Scum mafia: On Cecil pond [Game Over]

I simply don’t see how this is the case (by the way, my position has never been that a conventional Vig must be 100% convinced of Scumminess in order to take a shot - just that there should be a very, very, very good reason). I do not regard Vig kills as substantively the same as lynches. Vig kills by nature involve one player substituting his/her judgment for that of the rest of the Town; they generate less information than an actual lynch (even if the kill is made “for information”), because an actual lynch goes all the way, and seeing the behavior of voters in that last extremity is interesting in a way that no other behavior quite can be.

My position is that lynching is good, Vig killing in situations other than very high-confidence situations is usually bad. You may disagree with this position, but it’s a perfectly consistent position.

The answer to this seems very plain to me, and yet I struggle to articulate it. Let me leave you out of it for a minute, if I may. I have two players, S and F. I think one is likely to be Scum and one is likely to be Town, but don’t know which. However, both are behaving in what I consider to be an equally suspicious fashion. My votes on them are independent entities. I may be wrong about both or either. I may even be wrong in my initial hypothesis, and both could be Scum. I’m going to use my vote to record my suspicions and own them - aware even as I do so that I will be wrong at times.

I voted sach, too, eventually. I responded to things in the order that I read them. You’re trying to ding me for voting for both of them and then here, to ding me for voting for only one.

Wrong. There is no implicit assumption that you are Town. See, here’s the thing. I don’t know if you’re Town or if you’re Scum. What I think is that no matter what you are, you believe that double-lysing is Anti-Town. I think you were arguing your honest position; there’s no rule that says Scum must lie all the time, is there. I believe that you were arguing strenuously that double-lysing was an anti-Town idea because I think that you actually think that it is. If you’re Town, you were arguing it so fiercely because you didn’t want the Town to go down a route you considered unwise; if you’re Scum you were arguing it fiercely because (pick one) you felt you were right and were frustrated by my disagreement and/or you felt it was a topic you could use to argue openly and honestly while generating a creditable reason to be “suspicious” of someone you knew to be non-Scum.

I can’t read you alignment-wise. I just can’t. Your playstyle is as baffling to me as anyone’s with whom I’ve ever played.

I disagree. Assessing whether a role is consistent with known facts, that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Trying to apply your idea of what constitutes a “role that makes sense” is a fool’s errand unless you have some reason to believe that your own preferences were taken into account in the creation of the game. The Chia Bingo Manager role was just one example of dozens of times that players have used this argument - oh, that role doesn’t make sense, no way the moderator put that in there - and been tragically wrong. Usually, the role winds up making perfect sense once the whole picture appears.

Well, yes. I acknowledged that. As I said, I can understand voting for me because you don’t believe I have the power at all. Voting for me in the stated belief that I do have the power and am telling the truth about everything other than my alignment is… and odd position.

Yes.

Sure. Tell me when we have even numbers :smiley:

More seriously, obviously if the Town is in dire straits, anything and everything goes onto the table. I don’t think we’re there right now.

If there’s a Detective and (s)he hasn’t claimed yet, (s)he is probably losing us the game by that decision.

One thing to consider–Kelly did provide Oredigger on the list of claimed names. Does it mean anything? Had we not lynched Kelly, would we now be thinking that Oredigger is Town?

Further, it ignores the drawback that masons had for this game. I think that went a LONG way in having us not vote for the other. I mean, Scum can bus, and if they do it correctly, they will give scum mates fair warning on it. … Masons who can’t strategize on the other hand will get a WTF fest. And I can’t really think of a circumstance where Masons would bus. I would bet a game state / rule set could be demonstrated, but not probable.

Do we really want to go down the road of trying to WIFOM whether Kelly would have named a Town or Scum player?

On a True or False quiz, the statement is False if any of the statement is False. The statement must be 100% true to be true.

Fake Fakery is Fake. … I don’t think it means anything. We should have enough data before Kelly came up with the (Great) idea to false claim Rotifer, and after.

And I mean it is great because it got some people, ok me, not to vote him.

Does this mean there is hope for me yet?

Glad to see someone else struggles from time to time to articulate.

Can of worms, this.
Also, Oredigger was in the short list of the “Mason Sudoku” that Skeezix posted.

Would a Newer player, cooking up and slipping on a false claim, have the experience needed to NOT include scum mates?

o.O

Unvote all

**
Vote Alka**
Vote Digger

Reasons for Alka : The unvote of Kelly late.
Reasons for Digger : The Mason Sudoku, and the Hail Mary fail by Kelly to confirm him.

A vig of the vote runner-up can give just as much information as a lynch if the vote is close.

No, I’m flagging up some strange behavior.

If I was scum, I wouldn’t be frustrated at you arguing an anti-town position, I’d be pleased. Your argument doesn’t stack up here.

Why? I’ve posted a lot of content, are you really saying nothing I’ve done all game has moved you off null?

Is that Diggit’s position? That doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Yeah, it is a bit academic atm. I was more interested in your thoughts on what circumstances your claim could be tested.

