Grasslands [Game Thread]

[tutuu]

We gotta decide like when are we "locking" the votes too cuz u cant expect everyone to be around deadline and like u know

[Dyslexicon]

[mention]tutuu[/mention]
[mention]Hally[/mention]
[mention]Long Con[/mention]
[mention]NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME[/mention]
[mention]Sloonei[/mention]
[mention]novaselinenever[/mention]
[mention]staypositivefriend[/mention]
[mention]Thunal33[/mention]
[mention]nutella[/mention]
[mention]MartinGG99[/mention]
[mention]Alison[/mention]
[mention]Carotenoid[/mention]
[mention]JaggedJimmyJay[/mention]

Gentle reminder to use Vote Tags in thread when you make your votes!

Like so:

[VOTE: Thingyman] aubergine

[tutuu]

Spf already self voted she dont give a DAMN boye so yall gotta revote ur townies [mention]nutella[/mention] [mention]Hally[/mention]

[tutuu]

Man u kno wat im tired af of this vote tally thingy, imma just [VOTE: Carotenoid] aubergine and im not voting myself, if u guys pick someone else over me then they get sent anyway cuz im like top poster so all good. And i might be online to self vote myself later on if needed, if it even bcomes necessary iight kewl

[tutuu]

I JUST FOUND A slight flaw in our plan guys

The plan is the consensus wolf always get sgot right? So if they rly happen to be wolf (the one we put most votes on), then they have no reason not to openwolf by voting the person that supposedly getting 0 votes, and get the. outta the treehouse, and then kill their ass or some shit / or mess up with the plan somehow

Whatever yall figure it out yall smart and make big posts and stuff

[Alison]

Man u kno wat im tired af of this vote tally thingy, imma just [VOTE: Carotenoid] aubergine and im not voting myself, if u guys pick someone else over me then they get sent anyway cuz im like top poster so all good. And i might be online to self vote myself later on if needed, if it even bcomes necessary iight kewl

Not voting yourself just basically means you're voting yourself as the person who should get the gun. Which is reasonable for you to do, since you're in my doc pool anyway. I'm going to go ahead and lock a vote on myself since I don't think it's likely I'll get the gun.

[VOTE: Alison] aubergine

Currently I'm deciding between Sloonei and Thunal for my second vote. I'll do a formal vote on them nearer the deadline when I'm certain of my choice.

[tutuu]

Omg second flaw

If everyone self votes and their scumread

And the towniest person votes only scumread and doesnt self vote

What the scumread (if rly a wolf) can do is not ONLY vote the towniest person to remove their doc, they can ALSO vote someone else and then they get sent to the treehouse with 2 votes instead of the correct scumread (they just need to be faster than 1 townie) cuz ties for scumreads are determined whoever reached it first gets sent right?

They can force us to like have 3 towns in the treehouse even tho they out themselves like we lose a townie for nothing (am i cinfusing graslands with treehouse? Dunno dont care)

Omg this is annoying cant we just play this normally guys? Everyone votes whatsver theyw ant? This current plan can backfire in an annoying way and we need to tske annoying precautions and iverall just highly annoying ;-;

[tutuu]

No i am dumb ignore me

Idk why i thought our consensus scumread would oonly get 2 votes

I woke up 10 mins ago pls dont bully me ;-;

Sorry for post above its wrong and bad and its wrong and bad and dumb like me pls dont reply to it abd pla dont bully me ;-;

[Alison]

I JUST FOUND A slight flaw in our plan guys

The plan is the consensus wolf always get sgot right? So if they rly happen to be wolf (the one we put most votes on), then they have no reason not to openwolf by voting the person that supposedly getting 0 votes, and get the. outta the treehouse, and then kill their ass or some shit / or mess up with the plan somehow

Whatever yall figure it out yall smart and make big posts and stuff

I can't think of a good way to avoid this at the moment, at least not without severely diluting the power and meaning of a vote.

The second flaw is not correct. The person who's being sent to the Grasslands will have more than just two votes on them. Like let's say we send Sloonei to the Grasslands here, everyone who scumreads Sloonei is going to vote him. Even if Sloonei votes some random other person at the last moment, that person will only have 2 votes (self vote + Sloonei vote) and it won't outweigh all the other votes Sloonei is getting.

linki: yes

[tutuu]

Alison will u pat my head pls? ;-;

[Alison]

Alison will u pat my head pls? ;-;

*headpat*

[tutuu]

Alison will u pat my head pls? ;-;

*headpat*

AWWWWAAomfkggmmn i jsut made a nnndneenene noise irl ieeahahah. Hihihihhi

[JaggedJimmyJay]

[mention]MartinGG99[/mention] I would be grateful if you could share your perspective of Alison please and thank you.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Martin is just a very transparent player I think. There's something about the way he talks about managing information and how he feels his tell on Thunal can only be used once that rings of truth to me; I can sense the paranoia about being fooled by scum there. Honestly even this is like some attempt at verbalizing or rationalizing a gut read that was probably made for murkier reasons though.

I think I find players easier to read if their playstyle is similar to mine (duh). For instance I found proto's approach to the game very easy to read and vibe with, and I have a good track record of reading proto because of that. I suspect Martin is a similar case, and I townread him.

Could you expand on why you feel that particular Alison post does not represent an attempt to pocket Martin?

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Let's fix that:

Martin is just a very transparent player I think. There's something about the way he talks about managing information and how he feels his tell on Thunal can only be used once that rings of truth to me; I can sense the paranoia about being fooled by scum there. Honestly even this is like some attempt at verbalizing or rationalizing a gut read that was probably made for murkier reasons though.

I think I find players easier to read if their playstyle is similar to mine (duh). For instance I found proto's approach to the game very easy to read and vibe with, and I have a good track record of reading proto because of that. I suspect Martin is a similar case, and I townread him.

^ I kinda want to townread this post, because I also had the vague idea that Martin was somewhat similar to Proto and that it's the archetype of player that w!Alison would want to pocket. Alison initial way of approaching Martin didn't seem like she was actively trying to pocket him and I don't think she would be disclosing that much "info" if she was a wolf.

Could you expand on why you feel that particular Alison post does not represent an attempt to pocket Martin?

