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[notquitethere]

Hold up. I misread the voting sequence (missing Spaghetti's vote).

OK, so it looked like this:

SilverDragon(0):
Onyxjew994(0):
Captain Ford(2): Flying Dice
borno(0):
notquitethere(2):Captain Ford
Sphagetti7(0):
Flying Dice(3): Onyxjew994
Shakerag(0):
IronyOwl(0):

(Because contrary to Deathsword's count, he said he's take off SilverDragon's vote)

It was a three-way tie.

Then IronyOwl breaks it, voting for a town player. Crucially, a town player not voted for by the other scum (scum like to avoid concentrating their votes):

SilverDragon(0):
Onyxjew994(0):
Captain Ford(2): Flying Dice
borno(0):
notquitethere(2):Captain Ford, IronyOwl
Sphagetti7(0):
Flying Dice(3): Onyxjew994
Shakerag(0):
IronyOwl(0):

Then Spaghetti creates the draw. This isn't particularly suspicious as it couldn't have been a scum move to deliberately tie things so I didn't get lynched (as me, Spaghetti and FD can't all have been scum).

SilverDragon(0):
Onyxjew994(0):
Captain Ford(2): Flying Dice
borno(0):
notquitethere(2):Captain Ford, IronyOwl
Sphagetti7(0):
Flying Dice(3): Onyxjew994, Spaghetti7
Shakerag(0):
IronyOwl(0):

And then I end the draw:

SilverDragon(0):
Onyxjew994(0):
Captain Ford(2): Flying Dice
borno(0):
notquitethere(2):Captain Ford, IronyOwl
Sphagetti7(0):
Flying Dice(3): Onyxjew994, Sphagetti7, notquitethere
Shakerag(0):
IronyOwl(0):

IronyOwl's vote wasn't a tie-breaker, like I thought just a moment ago, but instead a vote which attacked a town-member and drew threat away from scum. (In fairness, both these things are possible to do accidentally as town.)

[notquitethere]

Sorry for multi-posting guys, but hot damn I think I have a case.

Is it telling that in IronyOwl's initial post, he addresses all players but two: Lord Al (my predecessor) who had never posted and scum Remuthra, who had posted 16 times since the game started (much more than several of the other players) and had at that time two votes to his name? i.e. not a player one would usually miss wanting to question. In fact, Ironyowl, in addressing healer SuperBlast, appear to give what might now be interpreted as a deflective defence of Remuthra:

superBlast:

So I'm gonna stop voting random people now and and vote who I suspect and that would be Remu.

Vote Remuthra

TIME TO MISLYNCH YOU AGAIN HAHAHAHA!

Uh, ahem. This is nice and all, but are you actually pressuring Remu at the moment, or have you just decided he's the best target to kill? A very quick scan back didn't reveal anything, and it's usually better to try to get a better read on someone, even someone you genuinely suspect is scum, than to just vote them and sit on what you've got.

[Tiruin]

Sorry for multi-posting guys, but hot damn I think I have a case.

{That's how you edit and add to your post

Multi-posting is accepted in the Mafia board - just try to put it all in one organized post if you can.}

[IronyOwl]

NQT:

If you lynch me and then I flip town, what information will team town have gained?

Why do you ask?

I want to make sure that if I am lynched, then town still benefits. I'd rather not be lynched, of course, but if I am I want it to at least be useful. I still win if we win when I'm dead.

How does this relate to asking about it, though? Does knowing how or checking on whether town will benefit from your lynch make it less likely or more productive or something?

Well looks like you're in the clear again Ford. Hmm... it sure looks like I could easily have got you lynched there if I hadn't withdrawn my extension. Good job for you that I'm not actually convinced you're scum yet.

So you're acting very townlike, is what you'd like to point out to all of us and especially your good buddy Ford?

