Scum mafia: On Cecil pond [Game Over]

The Game Room
1161

Unvoting a townie can be anti-town because most Townies can’t know the alignment of someone until their death. So you can’t make the argument that unvoting a player who ultimately turns out to be Town is ‘good town play’ since you shouldn’t know who is town and who isn’t. In fact, it can be seen as Scummy play if you are avoiding having your votes end on a Townie Season after Season. If you are Scum and know that your vote is on a Townie who is about to be Lysed and want to avoid your voting record looking like a Townie lyse-fest, you would be constantly switching off players who are Town and about to get lysed. The fact that you don’t think voting records count for much makes me more suspicious that you don’t want us to look too closely at yours.

vote Spawn
vote Meeko

As to the other part of your post that I quoted, Spawn don’t break ties, they randomly vote. Any ties that then remain are resolved randomly.

1162

Checking in quickly–I don’t have much time to coherently post right now.

I am not seeing Meeko as particularly scummy. I was Scum with him in the last game, and he’s much more cautious as Scum–keep in mind that a Scummy Meeko is constantly being curtailed and guided by a team–he stays in line a LOT more as Scum than he does as Town.

My main suspects are Mahaloth and Kelly. I don’t know whether or not to write Kelly’s mistakes off as noobishness–the comment regarding Mahaloth was one that I can somewhat agree with, but the second I saw it I thought “He’s going to get a lot of heat for the way this was phrased.” I said stuff like that a lot when I was a noob, though, so I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt…for now.

Mahaloth, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated. I think the case against him based on the peeker vote and his defense of it later is a solid one, and he seems like he’s avoided the noose quite deftly. His play reminds me a bit of Freudian in Colorless–he keeps digging a hole repeatedly but always manages to claw his way out of it.

I did, however, repeat a question to him yesterDay that he never answered. Until I see a listing from him of all the peeker votes, and a detailing of which were “lame” and which were “not lame,” and why, I think I’ll be giving him my vote. This appears to be the only way to get him to comply.

vote Mahaloth

1163

snipped

Sigh.

I apologize more than once for saying lame. I was wrong about that.

Anyway, I"m willing to review the votes if you really feel it is necessary. I don’t really get why, after I repeatedly said I was wrong about my “lame” comment, you require me(and only me) to review the peeker votes.

I don’t know if I have the time to comb through and locate the votes, but I’ll give it a shot. Don’t expect it all at once. I’m doing my best.

1164

NETA:

I meant “I apologized”(past tense) in my first full sentence there. Already did. In the past.

1165

Please remember I have already, on Day Two, said that I should not have said votes were lame on peeker.

Anyway, I’m doing my best, here.

I feel like I’m being set up a bit by Drain here. I think he may want me to review Day One votes, make judgments, but not because he wants to see what I say, but because he may, knowing I’m town, be trying to get me to critique people and get them upset at me and get them to vote for me.

However, I do believe in vote explanation and opining on others votes, so I have reviewed peeker’s votes(the ones on him) from Day One and here is my opinion.

If I have made any mistakes, please try to understand. Day One is a bit ago and I am going off memory and a review of the votes, which I have just now undergone.

We have “not that lame” and “kind of lame”, basically. For Day One, that’s about all we can hope for.

  1. Zeriel voted peeker for unsupported vote. = not lame

  2. I voted peeker for same reason as Zeriel. not lame

  3. Fluid vote peeker for selfish reasons(post 296) and due to reaction = uh, kind of lame, but not as lame as perhaps I said. Knowing fluid was town, I don’t get the vote explanation.

  4. Ed voted peeker for unsupported vote and his poor explanation = not that lame

    • I guess ed unvoted him and then revoted him? I’m going quick now and my memory is poor of Day One. I guess he re-vote was not that lame either(for Day one)

  5. Meeko voted peeker, but I don’t quite get why or how. Perhaps I’m stupid.I think he thought peeker was fishing(in post 386) = kind of lame or at least hard to follow.

  • If Meeko had some excellent explanation later, I don’t recall it and can’t find it in the game. Show me and I’ll re-evaluate.