[Thunal33]

I think Alison is towny from this solving. I've played with her before and as scum (well, SK) she was really only making reads that fit her agenda and not making the same logical sense that she did as town that I feel in this game.

there is where thunal initially outed her townread on alison - she followed it up a little bit more with this post:

True that a lot of tells are player dependent including that one, but I feel like I have to take a more general/umbrella approach to reading the players I don't know. I think for Alison (who I do know) that confidence seems towny. When she was SK she was more hesitant about her reads and gave only leans at the start. I've never seen her as mafia though, only once as town and once as SK.

you could definitely nitpick thunal's read on alison, but i don't particularly like that alison is choosing to frame thunal's reasoning as "townreading alision because she is confident". it seems pretty clear that thunal is saying that she townreads alison because her demeanor is different from her SK game - and the confidence is an element of that difference

I think this read is actually pretty bad though. "Alison is different from that one SK I had with her" is a very questionable way of viewing the situation. Could Alison be faking a change in demeanour to attract a townread? Don't SKs normally play similarly to a townie D1 anyway because they're alone? How can I claim to understand the difference between Alison's town and scum game just by seeing 1 SK game from her and one fragment of a town game where she subbed in at the last day?

I expect these questions to be running through her mind if she's town, and they aren't. Notably, she seems to believe that confidence in reads is enough out of my scum range to give me a firm townread for it. That's not a reasonable belief to have and it's not a belief that I buy Thunal genuinely having.

What kind of reads do you expect me to figure out on D1? Do you think I should be able to make strong reads with lots of evidence in them already despite there being so little info to go off of and despite me not knowing a lot of the players? Yes, the bolded is why I'm making my read. Like most people on PerC I like to read based on meta and even though I know your SK game should be different from your mafia game I thought you were closer to your town game and quite different from your SK game.

To clarify, by confident reads I meant non-hedgy reads without paranoia stated in them. My actual level of confidence in my reads is low since it's D1.

The implied line of reasoning you are engaging in is "Thunal did not do X as wolf. Therefore X is not scummy for Thunal."

That doesn't make sense, especially not when the sample size is one game. There are very few players whose scum repertoire is so limited that they only have access to a few ways of approaching the game as scum and if they deviate from those ways then it proves they aren't scum. Just because you did not do a scummy thing in the PerC game does not mean the behavior isn't scummy

It doesn't, but I like to play mafia as a game of likelihood. If someone plays completely differently from their scum game and I've only seen them as scum, I find it more likely they are town even though they could just be having another scum game and approaching it differently. You've also seen me as town once and I had the same reading style. I think you believe this logic is correct regardless of your alignment so this response doesn't look horrible.

[Alison]

My issue isn't the read you're making. My issue is that you're like handing out reads left and right for stuff that (in my view) should be close to NAI, and I don't see evidence of the paranoia I'd expect to see from town there. There's a disparity between the substance of the read and the attitude you have towards it that I think can be plausibly explained by you having NAI on the subject of the read.

This isn't to say that townies can never be paranoid about their townreads early. But I think that kind of confidence comes either from a long history or extensive meta on the person, or because they saw something that they thought was really hard to fake. I don't think you believe that the observations you've made about me are at all hard to fake - which makes me question why the possibility I was faking didn't seem to factor into your analysis.

[Alison]

And all of the above isn't just limited to your read on me: there's also the townreads on SPF and Carotte for re-evaluating you. I checked your ISO; you've said that you've only ever spectated SPF, and since you didn't know who Carotte was I'm going to assume that you haven't played with her at all. What is it about their re-evaluations that makes you townread them? Because you said that it wasn't the way they went around re-evaluating you that made them townie (which is a standard read), but the fact that they re-evaluated at all, when they could have justified scumreading you. I think that is completely NAI. Scum has reason to white knight a player. They can't just push townies all the time. They also can't just lock in a read and let it stagnate forever, they have to fake some kind of progression or development on their mindset. So why is the fact that they did re-evaluate on you townie?

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Alison, could you describe the mafia-aligned motivations you suspect might underlie Thunal's actions?

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Lol crosspost nutella

I don't get the commotion about Sloonei tbh, I believe that he believes in his read. :P

What makes you believe him?

I "get" his thought process, it doesn't seem like a stretch to me. I wouldn't townread him for that, but clearly don't share the ~general scumread he got for this read.

Last question for now, Carotte. I don't want you inundated with them when you show up.

If you believed that Sloonei believed in his read (per for your first post here), why wouldn't you town read him for it (per your second post)?

[Thunal33]

honestly my reads are getting a little messy this game, so im writing my quick thoughts on everyone here to figure out where my head is at. i'm also gonna force myself to take a GTH stance on each one

hally: i actually took a look at hally's ISO in the champs finale to contrast it with their ISO in this game - and the differences are pretty pronounced. i got the sense from the way that hally approached their final champ game that they were incredibly eager to align with the town consensus & not really stir the pot or radically change the gamestate. hally's strategy as mafia seemed partially to be lulling the town into a false sense of complacency - and i get a very different vibe from hally in this game. they are fiercely coming up with unique takes and thought processes that do not feel like an attempt to blend in with the rest of the game. in particular, i really like hally gunning for nutella to be a universal townread - i don't see what motivation hally would have as scum to shoot down the suspicions on nutella like they did. the only thing that concerns me about hally is a lack of content in the last day or so (which i can forgive, considering that a lot of us got distracted by the champs stuff), but so far, i do think that it's likely i'm playing with town hally. i guess there's a part of my brain that doesn't want to "commit" to my read on hally just in case im getting duped - but i would call them gth town

long con: i've been trying to figure out whether or not long con's "i am super detached from this game"-style of playing was coming from a genuine place or not. something that inclines me to think that long con isn't using their disinterest as an excuse to be lazy is the fact that they are still outing reads/thoughts in spite of being in a position where they don't ~have~ to make them. in particular, i like long con bringing attention to carotte's lack of stances on #470, because i noticed the same thing in my own readthrough. i would gth townread long con because of that

sloonei: i remember that sloonei got really flustered/frustrated by the early pushes on him in our final championship game, and my intent has been to give him the space that he needs to play the game and figure out the game on his own time. that said, i don't feel like sloonei has actually done anything with the space that we've given him. there is a distinct lack of curiosity/inquisitiveness from sloonei in this game that i saw in sloonei's game in spades in sf3 and the final champs game. i do not have a clear sense of where sloonei's head is at, and that concerns me as someone who usually has a pretty good idea of what sloonei is thinking (or at least, i assume i do :P). gth scum

thunal: i started out with a mild scumlean on thunal (because i thought the way that she outed a weird so early in the game was eyebrow raising/not coming from a genuine place), but her tone and her play has improved tenfold since then. reading through thunal's iso, she is constantly striving to clear people who aren't her, and i never feel like she's nervous about boxing herself in or feeling out of place w/the game. it's the mix of how easily thunal has integrated themselves into the game with how fluid and specific their logic is that makes me townlean thunal. gth town

alison: my biggest bone to pick with alison right now is the way that she framed her read on thunal - i don't like that she characterized thunal's tr on her as being about "confidence" when it was clearly about measuring expectations from one game to the next. still, i don't have any specific issues with alison in this game other than the very broad feeling that there is something wrong with her tone this game. it maybe feels a little bit too careful, or not as natural as i expected - but i can't actually substantiate my concerns about alison with any type of logic. i honestly need to see more from this slot to form a more educated opinion but i Guess i would gth scum

Re: read on Hally, I agree that they're town here. In the champs finale something just felt off about their tone early on and I got the sense they weren't comfortable. Here they're giving lots of takes and even though they haven't posted a billion posts yet they've made good use of the posts they did make.

