count suggest Kelly is now on 9 and Silver Jan on 7, so we’re not that far from a tie. > > Also, would all the people who are now rushing to second vote just because they can, please stop. I’m going to call out USCDiver in particular: you voted for the vote leader and the runner up. This has made absolutely no difference to the eventual lynch. > > Confused and fraught though recent posts have been, I haven’t seen anything to make me change my vote. And I certainly haven’t seen anything to make me put on a second vote, because as discussed at length earlier, they should only be used with exceptionally good reason. In context, this feels more genuine that my previous reading. Almost all of Stanislaus’ posts so far have a similar vibe to them, and theme. As such, this feels less opportunistic than I had read into it before, and more of the same. > [@](#): > > One other thing I wanted to comment on: Pizza, you do know that not only was your idea of late pile-on voting discussed at length and rejected yesterDay, but that one of the major advocates of the plan was Septimus? Had you even done a cursory review of his posts? Admittedly I had not been paying close attention to it. I commented quickly and did not do a re-read at any point until much later on in the game, completely missing things which were more obvious to everyone reading the thread. I had been looking at septimus, but only in the more recent context; I hadn’t gone back and read the previous day’s stuff. As such, I was finding him scummy while agreeing with stuff septimus had said at the same time. Thinking back, since septimus was an advocate of the obviously PC-friendly plan of wagoning so everyone gets experience without showing who was PC, it makes more sense that \*\*septimus \*\*is a PC bulletproof role. > [@](#): > > I’m not sure what to make of this. At first reading, it seems pretty vacuous. \*\*Looking closer, the first “Bah” can be interpreted as a criticisim of Koldanar for making a wishy-washy post that is itself pretty meaningless, but that’s leaving the reader to do a lot of work. \*\*The second part is of course explicitly making the “scum-slip” case against choie that got me voting for pedescribe and later was part of my reasons for voting Kelly. Really, consistency demands that I vote for ed right now, because it’s exactly the same logic. And in fact, calling choie out as Scum to her face and then not voting for her does look a lot like setting other people up to do ed’s dirty work. But it’s worth noting that I was wrong about Kelly, so I’ll hold fire right now. Also, it’s only fair to quote this later post when he was called on Bah-ing: Some of the opening lines in this paragraph\*\* ring true \*\*as stuff I’d think about as a townie, particularly the phrasing. If Stan is acting, I’m now more convinced by it. > [@](#): > > No, no, no. I see why you stopped the discussion of the vanilla PMs. I see that your contribution was carefully couched to avoid that, either from yourself or anyone else. Except that simply by keeping asking questions you kept the topic alive, and your warning about revealing details of PMs only came - alas! - after a couple of people arguably had. You’re smart enough to have seen the danger early on, so I’m wondering why you didn’t make a big deal with your first post on the topic to warn everyone of the risks. And the little suspicious part of me that won’t ever let me get truly close to anyone says it’s because you wanted to give people a chance to slip up before stepping in with your big pro-Town warning. Yeah, all of this leads me to believe that Stanislaus’ behavior is much more consistent and therefore whatever things I had latched onto before make no sense at all in proper context. If Stan is guilty, and he could very well be, he’s an excellent scumbag. > [@](#): > > So who does that leave? > > I didn’t like USCDivers’ votes before, and I don’t love his fairly unreasoned, non-scum-hunting vote for pizza now. But I really don’t like Mental Guy’s case on gnarlycharlie. Gnarly did a good job of refuting it, and the fact that Mental’s case can be so easily reflected back on him makes me wonder if there’s an element of transference: > > vote Mental Guy Man, you’ve got me reversing my earlier opinion all over the place now. I can see where you’re coming from. I also like the transference theory, I have similar thoughts when making cases on people; could it be transference. All right. **[THIS BIG POST](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=14051002#post14051002)** > [@](#): > > …and having written that out, I see that the risk of blocking doesn’t actually effect whether you should spill a name toNight - you can just tell us in the morning if you are blocked.\*\* I’m not going to delete it all and summarise though - people can read it through and check my logic.\*\* I identify with this moment, where after a long type-as-you-think post is concluding, you realize you’ve probably just wasted your time. **Smells townie.