  1. Texcat voted peeker for his reaction to ed. = not that lame, but a bit. I am assuming the reaction was perceived as anti-town

  2. USCdiver voted peeker for his anti-town(pond) behavior. = not that lame

  3. Alka voted peeker for fishing and because he thought of a scum gambit attempt = not that lame for Day one.
    Let me know how I messed up. I’m sure I did somewhere in there.

Does that at least satisfy what you were asking me, Drain?

1166

First off, I’m a she. :wink:

Second off, you’re assuming I’m Scum, which seeing as I’ve made an uncontested Mason claim, is highly unlikely. I may be wrong about you (all I know is that you’re not a CO, which is obvious since I’m voting for you), but that’s different from setting you up.

So, we’ve gone from you saying that the non-you peeker votes were “lame,” to “only two of the peeker votes was kind of lame”. Is that a fair assessment?

1167

  1. Ah, forgot about the “she”. Sorry.

  2. Ah, the mason claim. My bad memory.

  3. Again, I regretted almost immediately saying “lame” and I said so at the time. However, yes, I would say some were “kind of lame”, however I would disagree with what you said initially. You just said that I said “non-you peeker votes were ‘lame’”, right?

That makes it sound like I said all “non-me” votes were lame, when I was initially thinking of later votes, since he kind of ended up as a bandwagon.

I thought I said that then. I don’t recall saying, “all non-Mahaloth peeeker votes are lame” and you sound like you just said I said that.

Sigh. Dig it up if you have to. In fact, dig both my original statement and my apology regarding it if you have time.

I’m tired of focusing on that one mistake I made and I accept the vote you have on me if you think it is that important and was so scummy.

1168

Vote total:
Spawn 8
Storyteller0910 1
Meeko 1
Mahaloth 1

[del]1: special_ed[/del]
2: ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies – Spawn (1139)
3: Drain Bead – Mahaloth (1162)
4: Oredigger77
5: storyteller0910
6: Meeko – Spawn (1135)
7: Mahaloth – Spawn (1140)
8: Freudian Slit – Spawn (1136)
9: USCDiver – Spawn (1161), Meeko (1161)
10: Alka Seltzer
[del]11: peekercpa[/del]
12: Natlaw
[del]13: Zeriel[/del]
14: DiggitCamara
15: amrussell
16: KellyCriterion – Spawn (1145)
17: Red Skeezix – Spawn (1146)
18: sachertorte
[del]19: fluiddruid[/del]
20: TexCat – Spawn (1155), Storyteller (1155)
21: Rysto

Yeah, I know I just did one of these, but I thought there were more new posts, and if I don’t post it now my record-keeping will get confused.

1169

**It is apparent that NO ONE believes in Vote Early, Vote Often. **

That being said, I feel I need to vote for someone, that I feel comfortable with, even if we can not unvote.

There is NO REASON for town not to vote spawn.

That being said, it should be easy to look for players who have not voted for Spawn.

That was a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Hence, WOW on Natlaw. There has to be a better way to do this. Needle in a haystack comes to mind.

I snipped a few posts.

I will add my comments with >>> only because I’m not sure where I will comment, and I don’t want to worry about the quote boxes.

In spoiler tags for legnth.

>>> Some Snuggling here? Some I play as Good Scum, so look for me to be townie here?

>>> Yet you don’t vote Spawn.

>>> Interesting to bring this up. Did you want to ask this, all along, and just now found the way to do so?

>>> Why aren’t you Spawn hunting?

Ah. Ok. This answers it.

No wait, it doesn’t. Why on earth would Town want a freed vote off of spawn?

This is VERY Dangerous thinking here Nat.

Wait. What?! If you are a Scummy Nat, tell me how this is NOT :

“I think you should look at Townies who didn’t vote for Townie A or Townie B.”

Glad to see I am not he only one here on this. Or rather, that I Was not the only one, on that.

I guess Scum wouldn’t

And at this point, you just abandon all facade at voting Spawn.

seems kinda warmed over.

This just seems flat off to me.

And this Is where the game was where I Started this WOW over 2 hours ago.

You have not voted Spawn, and seem to be perfectly happy with your reasons not to.