Re: read on LC: I disagree with the bolded. I think every player is in a place where they need to make some thoughts and LC's already gotten some suspicion for not making them. It makes me uneasy how slowly he started the game since it reminds me of my own scum patterns so I'd say GTH scum but I'm probably not going to vote there since apparently this is normal for him.

Re: read on Sloonei, I dislike that he said he would contribute more last night and never did. I actually don't scumread him based on his early posts and I think his read on Nutella looks okay, but we gave him more of a chance and it really feels like he cares more about self-pres than solving and his content has been underwhelming.

Re: read on me: I think you mean read by weird? It definitely is my playstyle to make snap reads (generally townleans) early on as either alignment. For example, here's part of a post I made in a recent town game:

"I have a slight townlean on felicis already for leaning heavily into the cannibal flavor in his first post, especially the "tasty deduction" part. They seem excited to play as a cannibal and I think that's more likely to be real than fake (also, most people are more excited and motivated to play as town than to play as scum)."

It was the 7th post in the game.

Re: Alison, In her town game I found her process satisfying to read and I thought it made a lot of sense (to be fair I didn't really play with Alison that game, she was a replacement and I died before she repped in but I followed the game). I saw some of that same process here but I'm actually realizing that she didn't say anything like "Sloonei is making that up" in her town game. I dislike her suspicion of me because I feel like it doesn't have a strong base and I think she's also doing what she said I was doing (making reads that seem confident without any doubt). I'm unsure of Alison.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

At least one moment or trend in this thread exists that makes me believe in these players:
tutuu
Hally
Nanook
Sloonei
nova
SPF
Thunal
nutella

No such moment exists:
Long Con
Martin
Alison
Carotte

This would be my most generous POE split. The names within groups are not ordered. I tend to doubt that the three mafia are perfectly nestled in that lower group, so I will consider alternatives. Long Con in particular is down there by default in a way that he always seems to be in recent games -- so it's not inspiring to me.

[Thunal33]

My issue isn't the read you're making. My issue is that you're like handing out reads left and right for stuff that (in my view) should be close to NAI, and I don't see evidence of the paranoia I'd expect to see from town there. There's a disparity between the substance of the read and the attitude you have towards it that I think can be plausibly explained by you having NAI on the subject of the read.

This isn't to say that townies can never be paranoid about their townreads early. But I think that kind of confidence comes either from a long history or extensive meta on the person, or because they saw something that they thought was really hard to fake. I don't think you believe that the observations you've made about me are at all hard to fake - which makes me question why the possibility I was faking didn't seem to factor into your analysis.

The possibility the person is faking always does come into my analysis, but it's not exactly good town strategy to hedge every single read I make by saying "This looks good, but they could be faking" or "I like these thoughts, but they could be faking them." It's kind of obvious that it's a possibility so I don't feel the need to actually state it.

[Thunal33]

And all of the above isn't just limited to your read on me: there's also the townreads on SPF and Carotte for re-evaluating you. I checked your ISO; you've said that you've only ever spectated SPF, and since you didn't know who Carotte was I'm going to assume that you haven't played with her at all. What is it about their re-evaluations that makes you townread them? Because you said that it wasn't the way they went around re-evaluating you that made them townie (which is a standard read), but the fact that they re-evaluated at all, when they could have justified scumreading you. I think that is completely NAI. Scum has reason to white knight a player. They can't just push townies all the time. They also can't just lock in a read and let it stagnate forever, they have to fake some kind of progression or development on their mindset. So why is the fact that they did re-evaluate on you townie?

I'm not townreading Carotte. I think her reevaluation on me looked somewhat good and GTH I would say she's town instead of scum but my level of confidence there is very low. I don't really care what a "standard read" is, I have my own process for making them that might be different than site meta. Scum does have to fake progression but since I don't know Carotte I default to reading others' scum games based on my own and I know I don't reevaluate unless it fits my agenda, especially not early on like that.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

I seem to have hit some sort of Mafia fatigue that has even stifled my basic ability to Do Things. I feel like I could be making myself useful right now and I literally don't know what to post. I considered an interactions chart, but I haven't the energy for such a project.

JJJ would appreciate some motivation.

[tutuu]

I seem to have hit some sort of Mafia fatigue that has even stifled my basic ability to Do Things. I feel like I could be making myself useful right now and I literally don't know what to post. I considered an interactions chart, but I haven't the energy for such a project.

JJJ would appreciate some motivation.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Thanks for the assist, tutuu!

Would you like to work on a special Mafia mission with me?

[Alison]

Alison, could you describe the mafia-aligned motivations you suspect might underlie Thunal's actions?

It's less "mafia-aligned motivation" and more like, she's trying to make up reads (because mafia don't actually have reads, they know the alignments of everyone) so she just grasps at the first line of logic that comes to mind, and she doesn't bother questioning the logic because it's not a real read, it's made up.

[Hally]

this post is responses up to and including page 10

i have the game poe’d down to jay/sloonei/lc/carrote. not even kidding. like i tr everyone else. and rn im looking at that and going “this cannot possibly be right” so maybe one of my tr’s is wrong but this is where i’m at

Sounds great.

But then this post is just so blunt and blasé about his name being included in an early POE that I almost feel like it's affected. Meh.

what did you mean here by affected? as in, its good or bad for lc?

sloonei's tone is just wrong, I wish I could explain it better. it's like his posts are stilted, though that's not quite the right word. and it kind of feels like he's throwing out townreads to counteract it and look like he's solving. I also didn't like his hedge on LC

what was bad about his hedge on lc iyo?

Thunal-on-Carotte is the weirdest thing in the game so far.

Spoiler: show

I don't get the commotion about Sloonei tbh, I believe that he believes in his read. :P

Me neither tbh, I looked at Sloonei's ISO and the only suspicious thing I could find is a coffee tell ish thing about him posting 2 posts in a row about being distracted and tired but that's really tiny. His read on Nutella looks fine to me. I'll wait for his thoughts in the morning to actually try to read him. In champs finals (which is the only time I've seen him play) he definitely tried hard and was logical but he didn't have the same obvious town energy that, say, SPF or JJJ did so it might be hard to read him.

I like Thunal more today.

