DFS Mafia [ENDGAME]

[MacDougall]

Like since when is being irrational in how one formulates town reads a mafia tell?

[MacDougall]

I just want to know why I am still at risk of being lynched when the majority of the participants here have me as a strong to moderate town read? Can we just put all our votes on someone that we all agree is bad please?

Talk to me about why Robot over Alien.

Or why sprityo or anyone else really.

What's your POE? I just gave mine.

Alien has defended me when there was no cause to and I think that Russ's case on Alien was flawed, which remains the largest single reason Alien has votes. Alien has sounded pingy which is no surprise for a new player. Alien has been open and forthcoming with lots of information. I think Alien is a mislynch.

What did you think of my meta thing?

Completely overlooked whatever you are talking about.

[ColinIsCool]

Oh wait ... you say that in the post ....

[Tangrowth]

[mention]Tsaiah[/mention]

Alien is my #1 preferred lynch; Robot is my #2.

Despite my fluctuating reads I don't feel like my reasons on them have changed really from my list about 7 hours ago. Here is the link.

What do you think of Alien and Robot?

[MacDougall]

I don't like that right now under pressure of lynch Alien appears to be circling around me looking for an excuse to put a vote on me.

[Tangrowth]

Spoiler: show

I just want to know why I am still at risk of being lynched when the majority of the participants here have me as a strong to moderate town read? Can we just put all our votes on someone that we all agree is bad please?

Talk to me about why Robot over Alien.

Or why sprityo or anyone else really.

What's your POE? I just gave mine.

Alien has defended me when there was no cause to and I think that Russ's case on Alien was flawed, which remains the largest single reason Alien has votes. Alien has sounded pingy which is no surprise for a new player. Alien has been open and forthcoming with lots of information. I think Alien is a mislynch.

What did you think of my meta thing?

Completely overlooked whatever you are talking about.

Honestly I'm putting more stock in that because I just played two games with him than what Russ has said on its own; they go together.

Hold on, I'll get it for you and tag you in it.

[Infected_alien8_]

Spoiler: show

He stopped being self centered and looked outside himself, providing a better reasoning to his reads and interacting with other players.

does self-centered naturally follow to somebody being mafia to you, or is this a question of playstyle compatibility for you?

It’s not that, it was the matter of not contributing to the thread outside of the people who in any aspect poked at him. The moment mac started contributing to the overall well being of the thread I started to reconsider if maybe I jumped the gun on him

there's a difference between "not contributing" (not posting game-relevant information or attempting to solve) and "not contributing to the overall well being of the thread" (this is more about thread health and is less AI from my perspective). which one are you referring to here? because the distinction is important

if it's the first one then oh boy do we have some disagreements about Mac's play so far.

You’ve lost me, can you explain the differences better?

yeah, sorry. this is how i interpret the two:

not contributing=not making any attempts to solve the game, make comments on it, offer opinions, generate content, etc. could be lurking, could be avoiding offering takes on any situations, could be posting only fluffy spammy content.

not contributing to the overall well being of the thread=not trying to boost thread mood/morale, not rallying other players, posting toxic or overly distracting content (not necessarily all of these, but that's the basic idea).

which one are you trying to say is going on with Mac's earlier posts and then changed?

Oh definitely the latter.

Assuming Mafia has a day chat, I want to say that aby and sprit aren't a team. Aby asks him "which of these two options is it, 1 or 2? If it's 1, we'll disagree." Sprit says 2. The part where aby kind of warns him about her disagreeing is something I imagine she'd say in Mafia chat to him rather than out in the open because it could look suspicious (personally I think it's probably not alignment indicative so much as just a style of hunting)

[RobotNerd277]

okay hi I have missed the whole day, like 24 hours of it

I'm not going to bother trying to catchup. I'll just respond to mentions/quotes

Part of the problem with Robot is I don't really know what she stands on anything. Hopefully she can come back soon.

RobotNerd277

[VOTE: ROBOTNERD277] aubergine

I'll switch back here for now.

have a gut reads list (based on not reading anything since yesterday night (approximately 20 pages ago), with minimal iso skimming):

abyssum - remarks their perspective on what's going on, and I found their insights useful to analyzing the thread iirc, (though I can't recall an example of that aff the top of my head.
ColinIsCool - Asks a lot of questions and is involved in conversation. Seems okay to me.
DharmaHelper - So I'm sure this read should change if I had read the last 20 pages, but at that point, DH hadn't done anything particularly useful? He seemed like he was gearing up for a Big Statement though.
Infected_alien8_ - Alien... annoys me tbh. Particularly wrt how he kept putting pressure on me and luna that one time.
JaggedJimmyJay - Helpful, asking questions of people, putting pressure down.
Kylemii - I don't have a solid read on them yet. I only recall them talking about one post that took them 3 hours to make. I don't remember what the post was.
Lunalee - I liked her response to my question about mac vs spirityo, and that's what decided my vote.
MacDougall - my negative read on mac initially came from early day 0 joking, and then asserting that he was never joking and this frustrated me. Afterwards he's been a good townie, contributing to game decently well.
Marmot - I haven't seen any Marmot posts.
M Plus 7 - Talkative as usual. day 0 was really willing to give out townreads. that (thankfully) didn't really keep up once he got the power to vote, putting pressure in places he wanted people to talk from.
Russtifinko - Likes ISOs and walls and I appreciate their analyses.
sprityo - In the spate against mac, spirityo came out looking worse.
Tsaiah - On day 0 she seemed super excitable and pure as fuck.
Turnip Head - Not particularly memorable. I don't see much in the way of serious posts in TH's iso.

Robot's giant catchup post part 2 (pages 5-halfway thru 8)

Okay, I do actually want to hear whatever JaggedJimmyJay has to say, but I'm certain that none of the ego deflation is gonna shut him up so

~~~

I like JaggedJimmyJay's reads (in and around this post) but I personally don't think there's enough in the thread to peg DH as scum. He seems pretty resistant to posting in force until Day 1 properly starts. That's a viewpoint I personally dislike, but I don't think it necessarily reflects on DH's alignment, just his character.

~~~

hmm, I feel like at this point I should have a stronger read on JaggedJimmyJay. He's questioning Colin, hard, which is a good and reasonable thing to do. I think I'm just tinfoiling against him.

Hey there Robot. Could you expand on what's going on here in one of your catch-up posts? These were your first mentions of me I believe, and I'm not sure what inspired the yellow-highlighted bit there. You reneged on that a bit later, but I am wondering where it came from in the first place? Your handling of me so far has been a bit peculiar, foremost because there isn't much of it (and I have been louder than anyone else short of MP), and because it's difficult to follow your perspective of me.

So the tinfoil is basically "I think it's obvious that you're being a good and helpful townie, but WHAT IF?" I think I have overall discarded the tinfoil and trust you now. At this point my townread on you is one of my strongest reads.

@Marmot

hi do you exist

what is your opinion on literally anything? I think I particularly want perspectives on MacDougall, whose play I initially read as overly abrasive and distracting, but I'm now nodding my head along to everything they're saying. What do you think of them and their opinions?

While I appreciate any prod of the lowest post count to get them moving, this strikes me as the token "freebie post". When you're not sure what else to say, poke the lurker.

Did you see how I poked Luna like, two pages before this? And it ended up in an honestly kind of stressful conversation wherein I criticized alien for attacking luna's points and my words were unclear and misrepresented? ([mention]Lunalee[/mention], I'm still sorry about that)

and then I did it again because it's important to me that people talk so that there's something to get a read on.

The next few mentions aren't actually directed at me but I started responding to them anyways

Spoiler: show

Wait why the sudden flip onto Kylemii? I'm willing to join the wagon, but I just don't understand why.

Because Sprityo is scum obviously. You can see it by the way his wagon has had this passive resistance against it.

So you're saying Jay is scum, as the person leading the flip? I... don't want to buy that but I'll keep this moment in my back pocket.

Kind of ew.

that's just an "in case all hell breaks loose, this is a significant interaction"

I think my giant catchup posts are proving detrimental to actually catching up so I'm gonna not do that and instead skim the last several pages and hopefully eventually get back to the beginning of the thread and have time to iso colin and mac. I haven't read anything since daystart and I should fix that immediately.

Robot you should either just ISO me or ignore me completely because I'm pretty sure I'm like over 1/3 of the entire thread myself. Not sure which is more conducive to understanding what happens in the thread.

Yeah sorry I'm ignoring you.

Not sure a mafioso is as likely to make this blunt statement.

it is only at this point that I realized that the quotes/mentions mechanic notifies you regardless of whether you're being talked to.

@Marmot

hi do you exist

what is your opinion on literally anything? I think I particularly want perspectives on MacDougall, whose play I initially read as overly abrasive and distracting, but I'm now nodding my head along to everything they're saying. What do you think of them and their opinions?

I'll give Robot a vote.

This is a very wishy-washy post. Additionally, Robot is focusing a lot of attention on Macdougall, despite admitting here that he agrees with Mac.

That's my opinion, have it.

See above about treating you the same way as luna but tbh I guess you're right that was an easy post to go for? It wasn't like I was grasping at straws about what to post though. There was plenty to talk about, on the topic of MacDougall alone, let alone the isos of colin, mac, and spirityo, the rainbow reads list (which I guess I just checked off my todolist), and probably a bunch of other things that would appear while in the middle of working on the todolist? I just sorta fell asleep at that point and then had an Unexpectedly Busy Day irl afterwards and I'm still super behind on my todolist which now includes reading the 20 pages I never experienced.

@Infected_alien8_ and @RobotNerd277 the gun to head has revealed that you two are the most suspicious amongst the group who did it.

Can you please re-affirm your positions and make a read on one another?

Who did what? I could make a whole post about Alien, particularly about the alien + spirityo v mac conversation, and alien v me and luna conversation. I'm getting a little tired of keeping this one in the queue though, so I'll write that up immediately.

Ahhhhhhhhh I want to hear from @RobotNerd277 and @Tsaiah so baaad

on my way!

rl alibi for being afk literally all day (not gonna tag as off-topic because my absence is relevant to my gameplay):

Spoiler: show

as soon as I mentioned feeling better after being feverish yesterday, my family had me going grocery shopping and cooking and whenever my sister saw me going to my computer she'd complain "you're addicted to that game" and shut me down and give me some other cooking task. I'll try to shut my sister down a bit better. ftr there's a big party on saturday that my family is very fretting about.

[MacDougall]

I also don't like that the three people voting for me right now are all Mafia on my GTH.

[Tangrowth]

[mention]MacDougall[/mention]

@Russtifinko
@Kylemii
@Tsaiah

Random Alien meta musings:

Okay, after perusing Alien in WC1 (scum) versus G9 (town) again, I think I see the following meta differences:

- Alien's questions in G9 are more nuanced (moderate difference)
- Aliens' reads in WC1 are more verbose and hedgey (moderate difference)

See the subsequent spoilers for examples (I could have included so many more but I tried to distill down to 3 each):

Wild Card 1 [Alien is scum]

Spoiler: show

I'm super underwhelmed with Alien. Let's do it.

