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461

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
Thing Fish, this is a very lucid post that does a good job of outlining a lot of the reasons I found RyJae very suspicious after finishing catching up on Yesterday. I was unaware of the NAF angle you mention as well. That said, even without it, the anyrose vote has at least as much motivation for scum as it does for town. Consider, be you town, he doesn’t want to be on that Bandwagon, and be you scum, he doesn’t want to kill you. He posts a question of “What would you do differently?” Why would a townie do that? If you’re town, it won’t help him find scum. If you’re scum, you’re already dead, so anything you’d say to that is completely useless. The only motivation I can see is that he’s trying to find an excuse to unvote you and pretty much anything you’d say in response to that question would be “Seems townie enough for me”.

So why the vote for anyrose? If he’s scum, he wanted another wagon so it would look like genuine suspicion rather than a completely random other person. Also, at the point he voted, your death seemed like a foregone conclusion, so the anti-motivation that he would still be a part of a mislynch doesn’t really apply. OTOH, if you are also scum, anyrose was also the most likely wagon that would overcome yours, so that’s ALSO sufficient reasoning as to why he might vote there.

IOW, regardless of whether you’re actually townie or scum, his actions are fairly consistent with scum motivation for either scenario, and much less consistent with an unknowing townie.
[/QUOTE]

Welcome back, Blaster. Hope your move went well.

I think the above makes a lot of sense. At the time, I thought his “what would you do differently” question was just making pleasant conversation, I was quite surprised when he actually changed his vote in response to my answer, especially since it didn’t say anything I hadn’t already said before. So I am feeling a little stronger about this case, particularly after reading your post 439. Having said all that, of course I want to believe that he was convinced by my eloquence and sincerity, and I am going to feel REALLY bad if he is lynched for unvoting me and turns out to be Town, but I am glad to hear that I’m not the only one who viewed his last-minute vote change with suspicion.

BlaM, now that you have had a chance to review Yesterday, I would be interested in hearing your thoughts about your advocacy of my lynching, especially in regard to posts 246, 248 and 252, which I addressed in my post 314 and characterized as “completely going off the rails”. In retrospect, would you agree that the extent of your suspicion was somewhat out of proportion to the available evidence? I can well imagine that what with moving and playing two Mafia games at the same time, you were probably under a lot of stress, so I could totally understand this. Or maybe I am just misinterpreting your style and you always tend to express yourself rather forcefully with regard to the person you find most suspicious, regardless of the precise degree of your suspicion? As I said earlier, I have found you very hard to read in the past.

On preview: I agree with RyJae that his last minute vote change was bound to attract pretty much the sort of attention it is attracting Today, and so if it was a scum move it was a pretty clumsy one. Still, the fact that a move was clumsy doesn’t mean that it wasn’t also scummy.

I am entering the tough part of my workweek, might not be around much the next couple days.

462

[QUOTE=Thing Fish]
Welcome back, Blaster. Hope your move went well.
[/QUOTE]

Thanks, it went as well as could be expected. Still have a lot of non-essential stuff and junk to sort through as well as cleaning. Oh boy!

I’m going to address this a little out of order for sake of clarity.

As for the first part, yeah, you would feel bad if you voted for him after he unvoted you. Could be he’s town and really believes you. If he’s scum, that sure is a nice opportunity to allow him to keep you from voting for him. It’s not something you should allow to sway you either way.

And for the vote change, yes, it was very visible, but again, I see that as not much for either way. Was he town sold on his vote and making what he believed to be the correct move? Was he scum who did it and is now scraping for reasons why it’s not as suspicious as it appears?

I think your assessment of those posts as “completely going off the rails” isn’t a fair. Is it unreasonable for me to point out that you’re using strawmen? It’s a simple and common tactic to use strawmen in defense. Hell, I’ve done it plenty of times as scum, and often successfully. For instance, in 246 I was pointing out your strawmen. I’d previously pointed out the apparent contradiction between you claiming to be a newbie then giving advice, and your response was as if I’d accused you of having a big ego and you responded to that instead of to the contradition. This is a perfectly valid point. Because you never answered that apparent contradiction, and we you did, it was to a completely different argument.

