[V] Back to basics - Game over - Mafia wins!

[AngrySquirrel]

The basic rules (read them, they're good for you):

Spoiler:

Mafia, also known as Werewolf (to infidels, we shall not speak of them), is a game originating in real life, but adapted for a forum setting. Basically, you have a small village of innocent people, but hidden among them is a group of nasty mafiosos, whose sole goal is to have at least 50% of the population belong to their organization so that they can control the lynch-votes. Since they cannot recruit people, the only way to achieve this is bloody murder, but not more than one per night. The rest of the town uses their deductive abilities, along with some special roles, to find these infiltrators and lynch them.

To Vote: You must bold it, if you don't and I miss it, not my fault! It should also be on a separate line such as:
Vote: AngrySquirrel

If you want to change a vote, do it in this manner:
Unvote: AngrySquirrel
Vote: OneoftheDragon

Night—when everything else happens:
People with night-time powers send in their night actions and discuss among themselves etc.

Rules:
1. Do not talk about the game outside this thread.
2. DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE GAME OUTSIDE THIS THREAD. (Unless you spoiler it in the discussion thread, or really, really want to, you are only shooting yourself in the foot.)
3. Please stay on topic. (Or not.).
4. Don't lurk. If you need a replacement let me know and I'll fix it. If you go away for more than a whole day/night without letting me know, you will be modkilled.
5. If you aren't part of the game, please post in a separate, forbidden to players, thread for outside analysis.
6. Once I say that it's nighttime, do not post in the thread AT ALL. Minor off topicness will be tolerated but please, do not discuss the game during night.
7. If you die, don't say anything for the rest of the game except a simple, "Bah, you got me," or "Urrghh" which reveals no information. Seriously, dead people, you are dead, stay that way. YOU ARE DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD!
8. You may not post verbatim or quote from your role PM. Paraphrasing is fine. YOU MAY NOT QUOTE YOUR ROLE PM, anyone who does anything even close to this will be publicly executed.
9. You may not edit your posts. This is to preempt the possibility of cheating by sending messages to other people and then editing them out. Or a for a number of other reasons. DON'T EDIT.
10. Do not assume the game is over until one of the mods say it is.

Then for details regarding this game in particular:

Alive players:

Spoiler:

1. ConMan (I will be a bit busy Monday and Tuesday, but will do everything in my power to be active!)
2. webby (Because it seems like this game is going to die otherwise)
3.BoomFrog (In the interest of welcoming new players...)
4. Chandani (to help)
5. GopherofPern (Yay, a basic game!)

Dead players:

Spoiler:

1. BoomFrog - lynched day 1
2. Gopher Of Pern - killed night 1

This game is as vanilla as they get. There will be 4 townies and 1 mafia. No powers and no bastardry at all. The mafia will send in their kill when we reach the night-period. I will not enforce strict deadlines unless I am asked to do so or a day seems to drag on into infinity. If you have questions either send me a PM or post them in bold in the thread.

Status: Game over!

[AngrySquirrel]

*At the Town Meeting*
Mayor: "This city has shown tremendous progress in reducing crime and keeping our streets safe, I would now like to introduce the man responsible, our excellent Magistrate."
Magistrate: "Thank you Mayor, I take great pride is knowing that the citizens of XKCD Village can sleep without fear at ni—AGGHH!"
Two Gunshots are heard, and the Mayor and Magistrate drop dead, a taped distorted voice announces the Mafia is responsible and will take over the town, killing all those who oppose them. Somewhere in the crowd a cry of "LYNCH LYNCH LYNCH!" begins.

Seeing as there's only 5 of you I am going to go out on a limb and assume you're all ready to get started. So without any further delay.

Day 1 begins now! 5 players, 3 to lynch!

[ConMan]

Got a busy day ahead, but I'm here to confirm ...

Mayor Schnozzberry! Oh no! Whatever shall we do? And did I mention my campaign for mayor in November?

So, as a new player, I'm not sure what the best tactic is for this setup. Other than sitting around waiting for tells, are we better off with a random/"based on some little slip of the tongue which was probably due to the person writing it not having enough sleep" lynch or what?

[webby]

Games this small are difficult (see The Thing as an example). I find 1 scum games particularly tricky because the way I usually work in finding scum is by looking for links between players. The question here is what constitutes a scumtell. I don't like basing things on slips of the tongue/keyboard, because I'm sure I make such supposed slips as often as town as as scum (to a certain extent I think I make them less often as scum because I'm more cautious).

I think the best scumtells in this game are:
1. Bandwagoning too easily on a vote or generally doing things that suggest they don't care who gets lynched, as long as it's not them.
2. Being over-cautious in an attempt to avoid looking like 1.

