The Syndicate

Boomslang wrote:And then J posts a couple of small but meaty little takes on Page 6. I find that timing responsive, not self-driven.

There's the crux of those kinds of assertions. Any provision of content which follows the assertion is inherently open to suggestions of convenience or appeasement. Oh well. I produce reads as they come to mind.

I would also assert that I began putting content in this game thread well before that. A few people now have either mentioned or implied (MP, Golden, and Boomslang perhaps among others) that I haven't given much to this game yet despite my post count. I would contest that. The major conversations to this point have been about the PoE and perhaps about me. Otherwise it has been a thread of check-ins and light-heartedness, which is fine for Day 0. Those more relevant matters though have been the sources of the content I have supplied, and they are the only real sources available.

I don't have a sprinkler of reads spewing from my spickets in response to strategic dialogue, but I stated the perspectives I had -- positive for MP and timmer and barely positive for INH. I have observed people's treatment of me and stated reads -- positive for Dom and negative for Scotty. I have a few more:

I think MP's questions for me have looked genuine. His continued pressing of the issues where he doesn't have a full grasp of my play is sensible and I think reflective of the Urgency At All Times town game he has developed in recent memory -- especially when dealing with me, since he and I more often see eye-to-eye than not.

Sloonei's initial work in suggesting I have been a waffler of sorts was a nice workload for Day 0. I do think though that his choices for highlighting left room for contextual problems (highlighting a word or two that only loosely apply to the stated premise of tentativeness). I also think the core expectation of confidence from anyone, JJJ or not, in a Day 0 lean is rather bunk. So Sloonei should answer for that.

Golden has made some isolated external commentary, but I can't say I'm certain of his own read on me. He's dabbled and poked; I'm wondering if there's a conclusion.

MovingPictures07 wrote:

triceratopzeuhl wrote:I was gonna say, if I want any hope of keeping up with discussion I need to post faster

Sorry, I'm simultaneously torn between being insanely hyped for this game and wanting to generate ALL OF THE CONTENT IN THE UNIVERSE to catch all the town reads so that I can eliminate the mafia as well as trying to pace myself a bit so that I don't flood the thread too much with content.

The former half I think is winning. I need to run a quick errand anyway, so I'll leave again for a bit.

Yeah, sometimes the instinct within is too powerful. I have tried to restrain myself and here I am with way too many posts.

triceratopzeuhl wrote:Now hold on JJJ - I didn't say it was dangerous necessarily, mostly I'm getting at that it doesn't sound very useful until you have a confident read on most of the players. IMO it's not necessarily worse than misreading somebody as bad and lynching civs that way.

also, MP if I call you alex do people know who I'm talking about? maybe I should stick to usernames lol


linki - I played the game MP hosted on progarchives + a couple or three games on each of 4EW, the piano, and here, IIRC

I was referring specifically to your rainbow comment, not the POE stuff. Maybe I misinterpreted. I ask about your other sites to gauge your experience with rainbow lists -- and at those sites I would guess it's limited or non-existent.

What other sites have you played Mafia on trice?

MovingPictures07 wrote:What do you like about it?

His comment about your rainbow looks like one emerging from a brainstate where such a thing is unusual and may seem dangerous -- but it's there so we might as well make use of it.

That state seems more town-inclined than not.

triceratopzeuhl wrote:

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:triceratopzeuhl:

In your first post you acknowledged the quick beginnings of the baddie hunting in this game with what looked like an air of approval. Your content since though has been about the POE strategic discussion. Do you derive any reads from that?

Just impressed with the gusto from some people even if it might be mostly hot air. I can't tell much on day 0 and I seriously doubt anybody else can, no matter what they claim. We don't even have a lynch vote today, no night actions have happened, there isn't even a semi-nonsensical day 0 poll like some hosts like to do (MP comes to mind). At best one of the over-enthused paragraphs here will sound funny & gather suspicion - but who is more likely to be theorycrafting and looking for a winning strategy for the civs, goodies or baddies? Baddies benefit more from not directing attention at themselves.

Anyway, if alex is going to be posting his rainbow list here instead of keeping his reads private, it will if nothing else provide fodder for discussion

I like this post.

I'm not sure you understand my meaning, Dom. I don't think Mac is tentative either way. Sloonei suggested my tentativeness is atypical, and I was drawing a distinction between myself and players (like Mac and Zebra) who will state confident reads on a Day 0.