[V]Infected_alien8_[/V]

How are you feeling underwhelmed exactly?

If you want we can talk, I'm here, and I can pause on the catching up for a while because I doubt I'm ever going to catch up before the end of the day at this rate.

Hey Alien!

I just was hoping to see more from you I suppose, not sure what all of your reads are. I do suppose you have been poking and prodding while here but I’ve not been getting as much a sense where you are going other than with your Arch case and even then we just haven’t gotten on the same page.

I don’t think I want to lynch you in particular in the end, probably would rather Jari, but I am exploring the POE options

What are all of your reads now?

Oh, did you change your mind about finding my points on Arch compelling then? How come?

My main suspect is still Arch. After Arch I have very slight suspicions on [MENTION=2320]Five[/MENTION] (I may have just not caught up to your answer yet, but why are you town-reading me so hard?) and Mantis (just because of the point I just made).

I have a tentative slight town-read on Dave, because I feel similarly to before but the Zack-esque impression I was feeling yesterday is not as strong anymore. I have a slight town-read on Ara because although I have a gut feeling they're town, and I've liked a lot of their posts, there was one post that pinged me that I mentioned before, so my town-read of her has gone down slightly. I also have a tentative town-read on John, purely based on gut again. I also think Slaan is quite town because I get the sense they're genuinely trying to contribute and they're not afraid to say things that might not resonate with others and get a bit messy, but a few people have said they're great at being Mafia, and this is again just an impression I have of them rather than be going back to confirm this with specific posts because I haven't had the time to do that. I also have a very slight town-read on you just because, when I compare you to last game, in my mind you're basically the same, except I did note you used the emote this game a few times and I don't remember you using those last game but I think that's sort of a silly point so I'm ignoring it, and I feel satisfied about the pre-game thought process thing now that I understand it was about that instead of your current playstyle, though I still am slightly tinfoily/weary that you're attempting to ally with aby so I'm not feeling completely safe with you.

Everybody else is somewhere around neutral at varying degrees that I haven't thought about yet.

So, essentially, my main scum-read is Arch, then five and mantis as very slight things, then a handful of slight town-reads but nothing strong.

Spoiler: show

Hey everyone, I'm here and caught up.

Before I say anything I'd like to encourage you all to ISO me if you have the time. I know how I look if you just look at my vote day 1 but I'm at least hopeful that if you read all my posts, my Townie objective will bleed through. If it doesn't then that's my fault I guess in which case I'm sorry but I've done my best to scum-hunt and figure out the game and if you have any specific queries as to why I did what I did then let me know.

The end of day vote itself, sure, I can see why that might look suspicious because in a Mafia world, voting on Jari in that case would have been a good move. But I had genuine reasons for my move there as a Townie as well, and I think it's logical and not something I'm making up now because way before end of the day I was having a gut feeling on John being Town so that's why I didn't vote there (combined with my other point at end of the day RE his 'slip' response). I get why I'm mislynch material but I also think I have a decent case for me being Town - or I'm assuming so - so please read my posts and let me know if there's anything else you find suspicious and I can clear it up, and in the meantime I'm going to try to get something else in the event I'm spared.

Reads-wise, I town-read dich the most. I also town-read Ara - I'm getting random tinfoil moments about them but I want to ignore them at the moment. Same thing with Dave, except since wiggles said Dave wouldn't bus his partner and was Town, I trust his meta on that for now.

Mantis I get a Townie tone from their posts, their interaction with John felt genuine to me, and they have a sort of cool 'hmm' about them in my mind which feels like a genuine Town pondering on what's going on. That feels like a somewhat trashy articulation of my read but I can't really think of a better way to put it haha. At the same time though, the fact they town-read John, then after a while said it 'faded' without giving a reason (@mantis what was that reason?), then recommended someone that they vote Jari but never voted themself and also said they were fine with John reads to me as suspicious because it's like they wanted to suddenly lose John as a town-read so that when they got lynched she'd look good, but also wanted to defend John in favour of Jari to keep their rolecop but felt they'd look bad being on Jari if John got lynched so sort of froze up in indecision. That's all just a pretty little theory I have to explain it though and there's a Town explanation as well but this is why they're a candidate for a lynch to me - preferably not today though, unless nothing else comes up at all, because overall I do like her posts and my gut says she's Town.

I also think TK is Town. I guess I'm sympathetic of his end of day 1 wrong vote placement thing because I know I'm in a similar boat as Town (although I don't really feel that with mantis, I guess because her story is the progression leading up to her decision whereas mine and TK's has reasoning behind it that I can understand), but also, and this may be a silly point, but the fact he qualified as Mafia last game makes me have pretty high expectations of his Mafia game, and the fact he entered the thread by mostly just talking about how to play the game rather than making any reads, which I'd imagine he'd be self conscious of, and the fact he let his vote placement look so bad (as Mafia surely he'd forsee that), makes me lean Town. That's all WIFOM I suppose but that's the way my brain is thinking right now. Also his posts today just seem like genuine solving and I like the fact he keeps wanting credit for his ideas (lynching me which I know will end up wrong, and lynching dich which I think will end up wrong) makes me think he's Town as well because I doubt he'd keep wanting to take credit for wrong ideas as Mafia, but maybe his WIFOM is really strong.

Spoiler: show

I don't feel like you're actually trying to discern my alignment here. There's no answer I can give to this question that informs your read in a positive direction.

To answer your question, I didn't because I didn't feel like it? I pretty much voted you and nearly thereafter felt I didn't want to actually vote you anymore. I didn't feel it was serving any purpose, and my mood shifted, and I was distracted on phone. That's the answer. You can see it in my ISO.

I disagree, I can read your reason and see if I buy it or not and see how you respond to my pressure. Though I will agree the answer you have given doesn't swing me either way at all because it's fair enough and not really what I was expecting to be honest

Total horse $#@!. Your question was a loaded question.

In what way was it a loaded question?

Game 9 [Alien is town]

Spoiler: show

DansGame

I find this post quite generic and empty, which makes me question whether you're truly trying to piece together the game or just going through the motions to act the part:

@Secondhand Reverant 223

As I said, I like giving reads early when I have them. It was a very very slight townread anyway and need to see more posts from them.

Other reads so far:
Slight town
M Plus 7 - asking questions and contributing a lot to the discussion
Necrominius - seems to be approaching the game with an open mind. Developing reads based on content but not tunneling, thoughtful reasoning with their reads

Most everyone else is so far neutral
Slight Mafia Lean - Aldax for being nervous about being lynched, not seeming to want to open up about their thoughts

Thinking someone is town because they ask questions and contribute a lot just seems a little thin/empty to me, and isn't really the sort of read I expect from someone who supposedly doesn't know anyone's allignment and is paranoid about everyone and trying to work out who's trying to steer the game one way and who's trying to steer the game another and how they're going about doing it. If someone's contributing a lot and asking lots of questions, I think it then depends on the nature of their contribution and questions to determine their allignment, which you didn't mention.

Also, why are you singeling out Necro for approaching the game with an open mind, developping reads based on content, not tunnelling and having thoughtful reasoning with their reads? Do you not think anyone else has done any of that? Because in my opinion almost everyone has done that. So again it seems a bit generic and empty and like you just felt the need to single a few people out to look the part of 'I have a couple trusted people but everyone else I have no idea on because I'm town!' but didn't fully develop your scum-reading thought processes on them, because you don't need to, because you're not actually scum-hunting.

Also when what makes you think Aldax isn't wanting to open up about their thoughts? This leads to the next point:

Spoiler: show

I should have been more clear: I'm used to random voting on D1 but I'm not gonna blindly vote here, I don't know enough about the etiquette on MU games to risk throwing a random vote that can potentially bite me later on.

Seems a little nervous about the possibility of being lynched. What's wrong with giving your opinions early game? If you're lynched and you flip town, it gives people more to go off of if you are giving your reads. Do you have any reads or thoughts about anyone yet?

Thinking about this post a little more, and I don't like it.

For one, re: the bolded/underlined, Dans doesn't really elaborate on what is giving him that impression, nor does he seem to consider whether Aldax's perspective is coming from one of a different culture. In fact, what I don't like is that Dans isn't really giving us what he thinks about Aldax's alignment in here, in any form.

This is just a weaksauce post. The line of questioning is soft ball.

I could almost see this post by Dans being a post that one mafia member throws at another. It's soft distancing. But that's a bit cart ahead of horse.

Not being willing to give your thoughts because you're worried about possibly getting lynched because of them definitely seems alignment indicative and not just culture clash.

Whether intentional or not, I actually think you're strawmanning his points here. He said he wasn't willing to vote randomly because he was afraid it would bite him later, not that he was afraid to give his thoughts, from what I saw. Unless by 'random' he didn't mean truly random and meant he wasn't willing to out his suspicions, but from what I can tell he never said that, so where are you getting that from? It seems a bit to me like you're trying to find a reason to suspect him rather than truly scum-hunting, hence the misrepresentation of his points, either internally inside your head (because you're not bothered enough to read over and check in-depth his thoughts because you're not truly scum-hunting), or just externally to try to throw shade onto him or deflect suspicion from you by those who don't agree with your suspicion on him (by saying "actually look he did this super scummy thing"), hoping nobody notices. Since that'd be risky I lean towards the notion that you misrepresent his arguments in your own head, but I think it could be because, like I said, you're not truly scum-hunting and are more trying to find reasons to suspect people rather than genuinely working from the ground up. I think if you're trying to find reasons to suspect people you're probably more prone to forgetting what someone truly was saying because you're just focusing on throwing shade at them rather than truly being surprised/suspicious of something that stood out to you (which would probably be easier to remember clearly), so that's my logic behind that.

Spoiler: show

So you first did your ISO of robot and said they were scummy. Then you seemed to back off because of the people voting them, which is, I'm assuming, the part you're referring to when you said your opinion changed on them because of them having votes piled up? Or is that not right?

Then, you agree with SR that they seem scummy again.

Then, I don't think you mention them again until your neutral read on them where you say they're flying under your radar.

So if quote #2 is the part where robot moves up, and after that, quote #3 you reconsider that, why did you go silent on them for a while until neutral reading them the next day?

Spoiler: show

I just read through MP7's write up on Aldax/Asek. It makes sense. I don't have anything to add since when I was reading Asek/jdark, I thought a lot of Asek's actions screamed partners with Aldax.

How come you didn't say that in your analysis by the way?

This is tough though. Meta and all of that. He's a very impressive player either way (and I thought that from the moment we both started playing the G9 qualifier and still felt that way when I lynched him as scum in the WC1 game after changing my mind on him too many times).

[MacDougall]

Changing my vote to Alien

[Infected_alien8_]

This post in which mac goes through individually his options he put forth for an information lynch, he backs up how that will benefit the town as a whole and I thought that looked good on him

Do you think we should follow the advice he laid out in that post?

I think its a valid option, and technically appeals to me through mac’s eyes.