I know they seem contradictory, but there's a balance there where a good townie won't bandwagon too easily (this is another reason it's important to not just follow people who look really town to you, but instead think for yourself), but equally they'll vote decently early and often when they see scummy things. Unfortunately, exactly where that normal balance is depends on the player. Luckily, I've played plenty with everyone in the game except Conman.

I think it's a good question and it will promote discussion, so I'd like to see everyone answer it. What constitutes a scumtell in this specific game, with one scum?

[Gopher of Pern]

Posting intentionally winey posts, ala Lataro in The Thing? Also, a lack of general content D1, as that can carry over to D2, meaning it can be hard to get a tell on you D2.

This game should be abit easier for town than The Thing, as there is D1 info in it for D2. Still, we only have 2 chances for a lynch, so the first one will be information gathering, unless we get very lucky, and the second is the one we need to get right.

I would disagree abit with webby, i believe slip ups are worth looking into, as putting a vote on scum puts alot of pressure on them. It's not the slip up, per se, that is scummy, but it is a starting point for putting pressure on someone, and seeing how they react. You do have to be careful with this tactic, as you can put blinders on, and not see the whole picture.

[BoomFrog]

Yeah there's really nothing to actually base things on D1. We get a 1/5 and a 1/3rd chance to win though which is 7/15ths or almost 50%. Assuming we can do better then a random lynch in any way on D2 then we improve our chances to more then half. That's about as good as we can possibly do.

I think the best scumtells in this game are:
1. Bandwagoning too easily on a vote or generally doing things that suggest they don't care who gets lynched, as long as it's not them.
2. Being over-cautious in an attempt to avoid looking like 1.

Well if Conman is scum you just told him how to play well. He and Chandani are probably the only two who would make a real slip up as scum.

Vote Chandani

For bieng the last to post. Obviously waiting to see how the day goes so she can blend in easily.

[Chandani]

Okay then.
I don't have any good strategies to say for this game... the best are scumtells, but scumtells can be very subjective at times, and vary from context to context.
I guess we're going with lynching every time... it makes sense, since NL doesn't actually give us an extra day and thus it means that we would probably have less information (that seems to be the general consensus last time it was brought up in a mafia game) come day 2.

Scumtells... random votes early in the game? (I'm biased, I know) I'm not good with quantifying what I consider scumtells... typically it's ideas worded weirdly, stuff that seems off. Usually it's a gut thing.

BF: there are very good reasons why I might have not posted. Like school. And homework. And other involvements in life. Hell, depending on the time zone I'm in, I could have been sleeping right now. So it's not the best to assume the worst. You've only given me five hours to respond in-thread. Five hours. So think about that.

[webby]

Well if Conman is scum you just told him how to play well.

I'm ok with this, because I also told him how to play well as town, and we have far more problems with new players looking scummy as town than looking townie as scum. Also these vanilla games serve the purpose of teaching new players how to play, so I'm perfectly willing to give general tips in how to play even if it helps players play scum as well.

I agree we didn't really give Chandani enough time to post, but equally I can see that your vote was looking to see what sort of reaction you provoked. I don't see anything in particular in her post to object to.

[ConMan]

Hmm ... so now I need to work out whether I should say "It's ok, I'm town, so you did the right thing!" or if that's the first step in starting WIFOM ... Anyway, trust me, as helpful as webby's advice was, it's not going to make me a fantastic player of either side that quickly.

In any case, I agree with webby's analysis of BF's vote, so obviously there's no point jumping on that bandwagon (yet). GoP's suggestion that scum, when they're at risk of being lynched, are likely to slip up when trying to defend themselves, is good, but I'm trying to work out if there's any way to give us the best chance of doing so - obviously the incredibly stupid strategy would be to put each of us at L-1 in turn, but since everyone knows that they will then be unvoted clearly that doesn't work either.

Is it worth discussing who, in metagame terms, is a likely NK target? I say so only because I can think of reasons both for and against my being NKed - as a new player the scum might see me as an unknown factor, and hence want to get me out of the way for safety sake; alternatively, they may decide that I don't have the experience of playing with everyone here, and so am less likely to spot scumtells/more likely to agree with a bandwagon argument/otherwise play less well than everyone. Or the scum could just feel like being nice to me and hence let me play more than 1 day in my first game

Bah, there hasn't been much specific content and already I'm playing the wine game. I need to go now, hopefully I will come back to clarity.

[BoomFrog]

It's like we have some sort of mind meld Webby. It's creepy.
Unvote

@conman, as a great player once said, "Real content > wine > no content". (i don't actually remember who said that)

And is assume scum would let you live as your presumably a worse player and also easier to put suspicion on then someone who's meta is known.

Anyway, since Chandari* passed the test and Webby sided with me that leaves conman or GoP as scum. I'll go with GoP.
Vote GoP

*posting from my phone so sorry if that's misspelled.

[Gopher of Pern]

Hmmmm, not sure if serious.....