I'm not sure if everyone understands that the person sent to the grassland only gets to shoot *among* the persons in the grassland? (most voted, least voted, sent by scum)

I think tutuu & nutella are town. I liked Nanook/SPF/nova/LC/JJJ with no particular order.

I have some mixed feelings about Alison. I think that the only thing I really disliked is how she asked Hally why I wasn't on their read list (I thought it was pretty evident that they jsut didn't have a read on me) and then not really followed up when Hally answered that they didn't have a read yet.

What do you think town!Alison would follow up that read with? I don't follow up on every question that I ask that's been answered in a light game since I don't want to waste a post saying "oh, okay" if that would be my answer.

A fairly uneventful back-and-forth between them. Thunal doesn't have much to say about Carot, but carot town-reads Thunal.

Spoiler: show

I ran through Thunal's posts to check out my town-inclined intuition. I like the progressions/language of their reads. I have one question for @Thunal33: any suspects? You've given town credit to Martin, Alison, nutella, and Hally (perhaps among others if I missed them). I appreciate POE work; I just don't know your game. Perhaps you can chirp in too @Hally -- do you associate that kind of POE-centric methodology with Thunal?

Yes, I tend to make townreads first and it's hard for me to find suspects early on. I mainly have Sloonei as "not a townread or townlean" rather than a suspect, same with Carotte.

Thunal gives a fairly hedgy read on Carotte, in conjunction with Sloonei. This is Thunal making a direct statement related to the alignment of the player he identifies as "Carotte". It is not pointedly negative, but it is also very distinctly not a positive read either. "Not positive" would be the primary takeaway here in my opinion.

Spoiler: show

why carotte?

Primarily process of elimination with a pinch of I don't think she looks very comfortable.

why have i dropped down for you?

It's less that you've "dropped" than those four have become more solidified civilian reads. Gun to my head you're town too. If I have one gripe for you it's that I don't know that you've been fair in your assessment of my treatment of Sloonei. I said myself that I wanted to let him speak for himself. You asked me a specific question though, and I did you the courtesy of answering it -- so to say that I have given him an out somehow on that basis is a bit goofy.

Also, how can I find Carotte's posts? I wanted to ISO her but I 'm having a hard time finding her posts in the thread. Is there an easier way to find a post of hers so I can ISO?

Oops I didn't realize Carotte was Carotenoid, I thought Carotte was a completely different player. I think Carotte looks okay so far, I like that she reevaluated on me. I have more of a "wait and see" read on both her and Sloonei, I think they'll become more readable later on.

But then he reveals that the player he was identifying as Carotte doesn't actually exist: he didn't realize that "Carotte" was shortform for "Carotenoid", and that she looks "okay so far". So... what did the nonexistent player called "Carotte" do to earn that "not a townread" mention earlier? Who was that referring to if not Carotenoid, and why?

all this really tells me is thun/carotte are unlikely w/w. but this in and of itself isn’t scummy to me

@Hally asked for previous games where I was suspected early. The ones where I distinctly remember becoming frustrated at early suspicions are U-Pick and Pyre. The only recent game where I was correctly suspected early was The Wire, but that was an odd situation because I was subbing into a slot that had been the subject of suspicion prior to my arrival.

It is 3 PM and I've done nothing but play this game today. I need to go do other things for a while.

Escape from Trump Tower was one I think.

Escape From Trump Tower. Apparently I was a wolf? I have no strong memories of this game. Sorry G. Oh it was the one where 112 carried us to victory.

thanks! i’ll look at these when im done catching up

Martin is just a very transparent player I think. There's something about the way he talks about managing information and how he feels his tell on Thunal can only be used once that rings of truth to me; I can sense the paranoia about being fooled by scum there. Honestly even this is like some attempt at verbalizing or rationalizing a gut read that was probably made for murkier reasons though.

I think I find players easier to read if their playstyle is similar to mine (duh). For instance I found proto's approach to the game very easy to read and vibe with, and I have a good track record of reading proto because of that. I suspect Martin is a similar case, and I townread him.

^ I kinda want to townread this post, because I also had the vague idea that Martin was somewhat similar to Proto and that it's the archetype of player that w!Alison would want to pocket. Alison initial way of approaching Martin didn't seem like she was actively trying to pocket him and I don't think she would be disclosing that much "info" if she was a wolf.

I like Thunal more today.

I'm not sure if everyone understands that the person sent to the grassland only gets to shoot *among* the persons in the grassland? (most voted, least voted, sent by scum)

I think tutuu & nutella are town. I liked Nanook/SPF/nova/LC/JJJ with no particular order.

I have some mixed feelings about Alison. I think that the only thing I really disliked is how she asked Hally why I wasn't on their read list (I thought it was pretty evident that they jsut didn't have a read on me) and then not really followed up when Hally answered that they didn't have a read yet.

What do you think town!Alison would follow up that read with? I don't follow up on every question that I ask that's been answered in a light game since I don't want to waste a post saying "oh, okay" if that would be my answer.

I thought the initial question was really pointless (because the answer would be evident) and that she was having some sort of underlying idea she wanted to test/wanted to convince Hally with her read of me, but then nothing happened. It doesn't bother as much today, I can see this being t!Alison.

Hally why did you townread Alison?
because i agree with her reads so far

Hmmn that doesn't really seem to justify how highly you townread her.
#127 you quoted the posts Alison made that you townread.
Townread tutuu and scumread Sloonei: pretty consensus among the players who posted.
The comment on Martin... Exist.

She also gut scumread me, so do(did?) you like... Agree?

i thought her take on you dipping out after you said hi was agreeable because i’ve made reads off that in the past. i didn’t actually have that thought about you in this game but when i read alison’s post i liked it

do you object to me town reading alison? i don’t really get the purpose of this post

Hmnn okay. No, I'm just trying to understand what you were both thinking because the exchange seemed really weird to me.

there’s like... something pingy about how you’re treating alison here but i can’t tell if it’s w/w or w/v

are you mafia carotte?

Carotte questioned the pairings, in lieu of giving an opinion.

what does that tell you lc?

i just hacked into dizzy's account and read the role pms (sorry)

tutuu - vanilla TOWN
Hally - vanilla TOWN
Long Con - vanilla TOWN
NANOOKTHEGREATANDFEARSOME - vanilla TOWN
Sloonei - vanilla TOWN
novaselinenever - vanilla TOWN
staypositivefriend - vanilla TOWN
nutella - vanilla TOWN
MartinGG99 - vanilla TOWN
Alison - vanilla TOWN

Carotenoid- Mafia GOON
Thunal33 - Mafia GOON
JaggedJimmyJay - Mafia GOON

So do you think we just all decided to bus?

it’s interesting that you object to that and not that you’re being scum read

where did carotte switch to tr’ing thun? did i miss that? why did that happen @Carotenoid?