** > [@](#): > > I’ve got a certain amount of sympathy for septimus’s point that he wasn’t about to argue his way out of locked in votes. It’s true as far as it goes. But he’d spent the whole day in close contention for the lynch - he should have made his position a lot clearer before the very last minute. I know I said power roles should try to argue their way out of votes first, but I didn’t even see him do that very much. It looks like he was always planning to wriggle out at the last minute. Bah, I’d probably vote for septimus over Stanislaus at this point. Still not keen, but I’m just getting all the wrong/right kinds of vibes from Stan. **You fooled me, Stan. You fooled me good, if you’re guilty.** > [@](#): > > Suburban Plankton - I’m not very convinced by this case. Looking over your posts about him, it seems a lot like you were blowing off steam about people complaining about your playstyle. Yes, he shouldn’t have suggested it’d be OK to lynch you even if you were town - but is that subtle scum manipulation or just his honest reaction to your playstyle? He’s not the only one to do so - IIRC, you yourself said at one point you’d be a good lynch candidate, just because too many people were focused on you. I’m not sure that differs too much from what SP was saying. The core argument you have against him seems to be that he reasoned badly, therefore he’s scum. I agree that scum are essentially forced to reason badly by virtue of making cases that they know have false conclusions, but town are perfectly capable of reasoning badly themselves. > > ShadowFacts - similarly, most of Normal’s case against him boils down to “Bad reasoning ==\> scum” e.g. “Weird isn’t scum” (indeed!) “bad criticism of another player” “conclusions drawn are too facile”. Equally, there’s quite a lot of “Town wouldn’t do that!” e.g. consider voting for pedescribe, ask Lightfoot to reveal. Town will do all of that and more. **The points about being overcautious and ducking a direct Q from you are more persuasive, but not enough to convince me to vote**. Very well. Let’s set it up like this now: **1 ShadowFacts 2 Suburban Plankton 3 TexCat 4 septimus … Stanislaus** > [@](#): > > TexCat - I find this case more convincing. Suburban’s analysis of her as coming in to say something that makes waves before dropping back out of sight does seem to fit the pattern of her posts, and is plausible scum behaviour. Ditto her avoidance of the tie-break vote despite having made a case against septimus. I’ll have to think about it some more but she might be edging ahead of Mental Guy in my suspicions. I’m less convinced on TexCat than you are. But you’re sucking me in. I’m more concerned with Shadow and Suburban. I can buy you’re townie now, but my scumdar is ringing with both of these.[/SPOILER] **1 ShadowFacts 2 Suburban Plankton 3 TexCat 4 septimus 5 Normal Phase … Stanislaus** Very quick summary: From a more thorough re-read of Stanislaus and the context of his posts and the specific wording he uses, I identify with his thought pattern too much. It’s very townie smelling to me now. I’m going to go with a complete reversal. Explanation is that the first read cherry picked things that seemed odd, but those were out of context. And I missed most of the posts which would have convinced me otherwise. This is why I do more thorough re-reads. Hope you haven’t completely fooled me, mister Stan. ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1077 "2011-07-28T08:00:23Z")
And let’s keep going with **[ShadowFacts](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14073258&postcount=1072)**: [SPOILER] > [@ShadowFacts](#): > > I agree with this case, and want to emphasize the part that I see as the most damaging: \*\*Kelly \*\*demands examples (in an fairly aggressive way), then blames \*\*Stanlislaus \*\*for going through all of the “effort” of providing those examples. Don’t ask for cites, then use the fact that someone provided them to try to smudge them further! Not cool. > > **Unvote > Vote KellyCriterion** I get a foul taste in my mouth reading this aloud. It strikes me as ad-libbed acting. > [@](#): > > a bit more directly, i find askthepizzaguy’s vote here to be terrible and his follow-up explanation even worse, as others just above have already outlined. I need to review the case against kellycriterion (where my vote currently sits) to see which actions i like less before i decide if i will change, though. I’m at work right now and squeezing in this game between meetings. I find ShadowFacts to be captain “Me too” already, and this is just the second quote. I also get a whiff of using RL as an excuse to not have to make a decision like backing up your smearing with a vote. A crutch used too often by scums, even when it draws on actual RL events, it’s the perfect excuse. It’s more a feeling. I know it’s not great logic that proves anything, but