Mafia The Game III: Kinder and Gentler

The Game Room
2081

Doesn’t that necessetate a rather large leap of faith? Although it’s a possibility, I’m not seeing anything overt that would suggest one scum in each.

However, I can get behind the idea of that, simply because it would fit my suspicions. I’ve already voted for Rachm (incidentally, Millet, you said that Rachm “…has played too carefully to be Mafia”, and that he’s “…losing his cool a little too much right now, which has always been a townies thing”. I’m thinking they’re both being used as scum cover – especially the recent blowup. He’s putting on a nice show.

And speaking of putting on a show, that leads me to my other bit of suspicion. nesta, I owe you an apology. I’ve been quite certain of your townieness for several days now, yet I’ve continues to attack you. This was an attempt to draw scum into taking a side in our battle (it not really mattering which side they took). I figured if scum saw a heated town v. town fight, they would think they could move help one of us get lynched. When that person came up as town, it would make the other one of us look like scum. Win-win for the mafia, if not for it being a trap.

So, even though I would have liked to seen a firmer stance taken, I’m still going to FOS Blaster Master for his taking the bait against nesta.

And seriously hope I haven’t tipped my hand to early with regard to this ploy.

2082

Hey, guess who forgot to spell-check. It’s amazing how getting one letter wrong can make a word look so…off.

2083

I’m not sure whether to be flattered or suspicious of this. For now I guess I’ll go with flattered, because the people pointing to the “Hal/nesta thing” have seemed off to me. Many people FOS others, and get FOSed in return, and I don’t know why they thought our little go-round was anything special. Also, if Blaster Master thought something was strange about it, why did he choose me as the one to be suspicious of? I guess he was right that something was strange, but he picked the person to be suspicious of that wasn’t pushing our little feud.

I am, and have been, suspicious of Blaster Master as well. Something just doesn’t seem right about what he’s been doing all game. I really need to go back through the thread and see if I can figure out why I have this impression.

On the other hand the “lynch all liars” impulse is pinging heavily. If Hal Briston is town I’m not sure this ploy was a good idea. Deception is best left to the scum, because now we have to look at everything Hal says and try to decipher if he’s being honest this time, including his saying this was all a ploy. When I catch whiffs of deception, it makes me think scum, not clever townie trying to find scum. I still don’t think Hal is scum, but this has made me a little less sure.

2084

Don’t make me start with you again! :slight_smile:
Anyway, if I were scum, why would I have posted what I did? I’d be on my way to having a townie lynched. Scum need to be deceptive – it’s all they have in the game. But that doesn’t mean that town can’t occasionally use their tactics to trap them.

2085

:confused: I thought I made my stance quite clear. I’m suspicious of you for lurking, and low content posting, not the feud. The feud in and of itself is not enough reason to suspect either of you. The only reason the feud really matters is because I’m not sure whether it’s town vs. town or town vs. scum (as I said, I really doubt it’s scum vs. scum). In and of itself, it’s not worthy of an FOS because it could have very easily been town vs. town, but I’ve been keeping an eye on it in case it is town vs. scum (which would hence exonerate **Hal ** in my eyes).

Similar to what **tirial ** went on, I think scum will deliberately play different styles (though I can’t figure out how she came to the conclusion that there must be one scum in each group based on Idle’s vague feeling that he wasn’t as suspicious anymore of the lower groups); that is,. Considering that we’ve found two that were fairly prolific posters, I’m inclined to believe there is at least one who is lurking, and the two posters with noticeably low post counts are nesta and Rachm Qoch (Cookies is the next, but that’s only because she’s been gone for a while, so that isn’t evidence in suspecting her). That alone doesn’t mean much, but I have noticed that recently Rachm is a) under the attack of **tirial ** (whom I don’t can’t say with any certainty is pro-town or scum), b) has started to react frantically, as someone else pointed out, which IME, is often the result of a frustrated vanilla-townie, and c) has upped his posting over the last day or two with good content, hence, I’m inclined to think he’s more likely town than scum. Meanwhile, nesta has remained fairly quiet consistently, likening himself to the lurker style of scum from M2 (like Kat and, interestingly enough, himself particularly). Hence, I’m inclined to believe that, between Rachm Qoch and nesta, the latter is more likely to be scum. Because I’m fairly certain that at least one of them must be, I’m inclined to believe it is nesta.

Of course, following similar logic, that means Diggit and tirial are probably clean (unless one of them was recruited, which I think tirial very well may have been), and that one more lies somewhere in the more moderate posting range, like Cookies, or Millit; but I don’t have a scum read from either of them.