Looking at 248. I explained why I thought you were smudging me. I also explained why I thought your vote for Ryjae was contradictory. I don’t see how either of those points is unreasonable either. You may or may not agree with the efficacy of smudges and finding scum, but I wasn’t the only person who saw that statement as a smudge. I wanted a response, that’s a reasonable point. I also saw a contradiction with Ryjae because you random voted anyrose, then made a point about her responding with OMGUS, but you unvote her and put an OMGUS vote on RyJae. This is another contradiction and it’s a reasonable point.

Post 252 was an explanation of how motivation is usable early in the game and I went through a summation of many of the points I’d raised against you. Which of those points do you think is unreasonable?

As for my style, let me explain my philosophy of play. Beside all the strategy, I look at mafia a lot like poker, except our role is our hand. Sometimes you get a strong hand like a pro-town power role or scum, and sometimes you get a weak one, like vanilla townie. An amateur poker player plays the strength of his hand, and that’s it and the game is essentially pure luck for him. A veteran poker player can often win even when he doesn’t have the best hand.

Yes, this is a game of information, and the scum have a lot and the town has a little, but there’s one piece of information that even vanilla scum have that scum don’t, and that’s the exact degree of my suspicions and, more importantly, what I’m going to do about it. This means, I can make a bluff, for instance, my pressure on fluiddruid in the last game was the equivalent of a good draw, turned busted hand that I chose to bluff, and it had an immediate backfire (of getting her lynched, and misdirecting my suspicion onto Nanook), but because I showed my bluff, I managed to look weak enough to survive until I was Cop-confirmed, and then ultimately lead to three scum lynches in a row. Another one of my favorite bluffs was my contribution to getting the pirates to kill their secret scum buddy in the off-board pirates game.

Bottom line, I give careful consideration to every move and it’s specific effects and I play like an aggressive poker player. I bet big when I have the cards, and sometimes I bluff. That said, I never make arguments that I don’t perceive as logical, at least within the information available at large, I may or may not necessarily be convinced by my own arguments, but I never deliberately make illogical arguments. That is, even if I am going to bluff, I’m going to make a good bluff, not an obnoxious one.

So, that in mind, I think there’s a number of valid points against you. Was my suspicion out of proportion? I don’t think so, particularly considering the apparent preponderence for Day One. No one had the amount of evidence against them that you did, and so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to put pressure on you, just like I would in poker if I felt I had a good read on you.

463

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
Ok, it may not have been obvious to you; that’s fine. What I’m saying is that the votes were poorly reasoned. The votes for her were based upon the act and the result rather than the underlying motivation. So, OMGUS, is that bad strategy, generally, yes. Does bad strategy look scummy? Absolutely. Is it necessarily scummy? Absolutely not.

[/QUOTE]

Well, I didn’t vote for her based on her OMGUS vote. I voted for her continued defense of her Thing Fish OMGUS vote, using what appeared to be manufactured reasons. I voted because those reasons seemed like they were retrofitted to justify the OMGUS, which is what triggered my scumdar. So feel free to take as close of a look at me as you like, I simply disagree that I fall within your reasons for suspicion.

464

OK, BlaM, I’m going to go over this one more time, because I think I’ve already adequately addressed all your points.

246: Really not seeing how either of the things you quoted me saying could have been construed as any sort of “argument” at all, strawman or otherwise, they are simply assertions. Quoting myself:

“I already clarified that I was not telling her not to defend herself, and that I should have stated this more clearly than I did”

You felt that what I said “implied” that I told her not to defend herself. Fine, I can accept that I need to be much more careful in this game to make my meaning crystal clear. Other people besides you did read it the same way, but there are also those who did not.

And then:
“I’m a newbie who has more experience reading and carefully analyzing games than it appears a lot of the other newbies here do. Sorry if I came off as egotistical, but I prefer that to sitting back and letting the “veterans” like yourself lead everyone around by the nose, because if you happen to be scum, we’re all screwed.”

The second line of that quote was rather ill-considered and provoked by frustration. I submit that the first line did in fact directly address your original question, however. It is simply not true that I “never answered that apparent contradiction”.