I’m going with what the gut tells me. > [@](#): > > askthepizzaguy, i’m getting a sense of your defense and we’ve had “stir the pot” type players on these boards before (most notably, imo, peekercpa). So my suspicion of you is starting to lessen with your explanations. However, i still can’t quite get over this contradiction that septimus pointed out earlier. You said: I am noticing a pattern of **drawing upon other people’s content** instead of making his own cases. I don’t like that, it’s lazy as townie and allows him to leech off of others’ credibility as scum. > [@ShadowFacts](#): > > **Silver Jan’s** vote on **Romanic** bugged me, so I decided to use my lunch to do a review. Sorry for the Wall of Quotes, I think it’s easier to see the whole picture this way. Note: votes have been bleached, some quotes have been snipped to stay on topic. Click the arrow for more of the content and context, please. By this point Kelly is way, way, way ahead of Jan. I also felt Jan was an easy target. I can’t really pick on this except that it doesn’t risk anything and it pushes suspicion onto Jan who was townie in a situation where Jan wouldn’t even get lynched. This kind of behavior would feel more real to me if it came earlier in the round. Now it just feels like tacking on townie-sounding reasoning in a situation where it accomplishes nothing, hence a higher likelihood of fake. > [@](#): > > atpg, in this post, your case against septimus seems particularly vague - it’s all about his wording and level of certainty. If you want to convince me or anyone to vote for septimus, i suggest you tell us exactly what he said that tipped your scum-meter. You know, with quotes and stuff. If you’ve already done this, that’s cool, just link us to it. I pick on this because it again feels like SF wants others to take the lead and take all the risks. Also has a hint of acting in it. Feels like SF is pushing me to make convincing cases on septimus; why this would be to his advantage is obvious: a scum doesn’t die, sept flips townie, makes pizza look bad and discredits talkative player. I get the tactics involved if SF is scum. This matches. > [@](#): > > Despite that, i still think it’s more of a benefit to reveal. Scum will have to choose who to try to kill: “confirmed” townie who may or may not be a power role? lightfoot, who may or may not be protected by a doc? Tough wifom. I find that SF wants Lightfoot to reveal this confirmed townie because that’s a high priority target for the Lords at the moment. **Scummy motivation.** > [@](#): > > And all that said, i’ve long been an advocate of “trust your power roles.” they presumably have more info. So, i’ve made my opinion known, but lightfoot should play it how she sees fit. Distances himself a bit from the results. > [@](#): > > i am considering using my second vote to get the attention of some people who are not posting, but i’ll try some regular encouragement first: **let’s go people, it’s tuesday, and some folks have no posts at all today. Lame!** **Your acting is lame.** > [@](#): > > Also, i am increasingly convinced by the case against askthepizzaguy and his excuses are less convincing today than they were yesterday. Well, that will cost you even more points with me. I find your acting less convincing today, and I never really found it that convincing. I think we need to get the hook out for this guy. Your audition is over, you _hack!_ > [@](#): > > what, do you think you are darth vader? If that means I’ll be the guy that tosses you down the shaft and die from force lightning as a result, then yes. I am the Darth Vader to your Darth Sidious. > [@](#): > > Which leaves me with…no votes right now. Back to the drawing board. Yuck. **Take a risk** with your vote already! Then ShadowFacts goes into lurking mode due to RL or otherwise. I don’t care. He’s convinced me he’s worth dying for. > [@](#): > > someone else said something similar to this earlier, but i can’t remember who and i don’t want to go back and track it down. Anyway, this sentiment makes no sense to me. septimus came within moments of being lynched yesterday, and only avoided the noose with a last-minute vote switch that was sure to be controversial. It makes perfect sense to me that scum would skip him and assume that there was a high probability of him being lynched today. Why bother killing him when he’s garnering tons of suspicion and likely to die the following day? Cool, that explains why you didn’t try to kill him. Nifty peachy keen. Who are your partners?[/SPOILER] **1 ShadowFacts \<----Very happy with this one. 2 Suburban Plankton 3 TexCat 4 Normal Phase 5 septimus \<----More convinced he’s lynch bait … Stanislaus** ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1078 "2011-07-28T08:42:16Z")
