To summarize the supporting evidence below, NQT is Scum because:
1) He responds to pressure from Max (who is -extremely- likely to be Scum) differently than he does to pressure from anyone else - he confronts everyone else's pressure - to Max he vacillates and acquiesces over and over and over again.
2) He set up Nerjin to be lynched, simultaneously 'evading' Max's D1 pressure (and Max also lessens, the drops that pressure D1, despite his claim of an inspect N1 changing his opinion of NQT).
3) He waffles about why he lynched Nerjin/why he (claims to have) resurrected Nerjin.
4) He tried to set up Jim in a very similar way to how he tried to set up Nerjin.
5) He seriously discussed the odds of Jim being a monster hunter, really pressed this - despite the value to Town of any possible hunter not being exposed, and the value to Scum in any hunter being exposed.
6) He reacted -greatly- to my counterargument of Persus13's statement "Anyway, NQT couldn't be a Vampire Lord", which didn't say that NQT -was one-, merely challenged that it was not proven impossible.
7) From the beginning of the game - from before Max started to seriously tunnel NQT - NQT has spoken 'oddly' to Max (and to a lesser extent, to Caz) in a way totally different from how he has spoken to every other player. In nearly -every- post interacting with Max - in nearly -every- sentence of interaction with Max, NQT's use of sentence structure has been more complex, his use of commas more frequent, his use of direct and clear speech vastly less. If he were talking to -everyone- like this I would consider it differently, but he's not doing this with everyone. It's constant with Max, slightly present with Caz, and almost completely absent (at least before the tunneling of D1 starts, on page 10 if you use 15 posts per page) from his interactions with anyone else. Past page 10 NQT continues to use this unusual form of speech, especially when interacting with Max (during times of pressure and otherwise) but also during times of likely high stress.
My concern about NQT started with D1. When Max White pressed NQT to the point of tunneling, NQT's reactions were primarily evasive and redirective - not just once, but in almost every sentence of every post with interaction.
I don't even think I've been particularly scummy. You seem to be fabricating a case out of nowhere.
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I can see everything you said, but I don't see how any of it amounts to me being scum.
Okay, now I'd like you to think for a moment what a town player would do when questioned on a point. Do they just roll over? Defensiveness is not a scumtell.
You clearly did question me: there were question marks and everything. It's all quoted there. How is lessening a mistake a scum tell?!
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You obviously missed the post where I said that I didn't intend to imply that playing a town cop was unwinnable. However, being a cop makes me play more aggressively and talk on behalf of the town more and this sort of behavior gets me night killed. Maybe my confidence was misplaced, but it isn't due to me having a scum or third party role.
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You mistake my reasons, and I could have been clearer at the time: the very fact that we're worrying about ettiquette over questioning of essentially meaningless questions is a sympom of there being bugger all of real import to talk about Day One. Now do you see?
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Where are you even getting this from? You asked me questions, I gave you answers.
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I'm not trying to mislead anyone, we're just talking at cross-purposes here.
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You said I'd made a mistake, I acknowledged the mistake and then made a comment about the early game in general. Still failing to see how this makes me scum...
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I think we have different standards as to what constitutes a 'question'. You queried my behaviour, I gave an explanation and expanded on it. Can we stop going round in circles now?
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Obviously I don't think you should ignore what you take to be scumtells and so I took that part of your question to be rhetorical. Did you actually want me to spell that out?
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You mischaracterise what I'm doing. You explicitly stated that I am scum. I deny this. I fail to see how we can both be right about this! I'm trying to get town to appraise your arguments and make a decision. I don't think they should lynch you if they disagree with you: I think you're wrong about me but you're hardly the scummiest player.
Compare this to his recent reaction to my concerns about his weird behavior:
Uh posting from phone right now so can't quote etc. but thought I should quickly nip this nonsense in the bud, Imp. I did my vote analysis and came to the conclusion that Caz was top scum pick. He'd have been my Day 2 pick were it not for two things: Jim appeared to openly lie about me, which I couldn't in good faith ignore, and I realised that Caz's Nerjin vote was later backed up with some (weak) arguments, meaning he'd voted two targets, which made Max more scummy by this metric. End of Day 2 I pegged the scumteam as Caz-Max-Jim. A lot of new information has come to light and I still need to process it all before making fresh conclusions. We clear now? I'm not behaving weirdly or asking to be lynched and you setting me up as a later lynch is incredibly suspicious.
And his tone in response to pressure from Jim:
Jim you're super over-reacting. It was an early Day 2 vote, you said something suspicious, I voted you to press it a bit more then later unvoted in favour of doing more comprehensive reads. Now you're just making shit up: I unvoted you before you voted me. Your behaviour since has only made you come across as scummier. On a lynch-all-liars basis, my vote is going back to you: Jim.