I make reads on Day 0s which is itself perhaps atypical, but I don't act like they're authoritative.

triceratopzeuhl:

In your first post you acknowledged the quick beginnings of the baddie hunting in this game with what looked like an air of approval. Your content since though has been about the POE strategic discussion. Do you derive any reads from that?

I just made that decision with Dom, and I was giving Scotty time to expand which hasn't happened.

Scotty's accusation of me looks like a stance taken for the sake of taking a stance. That's less ideal.

Dom's reception of my poo fling at MP appears genuine. I can understand someone who didn't follow Transistor first hand might think it looks like I'm sussing MP for posting more than other people. In a vacuum that would look like a dubious notion.

Golden wrote:A qualifier - I don't know if it's because of what sloonei points out, but I independently felt in the PoE discussion, inh MP (and I) were all having a genuine discussion, and you almost were putting an oar in out of obligation because you know you are linked to the use of PoE in some peoples eyes. It's almost like you didn't want to contribute to the discussion but you did anyway. That's how it came across to me.

That's probably because past discussions of POE have been a hot mess. I did want to state my perspective since the concept applies a different way in a game like this, but no I was not thrilled to be talking about bloody POE again.

@Sloonei

The first one could be called a concession. Even when I'm town I often only half believe in my earliest reads/assertions. That's because being right is less important than the products of those assertions (responses from the focus of the assertion and other observers). When there's poop to fling one might as well fling it. That's sometimes the only way to make the game move.

I don't really have anything to say about "I guess". Replace those words with a shrug emoji and my intended message doesn't change.

MovingPictures07 wrote:

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Sloonei, I would question whether confidence would make sense in the contexts you've referenced. I made assertions based upon my best understanding of the discussions and that was it. I can't derive a confident read on INH, for example, based upon the point for which MP requested feedback. I said as much. I can provide a tentative lean by meta but little else.

I think the meta you're assigning to me is better associated with a Zebra or a Mac. I may exhibit confidence eventually, but everything is tentative on Day 0. This one especially has been a large portion of strategic debate (I'll accept a share of the blame for that) and check-ins. The capacity for generating meaningful reads out of that is limited.

I could assert that it appears as though you aren't making sincere efforts to generate content. What would you say in response to that accusation?

I would say I'm actively trying *not* to generate content. I've said before that blowing the thread up on Day 0 deters too many people from keeping up with the game. I've actually posted more than I would have liked already by instinct.

Day 1 is a time for making things happen.

Sloonei, I would question whether confidence would make sense in the contexts you've referenced. I made assertions based upon my best understanding of the discussions and that was it. I can't derive a confident read on INH, for example, based upon the point for which MP requested feedback. I said as much. I can provide a tentative lean by meta but little else.

I think the meta you're assigning to me is better associated with a Zebra or a Mac. I may exhibit confidence eventually, but everything is tentative on Day 0. This one especially has been a large portion of strategic debate (I'll accept a share of the blame for that) and check-ins. The capacity for generating meaningful reads out of that is limited.

I've spent like ten minutes looking at timmer's posts because they make me feel something, I just couldn't decide what.

A) His curious exploration of PoE with MP reflects a genuine interest in a method he hasn't considered, and his decision to forego it for now develops naturally from his stated concerns. That'd be nice.

B) He took the opportunity to discuss strategic matters without really thinking about their merits for his own sake. It creates posts in his ISO and establishes a rapport with an active contributor. That'd be less than nice.

Having typed both out now I feel like A) is more reasonable. So that's nice for timmer.

Dom wrote:

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:

Scotty wrote:No beef, mostly tofu

You see, I'm on a special diet of only civs and you aren't on the menu

Okay.

Why don't I satisfy your diet?

bc you served a bunch of bull product when you read MP as bad because he's posting a lot.

1. Why are you answering for Scotty?

2. That's an oversimplification of what I did that makes it sound worse than it was. I made a very specific numeral comparison to a game when MP was bad. It's not that he "posted a lot", it's that he utterly obliterated the count lead by a mile. He doesn't always manage quite that. It was something that concerned me in Transistor because I thought it might get him into trouble for being too tryhard. The memory came to me here so I poked him with it. I don't read him as bad. He warrants a little more poking than most other players because he does well to convey "genuine" effort regardless of alignment. I doubt it's the last time I'll poke him.