I re-assert that there is no Pro-Town reason to not vote Spawn.

1170

Vote Natlaw

1171

Meeko, you decided that Natlaw is Scum because he hasn’t voted for Spawn and then you go through his posts already having made up your mind. No wonder you see scum motivation in everything he says.

1172

OK - I voted for Mahaloth last Summer because of:

a) the “not lame” comment, which others have brought up and Mahaloth has now replied to
b) skimming Natlaw’s vote for KellyC. As his own vote was already on Kelly, I’m surprised he didn’t notice that the person he thought scummiest was attracting votes from other players. Speaking for myself, I tend to notice that when cases I make start getting traction. It makes me feel as if Mahaloth wasn’t invested in his vote.
c) asking us to discuss whether we thought there would be only 2 masons. Only other masons or power-roles can join in that discussion in any meaningful way, so it’s something of an elephant trap.

To that, I have to add;

d) not knowing that Drain Bead has an uncontested mason claim, and therefore trying to OMGUS her suspicions of him.
e) the OMGUS itself -

Two parts to that - the gratuitous “knowing I’m town” is a little over-eager, but more importantly, the fear of drawing attention seems very scummy to me. It’s a scum trait to worry about reputation and how town will percieve you.

Taking the point about voting early:

vote Mahaloth

1173

I would, as they say, forget my balls if they weren’t in a bag:

vote spawn

1174

Time to jump back in. I see where I’m already drawing suspicion and votes; I hereby pledge to avoid as much as possible getting worked up over the game, which I don’t think is helpful to me or to the Pond. I have one thing to say first, though. It’s reflective of my opinion about this game, and thus is worth exactly what you paid for it.

We, and Towns in general, have not been playing well. I noticed this in particular from my omniscient viewpoint in the just-concluded off-board game that I moderated, but I think it applies to us here (myself included). From my perspective, Mafia is about motivations, both public and hidden, and finding the faultlines where public motivations conflict with hidden motivations. As Town, my public and private motivations are identical; for the Scum, theirs conflict. The way to identify Scum is to find those conflicts.

In theory, we all know this. In practice, it has not been applied much. We (again, I include myself for certain here) spend time and energy nitpicking and scavenging for things we can use to support a vote. We do this, I think, in part because the pressure to vote dammit just vote, vote as early as you possibly can, vote vote vote vote vote has become an assumed part of the game (well, Town does it in part for this reason; Scum does it because it’s all they have - for the most part, they can’t search for conflicting motivations because all it will do is lead the Town back to them).

Here is my opinion; take it or leave it:

  1. An argument you don’t agree with is not in and of itself Scummy.
  2. An argument with (what you consider to be) logical flaws is not in and of itself Scummy.
  3. A statement that, when taken out of context, may hypothetically reflect extra knowledge is not in and of itself Scummy.

Scummy is a question of motivation. Of every action, I try to ask: why would a Scum player do this? If I can’t find an answer, I consider the action a Null tell. Even if it’s weird, even if it doesn’t make sense to me, even if it seems inconsistent, if I can’t find a Scum motivation underlying it I can’t look at it as a Scum tell. This is not to say that the player in question might not be Scum - (s)he definitely might. But the fact that Scum might do Thing X doesn’t mean that Thing X is reflective of Scum alignment.

Regarding the case against me, I submit that this is the missing element. Of course, I have an advantage, in that I know I am not Scum so it’s easier for me to see this more clearly. But the things for which I am being dinged? There is no coherent motivation that would make sense for a Scum player. Even if you think there are holes in my argument - and I don’t necessarily agree with that perspective, because I don’t think the double-lyse is/was a question with a single right answer, as I noted late yesterDay - it’s not a Scummy argument. Perhaps it will taking lynching me to bring that point home, and if that’s the case, I can live with it.