I merely wanted to point out that Ford's extension-related case against me no longer held up in light of my recent actions. Maybe this wasn't a prudent thing to do. Perhaps I should have waited until Ford worked it out himself or someone else pointed it out. Blowing your own trumpet looks bad in this game. Ford's a good guy but he hasn't buddied me this game.

It's a case of WIFOM. If scum would never do X, of course scum is going to do X because it'll mask that they're scum. Pointing out that it clears you (in most cases; there are exceptions) explains why it doesn't clear you.

The bedrock example of this would be scumhunting. Scum don't want to find scum, so clearly they'd never scumhunt. Except that makes them look like scum, so of course they pretend to scumhunt, even if not always very well. Hence, "I'm scumhunting therefore I couldn't be scum!" isn't a very good argument, at least not in blunt terms like that. Subtler nuances can still have merit, but this didn't seem like one of those to me.

I've been umming and ahhing on who looks scummiest. I probably don't have as finally honed scum-senses as the more seasoned players. My style is to look at the concrete and try to learn from the games I've been in. Though it was a different game mode, I think there might be some meta-data lessons to be learned from the recent masons game. In that game, I was scum and no one else kept track of voting patterns. This worked in my favour then because there were several meta-tells that were easily spotted.

Over the course of the whole game I had the most people vote against me (I had at least 18 votes and six fingers of suspicion from nine different players) and most of the scum, myself included, random voted each other or FOS'd each other as harmless distancing.

Given these insights, who looks most scummiest in this game?

Remuthra/Flying Dice has gained the most votes from the most people across the game, with ten votes and 3 FOS's from six players, compared to Nerjin/Silver Dragon with eight votes from four people. On a purely wisdom-of-the-crowd view, Remuthra/Flying Dice is the most guilty.

Whoa whoa whoa. What's the logic here? You were scum this one time and everyone voted you, so scum get the most votes, so this guy with the most votes is scum? Doesn't that seem more like an example than a pattern? _{Admittedly now you're 2 for 2, but still.}

Furthermore, what's the mechanism? Why would scum accumulate more votes and FoS's than town, yet not in a way that got them lynched?

For that matter, what's the correlation between being voted and being lynched, if any? I'm kind of curious about that now, since you apparently squeaked by despite all that sporadic attention and FD was lynched fairly narrowly.

I am anticipating a huge backlash here. Whenever I bring up anything half-way logical, people hate it. Here are two objections I'd like to forestall:

Well, this sounds like you know there's something about your argument that people aren't going to like, and I don't really believe it's just "it uses logic."

1. "Wouldn't scum concentrate their vote, and so someone who has a lot of votes on them is probably town?" My experience is that, in wanting to distance themselves, scum don't concentrate their vote. What they often do is vote for one another on Day One. This is Day One and we can expect that whoever scum is, other scum are likely to have random-voted them or at least FOS'd them. It's not a major tell, but Shakerag has been the most liberal with the Fingers of Suspicion so far.

Again, this seems dangerously assumptive. It's fine as a starting point, but... actually, I'm not entirely sure what your point is here. Scum don't concentrate their vote or bandwagon, Shakerag's used FoS's liberally, therefore your FD vote is entirely sound?

2. "Why don't you make your own read instead of relying on everyone else's?/You're bandwagoning/You're lazy scum-hunting." This is, if not entirely reasonable, at least wholly expected, so to appease you here are some independent reasons why Remuthra/FD could be scum:

- Remuthra openly stated that they didn't find Borno suspicious and yet still voted for him
- Remuthra had a very standoffish approach to scum hunting at the beginning
- Flying Dice is obviously a lot more competent than Remuthra, and we haven't interacted as much, so there's not much I can say here.

This doesn't seem like it has anything to do with your vote, though. It sounds like you're saying "FD is scum because of this reasoning, however I know you guys will say that's stupid, so here's some possible reasons you might like that I pulled up just to maybe appease you."

Which seems rather odd. Are you padding your case or what?