**[Suburban Plankton](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14073284&postcount=1073)**: Give me your scummy posts. I am already pretty sure of you. In fact, I’ll try very hard to read anything townie into what you’re doing, and see if I can’t be even a little fair to you. [SPOILER] > [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > No, you are the ‘Mage’. \*\*Kelly \*\*is the ‘NPC Townsperson’. If either of you were controlled my the DM, it would be him, not you. > > At this point, I’m not sure if you’re confused about RPG terminology, or if you are having trouble because you edited your PM before posting it and can’t keep your story straight. I never got any of those impressions during the initial reading. Granted I wasn’t paying close attention, but I just **disagree**. > [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > If you can’t make a case against **Koldanar** , then why are you voting for him? You already had a vote down on **pedescribe** , so you there’s no way you “had to” vote again… > > I agree. > > **vote Silver Jan** Too easy. Silver Jan was such an **easy target.** If the scums didn’t fall for my bait, they certainly had somebody voting for Jan. Silver Jan was even more tempting bait than I was, IMO. More defenseless, I think. > [@](#): > > the fact that she keeps voting and unvoting, with some poor reasoning (her vote on romanic; omgus votes on normal and pedescribe; the completely unexplained vote on koldanar). > > The repeated “innocent litte-ol’ me” tone in her posts. > > The fact that she didn’t know the vote count. > > All of which can be explained by her being a “new player”. Or not. :smack: Scare quotes over “new player”? :rolleyes: Honestly. Easy target. You’re not much of a risk taker, are you? > [@](#): > > fyi, i will be out of town all weekend, returning some time sunday evening, so i will miss the start of day. I sometimes announce when I’ll be away; that’s because I am very chatty and if I go sleep then work, that’s a large block of silence from me. I don’t like it if someone decides to make a post that is “incriminating” on me and I can’t respond to it for nearly a day, and then the vote is too big to reverse. And that’s exactly why I want to announce my departure as scum, too. I realize how tempting a target I am. It’s \*\*prophylactic \*\*play. Suburban is trying to make sure he doesn’t take a big accusation while he’s gone and have it be misinterpreted as avoiding/lurking/not having a good response. I think that’s what’s going on. I can explain it in me, but I’ve seen this sort of thing so often from scumbags, and just not as often from townies. > [@](#): > > well, they certainly weren’t obvious to me. > > [snip] > > i have found your play in this game to have been contradictory, inexplicable, and just plain bizarre. I think it has definitely not been pro-town…i’m just not sure if it’s intended to be anti-town or not. Went over this. Feels like \*\*opportunism \*\*and **going along with the crowd** ’s sentiments. > [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > I could vote once for each of you, if that would help… Insincerity, is what I got from this. > [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > **vote Silver Jan** > **vote choie** > > Because they both seem to be trying to one-up each other with their “I am just a poor sweet aVanilla townie, who could never hurt a fly” routines. > > I’ll admit it’s unlikely that they are _both_ Scum and both taking the same approach to the game, but there’s still plenty of Daylight left. > > I still think \*\*Normal’s \*\*case against \*\*Shadowfacts \*\*is a bad one, but it’s not enough to cause me to think he’s Scum. > > I think **Askthepizzaguy** , if he is as Townie as he claims, might help out the rest of the Town by actually doing some analysis. > > I think \*\*Ed \*\*might be a clever Scum skillfully maipulating the rest of us, but that’s only because I _always_ think that of **Ed**. On re-read with everything in context, it still feels **just as before** , to me. Suburban is spreading a lot of suspicion around while distancing himself from it. It reeks of a dog taking a dump on the kitchen table and then running and hiding upstairs. Bad dog. > [@](#): > > as i say, my gut feeling is that he’s town, but a part of me wants to see him lynched anyway, because i don’t want to implicitly approve of his playstyle by allowing him to continue it. And whether he winds up town, scum, or 3rd-party, i’m afrain that he has painted himself such an attractive target that we will ultimately learn nothing from the votes against him. **Still gut-wrenchingly scummy, IMO.** > [@](#): > > you obviously don’t care for my playstyle; i can’t fault you for that. And while i disagree with much of what you have to say in your last post,\*\* i’m not going to address most of it,\*\* because we’d just end up in a battle of “you suck!..nuh-uh, you suck!!”, which won’t help anyone. But there are a couple items that need further explanation. **You’re not Neo, you can’t dodge me like that.