I just want to point out this time, that I support this opinion, and I believe that everyone should take the list results that I posted with a bottle of scrutiny in hand. Also, I would have alot more faith in what list said if it were longer. A 1 in 3 chance of hitting a desired target, I think is enough for scum to take that risk. However, I don’t know whether or not scum would percieve an exposure risk if one or two scum might be exposed by taking out the mason.

@USCDiver: I do not believe, do to his playstyle, that Meeko would have voted for another mason. If we were to remove Those who voted for meeko, those who voted for drain, and those who drain voted for from the list. Things would be alot more interesting, and I’d have gobs more confidence in what the list would have to say. Although I feel that it would be disingenuous to do so since the record shows that in this game, no mason voted for any other mason.

But in the interests of what if-

If scum did not make the assumption that masons did not bus each other, the list looks like this:

Freudian Slit
Rysto
DiggitCamara
USCDiver
amrussell
Oredigger77
Alka Seltzer

The leftovers:
Red Skeezix
sachertorte
TexCat
storyteller
natlaw
With regards to Oredigger v Alka, and my choosing. Sach has pointed out that it is less likely for a scummy Alka to back up Kelly by forcing the tie. A side point, I believe that storyteller intimated that he preferred the Mahaloth lynch, so a tie wasn’t going to happen. I do not think it unlikely for a scummy Alka to have supported Kelly in such a manner. I’ve seen it before and was the recipient of it during my first real game (Pleonast casting a shadow of doubt on idle calling me ‘obvious scum’ during space hijack), where an experienced scum player will make a risky call to help out an inexperienced player simply because an easy excuse exists. Namely, ‘It’s hard to tell newbie behavior, from scum behavior’ and the ever classic ‘I didn’t like the late swing of votes’.

So in summary, I’m happy with my vote for now, but I am still examining cases. And I will take sach’s opinion about Oredigger looking townie as a scum indicator under advisement.

On Preview:

I think that Kelly’s mentioning of Oredigger is a null tell. The claim was weak, and perhaps intentionally so. I think that as scum, if you know there is a tremendous amount of heat on a player, You might try to trigger a lopsided lynch. A lesser of two evils from a scum perspective: If you think a player might be going down regardless, would it be a better strategy to rob the town of whatever info is not already out there, or do you try to make the best possible claim, to avert another lynch?

I’m not sure, but I am sure that there was a gaping hole in that claim, and most likely that claim was reviewed in the scum thread the night before, and that hole most likely would have been seen.

Vote count:
Spawn 8
Alka Seltzer 5
Storyteller0910 2
sachertorte 1
DiggitCamara 1
Natlaw 1
USCDiver 1
Oredigger77 1

[del]1: special_ed[/del]
[del]2: ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies[/del]
3: Drain Bead – sachertorte (1577), Alka Seltzer (1636)
4: Oredigger77 – Alka Seltzer, Spawn
5: storyteller0910
6: Meeko – [del]sachertorte[/del] (1580-1648), [del]Spawn[/del] (1580-1630), Alka Seltzer (1630), Oredigger (1648)
[del]7: Mahaloth [/del]
[del]8: Freudian Slit[/del]
9: USCDiver – Spawn (1634), Alka Seltzer (1634)
10: Alka Seltzer – Spawn (1632)
[del]11: peekercpa[/del]
12: Natlaw
[del]13: Zeriel[/del]
14: DiggitCamara – Storyteller (1596), Spawn (1596)
15: amrussell – USCDiver (1635)
[del]16: KellyCriterion[/del]
17: Red Skeezix – Alka Seltzer (1629), Spawn (1629)
18: sachertorte – Natlaw (1613), Spawn (1613)
[del]19: fluiddruid[/del]
20: TexCat – Spawn (1578), Storyteller (1578)
21: Rysto – DiggitCamara (1575), Spawn (1575)

QuicK question for our masons. Why are neither of you voting for the spawn? I know I mentioned possibly leaving it alive to screw with the scum but I mainly wanted people thinking that direction for future Days. I guess it could be because you are all the confirmed town that it’s looking like we’ll have then you want to get your vote out. But since there are 24 votes available only having 8 for the spawn worries me a bit.

As for Meeko’s vote and the couple of smudges as a clean noser; I really don’t have a response. I stayed away from the Sach/Story debacle because I thought it was a distraction and even voted to that extent. With the mechanisms of this game I don’t see any way to manipulate them to our advantage so I’ve stayed away from my crazy ideas. I guess I could stir shit up but I don’t think it’s helpful.

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. If it ever looks like there’s a chance the Spawn won’t be offed, I’ll switch my vote, but that hasn’t come close yet.

I guess I thought the spirit of my Summer 1 vote was clear. In the case where there is no apparent Pro-scum activity, the most Anti-town automatically qualifies as ‘Most Scummy’.

So I’m Scummy if I don’t do anything and I’m scummy if I vote early. I’m trying to be a better player here. I’m taking to heart the criticism that I’m too quiet. So I see a clearly scummy and poorly thought out fake claim and I vote. I don’t see the scumminess there.