If there's one thing I hate the most, is mislyching. Drawing on past experience, I think my method here is sound. However, I also know that I am a fallible human being and I make mistakes sometimes. So if you've got a really good reason why I'm off-base here, I'd like to here it. I'm looking at the IC's IronyOwl and Shakerag here: this is, after all, supposed to be a learning game.

I've already covered some of it above, but the short answer is that I think you're drawing unnecessary assumptions from an anecdote.

Of course, it's a bit harder to sell that explanation now that it seems to have been proven correct, but if I might offer an alternative hypothesis? Remuthra was inexperienced scum, and so slipped up badly, hence Remuthra had a lot of votes but then replaced out. That's similar to what you're saying, but it relies on three very important assumptions I don't see in your current analysis:

1. Remuthra was scum that dropped a lot of tells, as opposed to scum that didn't
2. Remuthra was scum that looked scummy, as opposed to town that looked scummy
3. Remuthra hadn't been bandwagoned and lynched for his mistakes by the time you came to your conclusion

Which boils down to "You/Town got lucky." Your analysis wouldn't have worked on experienced scum, flailing town, or (at least usefully) bandwagons that were over before you had time to point them out. Not coincidentally, those also tend to be the things regular, plain old "lynch the guy making mistakes" style town bandwagons tend to fail on; and indeed, since your method relies on (in this case D1) votes, you'd expect it to function pretty similarly, wouldn't you?


Post getting too long. I should really trim some of it out to remain concise and effective, but I'm too lazy for that so I'm going to post this and then talk even more. Note that nobody except NQT is going to read much of this garbage as a result.

[IronyOwl]

Ford:

Yay! I made myself a huge hulking target. While playing the doctor. Go me!

I now await the rest of you in the afterlife. I'll keep a cup of tea warm for you.

Indeed.

Well, sort of. Speculating on just why scum killed you is a Bad Thing, but the obvious answer is because you were a dangerous player.


NQT (again):

Now we should look at the posts by Superblast/Ford and Remuthra/Flying Dice with a closer eye, looking at people that were on Superblast/Ford's case unreasonably and signs of distancing by and to Remuthra/Flying Dice. I know that that's what I'm going to be looking at now.

Quite. Unfortunately I'm a liiiiiiittle busy right now, so this will have to wait on my end.

There was no reason for scum to bus Flying Dice on the first day in a beginners game, right?

Exactly. Which means that any scum that did would get a free pass, which means it'd be a cunning thing to do.

Now, usually beginner scum are not that cunning; they're greedy and cowardly, and having two scum ends the day and insures against mistakes or accidents a lot better than one. However, there are several things that bother me about this particular lynch.

One, FD was taking a lot of flak for Remuthra's stuff. He, his buddy, and whoever the Scum IC is could quite possibly have decided he was a sinking ship. FD himself was doing quite well, mind you- that was pretty much all he was taking flak for- but it was definitely an option.

Two, this is the second time you've been so vocal about how positively townlike you are.

Three, your FD vote was rather sudden and with odd reasoning, while both you and he were tied for votes. Hoping it passed to a nolynch might have been a better scum move if it'd worked, but ensuring not only your own survival but invulnerability at the cost of someone who was likely to be on the chopping block soon anyway would have been a rather nice deal, wouldn't it?

Dead people can be ruled out, as well as inactive players (else, who would have sent in the kill order?).

We should probably check on this, assuming DS can answer it, but allowing the Scum IC or dead scum to send in a kill order wouldn't be out of the question.

Crucially, a town player not voted for by the other scum (scum like to avoid concentrating their votes):

I don't see anything crucial or conclusive about that.

IronyOwl's vote wasn't a tie-breaker, like I thought just a moment ago, but instead a vote which attacked a town-member and drew threat away from scum. (In fairness, both these things are possible to do accidentally as town.)

Who says you're town?


Also, what happened to the reread paying attention to everyone's interactions? I'm certainly not in a position to judge if you haven't gotten around to that yet, but so far it seems like you've glanced back at the end of the day voting and that's it.