** > [@](#): > > i’ve had the time to go over a few players’ posts in detail. Briefly, > > [snip] > > vote texcat I say we lynch you before we lynch TexCat. > [@](#): > > just out of curiosity, why septimus necessarily? You could achieve the same result by voting for askthepizzaguy. Come and get me. > [@](#): > > what exactly is that supposed to mean? We’re supposed to be hunting down and killing scum here, not discovering out how they really feel about their parents. Sarcasm where it doesn’t fit. Unless you’re a newbie, and I don’t get that impression, you know darn well what a psychological case is. Fakeness. > [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > **Askthepizzaguy** , > > Do you want to know why I didn’t respond to the bulk of your accusations against me? I have some time now, so I’ll tell you. > > Despite the fact that I don’t like the way you played the first 2 Days of this game, I believe you are town. Therefore, time spent arguing with you was time that I didn’t have trying to find Scum. > > Also, you had locked your votes on **Septimus** quite early in the Day (they were the first and third votes of the Day, in fact), indicating that you were less than supremely interested in hearing the cases on any of the other 16 players in the game. I know, just because you had voted doesn’t mean you can’t discuss your opinion of other players’ possible guilt or innocence, but your words lose weight (in my opinion) when you are unable to ‘put your money where your mouth is’. > > Finally, your entire ‘case’ against me (as expressed in Posts [704](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14043862&postcount=704) and [708](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14043945&postcount=708) was built upon the fact that my criticism of you was unfounded; you simply didn’t like what I had to say. You made no attempt to find fault with any of my other actions in the game; if you had, then I would have had something to address and refute. > But now that Night has fallen, the situation has changed a bit, so I’ll oblige you now. > > I don’t like your playstyle, as you have shown us so far in this game. You have given people a host of reasons to vote for you, and you have done so willingly and seemingly with pride. You say that you do this in order to make yourself a target for Scum. That may well be, but it also makes you an easy target for Town. Note that I said an ‘easy’ target, and not necessaruily a ‘good’ target. You said, in Post 708, > > “The fact that you would include that as a reason to vote someone tells me that you’re more interested in making this a popularity contest than finding scum. You’re already subtly appealing to popularity with your preamble, and now your justification is I rub people the wrong way?” > > and > > “You think people are incapable of forming a clear opinion on someone because they’re a tempting target?” > > These are good points. This game \*shouldn’t \*be a popularity contest, and peoples’ opinion _shouldn’t_ be colored simply because someone is a ‘tempting target’. But you know what? Things don’t always go the way they should. People don’t always act appropriately. They get irritated, frustrated, just plain old mad. And when they do, they tend to act irrationally. They vote for the ‘loudmouth’, or the ‘controversial player’, just to shut them up, regardless of whether or not they are a ‘good target’. > > You have spared no effort to make yourself a ‘tempting target’, and as it’s put people off. Surely you won’t deny that. So far, it had not led to a rash of votes against you, but I am of the opinion that it has made people less likely to listen you what you have to say. That means more noise and less signal from you, which helps the Town not one bit. > > I’ll say it again, I believe you are Town. But I think your behavior has been largely anti-Town up to this point. Perhaps it’s all part of your master plan, and everything will become clear down the line. If that’s the case, I’ll acknowledge that when it happens. Perhaps it’s just ‘culture clash’. I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter at this point. Now, if there’s anything else you’d like to address about my play so far, I’d be interested to hear it. Worth reading in its entirety. Judge for yourself. My explanation: My pressure on you was worrysome, so you decided to finally address it. You saw that ignoring me wasn’t making me go away. > [@](#): > > You have spared no effort to make yourself a ‘tempting target’, and as it’s put people off. Surely you won’t deny that. So far, it had not led to a rash of votes against you, but I am of the opinion that it has made people less likely to listen you what you have to say. That means more noise and less signal from you, which helps the Town not one bit. I grow weary of scumbags telling me how my behavior doesn’t help the town. I honestly do. I already addressed this before, iirc; people were listening to me more when I began speaking up more and