To texcat: I often vote late because it often takes me a few days to read everything and draw a conclusion from what I read. This is not always the case, but it often is. If you want to vote me for it here, you will have to address the fact that I have played this way for a very long time, as both Town and as Scum. I see no value in an early-Day, ill-considered vote. Such a vote will not reflect my thinking in any meaningful way, so it’s useless even as a data point. I could have voted ten minutes into yesterDay for Freudian citing previous suspicions, and then changed my vote later once I had actually read everything that had happened since my last log-in - but that would have been a useless vote. It wouldn’t have given any data about me, and it wouldn’t have been useful for persuading Town because ten minutes into yesterDay, I wasn’t caught up and I hadn’t given any thought to a vote. I vote when I have a strong opinion that I am prepared to stand behind, and not before.

In this particular game, this is compounded by the fact that Days begin on Saturday evenings, and with some exceptions I can’t really play Mafia on the weekends. By the time I even start reading, it’s Monday morning, so if it takes me a real-life day to catch up I’m going to seem like I’m voting on the late side. I can’t help that.

All that said, I do have an early vote today: for sachertorte. I can’t get past the way he seems to have abandoned solid principles of Scum-hunting - most of which he taught me, in order to do the kind of cherry-picking and nitpicking that he would have castigated previous Towns for doing. In this case, the potential Scum motivation is clear: I am a power role, and if he’s Scum, he knows it. Getting the Town to lynch an uncounterclaimed power role would be a tremendous coup, and it’s not like going after me puts anyone in particularly controversial territory. His approach to the Rysto debate yesterday is also off-putting, and I’ll rehash it if I must but broadly speaking: agreeing that the statement “X is more often associated with Y than with Z” is a reasonable statement on the basis of a single instance in which X was associated with Y is terrible reasoning. sach is using this reasoning as part of his support for voting decisions.

[collor=blue]vote sachertorte[/color]

And for now:

vote Spawn

1175

All that, and I can’t spell the word “color.”

vote sachertorte

1176

I’m with Story in that I don’t post much on weekends so I’m just getting caught up.

Since we’re a couple of Days in I just want to throw out what I think the hurdle rate is for voting for spawn. With 17 players and 4 scum the spawn will vote for one of them 23.5% of the time. Since we have two power roles in the game, at least, spawn will not vote for a power role 84.6% of the time. I consider both of those pro town actions so the spawn will act in the town’s favor ~54% of the time with it’s actions split between Night and Day 50/50. I’ll use the same discount rate I did before of 50% so I think that 27% of the spawn’s actions will be pro town which means that I need to be more then 73% sure that two players are scum to not vote for spawn. That being said;

Vote Spawn

As far as scum hunting goes I really blew it with my scum holding Story one vote away theory. I need to revaluate what is going on in the game. I still don’t believe Story’s claim but at the point I’m willing to take it at face value until we can come up with a good time to test it. I’m just going to do a reread and see what jumps out at me and go from there.

1177

snipped

Fear of drawing attention? I don’t think I have that at all. I wouldn’t have voted so early on Day One and Two if I was afraid of drawing attention. I am not worried about my reputation at all.

I smell an attempt to start a bandwagon against me. :rolleyes:

1178

You’re not afraid of OMGUS either, I see.

You said you thought that our un-counterclaimed mason was trying to provoke you into criticising other players, so that they would vote for you in retaliation. There’s a whole heap of wrong there, one part of which seemed to me to be that you were apprehensive about being at the centre of attention. I don’t think that’s a massive leap based on what you said.

You have, as you say, voted early. It’s a point, but I’m not sure that there are many times you can vote and be sure it won’t draw attention. Late votes draw attention, early votes get queried, bandwagon votes raise eyebrows, one-off votes attract scepticism. On the other hand, once you’d eventually capitulated to the pressure to justify your “lame votes” comment, you felt the need to voice your fears that backing up what you’d said would get you voted for.

Now, you’re throwing OMGUS at me for picking it up. You’ve stated before that you believe in vote early, vote often. But heaven forfend VEVO go in your direction, or suddenly it becomes a bandwagon. Somehow, I’m getting the vibe that you are extremely allergic to votes. Couple that with what I saw as an attempt to discuss power-roles and not caring about other players’ votes on people you think are scum, and I think you’ve got a case to answer.