I said that I liked them more today here
It's not really a townread though. I... don't actually remember what I liked but there was some posts I liked.

....carotte, i love you but you’re really pinging me here can you try to find what posts from thun you liked? it’s important

actually i wonder if there is some psychological element if i start coloring all of my posts in green? since green is so much associated with townyness? would it make me look more towny hypothethically? i mean i dont need it this game since im so obv town already but if i establish a meta of doing this every game i wonder if it will bring me an advantage when i finally rand scum?

tutuu how do you only have 64 posts? i thought you had like 200 already and was about to remind you of the post cap but apparently your posts are just so full of energy that each one feels like five posts

hihihi stop making me blush hallie :P. u adorable cutiepie u

dont worry i wont forget our cuddling appointment after this game! u can be the little spoon and i will be the big spoon!!!!!

[tutuu]

Thanks for the assist, tutuu!

Would you like to work on a special Mafia mission with me?

Sure!

[Alison]

Re: Alison, In her town game I found her process satisfying to read and I thought it made a lot of sense (to be fair I didn't really play with Alison that game, she was a replacement and I died before she repped in but I followed the game). I saw some of that same process here but I'm actually realizing that she didn't say anything like "Sloonei is making that up" in her town game. I dislike her suspicion of me because I feel like it doesn't have a strong base and I think she's also doing what she said I was doing (making reads that seem confident without any doubt). I'm unsure of Alison.

This is a bad mischaracterization. I can show you a bunch of games where I say stuff like that as town. I also think it's wrong of you to say that I'm doing what you're doing. Here's my post about confidence re: early reads.

I think that kind of confidence comes either from a long history or extensive meta on the person, or because they saw something that they thought was really hard to fake. I don't think you believe that the observations you've made about me are at all hard to fake - which makes me question why the possibility I was faking didn't seem to factor into your analysis.

For every confident townread I've given, I can explain to you why I don't think the behavior I saw was trivially fakeable. In other words, I can show you why I didn't have a reason to question that read. That's the difference between my reads and yours.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Thanks for the assist, tutuu!

Would you like to work on a special Mafia mission with me?

Sure!

———
For: Special Agent tutuu
Instructions: Destroy after reading with fire or powerful solvent
File: Grasslands
Equipment: Encrypted mobile phone or laptop computer
Email: Prohibited

Statement: Suspects have accumulated within the Grasslands thread. Have been seen communicating in text. Viability of case depends upon reliable connections among suspects.

Investigate: Review the communication records between Martin, Alison, Carotte, Long Con, and/or additional suspects at your prerogative. Determine their associations. Are they in business together?

Suggest: Infiltration by way of active communication may be necessary. Stealth is not practical on an Internet forum. Talk with the suspects yourself if you feel it pertinent. Otherwise engage written records.

Report: Special Agent JaggedJimmyJay on location
———

[tutuu]

loool thats really cute

Roger that Special Agent JaggedJimmyJay!

o7

[Alison]

And all of the above isn't just limited to your read on me: there's also the townreads on SPF and Carotte for re-evaluating you. I checked your ISO; you've said that you've only ever spectated SPF, and since you didn't know who Carotte was I'm going to assume that you haven't played with her at all. What is it about their re-evaluations that makes you townread them? Because you said that it wasn't the way they went around re-evaluating you that made them townie (which is a standard read), but the fact that they re-evaluated at all, when they could have justified scumreading you. I think that is completely NAI. Scum has reason to white knight a player. They can't just push townies all the time. They also can't just lock in a read and let it stagnate forever, they have to fake some kind of progression or development on their mindset. So why is the fact that they did re-evaluate on you townie?

I'm not townreading Carotte. I think her reevaluation on me looked somewhat good and GTH I would say she's town instead of scum but my level of confidence there is very low. I don't really care what a "standard read" is, I have my own process for making them that might be different than site meta. Scum does have to fake progression but since I don't know Carotte I default to reading others' scum games based on my own and I know I don't reevaluate unless it fits my agenda, especially not early on like that.

It's not about site meta at all. My point is very simple, that it is completely illogical to assume that re-evaluation is townie when scum have multiple incentives to re-evaluate. You not taking those incentives into consideration smacks of TMI.

[Hally]

Phantom vote on LC.

Why LC?

He’s actively not trying and I want him to explain his read on me.

I haven't caught you acting bad yet. So far, so good.

you’re acting... kinda weird, but i can’t tell if it’s scummy or not

there were a few things i didn’t like

1) his push on alison for being confident in her reads when she’s always confident in her reads as town felt kinda fake

2) i didn’t like him jumping in to give sloonei a lifeline. i think town!jay would be more likely to wait for sloonei to address the suspicion so as not to poison the well, but here jay went to rescue sloonei immediately even though he doesn’t tr sloonei yet

3) didn’t like that he tr me so confidently early on, but meh

4) didn’t like that he said he had no thoughts on martin and when he went back to read he didn’t really give much of a stance

idk as i write these out now, particularly the last two, i do acknowledge i might be nitpicking somewhat and i probably overstated my confidence in the read in that moment but these small things added up for me as “jay is scum.” but it’s really too early to say that with any confidence

fwiw the point about sloonei is actually the same concern i have about jagged right now. i remember that in the final champs game when sloonei was getting a lot of heat early on, jagged didn't speak ~for~ sloonei, but he stood back and gave sloonei the opportunity to defend himself and explain his mindset. in this game i felt like jagged went out of his way to defend/justify sloonei's mindset, and it's just a little weird to me that he felt the need to do that without giving sloonei the opportunity to speak for himself first

i have a different take about his push on alison, though. i was getting these weird feelings in my guts when i read alison's posts that made me feel like ~something~ was off about her tone or her game but i couldn't really figure out a way to articulate it. jagged coming in and going like: "i don't trust alison" at the exact same time i was having those gut feelings reassured me a little bit that i wasn't going crazy. i know that jagged could do that as scum, but i dont find it actively suspicious

okay, i’ll consider this. i really don’t know yet on jay, he could be town. and i perhaps need to evaluate my own read on alison more closely if both you and jay have been pinged by her

i have the game poe’d down to jay/sloonei/lc/carrote. not even kidding. like i tr everyone else. and rn im looking at that and going “this cannot possibly be right” so maybe one of my tr’s is wrong but this is where i’m at

could you sell me on nanook being town? i don't know how to read him, especially this game

it’s a bit hard to explain my nook read because he’s very easy to sr if you don’t know him well. you kinda just have to get to know him as a player and decide if you think the takes he’s giving and how he’s approaching the game feel real coming from him. and strong emphasis on “coming from him,” because trying to read him as you might read others is probably going to be frustrating lol. atm im seeing things that i would more associate with town!nook but im not really locked in on it yet. i can maybe try to go through his iso and explain it better after this

[Thunal33]

Alison, could you describe the mafia-aligned motivations you suspect might underlie Thunal's actions?