248: I’ve reviewed the first Day in some detail, and I can’t see where I was in any way critical of anyrose’s OMGUS vote. I did mention in passing a couple times that it was in fact an OMGUS vote (which nobody, including her, ever disputed), but that’s not the same thing as “acting all suspicious”. My initial vote on RyJae was partially OMGUS and partially for lurking. That’s not a contradiction, because I never said that I had a problem with OMGUS votes early in Day One. I didn’t regard that as in any way a compelling argument, and I looked for a better one by the end of the day, which turned out to still point to RyJae (my final vote, of course, was motivated by pure self-preservation).

252: I think I have already addressed all these.

Your explanations have been very thought-provoking and helpful for understanding your outlook on the game. I continue to feel that your representations of my statements were not entirely fair or accurate, and this provokes a certain level of suspicion. You apparently still have some suspicion of me as well. Fair enough. I think my posts from Yesterday have been analyzed enough that everyone has been able to come to their own conclusions about how suspicious they were, so I don’t think it serves any pro-Town purpose to continue rehashing this discussion. But if you still have questions, feel free.

465

So Ryjae’s feet are being held to the fire right now, but while a couple people are mentioning Unkempt’s vote, no one’s pressing him. His reasoning for switching to anyrose as stated yesterDay was pretty much a me-too of what Ryjae and bufftabby had posted before their respective switches. (Ryjae coming off of Thingfish and bufftabby coming off of Koldanar.) Both of these have come under pressure for their switches, but not much heat has been put on Unkempt.

And he hasn’t even posted for this Day, other than a fluff saying he’d be back. I think a little more explanation for why he voted for thingfish originally, what caused him to change his mind, and why he specifically chose anyrose is in order, so:

vote The Unkempt One

466

And it should come as no surprise that the folks I am looking at are bufftabby, RyJaye and The Unkempt One - the order in which they switched votes. Not to be engaged in a cliffhanger but I want to make sure I get my thoughts down as succintly as possible before I place my vote. Also since the Spurs just tipped off so based on the way that series is going I should have plenty of free time starting midway through the third. Gastards.

467

[QUOTE=peekercpa]
And it should come as no surprise that the folks I am looking at are bufftabby, RyJaye and The Unkempt One - the order in which they switched votes. Not to be engaged in a cliffhanger but I want to make sure I get my thoughts down as succintly as possible before I place my vote. Also since the Spurs just tipped off so based on the way that series is going I should have plenty of free time starting midway through the third. Gastards.
[/QUOTE]

Well, obviously it was a good idea to unvote koldanar’s Townie self, and I felt like my vote for anyrose was reasonably well-substantiated, if misguided. So peek on, peeker, but you ain’t gonna see nuthin’ from me. (Sorry, I turn redneck every once in awhile, mostly when I go into, “aw, hell naw!” mode.)

468

And here we go. My reflections on yesterDay in the order I previously listed.
bufftabby. She switches her vote from Koldanar. I kind of thought the original vote was based on a real reach in the first place. One off votes at the end of the day, especially based on what I would consider to be based on a poor premise are things to look at, in my opinion. So getting out of there makes sense. But she follows up with a relatively good reason for the switch. Low suspicion.

RyJaye. Can we possibly beat this horse any deader. He’s already the vote leader and I feel that there are a couple more townies that could go his way. His vote switch,in retrospect, looks absolutely horrible. However, I am looking at the timing of this a wee bit. When he switched to anyrose it was 8 - 3 making it 7 - 4. Still a safe move. There were only five hours left in the Day and not a whole lotta folks looking real indecisive. At this point he’s off the fishy lynch and in with a still sizeable pool (4 of 14 - 28 percent of the players at that point.). So, today it looks like no way scum would make that play based on the way things ultimately turned out. But at the time it sure can be perceived as a nice way to distance yourself from a fish lynch. Moderate suspicion.

The Unkempt One. Now this is where I get real confused. He switches, literally, at the last second changing 7 - 4 to 6 - 5. Basically this lollipops fish into another last minute vote shift by fish making it 50/50. I can’t read anything into the fish vote since whether he is town or sum the same action would be taken. But this last second vote by TUO really has me thinking.

When I started this post I was going to vote RyJaye but now am having second thoughts.