1179

**vote storyteller
vote spawn
**

My top choice of things I want, would be for storyteller to be lynched. But I feel it necessary to also state precisely what I DON’T want. We absolutely must avoid a storyteller vs. vanilla choice. storyteller has claimed a power role. Towns are notoriously squicky about lynching claimed power roles. Given a choice between lynching a claimed power role and a vanilla claimant, town will lynch the vanilla claimant pretty much every time. We can’t fall into this trap or else scummy storyteller would be able to pick off one Townie at a time. We need to determine storyteller’s lynchability Today very quickly, and drop him if he is not feasible. That is not to say that we need to commit to lynching storyteller right away (though I wouldn’t mind), but if a significant portion of the population is against lynching storyteller because of the role claim, speak up now! Otherwise we’re wasting our time and setting up easy plays for scum.

I defy anyone to demonstrate that I’m playing any differently than I have before. I’ve done my best to be even-handed regarding storyteller. When I felt my argument is tenuous I have stated so (see initial suspicion on storyteller post on First Summer). When I see something that I can’t resolve as being consistent with scum play, I have stated so (storyteller’s roleclaim with drawback). And that’s just off the top of my head.
Storyteller seems to have it in his head that I need to have some sort of watertight case to be suspicious of him. He also seems to think that my “scum hunting” technique is good at finding scum. storyteller is wrong. My “technique” is proficient at finding Town.

Which brings me back to avoidance as a major point against storyteller. I’ve stated this before. storyteller has been frothy about this “scum hunting” technique Yesterday. I addressed this already. Instead of responding to my words, storyteller merely repeats the charge. Uh… scummy!

And that’s not all:
Way back on Day One, storyteller gave two options as part of his argument for double lyse, implying that option two is analogous to our situation. I pointed out that the options he gives have no equivalence to this game. storyteller never responded to that point.
I produced tables to show the differences between looking at the game on a lynch-by-lynch basis versus a day-by-day basis. Outright stating that day-by-day outlook is deceiving. Again, storyteller did not respond on this point.

Storyteller has charged me with ‘cherry-picking,’ regarding Rysto and scum bringing up perfect information slips. I have stated my thought process on this front repeatedly. I’ve already stated that I reject the notion that I need to commission a comprehensive survey to support an idea. Supporting data is enough for the purposes employed. My reasoning is sound. I ask that others weigh in on this nonsense.

Also, I would like to point out that keeping an eye on storyteller is always a good idea. Seriously, I explicitly noted that storyteller wasn’t on my “to lynch Today” list at some point Yesterday. The moment I changed my mind is a significant one. From the moment storyteller claimed, his play has shifted. He has become much more aggressive. Where he placed his vote Yesterday is very telling. storyteller simultaneously stated that he wasn’t sure what to make of Alka Seltzer, but was willing to vote for fluiddruid. I found this play perplexing. Furthermore, fluiddruid was particularly vulnerable at that point in time.

And now, Today, he goes after me. Is this the reaction of a townie? I say no. He has just seen a Townie devote a big chunk of time examining him and concluding he was scum. So the obvious conclusion is to be suspicious of the other player who finds his play scummy :rolleyes:!

Town, put yourself in storyteller’s shoes. What would be your reaction to fluiddruid’s death?

1180

Other Notes:

  • I agree with TexCat’s point’s on storyteller’s role claim.

  • I agree with amrussel’s point that Mahaloth’s worry about how he is perceived is not endearing to Mahaloth. I would be willing to lynch Mahaloth Today.

  • It is Day Three. I feel that Day Three is a good time to start looking at ‘clean nosers.’ I define ‘clean nosers’ to distinguish them from ‘lurkers.’ Lurkers are those players who post little. Often low posts are due to real life reasons rather than alignment. Clean Nosers on the other hand post enough not to be labeled a lurker, but post and vote in a way to avoid controversy and keep their nose clean.

This is not to say that I am suspicious of these people yet, only that I have a small impression of them so far for this game (which could very well be my fault).

I encourage others to look at the gameplay list and identify the players who you haven’t been noticing. Not that that makes them scummy, only that you need to pay closer attention to them and perhaps look and see if your lack of noticing them is signs of a ‘clean noser.’