It's less "mafia-aligned motivation" and more like, she's trying to make up reads (because mafia don't actually have reads, they know the alignments of everyone) so she just grasps at the first line of logic that comes to mind, and she doesn't bother questioning the logic because it's not a real read, it's made up.

This seems really nitpicky and completely untrue. Did you see that I did the same exact reading process in my town games? I assume you read my posts in Monster Hunter World when you repped in, and I gave an example of a townlean I made (for reasons that could be easily fakeable) on the 7th post in the entire game in another town game of mine. My reads are more about likelihood than anything. None of the townreads I have I'm certain about. But putting in a bunch of paranoia or saying something could be faked undermines the message I'm trying to make when I state a townread - that the person is more likely town than mafia.

[Hally]

that ^ was for page 11

i also have to say that i found it kind of hard to digest martin’s catch up posts so i’m making a note to try to real time more with him. to kick that off [mention]MartinGG99[/mention] where’s your head at rn? who do you think could be scum? who is town? any general thoughts and feelings about the game or anyone in it?

[Alison]

Alison, could you describe the mafia-aligned motivations you suspect might underlie Thunal's actions?

It's less "mafia-aligned motivation" and more like, she's trying to make up reads (because mafia don't actually have reads, they know the alignments of everyone) so she just grasps at the first line of logic that comes to mind, and she doesn't bother questioning the logic because it's not a real read, it's made up.

This seems really nitpicky and completely untrue. Did you see that I did the same exact reading process in my town games? I assume you read my posts in Monster Hunter World when you repped in, and I gave an example of a townlean I made (for reasons that could be easily fakeable) on the 7th post in the entire game in another town game of mine. My reads are more about likelihood than anything. None of the townreads I have I'm certain about. But putting in a bunch of paranoia or saying something could be faked undermines the message I'm trying to make when I state a townread - that the person is more likely town than mafia.

I explicitly said I didn't read most of the game because it was too long and the deadline was impending in MHW. If you want to defend yourself by saying you make this kind of read as town, I suggest you link the relevant post(s).

The other issue I have is that so far you've scumread someone for starting to scumread you (me), and townread two people (or at least liked their posts) for starting to townread you (SPF and Carotte). This isn't a consistent pattern in the sense that you don't townread everyone for townreading you (eg. I scrolled through your ISO and didn't see you reciprocatively townreading Martin or JJJ). But the fact that the three people you did so on were the same people I thought you had shallow reads on suggests that you might have been pulling together an excuse to scum/townread them for a more self-serving motive.

[MartinGG99]

@MartinGG99 I would be grateful if you could share your perspective of Alison please and thank you.

Personally, I haven't been particularly swayed by them by a whole lot since its day 1. However, I don't think anything they've done has been particularly scummy, and I think their rush to say that I pocketed them is indicative of being towny. I mean, if you were to try and pocket someone as scum, why would you rely on a player who has 6 games played so far to defend you? I'm not going to say no scum will ever do it but I do believe as it stands, I just think in this game's context, town's more likely to do that.

As for their prodding so far about your reaction to the Jay + Sloonei tinfoiling, I disagree with its prominence and relevance to your alignment. It could be honest differences in opinion, but I've felt the irrelevance or impertinence of it was preety obvious (in my opinion of course), especially since its day 1. I would almost say that's towny as well...but I almost can feel like if they're scum here then they're just trying to do things in order to get some town cred of some sort by doing things that don't immediately appear as scummy. Sort of a defensive scum play style where you don't particularly care who the town eliminates so long as its a townie.

If there was one post that bothered me most, it probably would be this one:

Spoiler: show

I actually am not a huge fan of how the response from both JJJ and Sloonei to the theory of a JJJ/Sloonei wolf game has been "I'm tired of people always theorizing about JJJ/Sloonei wolf teams". If you think about it, that is actually an AtE defense (albeit a more polite and subtle kind), since it doesn't actually do anything to rebut the theory that they're wolfing together.

This looks fake too.

"That is actually an AtE defense", whether true or not (I don't get it), says nothing about whether it is genuine. I don't think either of us made an effort to "rebut", because the accusation means so little at this point. I'm not mafia. I don't know about Sloonei, but we cannot be teamed. We can be sarcastic about the notion, because it is an age-old meme. I used to make fun of Epignosis back in the day for making the token "JJJ and Sloonei are teammates" accusation at least once per game thread.

This post has little hunting value unless you believe us to be actual mafia teammates. Is that what we are?

I don't think it's AI for you to be tired of JJJ/Sloonei tinfoils. The part I'm concerned about is that you're using that as a replacement for actually defending yourself or trying to show your towniness. Like this applies to Sloonei especially because he used a very similar defense ("nutella always scumreads me") instead of trying to engage with nutella to show her that he's town, or rebutting the case that nutella had on him. That bothered me quite a lot when he dismissed the case nutella had as "nutella tinfoiling me is on brand".

I generally think that this behavior increases both of your individual scum equity slightly, but it doesn't do much to make me suspect the specific team of JJJ/Sloonei.

Here they say that they don't think its AI to be tired or annoyed of scum-team tinfoils. Then says using a non-AI thing to defend yourself is somehow AI? I would personally stop at "you're using that", and just go no further if "that" is a thing that I say is likely NAI.

And at the end of it, she self-admits that such an observation only increased "scum equity" slightly....so that kinda begs the question as to why she brought it up in the first place: "I actually am not a huge fan of how the response...".

At the end of the day though, they didn't spend much posts about it (and technically just only 1 post until she got questions about it) and so I think it might not be scum-indicative, unless they're just poking at things they don't like as part of a defensive scum play style.

But for me that's just tinfoiling that they're scum. I think they're town, and I did sheep them a bit on #119 (and the following interactions resulting from that looks good to me).

If you think I have misinterpreted some things about Alison, or failed to consider some possibilities, feel free to say so.

[MartinGG99]

Also, I am here till EoD. However soon after that I have to start working on other stuff, so don't expect me to be very active (if much at all) during the 24 hour quick-topic chat phase.

[Thunal33]

Thunal is a she. And I think you're overblowing the weirdness of that, I just assumed she hadn't realized about the name and didn't particularly remember anything from Carotte hence not having a townread on her lol. It's not the type of inconsistency I'm concerned with. Do you think there's something scum indicative about it?

Sorry Thunal!

I am wary of the progression and want to highlight it. I could see it coming from scum, but it doesn't need to. I want Thunal to respond to it before I say more.

