De'endee Mafia

[choie]

@septimus

I liked the post by choie. This kind of frank discussion of feelings is what has helped Townies identify fellow Townies in the games I’ve played. For your comments, here’s what I’ve learned about scum-hunting:

Thanks septimus! Good advice (I think, assuming you’re not scum :D). You’re right about gauging sincerity. I think that’s what’s bothering me about Silver Jan most. She seems to think she’s making her “li’l ol’ townie” case conclusively just by repeating it, and it doesn’t feel right. If she were as bad at this as I am, or as new as I am, it’d be a different story. But she’s played Mafia here before, and from stuff she’s said, she’s played elsewhere a few times too (maybe IdleMafia and Giraffeboards?). This ain’t her first time at the rodeo, and I don’t think she’s the sweet flaky neophyte she’s pretending to be. (And that endeth my Columbo impression.)

@Silver_Jan

choie was feeling guilty for placing a vote on D1 and D2 she quite merrily places a vote on 2 people.

Hey, what can I say? Sometimes that first time ain’t so hot and you feel guilty about it; once you get some experience under your belt, subsequent attempts start feeling a lot nicer.

(Also, it’s early in the Day yet, so I don’t feel these votes are “permanent” and thus not as likely to result in a swinging corpse.)

No but seriously. First, the vote on you is pretty much a continuation of my vote from yesterDay – I voted you then, and since you haven’t done anything to change or rebut the stuff I felt was scummy (excepting now to OMGUS me, which is par for the course for you so I think it’s a null-tell), I’m just restating my feelings, which haven’t changed. Plus, what with the focus on the septimus/askthepizzaguy/special ed badinage since Dawn, everyone seems to have forgotten their suspicions of you – despite the fact that you were such a high vote-getter yesterDay – so I decided it was important to get the spotlight back on you. Or “pressure,” as pizza calls it.

As far as Normal, she pinged me 'cause of her rush to insta-claim and back you up despite how much it allegedly revealed about the so-called “vanilla” claim, which seems extraordinary behavior for someone of her experience. Plus there’s some other behavior that’s less easily quantified (she sometimes feels like she’s intimidating other players into voting/acting a certain way – again, this could just be the result of a strong forum personality rather than scumminess, but I’ve already explained my confusion with that).

In short, since I think you’re scummy, I guess her vote felt like it was scum-backing-scum, especially one who was flaking out and who’d made a few silly mistakes (and who I think seems to have a power role – worth saving, in other words). I’m less certain of the Normal vote, but what the heck. It’s not locked in and as I said earlier, since everyone is recommending that we get votes down “on paper” early so we have stuff to discuss… well, I’m just doing my part to push discussion.

But this is all gut instinct. For those of you who say that only one of the Silver Jan / Normal Phase early-claiming dyad is likely to be scum, could you explain that and talk me through that reasoning?

[ShadowFacts]

@Silver_Jan

@ ShadowFacts I have already said that I am Vanilla Town and that’s why the level cap thing worried me, there was nothing about levels or caps in my PM. I am sorry that my playing style isn’t up to your expectations but that’s the way I play.

I don’t always place a vote on people that have voted for me but I just didn’t like the whole case. Your case is almost as bad, just because I moved my vote a lot is cos I am Town with no powers and I was very uncertain who to vote for, and yes I am now being defensive. I was right about Kelly though and you even said you didn’t remove your vote even though you had doubts about her being scum, why not, just because it was late in the day. If you removed your vote you could have got other people thinking that maybe they were wrong too! But no, you just kept your vote there and don’t seem particularly worried about it.

I did remove my vote from KellyCriterion. It was YOU I kept my vote on.

[Koldanar]

OOG : Sorry guys, I have to bow out. Work has ramped up exponentially this week (some bastard took a 2 week vacation, and left me with all their work) so I can’t continue, as work is the only time I get to post. I had been keeping up reading here and there this week, but it takes longer to get a good post going for me than it takes to read. I’ve PMed astral for a replacement

[Silver_Jan]

@Askthepizzaguy

I can’t, I’m not under nearly enough pressure. I demand more votes on me, locked in. Only then will I struggle with the pain of it all, and announce what role I have.

Or, I’m a bad lynch but not a horrible one since it will get you guys off of suspecting me and it’s very early.

I have heard this kind of chat in a previous game ie I DEMAND, now if this is the same person then he could be doing it to wind everyone up and he is, in fact Town and giving scum an easy target for their votes. I am not totally sure of this of course but I have seen this type of play before and so has everyone that played the game on FB. I would not feel comfortable putting my vote there.

I do have a problem playing this game because I inherently think everyone is honest when I should think everyone is lying, this makes it difficult for me to make a case against anyone and I tend to go with a gut feel.