I believe that the reason his tone in response to Max is so different than his reaction to others is that he and Max agreed to 'do a dance'. NQT might not have wanted to agree, he might have had hesitations, and this might well have affected his thinking and writing styles. If it's hard to lie, it's even harder to lie in an 'unnatural' fashion, to lie along lines of thought that you're not completely supporting and are not sure is the best way to do things.
But he did not want to truly counter Max. He did not want to go head on with Max. In fact, he totally redirects - aikido - neatly lining Nerjin up as a target instead -
Now, there's two serious votes in the game: Max is convinced I'm scum, his argument is there for all to read. Nerjin claims Max is seriously over-reacting. Well, who is right?
Max has an argument against me, Nerjin disputes that argument. They both can't be right and both of them have backed up their positions with lynch-votes. The game has left the RVS and there is now substance to discuss. Can you understand why I'd want players to discuss matters of substance in the game? Is Max or Nerjin correct?
A very interesting thing happens between Max and NQT as Nerjin starts to get suspicious questioning - Max White's attacks on NQT ease greatly. His last 'harsh attack' is
here.
His next post doesn't address NQT (that's not unusual, given that NQT has not posted since Max's last post) but when he does
return to the 'attack' on the following post - the teeth are gone. The attack is winding down, the aggression is far less. In his immediately made following post,
Max has switched his focus to Nerjin, though not his vote, and he doesn't post again D1 (that doesn't end until 38 hours later).
So when Max claims:
For those wondering night 1 I did inspect NQT and found him benign. It was enough to convince me to rethink my stance, at least in regards to his day 1 play, but then he started role fishing and wanting to lynch somebody for being a Monster Hunter, and apparently inspects come before converts making him as potentially scum as anybody else... Then Caz flipped cult instead of vampire and it kind of settled that.
That's not what I see. I see that NQT and he 'set up' Nerjin in a way that they both hoped would neatly separate them should either be caught, and that Max 'dropped off' his 'attack' of NQT when there was a likely Town candidate lynch.
As to D2 Scumminess:
The whole mess of his waffling explanation about 'why Nerjin' - both as a lynch and as a resurrection choice. - heck, this post even starts like the same 'stampede' set up that he pulled on Nerjin, now a slightly different style trying to pull on Jim -
Hell, I admit I'm not always right about everything. Let's open these questions up to the floor.
Nerjin, Tiruin, Persus13, Cmega3, Imp, ToonyMan, Caz, Max White, Toaster
If a town monster hunter has an investigate and a kill ability, should they investigate their targets before killing them?
Should a priest use their resurrect power?
But back to that waffling about Nerjin, here's quotes to highlight it:
We knew he was town and by the end of Day 1 it looked like he was getting his act together and finally starting to think critically about the game.
Not sure how wanting to resurrect a confirmed town player is scummy. I was concerned about being night killed before I got the chance to use my power.
I was thinking of the posts immediately before you quoted, like this. He obviously went and reread parts of the thread and seemed to putting in some effort.
Max this is baseless speculation. Nerjin was so borderline. I didn't know whether he was just appearing to give an effort just because I gave an ultimatum and I knew I could resurrect him if I was wrong. I probably would have unvoted him if his scum-pick breakdown had made much sense.
I don't see the contradiction. Nerjin came to be town and I thought he would get his act into gear if he resurrected as town, and I had a strong incentive to use the power N1 before I get mislynched or night killed.
The last was in answer to my challenge, that the same reasons to lynch Nerjin are also reasons NOT to resurrect him.
Speaking of which...
Everyone else, Jim has clearly lied in his response to Toaster to back up his weak case: he just said that "Do you think he would have backed off if I hadn't voted him?" when in fact I had already unvoted when he voted me. Why would a town player need to lie to support their lynch target? Jim is scum and must die tonight.
I don't think Jim's clearly lying. You've only got one vote, but if you can properly direct 'everyone else' - then you've got enough votes to lynch anyone you target. You don't even have to be voting yourself. I don't think Jim meant your 'backing off' meant your unvote. I think he meant something much closer to your backing off on your gathering of crowd-focus to get momentum for a lynch pick, which actually took a fair bit more time than that post and was 'helped' or to your perspective 'hindered' by the general lack of agreement with you on the topic chosen.
I clearly didn't use the tabulation to build a case against you. I tabulated so people could have access to the same information I was working with. Let's be clear now as well: my current case against you is not anything to do with how you'd play a Hunter, it's because you lied to Tiruin about your vote on me and town never have a good reason to lie to press a lynch.
Considering how you 'set Nerjin up' - AND how you twisted the second question from "yes or no resurrection" in your tabulation to "yes or no Nerjin" - I don't believe you. I think you were trying to set Jim up, just like you tried and succeeded in setting Nerjin up. What were you saying about the necessity of lynching liars? For that matter, how -careful- were you to ensure that there wasn't a misunderstanding or misinterpretation on Jim's part?