[IronyOwl]

Finally:

Deathsword: In the event that all living scum are in need of replacements, can a Scum IC or dead scum direct night actions on the scumteam's behalf?

[notquitethere]

Irony Owl and The Wall of Text

How does this relate to asking about [what information will be gained by NQT's lynch], though? Does knowing how or checking on whether town will benefit from your lynch make it less likely or more productive or something?

Well, I'd hoped that it might make it less likely if they had to actually stop and think about what would be gained from my mislynch. It's hopefully no longer a pressing issue now.

[Blowing your own trumptet is] a case of WIFOM. If scum would never do X, of course scum is going to do X because it'll mask that they're scum. Pointing out that it clears you (in most cases; there are exceptions) explains why it doesn't clear you.

The bedrock example of this would be scumhunting. Scum don't want to find scum, so clearly they'd never scumhunt. Except that makes them look like scum, so of course they pretend to scumhunt, even if not always very well. Hence, "I'm scumhunting therefore I couldn't be scum!" isn't a very good argument, at least not in blunt terms like that. Subtler nuances can still have merit, but this didn't seem like one of those to me.

Sure, it probably wasn't a very good thing to say for either town or scum. I'm glad I acted how I did though, as we would have mislynched Ford otherwise.

[Logic!]

Whoa whoa whoa. What's the logic here? You were scum this one time and everyone voted you, so scum get the most votes, so this guy with the most votes is scum? Doesn't that seem more like an example than a pattern? _{Admittedly now you're 2 for 2, but still.}

Furthermore, what's the mechanism? Why would scum accumulate more votes and FoS's than town, yet not in a way that got them lynched?

For that matter, what's the correlation between being voted and being lynched, if any? I'm kind of curious about that now, since you apparently squeaked by despite all that sporadic attention and FD was lynched fairly narrowly.

These are fair questions, and what I would call a lesson, you might call an anecdote. But I've had a think about it and I think I've discovered a general principle of mafia: often times a person will give off scum-tells and will be suspicious for lots of different people over a long time, but scrape by because not enough people think that they're suspicious at the same time. In contrast to Remuthra/FD, I've only been voted four times (including once by Remuthra/FD), less than Borno and Nerjin/SD. I should point out that this isn't the only way of scumhunting, and you're absolutely right that more competent scum will avoid that level of attention. And who is more competent than an IC?

I am anticipating a huge backlash here. Whenever I bring up anything half-way logical, people hate it. Here are two objections I'd like to forestall:

Well, this sounds like you know there's something about your argument that people aren't going to like, and I don't really believe it's just "it uses logic."

Hah! Maybe you haven't seen my previous games but a lot of people around here recoil at the idea of looking at voting patterns.

Again, this seems dangerously assumptive. It's fine as a starting point, but... actually, I'm not entirely sure what your point is here. Scum don't concentrate their vote or bandwagon, Shakerag's used FoS's liberally, therefore your FD vote is entirely sound?

My point was just that if someone didn't think scum could get a massive vote count because the other scum player wouldn't vote for them, they may be mistaken. It wasn't a big point (especially as there's only one other scum player). Actually, it might go the other way: the only people that never voted for Remuthra/FD were Borno and yourself.

This doesn't seem like it has anything to do with your vote, though. It sounds like you're saying "FD is scum because of this reasoning, however I know you guys will say that's stupid, so here's some possible reasons you might like that I pulled up just to maybe appease you."

Which seems rather odd. Are you padding your case or what?

I was offering supporting reasons, as I know what counts as a burden of proof for myself may not count as such for other. As it happens, I was absolutely correct.

I've already covered some of it above, but the short answer is that I think you're drawing unnecessary assumptions from an anecdote.

