Mafia V: The Cult of Sekham

The Game Room
1141

Ok I lied, I have work to do but I am choosing to do the part that is watching blue bars fill up first.

The next thing I wanted to look at was the voting for mtgman. The first person to vote for mtgman was Scuba Ben. He did so in post 783 . His stated reason was for this giant post 649 which scuba ben did not link to so I am as well as mtgman’s “highly analytical and highly passive methodology” as it the best he has at the moment.

The next person to vote for mtgman was storyteller in post 824 . One of the reasons given was because mtgman wanted to know why story was leaving his vote on Mad the Swine even though he had suspicions of other people. To allay these concerns storyteller unvotes MtS and votes for mtgman instead. Story also promises a longer case against mtgman to come at some point. This does come rather quickly, in post 827 To summarize this post story says mtgman never answers questions directly, poses different questions instead of answers and uses smoke and mirrors when discussing anything but perhaps the metagame. That is my interpretation at least, feel free to read it yourself, its why I post the link :).

The next person to vote for mtgman is Hal Briston here in post 856. Hal summarizes the feuds as he sees them, focusing on the mtgman/storyteller one throwing in Scuba Ben as well. I am guessing Scuba Ben is thrown in this “feud” because he voted for mtgman first. Hal then votes for mtgman saying basically day 1 sucks to get a read on anyone so I am going to vote for mtgman.

Is this the well-known-scum-tell 3rd vote? No reasons are given for the vote.

The 4th vote is Diggitcamara here (sort of) but really here 867 . DC even unvoted autolycus to vote for mtgman. His stated reason is in 866. It is one that I just don’t get. It could be because of the name error, but the reason given is

What early statements by mtgman? Mtgman’s statements all metagaming and clearly defined by the prior votes. This looks like a bandwagon jump to me.

The 5th vote is Zeriel right here in post 870 . This also contains an unvote to vote for mtgman. Kyrie Eleison was unvoted to vote for mtgman. Stated reason is the attack on storyteller, believed to be over the top by Zeriel. The unvote was basically because of the substitution and the percieved less scummy posts by the new person.

6th person to vote is Pleonast in post 871 . Pleonast also unvotes, in this case malacandra because:

A poor reason to switch votes, but IMO consistent with Pleonast game style. However one thing worries me:

This is the second time pleonast has immediately switched his vote from one person to another after someone else voted for him (see my previous post). The first time he did so was post 405 after SCL did in 403 . I do not like this pattern of behavior.

7th person was mhaye who did so in post 874 . This post is somewhat long and contains reasons for the vote of mtgman. The reasons given are much the same as storytellers, and based somewhat on the post of storyteller. This post looks well thought out, and gives sufficient reason for the vote.

The last person to vote for mtgman was Hockey Monkey in post 884 . No reasons are given for this vote, and HM even says that s/he is uncomfortable with the how fast the votes have piled up, but is going to vote anyway. However, in post 862 HM does seem to give some reasons. However they are again based mostly on )Storyteller’s reasoning. HM also unvoted for pleonast here.

So what does all this mean to me?

1st vote (scuba ben): no or weak reasons given

2nd vote (storyteller): reasons given, reasons many find convincing and use for later justification of their vote.

3rd vote (Hal Briston: no reasons given. 3rd vote scum tell?

4th vote (Diggit Camara): weird explanation (IMO) given, looks like bandwagon to me.

5th vote (Zeriel): Uses storyteller’s reasons, as well the belief that mtgman was over the to in attacking storyteller

6th vote (Pleonast): no reasons given except no one wants to vote for my guy so I will vote for your guy. 2nd time changed a vote immediately after someone else voted.

7th vote (mhaye): Also uses storyteller’s reasons, but gives some of his own as well.

8th vote (Hockey Monkey): No reasons given in actual vote post, but some reasons given earlier on. Also changed vote from one (pleonast) to mtgman.

Of these votes I find Hal Briston, pleonast, Diggit Camara and hockey monkey suspect. I FOS all of you. I vote for:

Hal Briston

1142

This is going to seem like a very mean-spirited reason to vote for someone, but my suspicions have fallen very strongly on Kat. I already had some suspicions of ArizonaTeach but was trying to give Kat the benefit of the doubt. Then she came in yesterday and posted a very nice post defending my posting. A player defending another player is very worrisome to me; the only players who can know for sure if another player is worth defending are the ones with secret knowledge. In other words, Cult members. Also, defending a friendless player, as I seem to be, is a way to “make friends and influence people” - “SCL is getting picked on so if I defend her she won’t be suspicious of me”.