In what world is unvoting not backing off? Jim casts his votes as trying to get me to back off, which is dubious in and of itself, but his claim that I wouldn't back off if he didn't vote me is an outright lie.
This world - the world of NQT having already set up one lynch in a similar fashion.
Worth mentioning too - that you did focus on the undefined probability of Jim being a monster hunter. I agree that is a scummy thing to do.
Worth mentioning too -
Imp
Because of this, it is possible for NQT to be vampire, and Leader, and have a Scum teammate who is a priest -which would allow him to 'breadcrumb' priest with complete confidence and an ability to 'prove it' as long as his priest doesn't die before he or she can res someone.
Oh not you as well. Do you really think it's plausible that I could learn of a team mate having a priest role and decide to collude with them in bread-crumbing it all in the first hour of playing the game? It's not logically impossible, but it's not very plausible either.
That's a crazy strong reaction to my challenge to Persus13's assumption that it was -impossible- for NQT to be the Vampire Leader (even given that we didn't know if we had vampires).
But here's 'deeper evidence' - given that (I know) Max has lied about being a Sage...
Even from the beginning of the game - from before Max first votes for notquitethere, NQT speaks weirdly to Max (and to a lesser extent to Caz) in a way that is not present when he talks to others. His very sentence structure is different than how he is posting to others. He's using far more commas, he's often writing the sentences 'backwards', using a style that is still good English but isn't simple, direct, or easy - a style that he is NOT using with others. And what he says is typically indefinite - he's answering others for the most part directly. He's answering Max (and sometimes Caz) with vastly more 'dithering' and 'qualifying' - and this happens before serious pressure comes to him from Max, and it doesn't happen when others put pressure on him.
I did talk about this back then, when I compared how NQT was talking to Max as aikido-like - but it's WAY more obvious to me now (and I understand a possible reason for it now that I didn't then - Max, Caz, and NQT are all Scum)
Selected quotes from NQT posts talking to Max (not including any from 'breadcrumb'):
"You see 'acting like scum' is quite nebulous."
"There are, however, certain Day One actions that set off alarm bells for me."
"Also, when I make a mistake of play I try to own up to it: it was wrong of me to question your questioning before the original respondent had responded and it was right of you to pick up on that."
"At my worst, or most enthusiastic, I work off a vague sense of the game's position and post responses without giving adequate consideration to their wording."
"That's what I meant, yes."
"I should say, my play specifically on Day One sometimes suffers mis-steps because I prefer concrete information and also I occasionally don't think about my precise wording when I post."
Selected quotes from NQT posts talking to Caz:
"Also, it's hard to know whether someone genuinely is the most suspicious player, if a whole bunch of players haven't said anything."
"You've probably been asked this already or before, but have you played much mafia before?"
"So this isn't your first spin round the merry-go-round, good"
Comparatively, there is a very direct feel in his answers to others, which also usually average out shorter:
"Only scum and third-parties want to go unnoticed."
"Those are usually the hardest to win by because other roles you can win if your team mates survive after your death."
"It's only a wrong question at this stage of the game if you learn nothing from my response."
"By tailoring my questions to each individual person rather than asking mass questions, the respondents can't get clues on how to answer from the responses of others."
"I see that you answered the questions directed to you reasonably effectively but you didn't deign to answer any in turn"
"Another question: do you think Imp's actions look more like a scum avoid-antagonising-people strategy or an earnest misunderstanding (or something else)?"
"The reason I asked my question was because I wanted to get a sense as to whether Kleril genuinely was looking out for anything different this game."
"That's very nice of you but you could also answer the outstanding question:"
To be fair - there ARE a few other people where he sporadically uses his 'Max style' with before page 10 - however he is not being especially evasive in talking to these others, nor is the sentence structure as strongly changed, and it is sporadic, not consistent.
"Obviously, I read the main thread, but I don't necessarily recall all the usernames of new players."
"There's this idea in chess (and other games) called
momentum, if you're always
reacting to the other player's move they've got momentum."
"I've died twice on N1 as town cop in two BM's and then had the game go on to a town-loss: BM's on this subforum are heavily weighted towards scum, and obviously if I die after the first day there's very little I personally can do to help win them."
"Survivor probably isn't unwinnable, though I've never won as a survivor: it's just much much harder to win because most other alignments don't require living until the end, and there's very little to prevent scum from thinking you're a town-player and offing you in the night"
"I consider town and scum very winnable, and I was pleased to be regular town rather than a third party this game."
"Merely, that wasn't the purpose of my question at the time."
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Topic: Supernatural Mafia 6 - Game Over! (Read 170324 times)