I also think that scathach was Town because scum does not miss a chance of a NK and what would the chance be of a doc (if we have one) protecting the target that scum would go after? I think it “must” have been a scum NK and a scum janitor cleaned up.

[Silver_Jan]

@ choie, I might not be a neophyte but I am sweet (usually) and flaky

[special_ed]

Posting as I catch up

@choie

Well… wouldn’t Scum protect Scum, especially if the vote was getting relatively close (as I believe it was then)? Or am I missing some nuance of strategy here? Especially if my theory – that Silver Jan is a Scum power role, NOT an NPC – is correct. Normal was quick to dismiss that claim as being meaningless by hurriedly making her own claim (which seems like a very, very unusual act, at laest according to all the games I’ve read here on the SDMB) with a similar yet allegedly powerless role. Which goes against all good strategy, including the strategy Normal was espousing herself (“Don’t talk about [del]Fight Club[/del] Vanilla claims!”).

But DARN IT we’re not supposed to be discussing this stuff, right? Okay, shutting up now.

We can discuss this stuff. What we shouldn’t discuss is anything that we know because of what is in our role PM. We can freely discuss all public information while avoiding comments that indicate that our own PMs are similar or different.

To answer your question, Scum will sometimes defend each other, but I think rarely will they do so early in the game. Normal claimed a PM that was similar to Silver Jan’s. Had we lynched Silver Jan, we’d all be looking sideways at Normal right now. It’s too risky. Scum will often jump on each other’s bandwagons to earn “Townie Cred”

[Silver_Jan]

@ShadowFacts

I did remove my vote from KellyCriterion. It was YOU I kept my vote on.

Oops, sorry I misread that.

[special_ed]

@Silver_Jan

@ ShadowFacts I have already said that I am Vanilla Town and that’s why the level cap thing worried me, there was nothing about levels or caps in my PM. I am sorry that my playing style isn’t up to your expectations but that’s the way I play.

I don’t always place a vote on people that have voted for me but I just didn’t like the whole case. Your case is almost as bad, just because I moved my vote a lot is cos I am Town with no powers and I was very uncertain who to vote for, and yes I am now being defensive. I was right about Kelly though and you even said you didn’t remove your vote even though you had doubts about her being scum, why not, just because it was late in the day. If you removed your vote you could have got other people thinking that maybe they were wrong too! But no, you just kept your vote there and don’t seem particularly worried about it.

Bah!

Unvote: AskThePizzaGuy
Vote: Silver Jan
If you’re Town, please stop acting like Scum.

[Mahaloth]

Septimus(2): Askthepizzaguy, Askthepizzaguy,
ShadowFacts(1): Normal
Specialed(1): Stanislaus
Gnarly(2): Mentalguy, Normal
Koldanar(1): Mentalguy
Normal(2): Specialed, Choie
Askthepizzaguy(3):, Pedescribe, Pedescribe, Septimus
Silver Jan(3): Choie, Shadowfacts, Specialed
Choie(1): SilverJan

I believe Askthepizzaguy is still up to be lynched by this vote total.

[Normal_Phase]

I guess I am a tad on the aggressive side, but I like it, and I’m not planning to change any time soon. I do hope I don’t piss too many people off on a personal level; that’s not what I’m after. I think it was Stanislaus a few games back who described that he evisioned himself as a bit of an Errol Flynn en garde, scummo! type while playing this game; I’m very much of the same mind.

I’m not going to bother defending myself as not being scum with Silver Jan, because as stupid as such a move would seem, I’ve probably done stupider things in my mafia-playing career.

[Stanislaus]

@special_ed

Oh, you mean post something like the following in bold and large font immediately following KellyCriterion’s handshake attempt?

[Ed’s shoutiness]
Now why didn’t I think of that?

Yeah, well, that’s because… I mean obviously you would… balls.

unvote special ed

[Normal_Phase]

@special_ed

We can discuss this stuff. What we shouldn’t discuss is anything that we know because of what is in our role PM. We can freely discuss all public information while avoiding comments that indicate that our own PMs are similar or different.

I’m going to clarify even more, because the same issue just came up in another game the day after this one, and if I never see it happen again it’ll be too soon.

Moderators like to prevent “handshaking” by townies (public comparison of bits of a town role PM) by either making a generic version public, or by providing fake PMs to the scum to use for themselves directly or by modification. The reason for this is because it can break the game: if the town win condition contains the phrase “defeat all the baddy-evils and march forth to victory” or some such, adn the town starts comparing the number of A’s and the number of D’s while the scum have no way of doing the same, the whole game is trashed.