Back in a second.

And buffer I’ve got a thick skin and I also feel that I know you guys a little but… The peek on peeker (abridged/edited/etc.) comes across as a little snarky. I wonder if it is these types of “innocuous” comments that tend to intimidate the newbs. Another thread another time.

469

And I even managed to silence the crickets.

470

Vote Count
**RyJae - 3 ** (Thing Fish, Zsofia, cckerberos)
**Oredigger77 - 1 ** (RyJae)
**The Unkempt One - 1 ** (Hoopy Frood)

Not Voting
peekercpa, Oredigger77, bufftabby, , Dotchan, The Unkempt One, fluiddruid, Blaster Master

471

Ok the second tirned out to be longer. Won’t vote right now becausew the libations are flowing.

GO SdPURS GO.

472

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
So the bottom line is, you expect us to believe, after spending the whole Day going after him, and having plenty of evidence against him, that you get something out of about two sentences, that you fail to substantiate, and that it supercedes all the evidence against him? Either you’re a very instinctual and intuitive player (which is not my assessment of you), or your contradicting your own logic.
[/QUOTE]
To play devil’s advocate, the same line of reasoning was turned against me in the last game, and I was town. Sometimes something strikes someone as particularly important. Further, Thing Fish is not even confirmed scum at this point; the ‘plenty of evidence’ is really not standing up in any way, otherwise why aren’t we targeting him for votes as well? It was Day One.

473

So much for the everybody voting early thing.

474

Well, this is interesting. The Unkempt One’s post voting for anyrose. He’s got his reasons;
it’s just that, well, they’re already my reasons. While they’re not half-bad reasons, it seems pretty scummy to piggyback so completely on my vote. This way, if he gets questioned on the vote, he can lay the blame on me. Bonus: he doesn’t even have to come up with his own reasons to vote. What’s the easiest way to find Townie reasons to vote? Copy off of a Townie. I find this all highly suspect.

vote The Unkempt One

475

Here are some post numbers to play with:



	Posts D1	Post-TF (%)	Posts D2
BM	28		1 (04)		13
BT	18		10 (56)		5
PCPA	18		4 (22)		6
HF	16		4 (25)		3
TF	16		7 (44)		6
TUO	16		7 (44)		0
RJ	13		8 (62)		10
ZS	13		5 (38)		5
OD	12		5 (42)		0
CCK	10		5 (50)		4
FD	4		3 (75)		2
Total	164		58 (35)		54

Notes:

  1. The post counts only include on-topic posts and don’t include fluff, rules questions, etc. Obviously this is a little subjective.
  2. The “Post-TF” numbers are the number of Day 1 posts made after Thing Fish gained a substantial lead (3 vote margin, post #267, about 60% of the way through the Day). The % is the percentage Post-TF posts represent out of that poster’s total D1 posting.
  3. I didn’t include dotchan or the dead

I originally calculated the second column of numbers because it seemed to me (at the time) that the amount of posting died off during the second half of the Day, after Thing Fish was being fitted for a rope. Turns out that wasn’t actually the case. Even so, it occurred to me that a change in the rate of participation after TF’s fate seemed certain could signify something. Since every time we post something substantial we take the risk of having what we said misinterpreted as a scumtell (if town) or correctly interpreted as a scumtell (if scum) it seems to me that scum would have a motivation to reduce their involvement once the fix was in on a townie out of fear of screwing things up. Of course whether that would apply here or not depends on your view concerning Thing Fish’s towniness.

Hopefully I didn’t screw up any of the numbers.

476

[QUOTE=bufftabby]
Well, this is interesting. The Unkempt One’s post voting for anyrose. He’s got his reasons;
it’s just that, well, they’re already my reasons. While they’re not half-bad reasons, it seems pretty scummy to piggyback so completely on my vote. This way, if he gets questioned on the vote, he can lay the blame on me. Bonus: he doesn’t even have to come up with his own reasons to vote. What’s the easiest way to find Townie reasons to vote? Copy off of a Townie. I find this all highly suspect.

vote The Unkempt One
[/QUOTE]

Ya know. The same could be said about your vote on him since you’re piggybacking on my reasoning. Though, you are more explicit about what seems suspicious about the me-too than I was.