Of course, it's a bit harder to sell that explanation now that it seems to have been proven correct, but if I might offer an alternative hypothesis? Remuthra was inexperienced scum, and so slipped up badly, hence Remuthra had a lot of votes but then replaced out. That's similar to what you're saying, but it relies on three very important assumptions I don't see in your current analysis:

1. Remuthra was scum that dropped a lot of tells, as opposed to scum that didn't
2. Remuthra was scum that looked scummy, as opposed to town that looked scummy
3. Remuthra hadn't been bandwagoned and lynched for his mistakes by the time you came to your conclusion

Which boils down to "You/Town got lucky." Your analysis wouldn't have worked on experienced scum, flailing town, or (at least usefully) bandwagons that were over before you had time to point them out. Not coincidentally, those also tend to be the things regular, plain old "lynch the guy making mistakes" style town bandwagons tend to fail on; and indeed, since your method relies on (in this case D1) votes, you'd expect it to function pretty similarly, wouldn't you?

Crucially though, and I've made this additional connection above, Remuthra dropped a lot of tells and was voted for by lots of people just not at the same time. He would have slipped by if I hadn't have looked at the voting record and made the connection. He wasn't killed by luck but by analysis. I don't think we'll get the next scum in the same way, because the remaining scum is most likely you or Shakerag and you're both more experienced players.

There was no reason for scum to bus Flying Dice on the first day in a beginners game, right?

Exactly. Which means that any scum that did would get a free pass, which means it'd be a cunning thing to do.

Now, usually beginner scum are not that cunning; they're greedy and cowardly, and having two scum ends the day and insures against mistakes or accidents a lot better than one. However, there are several things that bother me about this particular lynch.

One, FD was taking a lot of flak for Remuthra's stuff. He, his buddy, and whoever the Scum IC is could quite possibly have decided he was a sinking ship. FD himself was doing quite well, mind you- that was pretty much all he was taking flak for- but it was definitely an option.

Two, this is the second time you've been so vocal about how positively townlike you are.

Three, your FD vote was rather sudden and with odd reasoning, while both you and he were tied for votes. Hoping it passed to a nolynch might have been a better scum move if it'd worked, but ensuring not only your own survival but invulnerability at the cost of someone who was likely to be on the chopping block soon anyway would have been a rather nice deal, wouldn't it?

Ha! While it's nice that you think I might be some kind of Machiavellian mastermind, shall we first consider the more likely before moving on to the more fantastic? Flying Dice might well have continued to escape the chopping block if I hadn't have cast my vote, he was a very competent player. I should think my innocence would be obvious by now (like that of Onyx and Spaghetti), but if I'm wrong about you or Shakerag, then everyone may rightly consider me a worthy target of suspicion once more. And I always look at the voting patterns, that how I play this game. So for me, it wasn't so strange a reason.

Also, what happened to the reread paying attention to everyone's interactions? I'm certainly not in a position to judge if you haven't gotten around to that yet, but so far it seems like you've glanced back at the end of the day voting and that's it.

Rest assured that is happening. First, I thought of the best way to proceed, then as I knew I'd be looking back, I thought to draft a list of suspects, then I saw that the suspects were just you and Shakerag and then I looked back and found evidence that made you look suspicious. That was the train of events.


Onyx, Spaghetti, what do you think of my case against IronyOwl? Or should we be more suspicious of Shakerag?

[Shakerag]

[Congratulations everyone on managing to lynch scum on D1 (even if it looked like there may have been a bit of serendipity involved)!  Town, keep up the hunting, and look over Remuthra's/Flying Dice's interactions, votes, and who interacted with them to sniff out leads as to the remaining scum. 

As this is an open setup, with the godfather dead, the cop (if there is one) can now trust his/her inspections to be 100% correct.

Scumteam, you have a bit of work cut out for you.  Continue to appear town-like by keeping up activity and scumhunting.  It's still possible for you to win even with half your team gone.  And, of course, consult with your scum IC for more detailed instructions.]

There was no reason for scum to bus Flying Dice on the first day in a beginners game, right?