You are either in a tunnel or pretending to be. If you want me to prove that I am town, let me do my thing.

how is there so much linki in a light game?

this post gives me a weird stilted vibe but i don't really know how to explain why. i'm used to sloonei's gamesolving being very fluid and very focused on checking for internal consistency, but sloonei's desire to just ~highlight~ a minor point without particularly taking a stance on it either way rubs me the wrong way a little bit. this especially bothers me paired with the fact that sloonei asked jagged why he townread thunal just a few posts earlier - i feel like sloonei is trying to have it both ways by making the case for thunal being mafia without actually pushing on her. it feels like he doesn't wanna get his hands dirty. maybe im going crazy

I had the same thoughts as SPF here. This post feels careful and forced somehow, and Sloonei never did his thing and tried to prove he was town. The read also seems hedgy "I could see it coming from scum but it doesn't need to" and I can definitely see the point of Sloonei not wanting to get his hands dirty on any wagon. He's not taking a whole lot of stances in general either. I tried to give him some space but he still hasn't done anything towny, in fact he only looked more scummy when he posted more.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

If you think I have misinterpreted some things about Alison, or failed to consider some possibilities, feel free to say so.

I appreciate your response. I will think about what you've said; otherwise I don't want to tie you up with my own questions -- be free and hunt for mafia your own way.

[Alison]

@Martin: A clarification about the post you were confused about. I think it's NAI to feel certain emotions. But I think it's AI to use those emotions as a shield in place of a real defense. I am well known for being harsher than average on AtE defenses, and I think they very frequently come from scum as well. It's fine to feel things, it's even fine to express those things, but when your only response is the expression of emotion and not, like, real reasons why the accusation is wrong, then that is where I get suspicious.

[MartinGG99]

martin: i mentioned last night that martin left a strong impression on me when he opened the game w/a relatively confident townread on thunal. unfortunately, martin's ISO drops off a lot after that. the majority of his posts so far have been responses to the parts of the game that he has missed, and they are fine. he's making a lot of observations and a lot of thoughts that appear good on a surface level, but i don't see much followthrough with the observations he's making. i have no idea who martin actually scumreads the most after reading all of his catch-up posts, and that concerns me a little bit. i still do like martin's tone but i'm not convinced his logic/gamesolving is equally as compelling. gth scum

I have no qalms with this read, for the record.

I find it actually a bit helpful since I have been re-evaluating how I should or want to play town as of late, even prior to this game. Ironically that's a scummy statement (by me), because scum are the ones who should be trying to see how to appear town to others lol. But I do hope there will be nuances that appear in this game where I am playing as town, not acting as such.

I probably should be a bit more forth-coming with my thoughts or notes.

[JaggedJimmyJay]

[mention]Alison[/mention] do you have any thoughts on the relationship between Thunal and Carotte?

[Thunal33]

Alison, could you describe the mafia-aligned motivations you suspect might underlie Thunal's actions?

It's less "mafia-aligned motivation" and more like, she's trying to make up reads (because mafia don't actually have reads, they know the alignments of everyone) so she just grasps at the first line of logic that comes to mind, and she doesn't bother questioning the logic because it's not a real read, it's made up.

This seems really nitpicky and completely untrue. Did you see that I did the same exact reading process in my town games? I assume you read my posts in Monster Hunter World when you repped in, and I gave an example of a townlean I made (for reasons that could be easily fakeable) on the 7th post in the entire game in another town game of mine. My reads are more about likelihood than anything. None of the townreads I have I'm certain about. But putting in a bunch of paranoia or saying something could be faked undermines the message I'm trying to make when I state a townread - that the person is more likely town than mafia.

I explicitly said I didn't read most of the game because it was too long and the deadline was impending in MHW. If you want to defend yourself by saying you make this kind of read as town, I suggest you link the relevant post(s).

The other issue I have is that so far you've scumread someone for starting to scumread you (me), and townread two people (or at least liked their posts) for starting to townread you (SPF and Carotte). This isn't a consistent pattern in the sense that you don't townread everyone for townreading you (eg. I scrolled through your ISO and didn't see you reciprocatively townreading Martin or JJJ). But the fact that the three people you did so on were the same people I thought you had shallow reads on suggests that you might have been pulling together an excuse to scum/townread them for a more self-serving motive.

You're misrepping me. I literally never said I scumread you and I don't. I townread you early for making a lot of sense but from the POV that I'm town this push doesn't make a lot of sense. I never said I scumread you once, I said I don't townread you anymore and I'm not sure about you. I'm not giving everyone that townreads me town points since it's really easy for scum to fake a townread on me. It was the way SPF did it (having expectations for what will happen when she looks through my ISO and then changing her mind on both me and Martin from our ISOs) and to a lesser degree the way Carotte did it that makes me think their specific progressions were towny. No, I won't townread everyone who townreads me.

Look at the first couple pages of this game and look at the townleans I gave out: https://mafiacafe.boards.net/thread/105 ... ial?page=2

Hally can also vouch that I do this sort of reading style as any alignment and actually a little more often as town (as scum I tend to have a harder time transitioning from fluff to solving).

[JaggedJimmyJay]

Thunal, could you please state/expand on your read on me?

[Hally]

page 12

I'm caught up. Okay with the idea of giving Sloonei space to breathe. If he doesn't produce results I'm going to end up voting him anyway and I think the other people who currently suspect him will as well.

I think Thunal is very likely a wolf. They were making super surface-level reads and were never paranoid that the reads were being manipulated. eg. "Alison is town because she's confident", "Carotte is town because she re-evaluated on me". We all scumread Sloonei because he gave a baseless townread on nutella for something that was very likely NAI. Same logic applies here: I think town Thunal would hesitate a bit more and wonder if Alison/Carotte was faking these things to pocket her. Doubly so if she feels intimidated by the playerlist.

Scum Vote: Thunal

ehh, idk. i’m not really feeling this push. i think thun’s reads have been pretty thoughtful compared to her scum game

I am a bit bothered by JJJ's progression on Martin, it doesn't seem like he really thought about it, despite mentioning him a few times already.

Spoiler: show

His first mentions of Martin are through the Alison read (that bugs him). A bit later he takes a closer look at Martin since he has no clear opinion:

I looked more closely at Martin. I have no "gripes". The posts emphasize strategic dialogue so far, so I couldn't provide a confident town read. I am not bothered either.

Then, when he does his 6-6 split, Martin is in the + half. (At this time, Martin is pretty much townread. No one scumread him.)

I asked myself to try to split the game at least 6-6 between town-inclined reads and not-town-inclined reads. The latter shouldn't be perceived as "suspicion" as much as "I am less confident they're town than the 6 above them". I chose the 6-6 split arbitrarily; I like to set some kind of numeral goal. I'll have to figure out if the unusual mechanics impact the standard approach to POE pool sizes.