Hey boomfrog, here's a good idea, why don't you stop that crap, and answer Weeby's question? Maybe contribute some real content.

Conman, there is no point in discussing a kill target. It will not get us any closer to who the scum is, as even if, who we generally agree is the most likely target, is not killed, it does not make them scum, as scum would know what we agreed on, and therefore choose another target.

Did that sentence make sense?

I still believe putting pressure on people is the best way, but not the way Boomfrog is doing it. It's a clear case of Doing It Wrong^TM

[BoomFrog]

But this wine is delicious. Anyway I am serious. I think there is about a 40% chance that you are scum and I won't be moving my vote unless I see a scum tell from someone else.

What constitutes a scumtell in this specific game, with one scum?

Not much. I'd say, trying to stay out of the spotlight. Scum generally try to get a feel for how the real townies are feeling and follow that instead of sticking thier neck out. But it really depends on the player. And obviously that's a big barrel of wine for me to say since I am currently sticking my neck out. Obviously as scum I would try to mimic my personal townie style.

[Gopher of Pern]

But this wine is delicious. Anyway I am serious. I think there is about a 40% chance that you are scum and I won't be moving my vote unless I see a scum tell from someone else.

What constitutes a scumtell in this specific game, with one scum?

Not much. I'd say, trying to stay out of the spotlight. Scum generally try to get a feel for how the real townies are feeling and follow that instead of sticking thier neck out. But it really depends on the player. And obviously that's a big barrel of wine for me to say since I am currently sticking my neck out. Obviously as scum I would try to mimic my personal townie style.

It's funny, because you are not mimicing (mimicking?) your own personal style. You are being totally different. You are being incredibly winey, and I reckon you are trying to emulate Lataro, and hoping we don't believe it, because who would be stupid enough to try it right now?

Vote: Boomfrog

[AngrySquirrel]

Votals:
1 Gopher Of Pern (BoomFrog)
1 BoomFrog (Gopher Of Pern)

5 players, 3 to lynch.

[ConMan]

Huh, I just realised that more than half the players in this game are from Australia.

Anyway, on actual on-topic stuff ...

My reading of things so far:

ConMan has been playing the "I'm a newbie" card, and playing it well. Almost certainly town, since as scum he would probably sit back and try to get a better feel for things first. A slight ping from how often he keeps mentioning his town-ness, but that's still probably a newbie thing.

webby has been very helpful to me, which may just be his desire to see more good players in general. Still, assuming he's also trying to help his own game here, the advice is extremely good and so definitely improves town's chances, so he's looking pretty town too.

GoP is also giving what looks to be good advice, and I do agree with the explanation of why discussing kill targets is probably not useful (just more of my attempts to create content, but probably not useful content at this point).

BF appears to be trying to root out the scum by directed pressure, although it does seem to be a bit of a heavy-handed technique that I'm not convinced will work and will probably more piss off some of the more experienced players. It could be an attempt at misdirection, and in a more sophisticated set-up I suspect it would be a not-too-bad Jester ploy. But here, it's just a little bit grating and it does also puing me a bit. FoS: BoomFrog. That said, GoP's reaction is somewhere between understandable (since I it's exactly what I said the tactic was likely to do) and overly defensive. I think that if suspicion falls away from BF, GoP might be my next choice (but not enough yet for me to even FoS).

Chandani's response to BF's tactic can pretty much be summed up as "OMGUS". Which is perfectly understandable. And I think that a lot of people in her position would be likely to respond with a retaliatory vote, especially if they were scum, so on that basis I'm leaning town. However, she still hasn't provided a huge amount of content yet, so it's a bit hard to read more into it.

So, my meagre analysis is putting people in the following order of most-to-least-scummy:
1. BoomFrog
2. Gopher of Pern
3. Chandani
4. webby

I won't vote just yet, but does anyone agree or disagree with any of this?

[webby]

I want to vote GoP for calling me Weeby.

Boomfrog is acting very strangely. I have no idea whether it's a Lataro gambit or he's trying something different/new out at town. Obviously he's deliberately acting very different to usual and that's going to make it harder to work out his alignment. I also think that these things are usually done as scum in one-scum games, where if it goes wrong you're not letting a teammate down. On balance, it makes him more likely rather than less likely to be scum and it's not being very helpful, so if we had a deadline in an hour, that's where I'd put my vote (obviously I'm not going to now when there's already a vote on him).

Conman posted while I was writing, I'll respond to him later.

[Chandani]

Content.
Well.

Usually this early in the game I do role-spec since there usually isn't much to analyze, and doing a full blown post-by-post analysis isn't worth it early on. I would have done a closer look at BoomFrog, but any accusation would look really OMGUSish. What I will say is that it seemed like BoomFrog is doing a Lataro gambit (much like what weeby webby just said) but it doesn't really work considering BoomFrong is BoomFrog, and not Lataro. Then he says he's pressuring people with votes, which I guess makes sense since there are only 5 people and thus one vote is 33% of the way there to a lynch (btw, I think we should avoid getting to L-1 early on in the day because then scum could hammer (this is more of a note for ConMan who might not realize it) (assuming scum isn't voting at the time)), but I still don't like that kind of thing. Considering he's doing it early in the game, as well.