If it turns out Kat is town I am going to feel like a small warm pile of dog poop, but for now - Vote Kat.

1143

Shame on me for skimming and not posting enough for the past couple of days, and FOS on you all for not calling me more on it. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m inclined to put my vote with the Kat-voters as well, but I’m leaving it as a FOS on Kat while I run off to gather my justifications.

Some may call this post pointless, but I challenge that it is better to here at least a mumbling now instead of me extending my freakish silence until whenever I can manage to post something coherent.

1144

How ironic…In M4, when I brought up the “3rd vote being a possible scum tell” point, I was railed against because we’ve moved so far beyond that idea, that even bringing it up was looked at as a scum tell in itself. Now it’s that same bad tell being used against me.

Ah well…either way, no, 3rd vote is not a scum tell (although if all other things were tied, you might make a case for using it as a tipping point) any more than bringing up “3rd vote scum tell” is a scum tell*. Both are no more than bad ideas and spurious logic.

Anyway, Queuing notes how storyteller gave good reasons for his Mgtman vote, “reasons many find convincing and use for later justification of their vote”. I had figured that anyone would realize that picking a side would mean “I find the arguments being by the person on the other side to be convincing”, but I suppose in hindsight I should’ve spelled it out – I found many of storyteller’s arguments convincing, I cannot say the same for Mgtman argyments, ergo I voted for Mgtman.

On the flip side, I find Queuing’s shotgun approach to casting suspicion to be a bit scummy in itself. Four FOS’s and a vote in two sentences? It all seems like a very convenient way for scum to keep everyone’s eyes on as many targets as possible. Not nearly enough for a vote, but certainly enough to FOS Queuing.

(*****On preview, it just occurred to me…I had argued against the whole “bringing up the ‘3rd vote scum tell’ is a scum tell” idea in M4, but I’ll be damned – it was correct. I brought up the “3rd vote scum tell” bit, and I was scum in that game. Might have to rethink this one…)

1145

I’m far more worried about some others, namely:

  1. Mad the Swine
  2. MonkeyMensch

Where are you guys?

1146

On that note, let’s try one of those “poke the player”-votes.

Vote Mad The Swine

1147

Incidentally…Google Docs & Spreadsheets is pissing me off, so I’m going to just host the voting spreadsheet myself. You can find it here. Blaster, mind updating the sig link? Thanks!

1148

OK, so I started this post with the intention to post my theory about Mal, but as I was looking over his posts I noticed something different. Something that is more interesting to my mind. Personally I think the Mal situation is all noise that the scum are staying away from, allowing us as a town to tear ourselves apart.

So I am looking at who started the ball rolling against Mal today, and I notice that Fluid is the second vote. Quietly adding to the vote count, then not saying much after. Mal even mentions that her vote looks over information he had already posted. Her response is strangely and IMO scummily non committal

Then as I was looking back, Fluid hasn’t been involved in much of anything, but her vote against Mal seems to go against her own philosophy of how scum behave. (It goes against mine, and I think Fluid and I think similarly on this topic) Also she has said that she is deliberately staying out of controversial subjects (Day 1 p15 post702).

Then take a look at post 491

particularly this bit:

Isn’t this what she is doing? She is truly flying below the radar. I also seem to recall her saying that if she had M3 to do over again, she would post exactly the way she is posting now. (sorry I couldn’t find the quote, but it was early in the game if someone else sees it.) And her stating that the way she is posting is an excellent scum strategy, is a great defense to being called scum. This is how Gad avoided suspicion in the pirates game.

vote fluiddruid for being actually below the radar. Not lurking but not putting herself out there enough to REALLY be noticed.

She was so hard to see that it took me looking for evidence against someone else to notice she wasn’t being noticed much.

1149

All well and good, but I think that there is some contradiction in Malacandra’s comment this day. Here is is, in it’s entirety:

At the time, I read this as an ironic remark on the likelihood that no matter what the truth of zuma was, Mal wasn’t likely to find himself out of the hot seat. Particularly so, given the “long Day” query. Malacandra’s remarks since have been consistent with this interpretation. I think that there’s some ironic contradiction here that got picked up as scummy contradiction by some.

This is just my take on what happened, and isn’t meant as an attempt to mitigate your suspicion of Pleonast or sachertorte. Even if you accept that this interpretation is accurate, they might still well be deliberately using the confusion introduced by Mal’s statement, rather than mistakenly doing so.