477

Crud. Must remember to remove color text. :smack:

478

[QUOTE=Blaster Master]
Ok, it may not have been obvious to you; that’s fine. What I’m saying is that the votes were poorly reasoned. The votes for her were based upon the act and the result rather than the underlying motivation. So, OMGUS, is that bad strategy, generally, yes. Does bad strategy look scummy? Absolutely. Is it necessarily scummy? Absolutely not.

Poorly reasoned votes could simply be that and nothing more. Or, they could be people with special information that know where they want their vote to be, then work backwards trying to find reasons to do so.

IOW, it may not have been obvious that she was town to you, but she sure as hell wasn’t scummier than Thing Fish. The three votes I picked out (yours, RyJae’s and Unkempt’s) all struck me as being poorly reasoned which means, either you just didn’t put a lot effort into it, or you decided to vote for her first and came up with reasons afterward. The first possibility is only slightly scummy, but the latter possibility is VERY scummy. Thus, I think it’s quite reasonable to say there’s a high probability that at least one scum lies between the three of you and I want to examine each of you more closely.
[/QUOTE]

I am reading through the thread to catch up, but I wanted to respond to this before I went any further.

My reason to switch my vote from **Thing Fish ** to anyrose was not poorly reasoned. I was one of the first people to suspect Thing Fish, putting a fos on him very early on Day one. After many other people voted for him as well, he started responding with what I consider to be very well thought out and compelling arguments as to why he wasn’t scum. Toward the end of Day one, it no longer seemed to me that he was the scummiest person posting, and I no longer felt comfortable voting for him.

I changed my vote to anyrose for reasons that I have already listed. It sucks that it was so close to the end of Day one when I changed my vote, but it wasn’t really until that point that **Thing Fish ** started to defend himself well. So, I stand by my reasons to change my vote. Hopefully Day 2 will yield a better result.

479

[QUOTE=bufftabby]
Well, this is interesting. The Unkempt One’s post voting for anyrose. He’s got his reasons;
it’s just that, well, they’re already my reasons. While they’re not half-bad reasons, it seems pretty scummy to piggyback so completely on my vote. This way, if he gets questioned on the vote, he can lay the blame on me. Bonus: he doesn’t even have to come up with his own reasons to vote. What’s the easiest way to find Townie reasons to vote? Copy off of a Townie. I find this all highly suspect.

vote The Unkempt One
[/QUOTE]

I understand the point you are making here, and like I mentioned in my previous post, it does suck that I had to change my vote at the last minute. However, after making so many posts accusing **Thing Fish ** of acting scummy, I simply couldn’t let my vote sit on him any longer when I didn’t think that he was scum any more.

I didn’t wait until the last moment to change my vote to cause confusion. It just so happens that **Thing Fish ** didn’t really start to make a good defense of himself until late on Day one, hence my late vote change.

Finally, bufftabby, my reasons for voting for anyrose were very similar to yours becuase you had come up with some very good reasons. I think that I made enough other posts about the whole **Thing Fish ** and anyrose debacle to give everyone a pretty good idea of where my head is at.

480

Ok, so I have to cast a vote. It looks like a lot of people are already jumping on the RyJae bandwagon, and I don’t think that my vote should go on him. In fact, many of the reasons that people are giving to vote on Ry could also be applied to me, and I don’t really want to go down that road.

bufftabby and **Hoopy Frood ** have both cast votes on me, but I can’t really fault them for that. I did my best to explain why I voted the way I did Yesterday, and hopefully they will change their votes accordingly.

So, who to vote for? I think that an initial vote on Oredigger would be a good place to start, since he was suspected at least a little bit by kold. But, there is already a vote on him, so hopefully he will be around to defend himself.

So, because I would like to hear more from her about her position as well as what has already transpired here in the game, I am going to

vote fluiddruid

I am suspicious that fluiddruid has had so little interaction with the rest of us during this game. It makes it difficult to really gauge her position or intentions. I spent some time looking over the past Day and a half, and I couldn’t really find enough on her to form an opinion one way or another. To make good decisions we need as much info from people as possible, and as of now we just don’t have much info from her.