However, it can, and could very well be an easy way to get pressure off himself. In where mac thought he could get an easy lynch out of me, he was met with resistance and now has to backtrack to another lynch. Only this time he adds understandable reasons it’s to lynch XYZ unlike previously.

You don't think Mac provided understandable reasons to lynch you the first time around?

Absolutely, 100%, no.

What? Yes or no?

[MacDougall]

Reasons:

1. Put distance between our wagons
2. I read things in that RobotNerd post that I thought were civvie intuition (particularly the reads)

[ColinIsCool]

@sprityo do you think that making specific/visible attempts to improve thread health is alignment-dependent rather than player-dependent? lol.

Alignment dependent. Visible effort would be seen, or st least I hope it would be seen if it was player dependent

in my experience there are usually a few specific players in the thread who make visible attempts to improve thread health or boost the morale of other players (MP7 does it on large amounts of speed, i care about thread health but am not quite as visible about it, Tsaiah is also on speed but is more subtle about it, i know players who don't touch the topic at all).

you've played w/ Mac before right? do you see those attempts from him as town?

In memory, I see him as different than when we played together in Retrocasuslty

But I have scope sprityo. It's what makes me good. I have a ton of gears and I have a Mafia and town version of each one. I have been playing for a long ass time and I have mastered this game. I know it sounds conceited but it's just true. Such to the extent that I consistently tell people all my tells and how to read me just to challenge myself.

Hmm I want to lynch Mac

[Tangrowth]

Spoiler: show

does self-centered naturally follow to somebody being mafia to you, or is this a question of playstyle compatibility for you?

It’s not that, it was the matter of not contributing to the thread outside of the people who in any aspect poked at him. The moment mac started contributing to the overall well being of the thread I started to reconsider if maybe I jumped the gun on him

there's a difference between "not contributing" (not posting game-relevant information or attempting to solve) and "not contributing to the overall well being of the thread" (this is more about thread health and is less AI from my perspective). which one are you referring to here? because the distinction is important

if it's the first one then oh boy do we have some disagreements about Mac's play so far.

You’ve lost me, can you explain the differences better?

yeah, sorry. this is how i interpret the two:

not contributing=not making any attempts to solve the game, make comments on it, offer opinions, generate content, etc. could be lurking, could be avoiding offering takes on any situations, could be posting only fluffy spammy content.

not contributing to the overall well being of the thread=not trying to boost thread mood/morale, not rallying other players, posting toxic or overly distracting content (not necessarily all of these, but that's the basic idea).

which one are you trying to say is going on with Mac's earlier posts and then changed?

Oh definitely the latter.

Assuming Mafia has a day chat, I want to say that aby and sprit aren't a team. Aby asks him "which of these two options is it, 1 or 2? If it's 1, we'll disagree." Sprit says 2. The part where aby kind of warns him about her disagreeing is something I imagine she'd say in Mafia chat to him rather than out in the open because it could look suspicious (personally I think it's probably not alignment indicative so much as just a style of hunting)

I don't totally understand?

Also I mean I think this is a neat observation but why is this what you are choosing to focus on with less than an hour until EOD?

Whom do you want to lynch Alien? What's your POE?

WHY IS YOUR VOTE STILL ON ME?

[Tangrowth]

I think Alien just literally parking his vote on me this entire time is a bad look too. Like what the actual heck?

[MacDougall]

@sprityo do you think that making specific/visible attempts to improve thread health is alignment-dependent rather than player-dependent? lol.

Alignment dependent. Visible effort would be seen, or st least I hope it would be seen if it was player dependent

in my experience there are usually a few specific players in the thread who make visible attempts to improve thread health or boost the morale of other players (MP7 does it on large amounts of speed, i care about thread health but am not quite as visible about it, Tsaiah is also on speed but is more subtle about it, i know players who don't touch the topic at all).

you've played w/ Mac before right? do you see those attempts from him as town?

In memory, I see him as different than when we played together in Retrocasuslty

But I have scope sprityo. It's what makes me good. I have a ton of gears and I have a Mafia and town version of each one. I have been playing for a long ass time and I have mastered this game. I know it sounds conceited but it's just true. Such to the extent that I consistently tell people all my tells and how to read me just to challenge myself.

Hmm I want to lynch Mac

[Infected_alien8_]

I am not Mafia for being hair brained Jay. Hair brained logic and whacky strategies are not part of my mafia meta.

Mac has written 'whacky' rather than 'wacky' in this sentence. as you all know, 'whack' is often used colloquially to mean to murder or kill (i.e., "He got whacked by the mob"). this is yet another example of a slip in Mac's posting, and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is mafia.

pack it up boys, this one's a done deal

See I KNEW it was a slip before!!!!

[Tangrowth]

Thanks for the thoughts, Robot! Reading it all now.

[Infected_alien8_]

Spoiler: show

It’s not that, it was the matter of not contributing to the thread outside of the people who in any aspect poked at him. The moment mac started contributing to the overall well being of the thread I started to reconsider if maybe I jumped the gun on him

there's a difference between "not contributing" (not posting game-relevant information or attempting to solve) and "not contributing to the overall well being of the thread" (this is more about thread health and is less AI from my perspective). which one are you referring to here? because the distinction is important

if it's the first one then oh boy do we have some disagreements about Mac's play so far.

You’ve lost me, can you explain the differences better?

yeah, sorry. this is how i interpret the two:

not contributing=not making any attempts to solve the game, make comments on it, offer opinions, generate content, etc. could be lurking, could be avoiding offering takes on any situations, could be posting only fluffy spammy content.

not contributing to the overall well being of the thread=not trying to boost thread mood/morale, not rallying other players, posting toxic or overly distracting content (not necessarily all of these, but that's the basic idea).

which one are you trying to say is going on with Mac's earlier posts and then changed?

Oh definitely the latter.

Assuming Mafia has a day chat, I want to say that aby and sprit aren't a team. Aby asks him "which of these two options is it, 1 or 2? If it's 1, we'll disagree." Sprit says 2. The part where aby kind of warns him about her disagreeing is something I imagine she'd say in Mafia chat to him rather than out in the open because it could look suspicious (personally I think it's probably not alignment indicative so much as just a style of hunting)

I don't totally understand?

Also I mean I think this is a neat observation but why is this what you are choosing to focus on with less than an hour until EOD?

Whom do you want to lynch Alien? What's your POE?

WHY IS YOUR VOTE STILL ON ME?

I'm catching up, not focusing on it in particular

My vote's still on you because I haven't decide where to change it yet because I'm not caught up

[MacDougall]

@MacDougall

@Russtifinko
@Kylemii
@Tsaiah

Random Alien meta musings:

Okay, after perusing Alien in WC1 (scum) versus G9 (town) again, I think I see the following meta differences:

- Alien's questions in G9 are more nuanced (moderate difference)
- Aliens' reads in WC1 are more verbose and hedgey (moderate difference)

See the subsequent spoilers for examples (I could have included so many more but I tried to distill down to 3 each):

Wild Card 1 [Alien is scum]

Spoiler: show

I'm super underwhelmed with Alien. Let's do it.

[V]Infected_alien8_[/V]

How are you feeling underwhelmed exactly?

If you want we can talk, I'm here, and I can pause on the catching up for a while because I doubt I'm ever going to catch up before the end of the day at this rate.

Hey Alien!

I just was hoping to see more from you I suppose, not sure what all of your reads are. I do suppose you have been poking and prodding while here but I’ve not been getting as much a sense where you are going other than with your Arch case and even then we just haven’t gotten on the same page.

I don’t think I want to lynch you in particular in the end, probably would rather Jari, but I am exploring the POE options

What are all of your reads now?

Oh, did you change your mind about finding my points on Arch compelling then? How come?

My main suspect is still Arch. After Arch I have very slight suspicions on [MENTION=2320]Five[/MENTION] (I may have just not caught up to your answer yet, but why are you town-reading me so hard?) and Mantis (just because of the point I just made).

I have a tentative slight town-read on Dave, because I feel similarly to before but the Zack-esque impression I was feeling yesterday is not as strong anymore. I have a slight town-read on Ara because although I have a gut feeling they're town, and I've liked a lot of their posts, there was one post that pinged me that I mentioned before, so my town-read of her has gone down slightly. I also have a tentative town-read on John, purely based on gut again. I also think Slaan is quite town because I get the sense they're genuinely trying to contribute and they're not afraid to say things that might not resonate with others and get a bit messy, but a few people have said they're great at being Mafia, and this is again just an impression I have of them rather than be going back to confirm this with specific posts because I haven't had the time to do that. I also have a very slight town-read on you just because, when I compare you to last game, in my mind you're basically the same, except I did note you used the emote this game a few times and I don't remember you using those last game but I think that's sort of a silly point so I'm ignoring it, and I feel satisfied about the pre-game thought process thing now that I understand it was about that instead of your current playstyle, though I still am slightly tinfoily/weary that you're attempting to ally with aby so I'm not feeling completely safe with you.

Everybody else is somewhere around neutral at varying degrees that I haven't thought about yet.

So, essentially, my main scum-read is Arch, then five and mantis as very slight things, then a handful of slight town-reads but nothing strong.

Spoiler: show

Hey everyone, I'm here and caught up.

Before I say anything I'd like to encourage you all to ISO me if you have the time. I know how I look if you just look at my vote day 1 but I'm at least hopeful that if you read all my posts, my Townie objective will bleed through. If it doesn't then that's my fault I guess in which case I'm sorry but I've done my best to scum-hunt and figure out the game and if you have any specific queries as to why I did what I did then let me know.

The end of day vote itself, sure, I can see why that might look suspicious because in a Mafia world, voting on Jari in that case would have been a good move. But I had genuine reasons for my move there as a Townie as well, and I think it's logical and not something I'm making up now because way before end of the day I was having a gut feeling on John being Town so that's why I didn't vote there (combined with my other point at end of the day RE his 'slip' response). I get why I'm mislynch material but I also think I have a decent case for me being Town - or I'm assuming so - so please read my posts and let me know if there's anything else you find suspicious and I can clear it up, and in the meantime I'm going to try to get something else in the event I'm spared.

Reads-wise, I town-read dich the most. I also town-read Ara - I'm getting random tinfoil moments about them but I want to ignore them at the moment. Same thing with Dave, except since wiggles said Dave wouldn't bus his partner and was Town, I trust his meta on that for now.

Mantis I get a Townie tone from their posts, their interaction with John felt genuine to me, and they have a sort of cool 'hmm' about them in my mind which feels like a genuine Town pondering on what's going on. That feels like a somewhat trashy articulation of my read but I can't really think of a better way to put it haha. At the same time though, the fact they town-read John, then after a while said it 'faded' without giving a reason (@mantis what was that reason?), then recommended someone that they vote Jari but never voted themself and also said they were fine with John reads to me as suspicious because it's like they wanted to suddenly lose John as a town-read so that when they got lynched she'd look good, but also wanted to defend John in favour of Jari to keep their rolecop but felt they'd look bad being on Jari if John got lynched so sort of froze up in indecision. That's all just a pretty little theory I have to explain it though and there's a Town explanation as well but this is why they're a candidate for a lynch to me - preferably not today though, unless nothing else comes up at all, because overall I do like her posts and my gut says she's Town.