GoP's first response to BF's vote I will characterize as 'whatever. Can you provide some content?' which is fine. It wasn't like Gee Willikers YOU SUCK WHY THE HELL DID YOU VOTE LIKE THAT so it's not necessarily scummy. HOWEVER, I do think that other than possibly ConMan, no one here should react to vote-pressure like what I just said: I'm pretty sure GoP and webby were there the last time I blew up and they know that's not the way to go, and BF can't react like that when he's the one applying pressure. So I'm not sure if gauging reaction is the best way to go.

Also...

But this wine is delicious. Anyway I am serious. I think there is about a 40% chance that you are scum

... how did you get this number? That's 2/5. If you took out yourself, you would get 1/4, which is 25%. If you took out yourself, me and webby (based off one of your posts) you would get 1/2, which is 50%. I don't get how you got around 40%, unless that's some number you pulled out of nowhere to serve as an estimation of your belief. If so, sorry for all this math.

[ConMan]

Again, I will read everything properly and try to continue over-analysing a bit later, but a couple of quick comments.

Content.

Thanks Like BF quoted, any content is better than none, and at first glance this looks like it's some good content.

Then he says he's pressuring people with votes, which I guess makes sense since there are only 5 people and thus one vote is 33% of the way there to a lynch (btw, I think we should avoid getting to L-1 early on in the day because then scum could hammer (this is more of a note for ConMan who might not realize it)

Don't worry, that's the main reason I didn't put a vote in my last post. Although, I think that a quick hammer would be a pretty stupid thing for scum to do on D1, since it paints a great big scumtell on them. If the dialogue hits a stalemate, though, putting someone at L-1 or even lynching them will probably give us something useful to go on.

So for now, I'll just watch BF swapping the wine glasses back and forth, but I'm leaving my finger hovering over the vote button.

[Gopher of Pern]

First off, apologies for calling you Weeby, Weeby Webbi Wibby Webby.

ConMan has been playing the "I'm a newbie" card, and playing it well. Almost certainly town, since as scum he would probably sit back and try to get a better feel for things first. A slight ping from how often he keeps mentioning his town-ness, but that's still probably a newbie thing.

Don't analyse yourself. It's just wine when you do that.

Can you also point out where I've been overly defensive? My points and vote would have stood if BF was pulling that crap on anyone, not just me.

So far, there isn't much else to discuss other than Boomfrog. Which is the problem with using such a tactic. If Boomfrog is indeed town, they have caused the discussion to head in 1 direction, which is all looking at a BF lynch, which is not good. It wont give us much information for tomorrow, which should be our main objective for D1, as the chances for lynching right today are quite low.

[Chandani]

Though to be fair, ConMan, if you say something like "I'm totally the most townie person there" people won't look at that badly. At least I won't, since it's kind of funny. Leaving yourself out is typically the safer route.

I don't think you were overly defensive, GoP. I only looked at your first post since that's where defensiveness should go. The second post seemed pretty reasonable.

[ConMan]

First off, apologies for calling you Weeby, Weeby Webbi Wibby Webby.

ConMan has been playing the "I'm a newbie" card, and playing it well. Almost certainly town, since as scum he would probably sit back and try to get a better feel for things first. A slight ping from how often he keeps mentioning his town-ness, but that's still probably a newbie thing.

Don't analyse yourself. It's just wine when you do that.

Sorry, it was a poor attempt at humour. At least I realised it would be even worse to pull a full Lataro and FoS everyone up to and including the mod. (And yes, I realise that the unspoken #1 rule of not looking scummy is "Don't copy what Lataro does, ever".)

Can you also point out where I've been overly defensive? My points and vote would have stood if BF was pulling that crap on anyone, not just me.

It's one of those things I'm having trouble explaining. Like I tried to say (but probably failed to), your response was reactive, but not highly so. I suppose it would be better to say that if BF were to be confirmed as town, and in the absense of any other evidence, you're giving me the next most scummy feeling. Which is still practically nothing, but it's less nothing than everything else I've seen so far. I'm still calibrating my scumdar here

So far, there isn't much else to discuss other than Boomfrog. Which is the problem with using such a tactic. If Boomfrog is indeed town, they have caused the discussion to head in 1 direction, which is all looking at a BF lynch, which is not good. It wont give us much information for tomorrow, which should be our main objective for D1, as the chances for lynching right today are quite low.

So, in voting for BoomFrog, do you think he looks genuinely scummy, or are you thinking that at least if he's out of the way it will be easier to spot the real scum?