2086

**Blastermaster ** it has nothing to do with “not being suspicious of the lower groups”

Right, lets run through this slowly - I am assuming four starting mafia:

a) Note that in P1411 Idle Thoughts pretty much discounts suspicions of 3 people for no reason other than that they were in the same group as a known scum.

Follow this logic though - if each time a scum is found, you discard the members of the other group, the model he is working on results inevitiably in one scum in each group. If there are more than four scum to start with, of course, it breaks, or if the mafia have been using identical playing styles, although that seems unlikely.

Then after his post, Idle Thoughts goes after Rachm Qoch and SCL, the members of his second group. So he seemed to be following his model.

a) Note that there are two scum remaining. Note that SCL is now known to be town.
Note that this leaves one poster in Group B who is likely to be scum.
If there is one poster in group B who is scum, this leaves one remaining mafia who must by definition be in group C. Hence the result is again one in each group.

Now again this doesn’t tell you much, all it gives are indicators, which are not much use until you end up cross referencing them, as I demonstrated above. The results of the cross reference are Diggit and Rachm looking just a bit like scum.

Having found your pointers, use them as a base to start building evidence on. Then expect other posters to do their own research.

2087

I’m getting suspicious of anyone who wants us to assume there are only two or three scum left. I think it’s quite likely there are four. This assumes, of course, that we started with five and had a recruitment. But isn’t it worse to assume that we have more wiggle room rather than less?

If the scum convince us that today doesn’t matter as much as it DOES, and they can get us to lynch one more townie, then they could win TONIGHT. Four Mafia and three townies = a Mafia win. This matters, a LOT. I hope to see a few more votes before we get down to the deadline. We’re about halfway there. Blaster, are you planning to vote today? Nesta, you almost always vote late. Who would you vote for, if you had to vote now?

If you’re playing sincerely, then at least help us out by letting us know. All of you!

2088

For better or worse, I’m going to throw out my vote for Diggit again. I still have time to change my mind if the case for both of us being town somehow strengthens between now and nightfall.

2089

If that turns out to be the case, then Gadarene had it in for us from the start. Five starting mafia plus a recruitment in a 20-player game is way too scum-based. I think that would give the town somewhere in the neighborhood of a 2% chance of winning.

Not saying it couldn’t be the case (and if it is, then hey, go us for surviving this long), but I sure as hell hope it isn’t.

2090

You’re missing my point. I can see how you came to the conclusion of the model that you think that Idle was following and from that, I can see how you’re using that to support Rachm and Diggit as scum. What I don’t get is why you think this model is necessarily valid. Sure, if the scum are randomly distributed (which is true), and there are four scum initially (which I believe is probable) then, logically, it’s intuitive that any four groups (equally sized) will each hold one scum but, this is by no means guaranteed. In fact, its only going to happen 9.3% of the time, that means over 90% of the time they will cluster. Further, this model fails on being equally sized, which only makes the math more difficult and makes it LESS likely for scum to be in smaller classes and MORE likely to cluster in larger ones. Finally, you haven’t even attempted to make a case to prove that his model necessarily broke up the initial random population perfectly without either a HUGE assumption or other information (like help from the detective), neither of which is stated.

So, let’s try this–and I’ll even concede that he was following that model–what makes you so sure it’s valid? What if he’d said “I’m really suspicious of people he have names near the bottom of the alphabet, but I think people with names near the beginning are probably town” and so he takes the player list, alphabetizes it, then makes four groups and goes after the “most suspicious” group. Now, obviously, his suspicions aren’t THAT random, but if your premise is that there is exactly one scum in each group, then you’re essentially saying that his suspicions were.

Quite frankly, this is just straight up bizarre reasoning. :confused:

2091

Damnit, I hate agreeing with people I think are scum.

But facts are facts…that would be a terrific system, tirial, but it necessitates assuming something of which we have no evidence.

2092

I’m still considering. I’m inclined to vote either nesta (for reasons I’ve already stated) or maybe tirial.