Scotty wrote:No beef, mostly tofu

You see, I'm on a special diet of only civs and you aren't on the menu

Okay.

Why don't I satisfy your diet?

I think you're good people INH. We may not agree about anything in Mafia, but oh well.

Sloonei wrote:Usually I'm all for tons of chatter out of the gate, but I'm too tired to read 140 posts right now, so you can all gonto hell.

You're probably not the only one that feels that way. I think we let our dialogue drag too long and I am going to chill out for the rest of Day 0. This is check-in time, not blow up the thread time.

That changes when the lynching starts.

Hey look at that. Twinsies.

DrWilgy wrote:I lost interest after reading PoE 3 times

JJJ and MP, are you teammates again?

If MP is town we are.

#redefiningteam #notonlybaddiesworktogether

Do you have a reason to suspect we're bad together?

It's probably a small point of dissent that appears larger in a lengthy discussion, because I don't have a baddie read on INH. The only read-relevant thing I have to say is that he's on meta, and that's still a positive thing even if only weakly so.

MovingPictures07 wrote:

Golden wrote:I didn't see disdain from inh. He seemed to be fine with others using it, pointed out that it had a particular weakness in this game, and made it clear he wouldn't be using it. That's all perfectly reasonable.

Yeah, this was part of my point; as a member of the mafia, if he in reality feels so strongly against POE, he could have easily derailed the entire thread by responding in a more emotionally manipulative manner. Instead, he popped in, noticed a potential hole in my strategy, expressed his beefs, and then was basically like 'OK, you do you, I'll do me'. I would expect that a mafia INH might have been more tempted to respond more outrageously, or at least draw out the conversation more. He seemed intent to express his piece and then end it.

I guess I don't agree with this assertion. I don't think "emotional manipulation" is a typical circumstance in strategic dialogue regardless of alignment. Sometimes it gets heated when people don't understand each other like it did in Red vs. Blue, but that's an exception and not the rule in my experience (and in that game everyone involved minus Epi was town).

Dom wrote:

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Actually MP, your post count has already jumped to an obscene place. I'm not sure I've seen it quite like this since you started Transistor with 57 posts before the second-highest poster made it to #8.

You over-eager cuz you bad, m8?

i got a cherry tree out back
wanna pick some more?

It's a cherry pick if MP dominates the early post count this much in every game, and I don't think he does. Indeed other than Transistor I might say the other most applicable comparison is to the Scrimmage (I can't remember his precise post count comparatively; I just remember it being very high very early). It doesn't make him bad, but it's worth throwing some poop.

MovingPictures07 wrote:Perhaps I'm being unclear. He displayed no inherent agenda in that conversation; that's what I'm trying to express. Now I'll need to see more from him, obviously, to determine whether that continues to be a pattern, but tentatively I think there is an interpretation to his behavior that he handled my conversation in a manner befitting a player more likely town than not.

Perhaps I'm also missing key perspective here though considering I didn't engage in the Red vs. Blue game and only read parts of it during and after the fact.

It sounds like you're saying in so many words that you think he appears sincere in his perspective and his conveyance of that perspective. I would agree with that. I think it's a perspective he has embraced in a number of recent games. I don't really derive any meaningful read from it because I think it's the default answer for him.

MovingPictures07 wrote:

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Actually MP, your post count has already jumped to an obscene place. I'm not sure I've seen it quite like this since you started Transistor with 57 posts before the second-highest poster made it to #8.

You over-eager cuz you bad, m8?

Furthermore, I could say that this was a bit of a softball, Jay, fabricated to seem as though you care about uncovering my alignment, but with no actual value in determining that or in generating useful conversation.

What would you say in response to that?

I would say that it probably is a softball, or perhaps it's better described as a poo fling. That's the nature of Day 0. I'm more conscious of the specific point I made than the average player because I was on your baddie team in Transistor. It came to mind so I puked it into the thread. You had 30 posts and I was in second place with I think 8. That's a significant disparity that recalled the even more significant disparity in that other game.

MovingPictures07 wrote:

That's fair, but I think you're somewhat missing the point that I'm making. Don't you agree that there is potential for a mafia INH to have engaged in that conversation in a more antagonistic or opportunistic manner? I don't see the avenue for it based on the way he approached it.

I know it's weak, but I feel like this is significant given how early we are in the game, and I want opinions on this. Am I reading too much into this or am I onto something?