I also think TK is Town. I guess I'm sympathetic of his end of day 1 wrong vote placement thing because I know I'm in a similar boat as Town (although I don't really feel that with mantis, I guess because her story is the progression leading up to her decision whereas mine and TK's has reasoning behind it that I can understand), but also, and this may be a silly point, but the fact he qualified as Mafia last game makes me have pretty high expectations of his Mafia game, and the fact he entered the thread by mostly just talking about how to play the game rather than making any reads, which I'd imagine he'd be self conscious of, and the fact he let his vote placement look so bad (as Mafia surely he'd forsee that), makes me lean Town. That's all WIFOM I suppose but that's the way my brain is thinking right now. Also his posts today just seem like genuine solving and I like the fact he keeps wanting credit for his ideas (lynching me which I know will end up wrong, and lynching dich which I think will end up wrong) makes me think he's Town as well because I doubt he'd keep wanting to take credit for wrong ideas as Mafia, but maybe his WIFOM is really strong.

Spoiler: show

I don't feel like you're actually trying to discern my alignment here. There's no answer I can give to this question that informs your read in a positive direction.

To answer your question, I didn't because I didn't feel like it? I pretty much voted you and nearly thereafter felt I didn't want to actually vote you anymore. I didn't feel it was serving any purpose, and my mood shifted, and I was distracted on phone. That's the answer. You can see it in my ISO.

I disagree, I can read your reason and see if I buy it or not and see how you respond to my pressure. Though I will agree the answer you have given doesn't swing me either way at all because it's fair enough and not really what I was expecting to be honest

Total horse $#@!. Your question was a loaded question.

In what way was it a loaded question?

Game 9 [Alien is town]

Spoiler: show

DansGame

I find this post quite generic and empty, which makes me question whether you're truly trying to piece together the game or just going through the motions to act the part:

@Secondhand Reverant 223

As I said, I like giving reads early when I have them. It was a very very slight townread anyway and need to see more posts from them.

Other reads so far:
Slight town
M Plus 7 - asking questions and contributing a lot to the discussion
Necrominius - seems to be approaching the game with an open mind. Developing reads based on content but not tunneling, thoughtful reasoning with their reads

Most everyone else is so far neutral
Slight Mafia Lean - Aldax for being nervous about being lynched, not seeming to want to open up about their thoughts

Thinking someone is town because they ask questions and contribute a lot just seems a little thin/empty to me, and isn't really the sort of read I expect from someone who supposedly doesn't know anyone's allignment and is paranoid about everyone and trying to work out who's trying to steer the game one way and who's trying to steer the game another and how they're going about doing it. If someone's contributing a lot and asking lots of questions, I think it then depends on the nature of their contribution and questions to determine their allignment, which you didn't mention.

Also, why are you singeling out Necro for approaching the game with an open mind, developping reads based on content, not tunnelling and having thoughtful reasoning with their reads? Do you not think anyone else has done any of that? Because in my opinion almost everyone has done that. So again it seems a bit generic and empty and like you just felt the need to single a few people out to look the part of 'I have a couple trusted people but everyone else I have no idea on because I'm town!' but didn't fully develop your scum-reading thought processes on them, because you don't need to, because you're not actually scum-hunting.

Also when what makes you think Aldax isn't wanting to open up about their thoughts? This leads to the next point:

Spoiler: show

I should have been more clear: I'm used to random voting on D1 but I'm not gonna blindly vote here, I don't know enough about the etiquette on MU games to risk throwing a random vote that can potentially bite me later on.

Seems a little nervous about the possibility of being lynched. What's wrong with giving your opinions early game? If you're lynched and you flip town, it gives people more to go off of if you are giving your reads. Do you have any reads or thoughts about anyone yet?

Thinking about this post a little more, and I don't like it.

For one, re: the bolded/underlined, Dans doesn't really elaborate on what is giving him that impression, nor does he seem to consider whether Aldax's perspective is coming from one of a different culture. In fact, what I don't like is that Dans isn't really giving us what he thinks about Aldax's alignment in here, in any form.

This is just a weaksauce post. The line of questioning is soft ball.

I could almost see this post by Dans being a post that one mafia member throws at another. It's soft distancing. But that's a bit cart ahead of horse.

Not being willing to give your thoughts because you're worried about possibly getting lynched because of them definitely seems alignment indicative and not just culture clash.

Whether intentional or not, I actually think you're strawmanning his points here. He said he wasn't willing to vote randomly because he was afraid it would bite him later, not that he was afraid to give his thoughts, from what I saw. Unless by 'random' he didn't mean truly random and meant he wasn't willing to out his suspicions, but from what I can tell he never said that, so where are you getting that from? It seems a bit to me like you're trying to find a reason to suspect him rather than truly scum-hunting, hence the misrepresentation of his points, either internally inside your head (because you're not bothered enough to read over and check in-depth his thoughts because you're not truly scum-hunting), or just externally to try to throw shade onto him or deflect suspicion from you by those who don't agree with your suspicion on him (by saying "actually look he did this super scummy thing"), hoping nobody notices. Since that'd be risky I lean towards the notion that you misrepresent his arguments in your own head, but I think it could be because, like I said, you're not truly scum-hunting and are more trying to find reasons to suspect people rather than genuinely working from the ground up. I think if you're trying to find reasons to suspect people you're probably more prone to forgetting what someone truly was saying because you're just focusing on throwing shade at them rather than truly being surprised/suspicious of something that stood out to you (which would probably be easier to remember clearly), so that's my logic behind that.

Spoiler: show

So you first did your ISO of robot and said they were scummy. Then you seemed to back off because of the people voting them, which is, I'm assuming, the part you're referring to when you said your opinion changed on them because of them having votes piled up? Or is that not right?

Then, you agree with SR that they seem scummy again.

Then, I don't think you mention them again until your neutral read on them where you say they're flying under your radar.

So if quote #2 is the part where robot moves up, and after that, quote #3 you reconsider that, why did you go silent on them for a while until neutral reading them the next day?

Spoiler: show

I just read through MP7's write up on Aldax/Asek. It makes sense. I don't have anything to add since when I was reading Asek/jdark, I thought a lot of Asek's actions screamed partners with Aldax.

How come you didn't say that in your analysis by the way?

This is tough though. Meta and all of that. He's a very impressive player either way (and I thought that from the moment we both started playing the G9 qualifier and still felt that way when I lynched him as scum in the WC1 game after changing my mind on him too many times).

It's compelling

[Kylemii]

okay I'm back what new things have developed in the last 10 pages

[MacDougall]

Why am I getting so many random suspicions from random ass posts from random ass poor contributors. WHYYYYYY

[MacDougall]

okay I'm back what new things have developed in the last 10 pages

We did a GTH.

[Tangrowth]

I definitely would rather lynch Alien than Robot. Let's please lynch Alien.

[ColinIsCool]

Also yeah I mean Marmot can be inactive relatively but when he wants to be he is fucking clutch as fuck and I will hear no arguments to the contrary

I'm the Andy Dalton of mafia. Absolutely not clutch, and I rely on other players playing their brains out to look good.

JaggedJimmyJay, how does this post make you feel?

[Tangrowth]

Spoiler: show

Spoiler: show

there's a difference between "not contributing" (not posting game-relevant information or attempting to solve) and "not contributing to the overall well being of the thread" (this is more about thread health and is less AI from my perspective). which one are you referring to here? because the distinction is important

if it's the first one then oh boy do we have some disagreements about Mac's play so far.

You’ve lost me, can you explain the differences better?

yeah, sorry. this is how i interpret the two:

not contributing=not making any attempts to solve the game, make comments on it, offer opinions, generate content, etc. could be lurking, could be avoiding offering takes on any situations, could be posting only fluffy spammy content.

not contributing to the overall well being of the thread=not trying to boost thread mood/morale, not rallying other players, posting toxic or overly distracting content (not necessarily all of these, but that's the basic idea).

which one are you trying to say is going on with Mac's earlier posts and then changed?

Oh definitely the latter.

Assuming Mafia has a day chat, I want to say that aby and sprit aren't a team. Aby asks him "which of these two options is it, 1 or 2? If it's 1, we'll disagree." Sprit says 2. The part where aby kind of warns him about her disagreeing is something I imagine she'd say in Mafia chat to him rather than out in the open because it could look suspicious (personally I think it's probably not alignment indicative so much as just a style of hunting)

I don't totally understand?

Also I mean I think this is a neat observation but why is this what you are choosing to focus on with less than an hour until EOD?

Whom do you want to lynch Alien? What's your POE?

WHY IS YOUR VOTE STILL ON ME?

I'm catching up, not focusing on it in particular

My vote's still on you because I haven't decide where to change it yet because I'm not caught up

This isn't good enough. What are your reads right now? Surely you have them even if you aren't fully caught up. Whom do you want to lynch right now?

I'm giving you a gun, Alien. Whom do you shoot and why?

[Tangrowth]

I feel like this is deja vu from Wild Cards 1. Alien is bad. I'm feeling pretty solid now.

He was frozen there when DaveDob asked him similar questions about whom to vote.

I don't recall him getting like this in Game 9.

[Infected_alien8_]

Oh wait I think I may have seen Marmot post before but I thought they were a host due to their name colour lol

[Turnip Head]

okay I'm back what new things have developed in the last 10 pages

Hi kyle thanks for being here. We're all just up to our usual tricks, posting this and that. Also Mac slipped but I don't have time to explain it

[Tangrowth]

If Alien was town and about to die, I can't fathom why he wouldn't have the biggest fire coming out of his ass right now.

Instead he keeps himming and hawwing about this and that, and he cannot even satisfactorily tell me his reads, his POE, his preferred lynch, or why he has parked his vote still on me.

His suspicion of me is fake.

He needs to be lynched.

[MacDougall]

Updated to include Russ's GTH



Marmot you still haven't given me a GTH on Lunalee.

[Tangrowth]

Spoiler: show

@MacDougall

@Russtifinko
@Kylemii
@Tsaiah

Random Alien meta musings:

Okay, after perusing Alien in WC1 (scum) versus G9 (town) again, I think I see the following meta differences:

- Alien's questions in G9 are more nuanced (moderate difference)
- Aliens' reads in WC1 are more verbose and hedgey (moderate difference)

See the subsequent spoilers for examples (I could have included so many more but I tried to distill down to 3 each):

Wild Card 1 [Alien is scum]

Spoiler: show

I'm super underwhelmed with Alien. Let's do it.

[V]Infected_alien8_[/V]

How are you feeling underwhelmed exactly?

If you want we can talk, I'm here, and I can pause on the catching up for a while because I doubt I'm ever going to catch up before the end of the day at this rate.

Hey Alien!

I just was hoping to see more from you I suppose, not sure what all of your reads are. I do suppose you have been poking and prodding while here but I’ve not been getting as much a sense where you are going other than with your Arch case and even then we just haven’t gotten on the same page.