Sometimes – as apparently in this game – all PMs are unique, even the vanilla ones. But they may be unique in ways that are still predictable, especially to the scum, who may well have access to a large enough variety of fake PMs (plus their real ones) to see the whole range of possibilities, whereas townies can’t. That means you can never tell, when commenting on someone else’s posted PM, whether or not your expression of doubt or belief as regards fprmat or content of a townie’s publicly posted vanilla PM might tell the scum exactly what you are.

I claimed my role, because from my perspective, a dangerously large number of players had already made potential slips of this type regarding Silver Jan’s PM, and if nothing was done to put a stake it in for good, it threatened to get even worse. So I stopped it. How much damage was done, if any (beyond my own reveal), I still don’t know, because I don’t know if a lot of vanilla townies have Kelly-style “NPC-townsperson” or hypothetical “farmer” or “blacksmith” role PMs that could mess it the scum’s conclusions. Kelly flipping town with the PM he had is a good sign, though, so we’ll see.

[LightFoot]

@Koldanar

OOG : Sorry guys, I have to bow out. Work has ramped up exponentially this week (some bastard took a 2 week vacation, and left me with all their work) so I can’t continue, as work is the only time I get to post. I had been keeping up reading here and there this week, but it takes longer to get a good post going for me than it takes to read. I’ve PMed astral for a replacement

** crumples up a page of quotes
Back to the drawing board

[Suburban_Plankton]

@LightFoot

** crumples up a page of quotes
Back to the drawing board

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.

[LightFoot]

@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.

Since it seems it is not frowned upon here I will re-compose my thoughts

[LightFoot]

@Koldanar

Now we’ve got the ball rolling!

RE : Kelly - I’ve since forgotten who said it, but I believe someone had mentioned once in one of the games here that it’s usualy more likely that the second or third or fourth (etc…) person on a bandwagon is more likely to be scum than the person that started, as scum will see a stone at the top of the hill and want to nudge it away from themselves. Kelly didn’t vote, but did FOS, with a weak argument.

Shadow and Stanislaus : Possible scum amongst the two of you, but only because of what I noted above. This is no where near enough to even suspect either of you, however. Voting history, and your actions during this game, will tell better.

Kelly does seem best as a good first day target, but he/she hasn’t even mounted a defense yet. Let us see what comes.

This started my suspicion……….the “third vote is Scum theorie” does not sit well with me……….How many smudges did we end up with here?
** Scathach ** commented on this too

@Koldanar

I certainly feel that I’m bad at this, and the only way to get better is to practice. I want to watch those two for behaviors later in the game (if I even make it there)…the though then was, if I mention it now on Day one, come day whatever, I have this to go back to to help justify. Is this really a move seen as scummy / bad? I’ve been railroaded before for similar behavior, in my first game (and man, was I railroaded BAD), but I felt I could better defend this action today.

(Underlining mine) OK, proceed
These quotes combined with other players’ “read” on **Koldanar ** don’t feel right

Their replacement will have some repair work to do .  I do realize that the replacement won’t know what Koldanar was ‘thinking’ . And I may move my  vote at a later time.
** Vote Koldanar **

[Askthepizzaguy]

I have to do some digging, but Septimus is either incorrect due to a simple mistake, or lying, when he says the only time I ever quoted him was that one time.

(Leaning mistake, as such an outrageous lie is worse than scummy, it’s either harmful to the town or deliberately mafia-related)

I can link you to the post where I cut out two bits of either his case on me or some other post he made, and responded to him, and suggested he was a worthy second after Koldanar. Or something.

Be right back.

[Askthepizzaguy]

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14017827&postcount=257
Here’s the post. I clearly quoted a couple bits of septimus’ post as I was responding to just about everyone who was talking to me at the time.

I concluded that Kold and sept both needed watching. I felt more strongly about Kold since I feel that if several people independently think someone is scummy, that’s better than just my own feeling, especially on a new forum with new people.
For reference, this is my follow up on septimus.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=14030667&postcount=488

Here, he thinks I am not scum due to my zany behavior, but for obvious reasons he still wants me dead.

@septimus

I was reacting to complaints from my previous game, where my vote explanations were considered underkill. Perhaps for my pizza vote, “voting for obvious reasons” would have sufficed.

This next part is telling.

I’ve mixed feelings about whether to renew my vote against you. I have no other strong scum candidates, but some of your zaniness and reversals do not seem like what Scum would do. I’m sure you’re capable of a deep double-think “wifom” game as Scum, but would you attempt that in your first game as a relative newcomer to SDMB? (Where do you usually play?)

So, for obvious reasons, I want him dead.

Pay close attention to the wording.