being more open about the tactic I was using. I consistently find the lecture about what helps the town to be given by scumbags. In almost every game I’ve played, invariably, some scumbag tells me how to play as town. You really should give up on that habit. > [@](#): > > I’ll say it again, I believe you are Town. But I think your behavior has been largely anti-Town up to this point. Perhaps it’s all part of your master plan, and everything will become clear down the line. If that’s the case, I’ll acknowledge that when it happens. Perhaps it’s just ‘culture clash’. I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter at this point. Now, if there’s anything else you’d like to address about my play so far, I’d be interested to hear it. Obviously expended some effort in replying, but the reply came too late for my taste, and it didn’t make any of my concerns evaporate. I feel this is the sort of carefully worded and thoughtful reply a scumbag would come up with when pressured consistently. It’s a good try at deflection. > [@](#): > > 1. no, that’s not correct at all. **If i wanted you dead, i would have said so, an i would have voted for you.** What i did was point out behavior which i felt was not in the best interest of the town. > 2. that argument was “your behavior is distracting and liable to cause emotional reactions in other players, neither of which are pro-town.” > 3. this is incorrect on a couple levels. First, one of my votes was on silver jan, so it did directly help to “decide the lynch”. Second, it is not necessary for a vote to “attempt to decide the lynch” in order for it to be a ‘good vote’. I place my votes on people i think are likely to be scum. Sometimes i share the majority view, and sometimes i don’t. > > I would like to know what it is that i am avoiding blame for. What is it that you think i have done for which i should be blamed? The red part is not true in my mind. There is more than one way to skin a cat. You want me dead, there are better and smarter ways than voting me. One way is to cast as much doubt on my credibility as possible, and keep straddling the “I don’t think you’re scum but you’re certainly scummy and anti-town” fence, and argue that such an anti-town player is a good lynch, without voting me. 1. Is wrong. Causing reactions in players sometimes causes reactions in scumbags. Always painting me negatively, yet not going as far as to say I am scum. Just bad for the town. 2. I’ve got such a weak argument here, I’ll drop it, but again the meat behind what I was saying was there, even if I argued it poorly. You were content with the bad lynch, that’s why your vote was on one, and your other vote was doing nothing. > [@](#): > > askthepizzaguy’s case on choie is worth a closer look. I had similar feelings about her on day 2, and had voted her at one time, but i later decided it wa no longer worthy of a vote. I need to go back and figure out why i thought that. More reasons why I don’t feel my case on choie was any good. > [@](#): > > what has he done today that says “town”? He’s certainly spent a great deal of time doing statistical research, but to what end? He has provided us with scads of data, but how is that “townie”? It’s just data; there is no relative ‘good-or-badness’ to it. JUST VOTE ME ALREADY, GAH!!! :smack: I’ll see you tonight. Murder me, you scum! > [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > **See, the problem is that I can never tell when you’re joking, and when you’re not. I guess that means you’re doing it right 🙂** > > But my issue here was more with \*\*MentalGuy \*\*than with you. If he was leaning Scum on you at the beginning of the Day, I fail to see how the posts you have made Today should have changed that opinion. There’s nothing necessarily \*wrong \*with what you have posted, but I don’t see anything that’s objectively \*right \*about it either. > > All of the ‘data dump’ posts are neutral when it comes to Scum hunting. I’ve seen plenty of Town players collecting and sharing data for the benefit of the Town, but I’ve seen plenty of Scum players doing exactly the same thing. So when \*\*MentalGuy \*\*says that your hard work makes you seem less likely to be Scum, I can’t agree. Acting. Acting. We haven’t played together and we have a very limited history. This sounds like something you’d say, but it doesn’t fit! Did my joke actually unnerve you? _Dear god. 