I don’t think I want to lynch you in particular in the end, probably would rather Jari, but I am exploring the POE options

What are all of your reads now?

Oh, did you change your mind about finding my points on Arch compelling then? How come?

My main suspect is still Arch. After Arch I have very slight suspicions on [MENTION=2320]Five[/MENTION] (I may have just not caught up to your answer yet, but why are you town-reading me so hard?) and Mantis (just because of the point I just made).

I have a tentative slight town-read on Dave, because I feel similarly to before but the Zack-esque impression I was feeling yesterday is not as strong anymore. I have a slight town-read on Ara because although I have a gut feeling they're town, and I've liked a lot of their posts, there was one post that pinged me that I mentioned before, so my town-read of her has gone down slightly. I also have a tentative town-read on John, purely based on gut again. I also think Slaan is quite town because I get the sense they're genuinely trying to contribute and they're not afraid to say things that might not resonate with others and get a bit messy, but a few people have said they're great at being Mafia, and this is again just an impression I have of them rather than be going back to confirm this with specific posts because I haven't had the time to do that. I also have a very slight town-read on you just because, when I compare you to last game, in my mind you're basically the same, except I did note you used the emote this game a few times and I don't remember you using those last game but I think that's sort of a silly point so I'm ignoring it, and I feel satisfied about the pre-game thought process thing now that I understand it was about that instead of your current playstyle, though I still am slightly tinfoily/weary that you're attempting to ally with aby so I'm not feeling completely safe with you.

Everybody else is somewhere around neutral at varying degrees that I haven't thought about yet.

So, essentially, my main scum-read is Arch, then five and mantis as very slight things, then a handful of slight town-reads but nothing strong.

Spoiler: show

Hey everyone, I'm here and caught up.

Before I say anything I'd like to encourage you all to ISO me if you have the time. I know how I look if you just look at my vote day 1 but I'm at least hopeful that if you read all my posts, my Townie objective will bleed through. If it doesn't then that's my fault I guess in which case I'm sorry but I've done my best to scum-hunt and figure out the game and if you have any specific queries as to why I did what I did then let me know.

The end of day vote itself, sure, I can see why that might look suspicious because in a Mafia world, voting on Jari in that case would have been a good move. But I had genuine reasons for my move there as a Townie as well, and I think it's logical and not something I'm making up now because way before end of the day I was having a gut feeling on John being Town so that's why I didn't vote there (combined with my other point at end of the day RE his 'slip' response). I get why I'm mislynch material but I also think I have a decent case for me being Town - or I'm assuming so - so please read my posts and let me know if there's anything else you find suspicious and I can clear it up, and in the meantime I'm going to try to get something else in the event I'm spared.

Reads-wise, I town-read dich the most. I also town-read Ara - I'm getting random tinfoil moments about them but I want to ignore them at the moment. Same thing with Dave, except since wiggles said Dave wouldn't bus his partner and was Town, I trust his meta on that for now.

Mantis I get a Townie tone from their posts, their interaction with John felt genuine to me, and they have a sort of cool 'hmm' about them in my mind which feels like a genuine Town pondering on what's going on. That feels like a somewhat trashy articulation of my read but I can't really think of a better way to put it haha. At the same time though, the fact they town-read John, then after a while said it 'faded' without giving a reason (@mantis what was that reason?), then recommended someone that they vote Jari but never voted themself and also said they were fine with John reads to me as suspicious because it's like they wanted to suddenly lose John as a town-read so that when they got lynched she'd look good, but also wanted to defend John in favour of Jari to keep their rolecop but felt they'd look bad being on Jari if John got lynched so sort of froze up in indecision. That's all just a pretty little theory I have to explain it though and there's a Town explanation as well but this is why they're a candidate for a lynch to me - preferably not today though, unless nothing else comes up at all, because overall I do like her posts and my gut says she's Town.

I also think TK is Town. I guess I'm sympathetic of his end of day 1 wrong vote placement thing because I know I'm in a similar boat as Town (although I don't really feel that with mantis, I guess because her story is the progression leading up to her decision whereas mine and TK's has reasoning behind it that I can understand), but also, and this may be a silly point, but the fact he qualified as Mafia last game makes me have pretty high expectations of his Mafia game, and the fact he entered the thread by mostly just talking about how to play the game rather than making any reads, which I'd imagine he'd be self conscious of, and the fact he let his vote placement look so bad (as Mafia surely he'd forsee that), makes me lean Town. That's all WIFOM I suppose but that's the way my brain is thinking right now. Also his posts today just seem like genuine solving and I like the fact he keeps wanting credit for his ideas (lynching me which I know will end up wrong, and lynching dich which I think will end up wrong) makes me think he's Town as well because I doubt he'd keep wanting to take credit for wrong ideas as Mafia, but maybe his WIFOM is really strong.

Spoiler: show

I don't feel like you're actually trying to discern my alignment here. There's no answer I can give to this question that informs your read in a positive direction.

To answer your question, I didn't because I didn't feel like it? I pretty much voted you and nearly thereafter felt I didn't want to actually vote you anymore. I didn't feel it was serving any purpose, and my mood shifted, and I was distracted on phone. That's the answer. You can see it in my ISO.

I disagree, I can read your reason and see if I buy it or not and see how you respond to my pressure. Though I will agree the answer you have given doesn't swing me either way at all because it's fair enough and not really what I was expecting to be honest

Total horse $#@!. Your question was a loaded question.

In what way was it a loaded question?

Game 9 [Alien is town]

Spoiler: show

DansGame

I find this post quite generic and empty, which makes me question whether you're truly trying to piece together the game or just going through the motions to act the part:

@Secondhand Reverant 223

As I said, I like giving reads early when I have them. It was a very very slight townread anyway and need to see more posts from them.

Other reads so far:
Slight town
M Plus 7 - asking questions and contributing a lot to the discussion
Necrominius - seems to be approaching the game with an open mind. Developing reads based on content but not tunneling, thoughtful reasoning with their reads

Most everyone else is so far neutral
Slight Mafia Lean - Aldax for being nervous about being lynched, not seeming to want to open up about their thoughts

Thinking someone is town because they ask questions and contribute a lot just seems a little thin/empty to me, and isn't really the sort of read I expect from someone who supposedly doesn't know anyone's allignment and is paranoid about everyone and trying to work out who's trying to steer the game one way and who's trying to steer the game another and how they're going about doing it. If someone's contributing a lot and asking lots of questions, I think it then depends on the nature of their contribution and questions to determine their allignment, which you didn't mention.

Also, why are you singeling out Necro for approaching the game with an open mind, developping reads based on content, not tunnelling and having thoughtful reasoning with their reads? Do you not think anyone else has done any of that? Because in my opinion almost everyone has done that. So again it seems a bit generic and empty and like you just felt the need to single a few people out to look the part of 'I have a couple trusted people but everyone else I have no idea on because I'm town!' but didn't fully develop your scum-reading thought processes on them, because you don't need to, because you're not actually scum-hunting.

Also when what makes you think Aldax isn't wanting to open up about their thoughts? This leads to the next point:

Spoiler: show

Seems a little nervous about the possibility of being lynched. What's wrong with giving your opinions early game? If you're lynched and you flip town, it gives people more to go off of if you are giving your reads. Do you have any reads or thoughts about anyone yet?

Thinking about this post a little more, and I don't like it.

For one, re: the bolded/underlined, Dans doesn't really elaborate on what is giving him that impression, nor does he seem to consider whether Aldax's perspective is coming from one of a different culture. In fact, what I don't like is that Dans isn't really giving us what he thinks about Aldax's alignment in here, in any form.

This is just a weaksauce post. The line of questioning is soft ball.

I could almost see this post by Dans being a post that one mafia member throws at another. It's soft distancing. But that's a bit cart ahead of horse.

Not being willing to give your thoughts because you're worried about possibly getting lynched because of them definitely seems alignment indicative and not just culture clash.

Whether intentional or not, I actually think you're strawmanning his points here. He said he wasn't willing to vote randomly because he was afraid it would bite him later, not that he was afraid to give his thoughts, from what I saw. Unless by 'random' he didn't mean truly random and meant he wasn't willing to out his suspicions, but from what I can tell he never said that, so where are you getting that from? It seems a bit to me like you're trying to find a reason to suspect him rather than truly scum-hunting, hence the misrepresentation of his points, either internally inside your head (because you're not bothered enough to read over and check in-depth his thoughts because you're not truly scum-hunting), or just externally to try to throw shade onto him or deflect suspicion from you by those who don't agree with your suspicion on him (by saying "actually look he did this super scummy thing"), hoping nobody notices. Since that'd be risky I lean towards the notion that you misrepresent his arguments in your own head, but I think it could be because, like I said, you're not truly scum-hunting and are more trying to find reasons to suspect people rather than genuinely working from the ground up. I think if you're trying to find reasons to suspect people you're probably more prone to forgetting what someone truly was saying because you're just focusing on throwing shade at them rather than truly being surprised/suspicious of something that stood out to you (which would probably be easier to remember clearly), so that's my logic behind that.

Spoiler: show

So you first did your ISO of robot and said they were scummy. Then you seemed to back off because of the people voting them, which is, I'm assuming, the part you're referring to when you said your opinion changed on them because of them having votes piled up? Or is that not right?

Then, you agree with SR that they seem scummy again.

Then, I don't think you mention them again until your neutral read on them where you say they're flying under your radar.

So if quote #2 is the part where robot moves up, and after that, quote #3 you reconsider that, why did you go silent on them for a while until neutral reading them the next day?

Spoiler: show

I just read through MP7's write up on Aldax/Asek. It makes sense. I don't have anything to add since when I was reading Asek/jdark, I thought a lot of Asek's actions screamed partners with Aldax.

How come you didn't say that in your analysis by the way?

This is tough though. Meta and all of that. He's a very impressive player either way (and I thought that from the moment we both started playing the G9 qualifier and still felt that way when I lynched him as scum in the WC1 game after changing my mind on him too many times).

It's compelling

What specifically is compelling about it?

[Infected_alien8_]

Spoiler: show

Spoiler: show

You’ve lost me, can you explain the differences better?

yeah, sorry. this is how i interpret the two:

not contributing=not making any attempts to solve the game, make comments on it, offer opinions, generate content, etc. could be lurking, could be avoiding offering takes on any situations, could be posting only fluffy spammy content.

not contributing to the overall well being of the thread=not trying to boost thread mood/morale, not rallying other players, posting toxic or overly distracting content (not necessarily all of these, but that's the basic idea).

which one are you trying to say is going on with Mac's earlier posts and then changed?

Oh definitely the latter.

Assuming Mafia has a day chat, I want to say that aby and sprit aren't a team. Aby asks him "which of these two options is it, 1 or 2? If it's 1, we'll disagree." Sprit says 2. The part where aby kind of warns him about her disagreeing is something I imagine she'd say in Mafia chat to him rather than out in the open because it could look suspicious (personally I think it's probably not alignment indicative so much as just a style of hunting)

I don't totally understand?