I’ve been on and off mildly suspicious of **Diggit ** for a few days, but because we’ve already found two prolific scum and I really doubt he was recruited, I can’t justify voting for him over tirial. I also have fairly strong town reads from Hal and Millit, so I’m also inclined not to vote for either of them. I also have a leaning-town read on Cookies, but if there is scum in the medium range (that is, among **Hal, Millit ** and her), I am inclined to think she’s most likely because my read on her is weakest and because I think Diggit brought up some valid points which she has not yet addressed. My reading on Rach Qoch is questionable, but because the main proponent there is someone I’m MORE suspicious of and the main evidence AFAICT is his lurking, which is more damning of nesta IMO, I have a hard time endorsing that

So, I’m mostly waiting to see what nesta and tirial have to say and, if I’m unsatisfied by one, I’ll vote there; otherwise, I may have to dig a little deeper into Rachm Qoch and Cookies.

That said, I was leaning toward nesta, but I’m having a serious WTF-moment with **tirial ** right now (see my last post).

2093

What have I not yet addressed?

2094

My apologies, you did… goodness it’s hard to keep two games straight. :smack:

2095

Actually, what she has said about the points I brought up amounts to being unable to defend for past actions, to point at one other player with her behavior and not seeing the need to add her thoughts to the reasoning that led other people to vote for someone.

All in all, not enough to throw me off her tracks. And, during the weekend, I’ll try to re-read her posts to see what I can see.

2096

Right

  1. Idle Thoughts system is a basis - it is useless without further analysis. Not sure why you keep trying to use it without that.
  2. I did - and explained - further analysis and cross refencing - not sure why people keep ignoring that.
  3. The further analysis I have done and spelt out indicates an overlapping suspect pool

And as I have said three times now, the overlapping suspect pool is not a tell, it is:
a) pointers to where to start looking
b) So I started looking at Rachm and the evidence just mounted and
c) he keeps getting tied to Diggit.

I have asked several times for other townies to do some flipping research themselves, instead of being lazy toads picking over other people’s analysis instead of looking through posts. I notice no one has bothered to actually examine Rachm’s defense or look for evidence against him or Diggit apart from me. This feels like fluiddruid Day 3 all over again.

Millet, keep looking to support your preconceptions all you like.

Oh and BTW, I have so far tried building cases against Millet, Hal and nesta btw, and I can’t get nearly the case against them I can against Rachm, or Diggit or Blastermaster.

2097

BTW Gad can we have a vote count.

2098

I’ve now repeatedly and consistently voted for Diggit for many days. While I assume that you don’t find my justifications to be worth a piss, they’re enough for me.

2099

Sorry I meant the large amount of posts from/about Rachm and Diggit I’ve linked to with notably little response. (Will take your word for it for now, as haven;t got time to check voting records. Will check later.).

As long as we get a scum lynched today I really shouldn’t care.

2100

WHOA! WTF? I’m even MORE confused by your argument now. Let’s look at your posts:

In post 2077. You DO make a compelling case for the method that Idle Thoughts was following. But WAIT a minute, how many scum did this method catch? ZERO! When fluiddruid was lynched, he was voting elsewhere. When Lemur was lynched, he was voting elsewhere. His persistence led pretty much single-handedly to the death of SCL. When he was alive, you hounded him for each of these and, no that he’s dead, you’re pretending like its gospel?

Then, you go on to talk about your similar list, and expand the same logic that there must be one scum in each of your groups as well. Why must this, or even should it be true? Hey look, I’ve got Four groups (two of which only contain two people each), and you’re surprised that of the two scum we found, one landed in the group of 4 people, and the other in the group of 5 (as opposed to either of the small groups) and you’re trying to draw conclusions from that?

So, you’re asking us to believe that you believe that what Idle believed was a good model is AND you’re asking us to believe that what you believe to be are good reads on people’s play styles, including such doozies as “no real reason just overall impression”, “insufficient information. All posts read neutral” x2, “Just a feeling”, etc.? You’re kidding, right?

THEN, when you’re called on it, you respond in post 2086 you respond with reasoning that follows logic ONLY if the assumptions (which are not verifiable) are true. And EVEN IF THEY ARE, your STILL assuming that ALL of his reads (which you largely disagreed with at the time, mind you) and ALL of your reads (which largely conflict with his) are highly accurate, then you’re doing questionable math [err… read that as invalid] to draw conclusions.

EVEN WORSE, when you combine the charts, you get one “pointer” to Rachm Qoch, one “pointer” to Millit, TWO “pointers” to Diggit, and yet you’re LESS suspicious of Diggit than Rachm Qoch and MORE suspicious of me than Millit? How self-contradictory can you be? You even claim you can make a case against both Diggit and Rachm, and, according to your spurious logic above, you should be most suspicious of Diggit because he’s the only pointed to by both charts, so why aren’t you making your case against him when you have someone that agrees with you and has already voted for him?