I'm not sure what kind of opportunity you'd expect to be capitalized on here in the event of a baddie INH. Is there something about a discussion of PoE that incites or invites antagonism? I think INH responded to the mention of PoE as I'd always expect him to respond to it -- with disdain. You're right that he didn't turn it into some kind of eruption of a dialogue, but I don't know that that was ever likely in the first place regardless of alignment. It's just generic strategy chatter.

He's on meta so far. That's worth something even if it's weak.

Scotty wrote:Hi.

JJJ is bad.



If anyone wants me, I'll be listening to REM

Hi Scotty.

No. What's your beef?

MovingPictures07 wrote:I am townreading that highlighted bit. That sentiment is constructed in a manner that bluntly stated his beef; at face value, I believe him. Further, I like his last paragraph, because as a member of the mafia he could have easily used this conversation to derail or antagonize as a way to manipulate the thread, but he left it alone.

In summary, INH noted my declaration to use POE, noted a fair criticism of its approach in this game, then after engaging with me a bit further on it, clearly stated his beef with it, that he will be using a different method, and was willing to leave it at that. I see no nefarious avenue for the way he approached this situation, only a fellow member of the town sincerely expressing his concerns and approach to the game.

It's not much, but I think already the strategy conversation at least generated a potentially useful read. What do you think?

I think INH completely misinterpreted/misrepresented my perspective (I won't even be using much PoE myself in this game, he assumed the contrary based on I don't know what). That happens in every game we play together though so shrug. We seem to have some core inability to understand one another that has never ceased.

I think his stance on the issue suits his meta, which is a decent enough look so early in the game that there's nothing better to say.

Golden wrote:Inadvertently, getting Jay on my side through use of PoE while I was a civilian, when he was under attack from people who didn't believe in it, allowed me to manipulate him a little into seeing the serial killer through the same PoE lens when I knew I could use it against him.

To be fair, I was perfectly ready to lynch you until that bastardized role intervened.

MovingPictures07 wrote:

JaggedJimmyJay wrote:Actually MP, your post count has already jumped to an obscene place. I'm not sure I've seen it quite like this since you started Transistor with 57 posts before the second-highest poster made it to #8.

You over-eager cuz you bad, m8?

You wish.

It's really just that I'm dying to play another game after being prematurely taken out in Monkey Island, I'm procrastinating dissertation stuff, and I've been absolutely loving sitting here at my computer the last like five hours just dicking around on the internet (without even worrying about admin stuff here, or teaching, or other PhD concerns). It's been glorious. I haven't done this in way too long.

Cool. Cool cool cool.

Any immediate perspectives emerging from the little chats you've had to this point?

Actually MP, your post count has already jumped to an obscene place. I'm not sure I've seen it quite like this since you started Transistor with 57 posts before the second-highest poster made it to #8.

You over-eager cuz you bad, m8?

Epignosis wrote:Townie is Such a Pussy Word

There is no wimpier word than "baddie".

insertnamehere wrote:"playing for the town win condition," which I assume means following POE to the letter.

As I've said 8,000 times in these games, I don't care who does or doesn't use "PoE". It's just one strategy among many. When I say I want townies to play for the town win condition, that means I want to see their reads. I want to see their suspicions. I want to see their cases.

When too many people refuse to play with any transparency because they don't want to die, town loses. When town loses, the survival win condition no longer matters because winning is already impossible.

Obviously everyone should play however they want. I doubt my perspective will change anyone's minds.

Minor town points to MP for jumping into the thread with a distinct strategy in mind and a willingness to discuss its merits and shortcomings in a way that I think looks genuine.

I think INH is right that a cooperative PoE effort in a game where townies must survive to win is inherently challenged, because in games like this town reads are generally harder to come by. However, the only reason that's true is that townies are more hesitant to put forth a visible, vocal effort for fear of standing out and becoming kill targets. That problem is resolved if every townie puts forth a visible, vocal effort.

Maybe that's a pipe dream, but I would encourage the townies out there to still make a concerted effort to play for the town win condition as much as their own survival. To focus too much on survival ensures that the baddies benefit maximally from these rules as I would theorize they typically do. I think it's the #1 reason town won games so infrequently on this site until recently (as that rule has appeared less often).

Rico, please don't interpret this as a complaint. It's just advice.

Rico is that your handwriting? It's strangely mesmerizing.

Cool beans. I'll take this opportunity to actually listen to one of their things. It's been ages.