Also I mean I think this is a neat observation but why is this what you are choosing to focus on with less than an hour until EOD?

Whom do you want to lynch Alien? What's your POE?

WHY IS YOUR VOTE STILL ON ME?

I'm catching up, not focusing on it in particular

My vote's still on you because I haven't decide where to change it yet because I'm not caught up

This isn't good enough. What are your reads right now? Surely you have them even if you aren't fully caught up. Whom do you want to lynch right now?

I'm giving you a gun, Alien. Whom do you shoot and why?

Isn't good enough? Why is me catching up not good enough?

My reads right now - luna/mac I'd be happy lynching. You I think I want to get off you for now. Kyle/Colin/Jay/Aby seem Town. Uhhh, no strong feelings about anyone else right now I don't think?

[sprityo]

I'm a bit... perturbed at sprityo voting Alien. Not sure what to do with that.

Pray tell, why?

I just read the ISO Russ did and it’s solid enough. His introductory segment wasn’t really related to the overall content, more so like a presenter catching the audience into listening with a good personal story. I got the general idea of his back and forth self countering color dealio. And it makes sense, but I didn’t but personally find it convincing. What I did find convincing was the statistics he used when showing when alien “buddies” jay. (Another good presenting strategy, I’m studying this rn in school). 23 sounds like a lot but i’d Also like to know what it is in comparison to someone else in the game. I find the “scum asking questions to stay relevant” strategy a very common one at that so it’s a good lead to follow. What really sold me however was the waffling. Particularly the statement of why would you back down on someone who you think slipped? I want to read it again to make sure but from how it was given by russ, there wasn’t a super good reason not to pursue the line of thinking.

What did you think of my meta analysis on Alien?

[Infected_alien8_]

If Alien was town and about to die, I can't fathom why he wouldn't have the biggest fire coming out of his ass right now.

Instead he keeps himming and hawwing about this and that, and he cannot even satisfactorily tell me his reads, his POE, his preferred lynch, or why he has parked his vote still on me.

His suspicion of me is fake.

He needs to be lynched.

What? I have 30 minutes do I not?

I have no issue telling you why I'm parked on you, I just did. I've told you my reads, I just did. I'm still catching up.

[MacDougall]

Spoiler: show

yeah, sorry. this is how i interpret the two:

not contributing=not making any attempts to solve the game, make comments on it, offer opinions, generate content, etc. could be lurking, could be avoiding offering takes on any situations, could be posting only fluffy spammy content.

not contributing to the overall well being of the thread=not trying to boost thread mood/morale, not rallying other players, posting toxic or overly distracting content (not necessarily all of these, but that's the basic idea).

which one are you trying to say is going on with Mac's earlier posts and then changed?

Oh definitely the latter.

Assuming Mafia has a day chat, I want to say that aby and sprit aren't a team. Aby asks him "which of these two options is it, 1 or 2? If it's 1, we'll disagree." Sprit says 2. The part where aby kind of warns him about her disagreeing is something I imagine she'd say in Mafia chat to him rather than out in the open because it could look suspicious (personally I think it's probably not alignment indicative so much as just a style of hunting)

I don't totally understand?

Also I mean I think this is a neat observation but why is this what you are choosing to focus on with less than an hour until EOD?

Whom do you want to lynch Alien? What's your POE?

WHY IS YOUR VOTE STILL ON ME?

I'm catching up, not focusing on it in particular

My vote's still on you because I haven't decide where to change it yet because I'm not caught up

This isn't good enough. What are your reads right now? Surely you have them even if you aren't fully caught up. Whom do you want to lynch right now?

I'm giving you a gun, Alien. Whom do you shoot and why?

Isn't good enough? Why is me catching up not good enough?

My reads right now - luna/mac I'd be happy lynching. You I think I want to get off you for now. Kyle/Colin/Jay/Aby seem Town. Uhhh, no strong feelings about anyone else right now I don't think?

Player salad.

Also this is the part where you manage to justify your self preservation vote on me right?

[Tangrowth]

Spoiler: show

yeah, sorry. this is how i interpret the two:

not contributing=not making any attempts to solve the game, make comments on it, offer opinions, generate content, etc. could be lurking, could be avoiding offering takes on any situations, could be posting only fluffy spammy content.

not contributing to the overall well being of the thread=not trying to boost thread mood/morale, not rallying other players, posting toxic or overly distracting content (not necessarily all of these, but that's the basic idea).

which one are you trying to say is going on with Mac's earlier posts and then changed?

Oh definitely the latter.

Assuming Mafia has a day chat, I want to say that aby and sprit aren't a team. Aby asks him "which of these two options is it, 1 or 2? If it's 1, we'll disagree." Sprit says 2. The part where aby kind of warns him about her disagreeing is something I imagine she'd say in Mafia chat to him rather than out in the open because it could look suspicious (personally I think it's probably not alignment indicative so much as just a style of hunting)

I don't totally understand?

Also I mean I think this is a neat observation but why is this what you are choosing to focus on with less than an hour until EOD?

Whom do you want to lynch Alien? What's your POE?

WHY IS YOUR VOTE STILL ON ME?

I'm catching up, not focusing on it in particular

My vote's still on you because I haven't decide where to change it yet because I'm not caught up

This isn't good enough. What are your reads right now? Surely you have them even if you aren't fully caught up. Whom do you want to lynch right now?

I'm giving you a gun, Alien. Whom do you shoot and why?

Isn't good enough? Why is me catching up not good enough?

My reads right now - luna/mac I'd be happy lynching. You I think I want to get off you for now. Kyle/Colin/Jay/Aby seem Town. Uhhh, no strong feelings about anyone else right now I don't think?

If this is true, why have you not been spending any time moving your vote off of me, discussing these suspicions/thoughts with anyone else, etc.? Instead you've just been responding to posts.

[MacDougall]

Spoiler: show

@MacDougall

@Russtifinko
@Kylemii
@Tsaiah

Random Alien meta musings:

Okay, after perusing Alien in WC1 (scum) versus G9 (town) again, I think I see the following meta differences:

- Alien's questions in G9 are more nuanced (moderate difference)
- Aliens' reads in WC1 are more verbose and hedgey (moderate difference)

See the subsequent spoilers for examples (I could have included so many more but I tried to distill down to 3 each):

Wild Card 1 [Alien is scum]

Spoiler: show

How are you feeling underwhelmed exactly?

If you want we can talk, I'm here, and I can pause on the catching up for a while because I doubt I'm ever going to catch up before the end of the day at this rate.

Hey Alien!

I just was hoping to see more from you I suppose, not sure what all of your reads are. I do suppose you have been poking and prodding while here but I’ve not been getting as much a sense where you are going other than with your Arch case and even then we just haven’t gotten on the same page.

I don’t think I want to lynch you in particular in the end, probably would rather Jari, but I am exploring the POE options

What are all of your reads now?

Oh, did you change your mind about finding my points on Arch compelling then? How come?

My main suspect is still Arch. After Arch I have very slight suspicions on [MENTION=2320]Five[/MENTION] (I may have just not caught up to your answer yet, but why are you town-reading me so hard?) and Mantis (just because of the point I just made).

I have a tentative slight town-read on Dave, because I feel similarly to before but the Zack-esque impression I was feeling yesterday is not as strong anymore. I have a slight town-read on Ara because although I have a gut feeling they're town, and I've liked a lot of their posts, there was one post that pinged me that I mentioned before, so my town-read of her has gone down slightly. I also have a tentative town-read on John, purely based on gut again. I also think Slaan is quite town because I get the sense they're genuinely trying to contribute and they're not afraid to say things that might not resonate with others and get a bit messy, but a few people have said they're great at being Mafia, and this is again just an impression I have of them rather than be going back to confirm this with specific posts because I haven't had the time to do that. I also have a very slight town-read on you just because, when I compare you to last game, in my mind you're basically the same, except I did note you used the emote this game a few times and I don't remember you using those last game but I think that's sort of a silly point so I'm ignoring it, and I feel satisfied about the pre-game thought process thing now that I understand it was about that instead of your current playstyle, though I still am slightly tinfoily/weary that you're attempting to ally with aby so I'm not feeling completely safe with you.

Everybody else is somewhere around neutral at varying degrees that I haven't thought about yet.

So, essentially, my main scum-read is Arch, then five and mantis as very slight things, then a handful of slight town-reads but nothing strong.

Spoiler: show

Hey everyone, I'm here and caught up.

Before I say anything I'd like to encourage you all to ISO me if you have the time. I know how I look if you just look at my vote day 1 but I'm at least hopeful that if you read all my posts, my Townie objective will bleed through. If it doesn't then that's my fault I guess in which case I'm sorry but I've done my best to scum-hunt and figure out the game and if you have any specific queries as to why I did what I did then let me know.

The end of day vote itself, sure, I can see why that might look suspicious because in a Mafia world, voting on Jari in that case would have been a good move. But I had genuine reasons for my move there as a Townie as well, and I think it's logical and not something I'm making up now because way before end of the day I was having a gut feeling on John being Town so that's why I didn't vote there (combined with my other point at end of the day RE his 'slip' response). I get why I'm mislynch material but I also think I have a decent case for me being Town - or I'm assuming so - so please read my posts and let me know if there's anything else you find suspicious and I can clear it up, and in the meantime I'm going to try to get something else in the event I'm spared.

Reads-wise, I town-read dich the most. I also town-read Ara - I'm getting random tinfoil moments about them but I want to ignore them at the moment. Same thing with Dave, except since wiggles said Dave wouldn't bus his partner and was Town, I trust his meta on that for now.

Mantis I get a Townie tone from their posts, their interaction with John felt genuine to me, and they have a sort of cool 'hmm' about them in my mind which feels like a genuine Town pondering on what's going on. That feels like a somewhat trashy articulation of my read but I can't really think of a better way to put it haha. At the same time though, the fact they town-read John, then after a while said it 'faded' without giving a reason (@mantis what was that reason?), then recommended someone that they vote Jari but never voted themself and also said they were fine with John reads to me as suspicious because it's like they wanted to suddenly lose John as a town-read so that when they got lynched she'd look good, but also wanted to defend John in favour of Jari to keep their rolecop but felt they'd look bad being on Jari if John got lynched so sort of froze up in indecision. That's all just a pretty little theory I have to explain it though and there's a Town explanation as well but this is why they're a candidate for a lynch to me - preferably not today though, unless nothing else comes up at all, because overall I do like her posts and my gut says she's Town.

I also think TK is Town. I guess I'm sympathetic of his end of day 1 wrong vote placement thing because I know I'm in a similar boat as Town (although I don't really feel that with mantis, I guess because her story is the progression leading up to her decision whereas mine and TK's has reasoning behind it that I can understand), but also, and this may be a silly point, but the fact he qualified as Mafia last game makes me have pretty high expectations of his Mafia game, and the fact he entered the thread by mostly just talking about how to play the game rather than making any reads, which I'd imagine he'd be self conscious of, and the fact he let his vote placement look so bad (as Mafia surely he'd forsee that), makes me lean Town. That's all WIFOM I suppose but that's the way my brain is thinking right now. Also his posts today just seem like genuine solving and I like the fact he keeps wanting credit for his ideas (lynching me which I know will end up wrong, and lynching dich which I think will end up wrong) makes me think he's Town as well because I doubt he'd keep wanting to take credit for wrong ideas as Mafia, but maybe his WIFOM is really strong.