[Addressed by IronyOwl, but yeah, this is WIFOM.]

Shakerag, you had no less than a random vote, a finger of suspicion and a pressure vote on Remuthra/FD at various points. Reasonable suspicion, or scum distancing?

Suspicion certainly, but also a healthy dose of pressure (both to catch slip-ups and as an educational tool).  And, admittedly, a bit of unprofessional "I want you to hang because of your eye-fucking formatting and not listening to me when I'm trying to correct that and other things".  Which, depending on how you look at it, is another pressure reason. 

As far as Flying Dice goes, he seemed to be playing pretty solidly to me.  For better or worse, I tend to back off a bit when someone gets replaced so as to get a feel for the replacee.  Since Flying Dice didn't really set off any alarms, I likely chalked up Remuthra's behavior as more "newbie flailing" than "newscum flailing". 

Dead people can be ruled out, as well as inactive players (else, who would have sent in the kill order?).

[Actually, I just remembered at least one instance where a player requested replacement but still sent in night action orders when prompted.  So inactives can't be ruled out automatically.]


Doing a re-read myself, but notquitethere *is* a bit suspicious for the whole "rah rah I'm town go town" thing as IronyOwl noted. 

NQT:  Now that we've had two roleflips, how do you feel about your case on borno?

Ford:

Yay! I made myself a huge hulking target. While playing the doctor. Go me!

I now await the rest of you in the afterlife. I'll keep a cup of tea warm for you.

Indeed.

Well, sort of. Speculating on just why scum killed you is a Bad Thing, but the obvious answer is because you were a dangerous player.

Which is why you killed him, right?

[notquitethere]

Shakerag, I don't have a case against Borno

[notquitethere]

[Accidentally clicked tab then enter...]

... anymore. My new cases are against you and Ironyowl. Until further indication, Borno is presumed innocent.

Flying Dice did look solid, and even I didn't overly suspect Remuthra before. But the meta-data was telling and that's what I went with and that's why Flying Dice is dead.

[On an IC game-advice level, how do you avoid overstating the fact that you are town when playing town? Is there an acceptable level of assuming your own innocence in public, or must you always pretend that you might be guilty, for the benefit of others?]

[Teneb]

Finally:

Deathsword: In the event that all living scum are in need of replacements, can a Scum IC or dead scum direct night actions on the scumteam's behalf?

If all living scum are up for replacement the scum IC may direct the night kill.

[notquitethere]

Hmm... this changes things.

[Onyxjew944]

Onyx, Spaghetti, what do you think of my case against IronyOwl? Or should we be more suspicious of Shakerag?

It seems solid, but it seems to be heavily based on a few critical assumptions that either could easily be false or have already been proven false. You being Town and inactive players being Town, respectively.

NWT Why do you keep mentioning that you are Town?

IronyOwl Besides NQT, who are you currently suspicious of?


Sorry about the current failures in activity, but IRL duty calls. I'll be looking back through our month-long D1 over the weekend. I'll try to remain current on my readings and answer questions, but no WoT investigations for now.

[notquitethere]

Well I keep saying that you and Spaghetti are town as well. I think it's pretty obvious that given the state of the game as it was, bussing would have been completely ridiculous. I'm not trying to push anyone on my purported towndom, the record speaks for itself and everyone should feel free to make their own mind up about it. Clearly more people need to have their say and more retrospection needs to occur before we make our final decisions for the day. Now the doc is dead, we can only afford two mislynches, so we should obviously choose carefully.

That inactive players still might have a vote through the scum IC changes things, and I'll take that fact into account as I continue to look back at the actions of Remuthra/SilverDragon.

[Vector]

I am anticipating a huge backlash here. Whenever I bring up anything half-way logical, people hate it.

Doodabuddy, if it helps to rest your mind I'm a professional mathematician-in-training.  Keep plugging away... you're a clever dude and your data analysis will probably help someday, but accepting lessons with humility is step one to overcoming your predecessors.