If he doesn’t think I am scum, but I need to die anyway, then for obvious reasons, he needs to die. His own words, used as a case on me, is my case on him.

That plus his ridiculous overcompensation for previous games. Did not want to be the target of attention, mayhaps.

[TexCat]

I am a little concerned about the coziness I see in the posts between septimus and choie.

@septimus

I liked the post by choie. This kind of frank discussion of feelings is what has helped Townies identify fellow Townies in the games I’ve played. For your comments, here’s what I’ve learned about scum-hunting:
(1) The player who behaves very anti-Town is seldom Scum! In the past I’ve voted OMGUS and for actions or posts that seem anti-Town and been disappointed.
(2) In the last Mafia game I played, a Scum (guiri) cast FOS on me, then quickly backed off when I called him on it. I wish I’d caught that. Instead I went after the player who sunk his teeth into me and wouldn’t let go… He turned out to be Town. :smack:
(3) The one thing I’ve found that often works is to gauge posts by sincerity. The problem is that Scum try to act very sincerely; so you need to distinguish fake sincerity from real sincerity. I do realize this can be very hard to do, and I’m not competent to offer details on how to do it, beyond saying Scum try to act “agreeable.”
[…]

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.

@choie

Thanks septimus! Good advice (I think, assuming you’re not scum :D). You’re right about gauging sincerity.[…]

The original post that septimus liked, raised my eyebrows:

@choie

I’ve been quiet the past few days for a few reasons, mostly because much of the discussion is above my head. It’s also just darn hard trying to learn the game a) while in the game, and b) without asking questions, because apparently my asking questions risks screwing things up for my fellow townies. Feels like every question I want to ask would inadvertently reveal too much. For example, earlier I was trying to ascertain what I felt was a suspicious discrepency between Silver Jan’s behavior and her claim, and (more to the point) between what we know of her claim, our moderators’ disinclination to allow handshakes, and D&D story conventions in general. That got me chastized, possibly correctly. So ever since I’ve tried to keep my mouth shut.

Part of my problem with the latest discussions I’ve been reading here is that I’m finding it hard to distinguish between posting that’s “scummy” and a general posting style that’s simply part and parcel of the member’s personality. Some folks here (okay, I won’t be coy: Askthepizzaguy, special ed and sometimes Normal Phase are on this list) are what my late mom would call “personality kids,” … and that wasn’t always a compliment. They thrive on being forceful, confident, different and eclectic. The kindest reading is that they’re just A-type personalities who just want to be funny and stir the pot, livening things up. The less generous take is that these guys take absolute pride in posting in a cocky, dismissive, off-putting way.

When I see someone posting like that, I think to myself: is this person being disruptive, fomenting suspicion and generally being kinda annoying because s/he’s so darn confident that s/he’s an innocent townie and s/he’s trying to ward off scum? Or is s/he being disruptive and fomenting suspicion because that’s what scum would do? If innocent, is this person utterly unaware how s/he’s coming off to the rest of his or her townie neighbors – making it hard for us to trust him or her?

Classic WIFOM, I know. But you see, since I’m sucky at metagaming and generally ignorant of the rules, I’m trying to make up for it with psychology and characterization. (I’m both a writer and an admin of a message board, so I’m pretty good at assessing personalities/characters through written communication.)

I’m putting that out there just so that the innocent town folks on my team might think about toning themselves down a bit, if only because it’ll help us act as a team instead of a loose collection of paranoid miscreants.

Anyway, on to my suspicions. Right toward the end of Day 1, I said I found Silver Jan scummier than KellyCriterion, especially after her claim and the constant “li’l ol’ me?” behavior. I haven’t changed that opinion, and frankly Normal Phase, whom I respect as a player (and clearly many others do too), turned me off with her defense of Jan, which everyone seemed to take as gospel but seemed to me to be utterly worthless if both Normal and Jan are scum. Which I kinda think they both are.

My instinct would normally be to just FOS 'em both. But since everyone’s trying to get us all to vote early, vote often, I guess I’ll codify my thoughts thusly:

vote Silver Jan[/color]
vote Normal Phase[/color]

Sigh. I just know I’m gonna get dinged for making a crappy rationale-less vote. Sadly, since we’re not allowed, or at least encouraged, to continue the line of thought that gets me to this point (Silver Jan and Normal Phase’s claims), I’m gonna have to shut up about it. If anyone can figure out a way I can talk about this stuff without giving away any farms to the scummy Lords of Slaughter* please let me know.

• Remember them? At the end of last Night we sure didn’t seem to get much info about their style of killing or, really, anything. For a D&D-based game, there’s not much color or role-playing involved, is there? I hope that increases as time goes by.

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?