1150

Snipped, colour removed, size changed

2 sentences?! 2 Sentences! Do you know how long it took me to do that post? Yet you reduce it to 2 sentences!? Damn you!

In all seriousness, damn you!

It would have been nice for you to put your reasons down in the first place, not way after the fact and after someone has called you on it, then using as a defense part of the point said accuser used in his lot-longer-then-2-sentence-post-and-case. Not saying that it was obvious “I find the arguments being by the person on the other side to be convincing” because there are many reasons to place a vote on someone, including being scum and knowing they aren’t.

1151

Done.

1152

Aaarrrgghhh! Curse you, no edit rule.

With respect to a vote, I’m still pondering. I have a lingering suspicion concerning Hal Briston’s Day One suggestion that the Apprentice unobviously out himself; I found Fretful Porpentine’s late, seemingly throw-away vote for Nava odd; and I think that NAF1138 has just made an interesting point regarding fluiddruid.

Yesterday, I was suspicious of ArizonaTeach, based on my subjective impression that his meltdown smacked of “scummy desperation,” and that carries over to Kat. Since then, Kat hasn’t really done anything either to increase or to decrease my worries, but storyteller0910 pointed out that, at the time, there were four vote-getters, including myself, who were virtually tied. So I have to ask myself, did it really make sense to think that AZTeach would react that way out of concern that he might be dunked?

No vote yet, still pondering…

1153

FTR, I just received a response from him and he expects to be back on Sunday. If you all want, I can still forcibly replace him; otherwise, I’m content to let him come pick up where he left off… after reading a 20 pages of new content. :smiley:

1154

Ok, Arizona/Kat…

Post #807 (like most of his last posts) is hard to gauge…is it from the gut, is it scummy defensiveness, is he just flaming-out? People tend to interpret these ramblings of mine a bit to literally. So before anyone chimes in with “non of the above”, know it is a rhetorical question. :stuck_out_tongue:

I will admit that my reaction to most of Arizona’s posts is a gut reaction, and my gut tells me that it was hyper-sensative defensiveness of scummy origin.

And I want to supplement my own pathetic attempts at research and analysis with that of our dearly departed Mtgman. Nairu, you took him too soon…sniff

For Kat, the first thing that strikes me on re-read of her vote-justification for sachertorte is placing a FOS on Diggit with one breath, and then citing something Diggit pointed out as reasoning to vote for sachetorte. I’m inclined to say: which is it? Are we supposed to trust Diggit or not trust him?

The second thing that struck me was that harping on sache for the whole Oracle/Apprentice fiasco is SO yesterDay, and the argument still just doesn’t go anywhere with me.

So, among other flotsam and jetsam of rationalization, this all leads me to vote Kat.

1155

If he hasn’t posted anything by Monday morning, at least a “HI I AM NOT DEAD BUT I HAVE TO READ THIS MONSTER BEFORE I CAN POST” I would like to ask that he be subbed out. But if he says he will be here by Sunday I can deal with that.

1156

I think we’ve still got enough players that we can “carry” one for a couple more days.

Fortuitously, he should be back during a Night period, so he’ll have a day or so to catch up. If he can’t get back then, he’ll have to be subbed out soon thereafter.

I’ve got to reread the Day before making any substantive posts on the last few pages.

1157

Since I was riding AZ hard yesterDay I just wanted to throw 2 cents in on the kat/AZ thing.

I am not going to vote for Kat, because I think it is inherantly unfair to the new player to vote them out on the first day they are in the game based on the previous players postings. At least it is when we still clearly have more than one scum to chase down. My feeling is they should all get a 1 Day period to make their own mark. That being said, AZ was at the top of my scum list and so far Kat hasn’t been doing anything to change my mind. So I shall not be adding my vote toDay but if Kat hasn’t changed my mind by tomorrow I will gladly join this wagon.

1158

I think Blaster Master said that he would replace Mad the Swine if he didn’t post by the end of the day. I think he meant gameday, which is an awfully long time, in my opinion. By the time we get a replacement, there will be very little data in comparison to everyone else.

I for one would encourage Blaster Master to replace Mad the Swine as soon as possible, especially if there are people who want to play.

1159

Fair enough. The first “poke-a-player”-vote worked.

Unvote MadTheSwine

Let’s try a second one

Vote MonkeyMensch

1160

Let’s try that again:

Unvote MadTheSwine

Vote MonkeyMensch