Though to be fair, ConMan, if you say something like "I'm totally the most townie person there" people won't look at that badly. At least I won't, since it's kind of funny. Leaving yourself out is typically the safer route.

I don't think you were overly defensive, GoP. I only looked at your first post since that's where defensiveness should go. The second post seemed pretty reasonable.

Well, obviously I'm the towniest of the townies As for the second part of your post, I'll just point at what I said above.

[Gopher of Pern]

Though to be fair, ConMan, if you say something like "I'm totally the most townie person there" people won't look at that badly. At least I won't, since it's kind of funny. Leaving yourself out is typically the safer route.

I don't think you were overly defensive, GoP. I only looked at your first post since that's where defensiveness should go. The second post seemed pretty reasonable.

True, one off comments like that aren't bad, but when you constantly do things like that, it tends to rub people the wrong way.

Well, I didn't think I was defensive, but I would like to hear why Conman thought so.

*ninjad*

So, in voting for BoomFrog, do you think he looks genuinely scummy, or are you thinking that at least if he's out of the way it will be easier to spot the real scum?

I really do think he's scummy. He hasn't acted in towns best interests, and is playing very differently from usual.

That comment was more an appeal to make sure we don't get railroaded into only discussing BF. Which we dont seem to be doing, which is good.

BTW, you're not as townie as I am!

[BoomFrog]

It's funny, because you are not mimicing (mimicking?) your own personal style. You are being totally different.

That is my (incredibly wine filled) defense. I wouldn't be acting like this is I was scum. Lataro got away with it in The Thing because he only had to survive one day. If I was scum putting myself in the spotlight like this would be incredibly stupid as I would have to survive two days. Even if I am lynched today I think I have spured real content generation from others and we will have a lot more to go on D2 then we would have otherwise. I still belive that I have raised the chances that town will win.

I also think that these things are usually done as scum in one-scum games, where if it goes wrong you're not letting a teammate down. On balance, it makes him more likely rather than less likely to be scum and it's not being very helpful

Well, I think it is helpful, I guess we will have to see in the post game analysis. At any rate I think this game is a lot more fun then it would be if we were all playing "typically" sitting around in a circle saying, "Anyone acting scummy? No one is doing anything so I can't tell who is acting scummy."

how did you get this number?

At the time of that post my list was 40% GoP, 30% Conman, 20% Webby, 10% Chandani. It's not like my first "test" was some foolproof way to detect scum. I haven't truly ruled anyone out. Obviously there's a lot more real content now and my suspicions have changed somewhat but I won't voice them quite yet as I want to see more.

[ConMan]

Hey boomfrog, here's a good idea, why don't you stop that crap, and answer Weeby's question? Maybe contribute some real content.

I guess this is what I was talking about when I meant "being defensive". On the one hand, it's telling BF that you don't think his strategy is a good idea, on the other, it's directing attention towards BF and hence away from yourself. I agree the first reading is the most likely, but it's the tone that lends it what I consider a hint of scum - but then that's based on what I would say if placed in the same position, and could as much be that you're a slightly more agressive player than me.

[webby]

Going through the posts since I was here this morning:

Poor Chandani - three Australians and Boomfrog in Shanghai means the American finally gets a taste of what it's like to be posting from a different timezone to the other players.

So, my meagre analysis is putting people in the following order of most-to-least-scummy:
1. BoomFrog
2. Gopher of Pern
3. Chandani
4. webby

I won't vote just yet, but does anyone agree or disagree with any of this?

Agree with this, putting ConMan around equal with Chandani. But I will note that there wouldn't be a big difference between first and last on the list for me yet - I'd be nowhere near as confident as Boomfrog's 40-30-20-10 percentages (Mine would be more like 35-25-20-20).

Chandani sounds like town Chandani with a note of caution that I don't think I've played with her as scum before.

GoP asks where he's been over-defensive. Conman responds saying it wasn't much, but enough to put him above everyone else other than Boomfrog (btw, I agree with the point that the problem with what Boomfrog is doing is that he's focussing the game on him (and to a lesser extent GoP, who's attacking him the most), which is very bad if they're both townies and letting the real scum stay under the radar). I also think that GoP hasn't been overdefensive, and the only reason he's second on my scumlist is because neither Conman nor Chandani have done anything scummy yet.

I guess it is a plausible explanation that Boomfrog is doing this to generate content, as he says in his most recent post, but it's at least as plausible that he'd do it as scum. And anyway, sure it creates content, but if all that content is 'Boomfrog is acting scummy', you're providing a safe place for scum to place their vote without looking suspicious. If you weren't doing that, scum would have to find an excuse to vote for a townie, while this way they can just vote for you and if you turn out town, use the defence that the vote was reasonable given their knowledge at the time.

[ConMan]

I got ninja'd by webby, so I'll post this and then I'll try to follow-up with an ebwop.