Didn’t vote is different from Can’t or Won’t. How does **Red **know that the Scum can ignore me as a possible Mason simply because I voted for **Meeko **back in Summer 3?

Looking at Oredigger now. The things that stand out to me the most are his weak vote on Fluid, his attack on me after the Fluid flip (he previously FOS’ed me in the post where he voted Fluid, saying I was suspicious for much the same reasons), very inconsitant position on Story and Fluid, and voting me after the Mahaloth flip but before Kelly’s alignment was known.

This was in response to Story’s claim.

@Oredigger - Why did you have a town read on Story at this point?

This was the bad vote for Fluid, which I flagged up in my analysis of the wagon on her in this post:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=12128648#post12128648

Oredigger now thinking Fluid is town but voting for her anyway.

Dubious of Story’s claim, tactical vote on Fluid, now thinks Fluid is scum again (!). Acknowledges that his FOS on me is a weak case.

Now saying he doesn’t believe Story’s claim. Admits his case on Fluid was bad, and says he needs to re-evaluate. Noteable that he doesn’t change his position towards me.

Bad strategy. Spawn night votes are only relevant if there is a single scum left, otherwise they will have no effect on the outcome of the NK. It’s ridiculous to assume scum would allow their kill votes to be split if spawn were in a position to mess it up.

I was pushed for time, so my vote probably didn’t make much sense. I’ll dig up my previous posts where I explained my position towards Mahaloth and Kelly. I think it’s significant that Oredigger is voting for me at this point. If he thought Kelly was scum and I was trying to save him, he could have voted Kelly. If he thought Kelly was town, I’d have had no reason to vote Mahaloth, especially since Mahaloth had claimed vanilla and Kelly was unclaimed. Doesn’t consider any of the other Mahaloth voters, and ignores the fact that Story broke the tie.

This is weak, see above.

Vote Oredigger

I’ll give it to you Alka, I have been inconsistent on Story. I go back and forth about that claim on one hand it could be town role with a huge liability or it could be a pretty perfect third party role whose use would force us to look for third parties, or it could be the perfect scum made up role since it’s essentially untestable. I think my position changes based on Story’s latest posts and how I feel about them.

As for my treatment of Fluid I think that Fluid wasn’t acting pro-town in keeping Story so close to being lynched. While Story’s claim is untestable I thought it was premature to keep a claimed power role in a position where it would only take a single scum to jump on the wagon to push her over the edge or as we have all seen a couple of scum build a case and wait for a townie to jump on to a wagon and push it over the edge. In either case it’s a bad play to hold a power role in that position.

My FOS of you was weak that’s why it was only an FOS but as you continue to act scummy the case against you has grown and I think it’s pretty strong now. I thought it was pretty strong yesterDay independent of Kelly but now that we know for certain you were saving a scum buddy I will dance on your grave toDay.

I’ve collected together my relevant posts on Mahaloth vs Kelly.

These are from Day 2:

I’ve underlined the relevant bit, I thought there was a decent chance Mahaloth was scum if Kelly was town.

Moving onto Day 3:

This probably gave the impression I was thinking of voting Kelly. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do at that point, I wasn’t at all happy with Kelly’s response to my analysis, but wasn’t sure if it was scummy. That’s also the post where I encourage Meeko to vote for his top suspect.

Hopefully this makes a bit more sense in the light of my previous posts.

Day 4, after the Mahaloth flip:

I really don’t like Oredigger’s reasoning here. Actually, I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a good part of Oredigger’s reasoning (especially all the nonsense about keeping Spawn alive for some bizarre and incomprehensible reason). Anyway. What?!

Oredigger explicitly stated that if KellyCriterion turned up Town, then Alka Seltzer would be ‘scummy’ for voting to keep a weak newbie player around and if KellyCriterion turned up scum Alka Seltzer would be ‘scummy’ for protecting fellow scum. I really really didn’t like that. I can possibly accept Oredigger’s response that he thinks Alka Seltzer was scum regardless of the alignment of KellyCriterion, but even that is a rather myopic view of the world. But here he points out that KellyCriterion’s alignment is additional evidence that Alka Seltzer is scum. Argh. The lack of logic here is driving me nuts.

(1) If you’re going to take KC’s alignment as proof of scumness regardless of what it turns up to be… that isn’t proof. Or even evidence… or anything.

(2) How does scummy Alka Seltzer voting for Mahaloth (BTW, someone stated that Alka Seltzer unvoted KC, that isn’t true. Alka unvoted storyteller to vote for Mahaloth) make significantly more sense than townie Alka Seltzer voting for Mahaloth? You can’t make a case like this. Sure it’s POSSIBLE that Alka Seltzer is scum and voted to save KC. But it is also POSSIBLE that Alka Seltzer is town who just happened to vote for Mahaloth. How can you distinguish between the two? Plausibility is not proof.

unvote Natlaw
vote Oredigger