😃_ > [@](#): > > i’ve been very busy at work today, so i haven’t been able to follow the thread as closely as i normally do, but i’m going to step in and > > vote texcat I just threw up a little in my mouth. Several other players made points against TexCat, here SP again leeches off the efforts of others and plays the “me too” game. I am increasingly convinced that of my 4 “cluster” suspects, TexCat was decided to be a good compromise. Either a bussing attempt, or a townie that I guessed wrong on. I don’t believe that SP really feels TexCat is scum here. I don’t buy it. > [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > Let’s see…there are 16 living players in the game at the moment. We have so far identified 0 Scum. So there are most likely at least 4 Scum still in the game. So pick any 4 players at random; how many do you think will flip Scum? > > I personally think your statement is correct: that there is at least one Scum in the group you named, and I am voting for her. But statistically speaking your statement would be correct for any group of 4 players you happened to pick, so it really doesn’t mean much. Click the arrow and read the context. **Suburban Plankton is clearly nervous. I think I’ve got at least two of them.** [/SPOILER] Sorry, I can’t find your townie-ness. The dark side is strong with you, Lord Plankton. **1 ShadowFacts \<----Very happy with this one. 2 Suburban Plankton \<----Very happy with this one. 3 Normal Phase (or someone else, I don’t really have a strong number 3) 4 TexCat \<----More convinced she’s lynch bait, but I still have some suspicion. 5 septimus \<----More convinced he’s lynch bait … Stanislaus** _Suburban Plankton; I am the big hungry whale Om nom nom nom nom_ ---
**Author:** ![Askthepizzaguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askthepizzaguy/32/9405_2.png) [@Askthepizzaguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askthepizzaguy)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 8:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1079 "2011-07-28T08:56:20Z")
Meh, let me switch that. There’s still enough meat on the TexCat case to be number three. I get the feeling she could be innocent or bussed, however. And with this number of consecutive posts, I have become a Normal Phase clone with the genders reversed. ---
**Author:** ![Normal\_Phase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Normal\_Phase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Normal_Phase)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2011, 9:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052/1080 "2011-07-28T09:24:25Z")
Well I was hoping to wait until ShadowFacts was done before pushing on him again, but I don’t know at this point whether I’ll be around to post for the rest of the day. I wish he had found time in those posts up above to describe who he does find suspicious (other than the characterization of me and Hirka as being unreasonable, both of whom are already or might be expected to place a vote on him today regardless, and who thus are safe as houses to take some pokes at, relatively speaking). That’s what I was hoping to see from him today, in the (presumed but not actual) calm space provided by Septimus’ sure lynch, and I didn’t get it. What I have gotten so far was him not seeing a reason to vote for two people who have thus far gotten their fair share of suspicion from others. It’s just too safe to have any chance of changing my mind. I am deeply conflicted about Septimus right now. There are so many things I’m not liking about his play: his ignoring of much of my case, his unnecessarily-late saving votes, the convenience of the bulletproof claim, and his vote on TexCat for what I think is the weakest possible reason (despite having indicated he might have suspicion on her in other ways in other contexts). But then ShadowFacts comes along and bumps up the meta-reasons for “not scum” even higher, being yet another of my strongest suspects who thinks there’s no reason to suspect Septimus for what I think are largely superficial reasons (added to choie and TexCat). I don’t think I’m going to try to pull the plug on him today. I have no idea what I think of the prospect of other people doing so. A flip might be useful (scum or to a lesser degree town), or it might be next to useless (PFK). I suspect ShadowFacts more than choie (or at least for longer), so **unvote choie** **vote: ShadowFacts** I’d really like to double-up my votes on just one of them, but this far out from the end of the day I’m not comfortable doing so. Finally, a note about TexCat: – she is either being very careless or intentionally deceptive about her description of her own actions. I pointed out that her rationale for voting Special Ed and not Septimus yesterday cannot possibly be the truth. (She argued something like that Ed’s own late vote switch yesterday increased her suspicion of him over Septimus, whose saving action she finds unremarkable. But at the time that she voted, Ed was still voting for Silver Jan. What TexCat offers could be a reason that during last night she found Ed scummier than Septimus. It can’t be a reason why she voted for one over the other in the first place.) TexCat chose to vote for Suburban Plankton after I made this observation. She didn’t choose to respond to my point. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052.md?page=53) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deendee-mafia/588052.md?page=55)