So far, there isn't much else to discuss other than Boomfrog. Which is the problem with using such a tactic. If Boomfrog is indeed town, they have caused the discussion to head in 1 direction, which is all looking at a BF lynch, which is not good. It wont give us much information for tomorrow, which should be our main objective for D1, as the chances for lynching right today are quite low.

Looking at this post again, I have to wonder about the bolded part.

If I understand you right, then what you're saying is something like this:

BoomFrog has been drawing attention to himself with a bunch of wine, which means that if nothing else were to develop then since all our discussion has been over how scummy he looks he will probably be the first one lynched. IF he is scum, THEN hooray we killed the scum and we win. But IF he's town, then not only have we killed a fellow townie (boo) the lack of non-BF discussion means that we will have very little information on Day 2 to make an informed lynch.

If that's the case, but you've voted for BF, does that mean that you're hoping for discussion to move away from him and onto the rest of us now? Because I would have thought that anyone with a vote on them is going to be the subject of even more discussion, as people try to work out whether they should join in the voting.

As such, who else is looking scummy to you right now? If you were finally convinced that BF is just playing a weird town game, where would your FoS land?

Actually, I'll pose a similar question to BF - if for whatever reason you were convinced to move your vote off GoP, where's the next place it would go?

Chandani, you said before you weren't keen on posting an analysis of BF since at the time he had voted for you. Now that suspicion has apparently moved off you, are you willing to share some some thoughts on him - and on the other players?

Finally, webby, who's your number 2 choice in terms of scumminess? What's pinging that?

[ConMan]

Finally, webby, who's your number 2 choice in terms of scumminess? What's pinging that?

Re-reading my post, I think this is the only part that needs EBWOP, since webby's posted his analysis now.

As for webby's post ...

(btw, I agree with the point that the problem with what Boomfrog is doing is that he's focussing the game on him (and to a lesser extent GoP, who's attacking him the most), which is very bad if they're both townies and letting the real scum stay under the radar).

This is something I've been thinking about too, which is partially why I asked those questions. Basically I'm trying to get everyone to contribute something that's not BF- (and hopefully not completely GoP-) related. Chandani has a decent excuse to be less active than us, with the timezone difference, but I would still like to see some more content from her to go on. Webby, on the other hand, hasn't said much on his thoughts regarding who is or isn't scum except for a bit of finger-pointing at BF's behaviour and this post.

So, since I've retracted my previous question to webby, how about a new one: What do you think the odds are that the real scum is flying under the radar, and/or riding the "BF/GoP is acting scummy" bandwagon?

[Gopher of Pern]

Well, frankly, before your last post, you were second on my scummy list. Mainly for such things like constantly claiming town, and trying to hide in your newness. But your recent posts have made me change my mind, and believe they were just newbie errors. Your latest post is exactly what I wanted someone else to do; try and focus discussion somewhere else. I was hoping that Boomfrog would do it, but they still seem intent on defending their decision.

Now, Chandani and Webby:

Both expressed interest in voting for Boomfrog, but refrained due to not wanting to get to L-1. At this stage I'd put Chandani as scummier over Webby, but not by much, and mostly simply because Chandani has posted less content, so is a safer townie to lynch than Webby. Webby does seem to be in iterate mode, but with the lack of other things to discuss, its not neccessarily scummy.

So, my order is:

Boomfrog
Chandani
Webby
Conman

[Chandani]

Okay. I don't want to pull out the life card, but I'm pretty busy this week. And generally I have a lot of stuff going on. My Thursday (no idea what's that in your timezone) is always busy, so I won't be able to post anything substantial until late in the day (for me). Just a heads up for you guys.

So... thoughts on players
1. ConMan: newbie who started out aksing a lot of questions and is helping with discussion. Leaning townie here.
2. webby: Also helped start discussion, but hasn't posted as much as others (compared to me, he has posted more). Townie/leaning townie
3. BoomFrog: See below
5. GopherofPern : Haven't found anything wrong with GoP, though I don't trust him as much as the others. Neutral.

BoomFrog is... eh. The last time someone did something like that (who wasn't Lataro) they told the people why they were doing it. Nevertheless, I failed. Anyway, BoomFrog isn't playing like BoomFrog: they did something which would not be ignored and looked scummy. I don't know if he thought he could convince people that he was doing it to elicit responses, but it doesn't seem like a townie move at all. I don't think town would do something like that which would draw attention (but then, neither would scum). He's basically confusing me and I don't like it. It's either town failing or scum laughing at us evilly at our confusion. Nevertheless, he's the most scummy person on the list for me.

On scum being able to hide under GoP/BoomFrog focus... it's possible. I think there's a decent amount of evidence for BoomFrog being scum, but if he isn't, it's very easy for scum to take advantage of this and hide, especially the more experienced players (though it's not like ConMan couldn't do it either). I would give around a 40-45% chance BF is scum... if he isn't, that means there is a 55-60% chance that scum is floating under my radar.