Spoiler: show

I disagree, I can read your reason and see if I buy it or not and see how you respond to my pressure. Though I will agree the answer you have given doesn't swing me either way at all because it's fair enough and not really what I was expecting to be honest

Total horse $#@!. Your question was a loaded question.

In what way was it a loaded question?

Game 9 [Alien is town]

Spoiler: show

DansGame

I find this post quite generic and empty, which makes me question whether you're truly trying to piece together the game or just going through the motions to act the part:

@Secondhand Reverant 223

As I said, I like giving reads early when I have them. It was a very very slight townread anyway and need to see more posts from them.

Other reads so far:
Slight town
M Plus 7 - asking questions and contributing a lot to the discussion
Necrominius - seems to be approaching the game with an open mind. Developing reads based on content but not tunneling, thoughtful reasoning with their reads

Most everyone else is so far neutral
Slight Mafia Lean - Aldax for being nervous about being lynched, not seeming to want to open up about their thoughts

Thinking someone is town because they ask questions and contribute a lot just seems a little thin/empty to me, and isn't really the sort of read I expect from someone who supposedly doesn't know anyone's allignment and is paranoid about everyone and trying to work out who's trying to steer the game one way and who's trying to steer the game another and how they're going about doing it. If someone's contributing a lot and asking lots of questions, I think it then depends on the nature of their contribution and questions to determine their allignment, which you didn't mention.

Also, why are you singeling out Necro for approaching the game with an open mind, developping reads based on content, not tunnelling and having thoughtful reasoning with their reads? Do you not think anyone else has done any of that? Because in my opinion almost everyone has done that. So again it seems a bit generic and empty and like you just felt the need to single a few people out to look the part of 'I have a couple trusted people but everyone else I have no idea on because I'm town!' but didn't fully develop your scum-reading thought processes on them, because you don't need to, because you're not actually scum-hunting.

Also when what makes you think Aldax isn't wanting to open up about their thoughts? This leads to the next point:

Spoiler: show

Thinking about this post a little more, and I don't like it.

For one, re: the bolded/underlined, Dans doesn't really elaborate on what is giving him that impression, nor does he seem to consider whether Aldax's perspective is coming from one of a different culture. In fact, what I don't like is that Dans isn't really giving us what he thinks about Aldax's alignment in here, in any form.

This is just a weaksauce post. The line of questioning is soft ball.

I could almost see this post by Dans being a post that one mafia member throws at another. It's soft distancing. But that's a bit cart ahead of horse.

Not being willing to give your thoughts because you're worried about possibly getting lynched because of them definitely seems alignment indicative and not just culture clash.

Whether intentional or not, I actually think you're strawmanning his points here. He said he wasn't willing to vote randomly because he was afraid it would bite him later, not that he was afraid to give his thoughts, from what I saw. Unless by 'random' he didn't mean truly random and meant he wasn't willing to out his suspicions, but from what I can tell he never said that, so where are you getting that from? It seems a bit to me like you're trying to find a reason to suspect him rather than truly scum-hunting, hence the misrepresentation of his points, either internally inside your head (because you're not bothered enough to read over and check in-depth his thoughts because you're not truly scum-hunting), or just externally to try to throw shade onto him or deflect suspicion from you by those who don't agree with your suspicion on him (by saying "actually look he did this super scummy thing"), hoping nobody notices. Since that'd be risky I lean towards the notion that you misrepresent his arguments in your own head, but I think it could be because, like I said, you're not truly scum-hunting and are more trying to find reasons to suspect people rather than genuinely working from the ground up. I think if you're trying to find reasons to suspect people you're probably more prone to forgetting what someone truly was saying because you're just focusing on throwing shade at them rather than truly being surprised/suspicious of something that stood out to you (which would probably be easier to remember clearly), so that's my logic behind that.

Spoiler: show

So you first did your ISO of robot and said they were scummy. Then you seemed to back off because of the people voting them, which is, I'm assuming, the part you're referring to when you said your opinion changed on them because of them having votes piled up? Or is that not right?

Then, you agree with SR that they seem scummy again.

Then, I don't think you mention them again until your neutral read on them where you say they're flying under your radar.

So if quote #2 is the part where robot moves up, and after that, quote #3 you reconsider that, why did you go silent on them for a while until neutral reading them the next day?

Spoiler: show

I just read through MP7's write up on Aldax/Asek. It makes sense. I don't have anything to add since when I was reading Asek/jdark, I thought a lot of Asek's actions screamed partners with Aldax.

How come you didn't say that in your analysis by the way?

This is tough though. Meta and all of that. He's a very impressive player either way (and I thought that from the moment we both started playing the G9 qualifier and still felt that way when I lynched him as scum in the WC1 game after changing my mind on him too many times).

It's compelling

What specifically is compelling about it?

The part where his scum game looked like this one mate.

[Tangrowth]

If Alien was town and about to die, I can't fathom why he wouldn't have the biggest fire coming out of his ass right now.

Instead he keeps himming and hawwing about this and that, and he cannot even satisfactorily tell me his reads, his POE, his preferred lynch, or why he has parked his vote still on me.

His suspicion of me is fake.

He needs to be lynched.

What? I have 30 minutes do I not?

I have no issue telling you why I'm parked on you, I just did. I've told you my reads, I just did. I'm still catching up.

30 minutes until EoD and you think the best use of your time is catching up instead of trying to figure out whom to vote?

[Lunalee]

I also don't like that the three people voting for me right now are all Mafia on my GTH.

Haha, so any suspect on you right now gets a "no u" back?

[Tangrowth]

Spoiler: show

Oh definitely the latter.

Assuming Mafia has a day chat, I want to say that aby and sprit aren't a team. Aby asks him "which of these two options is it, 1 or 2? If it's 1, we'll disagree." Sprit says 2. The part where aby kind of warns him about her disagreeing is something I imagine she'd say in Mafia chat to him rather than out in the open because it could look suspicious (personally I think it's probably not alignment indicative so much as just a style of hunting)

I don't totally understand?

Also I mean I think this is a neat observation but why is this what you are choosing to focus on with less than an hour until EOD?

Whom do you want to lynch Alien? What's your POE?

WHY IS YOUR VOTE STILL ON ME?

I'm catching up, not focusing on it in particular

My vote's still on you because I haven't decide where to change it yet because I'm not caught up

This isn't good enough. What are your reads right now? Surely you have them even if you aren't fully caught up. Whom do you want to lynch right now?

I'm giving you a gun, Alien. Whom do you shoot and why?

Isn't good enough? Why is me catching up not good enough?

My reads right now - luna/mac I'd be happy lynching. You I think I want to get off you for now. Kyle/Colin/Jay/Aby seem Town. Uhhh, no strong feelings about anyone else right now I don't think?

Player salad.

Also this is the part where you manage to justify your self preservation vote on me right?

OH MY GOD IT IS PLAYER SALAD HOLY FUCK

Dammit I haven't used that tell in too long. Game 9 shook my confidence in it a bit.

[MacDougall]

I also don't like that the three people voting for me right now are all Mafia on my GTH.

Haha, so any suspect on you right now gets a "no u" back?

Oh look it's Lunalee right before deadline. Hey how are you? Maybe you can explain why your votes on me now.

[Epignosis]

The poll ends in thirty minutes. Two individuals have not voted.

[Infected_alien8_]

Spoiler: show

Oh definitely the latter.

Assuming Mafia has a day chat, I want to say that aby and sprit aren't a team. Aby asks him "which of these two options is it, 1 or 2? If it's 1, we'll disagree." Sprit says 2. The part where aby kind of warns him about her disagreeing is something I imagine she'd say in Mafia chat to him rather than out in the open because it could look suspicious (personally I think it's probably not alignment indicative so much as just a style of hunting)

I don't totally understand?

Also I mean I think this is a neat observation but why is this what you are choosing to focus on with less than an hour until EOD?

Whom do you want to lynch Alien? What's your POE?

WHY IS YOUR VOTE STILL ON ME?

I'm catching up, not focusing on it in particular

My vote's still on you because I haven't decide where to change it yet because I'm not caught up

This isn't good enough. What are your reads right now? Surely you have them even if you aren't fully caught up. Whom do you want to lynch right now?

I'm giving you a gun, Alien. Whom do you shoot and why?

Isn't good enough? Why is me catching up not good enough?

My reads right now - luna/mac I'd be happy lynching. You I think I want to get off you for now. Kyle/Colin/Jay/Aby seem Town. Uhhh, no strong feelings about anyone else right now I don't think?

If this is true, why have you not been spending any time moving your vote off of me, discussing these suspicions/thoughts with anyone else, etc.? Instead you've just been responding to posts.

Because I don't know where to put it, I'm not caught up, I don't feel like I can make that decision yet. I'm happy to discuss things, my comments I expect to have answers to, some of them are questions. I'm not sure why you get the impression I'm not wanting to discuss.

[Tangrowth]

Spoiler: show

@MacDougall

@Russtifinko
@Kylemii
@Tsaiah

Random Alien meta musings:

Okay, after perusing Alien in WC1 (scum) versus G9 (town) again, I think I see the following meta differences:

- Alien's questions in G9 are more nuanced (moderate difference)
- Aliens' reads in WC1 are more verbose and hedgey (moderate difference)

See the subsequent spoilers for examples (I could have included so many more but I tried to distill down to 3 each):

Wild Card 1 [Alien is scum]

Spoiler: show

Hey Alien!

I just was hoping to see more from you I suppose, not sure what all of your reads are. I do suppose you have been poking and prodding while here but I’ve not been getting as much a sense where you are going other than with your Arch case and even then we just haven’t gotten on the same page.

I don’t think I want to lynch you in particular in the end, probably would rather Jari, but I am exploring the POE options

What are all of your reads now?

Oh, did you change your mind about finding my points on Arch compelling then? How come?

My main suspect is still Arch. After Arch I have very slight suspicions on [MENTION=2320]Five[/MENTION] (I may have just not caught up to your answer yet, but why are you town-reading me so hard?) and Mantis (just because of the point I just made).

I have a tentative slight town-read on Dave, because I feel similarly to before but the Zack-esque impression I was feeling yesterday is not as strong anymore. I have a slight town-read on Ara because although I have a gut feeling they're town, and I've liked a lot of their posts, there was one post that pinged me that I mentioned before, so my town-read of her has gone down slightly. I also have a tentative town-read on John, purely based on gut again. I also think Slaan is quite town because I get the sense they're genuinely trying to contribute and they're not afraid to say things that might not resonate with others and get a bit messy, but a few people have said they're great at being Mafia, and this is again just an impression I have of them rather than be going back to confirm this with specific posts because I haven't had the time to do that. I also have a very slight town-read on you just because, when I compare you to last game, in my mind you're basically the same, except I did note you used the emote this game a few times and I don't remember you using those last game but I think that's sort of a silly point so I'm ignoring it, and I feel satisfied about the pre-game thought process thing now that I understand it was about that instead of your current playstyle, though I still am slightly tinfoily/weary that you're attempting to ally with aby so I'm not feeling completely safe with you.

