*Wow that guide goes all the way back to the fifth BM... that's why it's so out of date. I read the whole thing and it isn't any better at describing the current meta. I'm kind of interested in how the meta has evolved over time, though, from the hyper-aggressive tunneling behavior promoted in Dakarian's guide to what it is today.
*Having seen the discussion on cryptographic hashing, I now see why it was forbidden in the game. That was more of a curiosity than anything else, I didn't think it should be brought back.
*I personally would say that meta is THE strongest weapon there is, which is why so many BM's end in town loss. Like, seriously, the one time I can remember pegging scum with scumhunting is by analyzing their behavior in terms of their past behavior (this was Toaster in FHPBYOR, and it didn't matter since he died overnight). That's what makes new players so devastating as scum: if they don't trip over some silly thing and get lynched, they'll rarely be caught because nobody knows how they normally play. Similarly, this is why new town players usually don't find scum, because they don't have a read on anyone else over the course of several games.
*Agreeing on the OMGUS thing.
*As we've both stated, the TTHTAT scumtell is incredibly difficult to prove and incredibly subjective. hector13 is probably one of the few people I can actually apply it to, but it's a relatively rare strategy nowadays and again incredibly meta-dependent.
*I'm mostly arguing against the use of lying as a super-scumtell, as you put it. It is definitely scum behavior under many circumstances, though.
*Agreed here.
*I have a vague recollection of somebody mentioning Wuba being fooled by and AtE done by Vector in one of the early BM's (and, if I'm recalling my facts correctly, Vector's first game). Not sure what type of AtE, though.
*Hehehe yes it should be.
Now for some more points of my own:
*I've found that under a lot of circumstances, if you're in a tight spot and there's one lone person talking about how they believe you, and you are not-scum, the person defending you is probably scum looking to gain some major towncred upon your lynch and saying "see, told you so". This isn't defending in the typical sense I see it used, because they defending you in front of everyone else: they're just expressing their opinion that you are town and leaving it at that. Furthermore, townies will tend to be skeptical of even strong logic behind actions (heaven knows I am: Supernatural 7, anyone? I'm not sure how much of it I voiced, but I was constantly going through every possible doomsday scenario in my head of "what if this person is lying"). This is the one example I can think of for TTHTAT that actually has some backing to it.
*Passivity extends beyond just not taking a stand on lynches. It is, rather, the person's entire demeanor. It isn't the kind of "meh, whatevs" passivity either that I'm talking about. I'm talking about the "walking on eggshells and trying not to break them" passivity.
*Lurking in the sense of malign lurking (not being active at critical junctures in the game) is incredibly hard to prove, though. I've occasionally seen reason to call normally active players on their absence, but it's not really a provable thing and more of a gut feeling where the situation can just as easily be "I was at the doctor's". Active lurking is a little more clear, but that really ties directly in to passivity: and active lurker is passive, and a passive player active-lurks. Those should probably be tied into one scumtell: posting without content, avoiding contentious issues, and shying away from voting.
*I've never been clear on why the D1 no-lynch thing is in there to begin with. I'm not sure what the math for lynch vs. no-lynch is, but the only person I've seen bring up no-lynching outside of MYLO/LYLO with any frequency is Varee, but that whole passage seems to be taking up space where it could simply say something like "The D1 lynch provides concrete information that can be combined with D1 discussion to provide a foundation for future scumhunting. Without the D1 lynch, the town has only one death onto which to pin the D1 discussion, and the WIFOM of the mafia kill makes even that an unreliable benchmark."
*On D1 reads lists: enough of them already. I know I used to be one of the big proponents of getting reads out as quickly as possible, to the point where I've ticked off some of the old guard in games, but I've come to my senses in this regard. The only purpose D1 reads lists serve is as excellent WIFOM and rabbit-chasing fodder on later days. D1 reads are MEANINGLESS, particularly in a BM. Unless you get your reads in right at the end of the game-day, having seen the actions of everyone and analyzed them according to their meta, you have an INCREDIBLY small base of information to go off of when making them. This leads to reads lists that are biased by one individual post rather than taking the individual as a whole and are in no way reflective of the person making them's views on later days. However, it is very easy to see someone making an incorrect read or seemingly pushing what in hindsight was a mislynch and jump on that with all your might, which means that D1 reads DO serve as a means of confusion for the town, and an unnecessary one at that. So no more, please, they aren't needed and they aren't beneficial.
*On D1 extensions: as above, DON'T DO IT. Even if somebody hasn't posted anything and promise to within the coming day, the odds are incredibly high that they won't get anything in and a RL day will be wasted with almost no content added. Here's the thing about D1: pretty much every lynch is effectively pseudo-random, barring weird bastard-mod setups where things go wacky (I'm looking at you, Smster w/ Love). Without a lynch result or a broad base of player posts to go on, it is near impossible to make a truly informed decision in your lynch, and who gets lynched really comes down to who was the last person to make a "mistake". I will caveat this entire statement with this: if there is a strong discussion AND the extension will not make the game go over the weekend, ONE 24 hour extension can be helpful for later days, but no more.
Author
Topic: Mafia Theory (Read 75742 times)