[webby]

Lol I post four times in the first 1.5 days of the game and I 'haven't posted as much as others'. Pretty good activity.

Conman - Well obviously the answer to your question is that it's equal to the probability that you or Chandani are scum. If I have to put a number on it, I'll say 40%. It's still very early in the game, so the honest answer is that I have no idea who the scum is.

Here's the list of things that stick out at me from people's posts (ignoring Boomfrog, who's been analysed enough already ) - I'll say something's townie if it's more likely to be said by town than scum, neutral if I think it's equally likely to be said regardless of alignment, and scummy if it's more likely to be said as scum. Obviously given the goal of scum is to look like town, most things will be close to neutral.

ConMan:
1. New player, asks what to do. Neutral (ie he would say this whether he's town or scum)
2. Discusses ideas of how to find scum. Neutral - I don't think the ideas are likely to work, so it could be either a genuine attempt to help town, or pretending to help town. I lean very slightly (ie above the 75% if I had no idea who was scum) towards the hypothesis that it's a genuine attempt to help, because they are plausible ideas from a player new to the game.
3. Analyses players. Slightly townie because I agree with it, but only slightly because it doesn't really say anything controversial - because of the way Boomfrog has been acting, a scum player could write that same analysis without having to worry about finding a lynch target later.
4. Responds to GoP on the defensiveness thing. Backs down slightly, then brings up an example of GoP's defensiveness. Neutral - if anything, very slightly scummy for a slight feeling that you're going looking for an excuse to find someone other than Boomfrog scummy, but that's a very minor thing - it's not anti-town to do it, but it's something that scum would definitely want to do.
5. Asks us all a bunch of questions which seem reasonable. Very slightly townie.

GoP:
1. Answers my 'what is scummy' post with, amongst other things, 'posting intentionally winey things' (which Boomfrog then goes on to do, so at least GoP voting for Boomfrog is consistent... ) Thinks slip-ups can be useful too. Slightly townie for being very forthcoming with his answer, as he's giving us a test by which we can judge how genuine his actions are. Scum will tend to be looking for any reason to lynch a player, so it's good to put a standard of 'what is scummy?' in place.
2. GoP responds to Boomfrog's vote telling him he's doing it wrong and then in the next post votes for him. Netural - I have no idea whether to read these posts as being too aggressive or not. Part of me says that the reaction was warranted, while another part thinks it was over the top. Some townie players naturally react quite aggressively to being voted for, but I don't think GoP is one of them. On the other hand, there wasn't really much justification to Boomfrog's vote. I'll reserve judgment on this for now.
3. ConMan's accusation of being overdefensive is replied to. Makes the point that he would have done what he did regardless of who Boomfrog had done it to. Slightly townie - I find myself believing this, but I believe he would have done it whether he's town or scum given there's only one scum in the game . The slightly townie is for the other part of the post where he tells us to stop focussing so much on Boomfrog so we have information for tomorrow.
4. Posts an analysis of players. Neutral - says pretty much all the obvious things. Although what is iterate mode?

Chandani:
1. Has no real strategies to help us, gives only one example of scummy behaviour, defence against Boomfrog's vote. Neutral - Not really much content, but at least there was no overreaction to Boomfrog's vote. Feels like normal Chandani.
2. Discusses the Boomfrog issue, then looks at GoP's response to Boomfrog's vote. Neutral/Slightly townie - The discussion on GoP's reaction is pretty reasonable, no other real comments here.
3. Most recent post contains little that's new/original. Neutral

So that's what I think of everything so far. We're only two days in and so far I think it would be pretty easy for a non-Boomfrog scum to hide - there are very few places where I think scum would look different to town. There's no deadline yet, so there's no hurry, and I'm not going to force myself to see scumminess when it's not there.

Based on that analysis, Chandani and GoP are =2nd and ConMan is the most townie at this stage. If this was a large game, based on their content to this stage, I would guess that they were all town.

[BoomFrog]

Hmm, Webby's analysis seems decent. He's always a really hard read though. I'm not seeing any slip ups from anyone. Here is a question to stir things up some more.

If I couldn't be lynched today who would you lynch right now if you got to unilaterally decide the lynch?

[Gopher of Pern]

Iterate mode is a term I have just invented. It means all you are doing is stating what people have done, without really saying much yourself. The below quote would be an example of what I mean:

GoP asks where he's been over-defensive. Conman responds saying it wasn't much, but enough to put him above everyone else other than Boomfrog (btw, I agree with the point that the problem with what Boomfrog is doing is that he's focussing the game on him (and to a lesser extent GoP, who's attacking him the most), which is very bad if they're both townies and letting the real scum stay under the radar). I also think that GoP hasn't been overdefensive, and the only reason he's second on my scumlist is because neither Conman nor Chandani have done anything scummy yet.