Everybody else is somewhere around neutral at varying degrees that I haven't thought about yet.

So, essentially, my main scum-read is Arch, then five and mantis as very slight things, then a handful of slight town-reads but nothing strong.

Spoiler: show

Hey everyone, I'm here and caught up.

Before I say anything I'd like to encourage you all to ISO me if you have the time. I know how I look if you just look at my vote day 1 but I'm at least hopeful that if you read all my posts, my Townie objective will bleed through. If it doesn't then that's my fault I guess in which case I'm sorry but I've done my best to scum-hunt and figure out the game and if you have any specific queries as to why I did what I did then let me know.

The end of day vote itself, sure, I can see why that might look suspicious because in a Mafia world, voting on Jari in that case would have been a good move. But I had genuine reasons for my move there as a Townie as well, and I think it's logical and not something I'm making up now because way before end of the day I was having a gut feeling on John being Town so that's why I didn't vote there (combined with my other point at end of the day RE his 'slip' response). I get why I'm mislynch material but I also think I have a decent case for me being Town - or I'm assuming so - so please read my posts and let me know if there's anything else you find suspicious and I can clear it up, and in the meantime I'm going to try to get something else in the event I'm spared.

Reads-wise, I town-read dich the most. I also town-read Ara - I'm getting random tinfoil moments about them but I want to ignore them at the moment. Same thing with Dave, except since wiggles said Dave wouldn't bus his partner and was Town, I trust his meta on that for now.

Mantis I get a Townie tone from their posts, their interaction with John felt genuine to me, and they have a sort of cool 'hmm' about them in my mind which feels like a genuine Town pondering on what's going on. That feels like a somewhat trashy articulation of my read but I can't really think of a better way to put it haha. At the same time though, the fact they town-read John, then after a while said it 'faded' without giving a reason (@mantis what was that reason?), then recommended someone that they vote Jari but never voted themself and also said they were fine with John reads to me as suspicious because it's like they wanted to suddenly lose John as a town-read so that when they got lynched she'd look good, but also wanted to defend John in favour of Jari to keep their rolecop but felt they'd look bad being on Jari if John got lynched so sort of froze up in indecision. That's all just a pretty little theory I have to explain it though and there's a Town explanation as well but this is why they're a candidate for a lynch to me - preferably not today though, unless nothing else comes up at all, because overall I do like her posts and my gut says she's Town.

I also think TK is Town. I guess I'm sympathetic of his end of day 1 wrong vote placement thing because I know I'm in a similar boat as Town (although I don't really feel that with mantis, I guess because her story is the progression leading up to her decision whereas mine and TK's has reasoning behind it that I can understand), but also, and this may be a silly point, but the fact he qualified as Mafia last game makes me have pretty high expectations of his Mafia game, and the fact he entered the thread by mostly just talking about how to play the game rather than making any reads, which I'd imagine he'd be self conscious of, and the fact he let his vote placement look so bad (as Mafia surely he'd forsee that), makes me lean Town. That's all WIFOM I suppose but that's the way my brain is thinking right now. Also his posts today just seem like genuine solving and I like the fact he keeps wanting credit for his ideas (lynching me which I know will end up wrong, and lynching dich which I think will end up wrong) makes me think he's Town as well because I doubt he'd keep wanting to take credit for wrong ideas as Mafia, but maybe his WIFOM is really strong.

Spoiler: show

Total horse $#@!. Your question was a loaded question.

In what way was it a loaded question?

Game 9 [Alien is town]

Spoiler: show

DansGame

I find this post quite generic and empty, which makes me question whether you're truly trying to piece together the game or just going through the motions to act the part:

@Secondhand Reverant 223

As I said, I like giving reads early when I have them. It was a very very slight townread anyway and need to see more posts from them.

Other reads so far:
Slight town
M Plus 7 - asking questions and contributing a lot to the discussion
Necrominius - seems to be approaching the game with an open mind. Developing reads based on content but not tunneling, thoughtful reasoning with their reads

Most everyone else is so far neutral
Slight Mafia Lean - Aldax for being nervous about being lynched, not seeming to want to open up about their thoughts

Thinking someone is town because they ask questions and contribute a lot just seems a little thin/empty to me, and isn't really the sort of read I expect from someone who supposedly doesn't know anyone's allignment and is paranoid about everyone and trying to work out who's trying to steer the game one way and who's trying to steer the game another and how they're going about doing it. If someone's contributing a lot and asking lots of questions, I think it then depends on the nature of their contribution and questions to determine their allignment, which you didn't mention.

Also, why are you singeling out Necro for approaching the game with an open mind, developping reads based on content, not tunnelling and having thoughtful reasoning with their reads? Do you not think anyone else has done any of that? Because in my opinion almost everyone has done that. So again it seems a bit generic and empty and like you just felt the need to single a few people out to look the part of 'I have a couple trusted people but everyone else I have no idea on because I'm town!' but didn't fully develop your scum-reading thought processes on them, because you don't need to, because you're not actually scum-hunting.

Also when what makes you think Aldax isn't wanting to open up about their thoughts? This leads to the next point:

Spoiler: show

Not being willing to give your thoughts because you're worried about possibly getting lynched because of them definitely seems alignment indicative and not just culture clash.

Whether intentional or not, I actually think you're strawmanning his points here. He said he wasn't willing to vote randomly because he was afraid it would bite him later, not that he was afraid to give his thoughts, from what I saw. Unless by 'random' he didn't mean truly random and meant he wasn't willing to out his suspicions, but from what I can tell he never said that, so where are you getting that from? It seems a bit to me like you're trying to find a reason to suspect him rather than truly scum-hunting, hence the misrepresentation of his points, either internally inside your head (because you're not bothered enough to read over and check in-depth his thoughts because you're not truly scum-hunting), or just externally to try to throw shade onto him or deflect suspicion from you by those who don't agree with your suspicion on him (by saying "actually look he did this super scummy thing"), hoping nobody notices. Since that'd be risky I lean towards the notion that you misrepresent his arguments in your own head, but I think it could be because, like I said, you're not truly scum-hunting and are more trying to find reasons to suspect people rather than genuinely working from the ground up. I think if you're trying to find reasons to suspect people you're probably more prone to forgetting what someone truly was saying because you're just focusing on throwing shade at them rather than truly being surprised/suspicious of something that stood out to you (which would probably be easier to remember clearly), so that's my logic behind that.

Spoiler: show

So you first did your ISO of robot and said they were scummy. Then you seemed to back off because of the people voting them, which is, I'm assuming, the part you're referring to when you said your opinion changed on them because of them having votes piled up? Or is that not right?

Then, you agree with SR that they seem scummy again.

Then, I don't think you mention them again until your neutral read on them where you say they're flying under your radar.

So if quote #2 is the part where robot moves up, and after that, quote #3 you reconsider that, why did you go silent on them for a while until neutral reading them the next day?

Spoiler: show

I just read through MP7's write up on Aldax/Asek. It makes sense. I don't have anything to add since when I was reading Asek/jdark, I thought a lot of Asek's actions screamed partners with Aldax.

How come you didn't say that in your analysis by the way?

This is tough though. Meta and all of that. He's a very impressive player either way (and I thought that from the moment we both started playing the G9 qualifier and still felt that way when I lynched him as scum in the WC1 game after changing my mind on him too many times).

It's compelling

What specifically is compelling about it?

The part where his scum game looked like this one mate.

Now you understand where my mind has been at.

[sprityo]

Spoiler: show

Nice job on the chart, Mac!

*thinks*

MacDougall:
- Can you talk more about the Alien town read?
- Why do you have so many scum reads?
- What is your POE today exactly?

sprityo:
- Talk to me more about Colin.

I need to figure out why exactly I flipped on TH and DH.

Why do players in general have so many scum reads? That's strange to me. I feel like the thread state is way more conducive to finding everyone town. What gives?

Having played scum with Colin, I know he’s a tough nut to crack. Good at contributing while not garnering suspicion. I hadn’t a solid opinion on him, as I had said before the gth started, so my past experience is what made me choose one or the other.

[Infected_alien8_]

If Alien was town and about to die, I can't fathom why he wouldn't have the biggest fire coming out of his ass right now.

Instead he keeps himming and hawwing about this and that, and he cannot even satisfactorily tell me his reads, his POE, his preferred lynch, or why he has parked his vote still on me.

His suspicion of me is fake.

He needs to be lynched.

What? I have 30 minutes do I not?

I have no issue telling you why I'm parked on you, I just did. I've told you my reads, I just did. I'm still catching up.

30 minutes until EoD and you think the best use of your time is catching up instead of trying to figure out whom to vote?

You don't think catching up will help me decide who I want to vote?

[ColinIsCool]

I'm low key worried about Russ actually being scum right now. Someone either engage me on that or slap me in the face quickly please.

That “how many scum are there?” question sure pinged me hard

[Tangrowth]

Spoiler: show

Spoiler: show

Assuming Mafia has a day chat, I want to say that aby and sprit aren't a team. Aby asks him "which of these two options is it, 1 or 2? If it's 1, we'll disagree." Sprit says 2. The part where aby kind of warns him about her disagreeing is something I imagine she'd say in Mafia chat to him rather than out in the open because it could look suspicious (personally I think it's probably not alignment indicative so much as just a style of hunting)

I don't totally understand?

Also I mean I think this is a neat observation but why is this what you are choosing to focus on with less than an hour until EOD?

Whom do you want to lynch Alien? What's your POE?

WHY IS YOUR VOTE STILL ON ME?

I'm catching up, not focusing on it in particular

My vote's still on you because I haven't decide where to change it yet because I'm not caught up

This isn't good enough. What are your reads right now? Surely you have them even if you aren't fully caught up. Whom do you want to lynch right now?

I'm giving you a gun, Alien. Whom do you shoot and why?

Isn't good enough? Why is me catching up not good enough?

My reads right now - luna/mac I'd be happy lynching. You I think I want to get off you for now. Kyle/Colin/Jay/Aby seem Town. Uhhh, no strong feelings about anyone else right now I don't think?

If this is true, why have you not been spending any time moving your vote off of me, discussing these suspicions/thoughts with anyone else, etc.? Instead you've just been responding to posts.

Because I don't know where to put it, I'm not caught up, I don't feel like I can make that decision yet. I'm happy to discuss things, my comments I expect to have answers to, some of them are questions. I'm not sure why you get the impression I'm not wanting to discuss.

Holy shit man, I get being unsure, trust me (you've seen me play so you know!). But dude.. there have been over 2,500 posts of content. Surely at some point you feel you need to switch over to *VOTING MODE* right? Especially since you're town and might die?

How do you see catching up as a remotely productive use of your time as town?

It's busy work.