The first 2 sentences are just stating what's been happening. The last few sentences only add neutral opinions on whats been discussed. All in all, its a very safe way of flying under the radar, while seeming to add content. Your latest post adds more information than earlier.

Boomfrog, you know you could provide some analysis yourself. In fact, I think hearing your views on other people would be good, seeing as though you are the favourite lynch candidate atm. Despite all the hoohaa, you seem to have posted the least amount of content out of everyone. Your question is also useless, as we have all pretty much answered the question in our last posts. Or haven't you been reading our posts?

[BoomFrog]

You answered already and very thoroughly I might add. I guess that question was more directed at Webby who stated "everyone looks town besides BF". I'd like the others to state it more explicitly though.

I'm going to be very busy with RL for the next 24-48 hours. I'll try to do a solid analysis after that.

[ConMan]

If I couldn't be lynched today who would you lynch right now if you got to unilaterally decide the lynch?

Up until webby's most recent post, I was actually thinking that he was the most likely "flying under the radar" scum candidate. Now, I'm not sure - I'll have to re-read his post to see what I think of it. I'm still leaning on the side of thinking that Chandani is just suffering from having to deal with real-life pressures and the time zone difference and isn't acting particularly scummy. GoP I still think of as playing aggressively, but if everyone's opinion is that there isn't anything particularly scummy about that then I'm happy to go with that for now.

Which doesn't answer your question, does it? I guess, if I got told "lynch someone now or lose", I'd probably go for webby just based on that "under the radar" feel, but it's an opinion likely to change.

Also, a bit of a warning that I'm probably not going to be very active over the weekend. I might lay a vote on someone tomorrow afternoon, depending on how strongly my scumdar is pinging.

[ConMan]

Ok, I've re-read the last few posts, and my opinion hasn't really changed.

GoP's description of "iterate" mode is actually kind of close to how I was feeling about webby to start with - while the analysis is helpful, it contains a lot of "low-fat" content that isn't really good or bad in itself but which could be a way of avoiding looking too lurky without going on the attack on anyone in particular (besides everyone's current target, BF). But, as others are saying, this is just as much due to the difficulty of finding anything scummy in anyone's actions as anything else - it doesn't look like any of our analyses has said much more than "BF is acting weird, possibly scummy, everyone else is neutral-to-slightly-town".

[Chandani]

I would lynch BoomFrog.
Unless something comes up, BoomFrog is the scummiest person on my list.
Nothing has come up. I think we should do something dramatic or something. Maybe we should talk about our role PMs or the awesomeness of life or the number of letters in supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. I just don't think we're going to get anywhere with analyzing everybody's posts. I mean, we're a five player vanilla game. Not much to spur on discussion, and we're going to start running around in circles soon. I don't think talking about role PMs is the smartest thing to do, but it's a possibility. We just need a new source of discussion so that we can actually find something.

Iterate mode seems to be similar to active lurking. I wonder why GoP didn't just use that word... maybe he forgot? I did until I started to describe it in my head.

[ConMan]

All right, here goes..
Vote: BoomFrog

This better not hurt my mayoral campaign ...

I'll try to log in before Monday, but no promises.

[BoomFrog]

Going to sleep please don't lynch until I post again.

[webby]

Sorry, I was busy yesterday and didn't get online. I don't really disagree with anything you've said about me - I guess it's just hard to provide good content in a game like this, especially on day 1. Nobody has really done anything except the easy analyses apart from Boomfrog and GoP's reaction to Boomfrog. If we're lucky, the game will end today, if not, at least tomorrow we'll have the objective information that the lynch target was town and we'll have a nightkill victim. I'll try to get back to this game later and do a better post, I'm just realising how much mafia I've signed up for.

[BoomFrog]

I think we should do something dramatic or something.

Perhaps now you understand why I am playing so oddly this game? GoP, Webby and you are all experienced enough that I had to start off with something dramatic to get you to make a mistake by putting you in an unusual position. I do regret spilling the wine so early though, I should have given conman a chance to screw up first if he was scum. He is really hard to read now.

Anyway Chandani's post sounds like genuine townie frustration so I'm putting her down as town. Conman I had as town until the actual vote for me came when I had promised content after I was less busy in RL. Why the rush? GoP's OMGUS seems justified sine at the time I was leading a lynch on him in another game as well and he had just gotten lynched D1 in lock stock. I can understand his anger and I think as scum he would have tried to keep his cool more.

Now Webby. Webby perfectly understood my vote on Chandani and yet he completely cannot understand my GoP vote. As scum its hard to not judge others as town since you know they are town. However after GoP voted me Webby had to either find me scummy or be in the unenviable position of scum defending the scummiest townie. Webby has a very good read on me and town Webby would be defending me right now.

Case closed.
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