+
tutuu
Hally
Thunal33
staypositivefriend
MartinGG99
Sloonei

Not +
Long Con
NANOOK
novaselinenever
nutella
Alison
Carotte

The names within groups are not ordered. The player I immediately find myself conflicted over is nutella. I like her energy level and engagement, and will have to reconcile that with my gripes.

Later, he puts more emphasis about his view of Martin being vague:

i was just iso'ing martin/thurnal, and i was expecting to come out of it with a scum-lean on thurnal and a townread on martin. weirdly enough, i'm kinda feeling like i'm in the exact opposite position. martin left a strong impression on me with his early townread on thurnal, but his logic doesn't read as: "this is a perspective that is DEFINITELY coming from a town mindset" in the same way that it did when it was happening in the moment. i also wasn't particulary moved by any of his other posts

on the contrary, i actually quite like how much of an open book thurnal is. the way that she unflinchingly accept hally's meta on nutella on #156 and the way that she explicitly brings attention to alison's meta to townread them on #130 does not strike me as somebody who is trying to play the game with an agenda

i'm not completely sure i'll feel the same way when i wake up tomorrow, but i'm especially interested in hearing more from martin right now

My view of Martin is very vague, so I think that's agreeable enough. I have no significant "complaints". I agree about Thurnal though. After looking over their ISO I felt more secure about their sincerity than anyone else here save maybe tutuu. I will temper that with the meta-related question I asked earlier (regarding how Thurnal usually hunts re: town reads and suspects), but in the absence of an answer to that I like them.

Then, Martin appears in his PoE... ?

I don't have much of a "town read" on nutella or Alison, but I'm also not sure I'd call them appropriate Day 1 eliminations. nutella still profiles in a pro-town way with her general energy level, and my suspicions of Alison are not highly developed or confident matters. If I move on from them at least temporarily, that leaves me with a relatively tight POE pool. And it's noteworthy enough that Sloonei would be in it. My dude still hasn't done much.

To be clear, that POE pool would look like this:

Sloonei
Long Con
MartinGG99
Carotte

In that way I relate with Hally. I don't have great confidence that three mafia are in this pile. But one or two seems quite likely at least.

General takes on Martin would be appreciated.

@JaggedJimmyJay It seems like you never had a really clear view of Martin's posting. What made you put him in the + half of the split? Why did you then decide to put him in PoE?

I asked about Martin in that last post because I don't know what to do with them. When I find myself in that position, I ask for help. I gave them the "+" earlier when I tried to divide the game 6/6, and for that moment he seemed vaguely town enough to be there -- just for an innocent tone. The game progressed after that and eventually he wasn't one of the six most town-looking people (because others overtook him). I kinda followed the same trajectory with Sloonei.

just making a note that i don’t find what carotte pointed out scummy for jay. i think it tracks with how his reads other developed and it’s clear that martin has been a bit of a question mark for him this game. i don’t think there’s anything wrong with that on its face

I am thoroughly out of sorts today. I sent a mass email to my students apologizing for missing our Wednesday Zoom meeting.

It's Tuesday.

Forgive me if I come off as a Grumpy Gary at points here. This has been my whole October.

~~~

Meanwhile, I think Sloonei's town. I'm reviewing his posts today (Tuesday, not Wednesday), and I think he looks the part. As soon as he could dedicate some energy to the thread beyond frustration, he engaged the kinds of hunting modes I expect from him. He's incisive in his questions, and they are relevant and productive. His dig at me is a good example: I don't care if he missed that I was going for six names. He felt I was defending him and then didn't feature him on the townsquad, which understandably may inspire questions -- he is as attuned to me as I am to him. His take on Thunal goofing "Carotte" vs. "Carotenoid" is the kind of thing he will poke at not as a "push", but as a springboard to better understand Thunal and everyone interacting with Thunal. I think he's a'ight.

noted, thank you. i have to say that i think sloonei’s posting is fine. i wouldn’t say it blows me away necessarily but like... ig i don’t feel as badly about his posts as nut or spf for example. i think i mostly want to give him more time and see what he does with the space, but atm i’m against eliminating him D1. i feel similarly about you fwiw. i think you’re posting fine but there’s nothing that i like... love. im just kinda waiting and seeing with both of you

I have more active suspicion of Alison than anyone else. I also grant though that it's not a confident matter, and I can see alternative realities where she's town. Carotte is my most-preferred chop as "second-most" actively suspected without a clear town orientation that I could identify, and by generic POE.

can you look over carotte’s treatment of alison? i quoted it in one of my catchup posts

Hello I’m way behind

Have we decided to give me the gun yet, and if not have we decided to give it to sloonei yet?

who's mafia?

You know I hate this question literally every time someone replies to a post of mine asking a question with “who’s mafia” instead of just answering my question

So from now on I’m going to reply to it with some version of “you motherfucka” k thx

who’s mafia?

carotte: good, solid observations and analysis that nevertheless feel dissociated and detached from the current context of the game. i don't particularly know what carotte is thinking at any given moment, and i also feel like a lot of her posts have a lot of good thoughts and observations that she does not formulate into conclusions. there is a sense of aimlessness to carotte's hunting today that rubs me the wrong way, even though i like quite a few of her posts tonally. gth scum

Can you talk some more about this and why it's a bad thing? If they are good observations, why is the relative dissociation necessarily a bad thing? Perhaps give us some examples of what you're talking about.

Admittedly I have not looked at carot much at all yet despite her being the most popular suspect other than myself. I'll put that on the To Do list.

i’m curious if you got around to looking at carotte yet?

I am feeling inclined to say Hally should get the gun all of a sudden.

i would be honored to accept this nomination but really, i’m curious as to what prompted this shining moment of trust in me

carotte: good, solid observations and analysis that nevertheless feel dissociated and detached from the current context of the game. i don't particularly know what carotte is thinking at any given moment, and i also feel like a lot of her posts have a lot of good thoughts and observations that she does not formulate into conclusions. there is a sense of aimlessness to carotte's hunting today that rubs me the wrong way, even though i like quite a few of her posts tonally. gth scum

Can you talk some more about this and why it's a bad thing? If they are good observations, why is the relative dissociation necessarily a bad thing? Perhaps give us some examples of what you're talking about.

Admittedly I have not looked at carot much at all yet despite her being the most popular suspect other than myself. I'll put that on the To Do list.

good observations are only half the battle in a mafia game - you need to use the observations that you're making to advance your reads (and the game-state, by proxy)

so, for example, carotte made this post about thunal early on in the game:

So far I feel like Thunal is really reserved. There's a kind of weirdish balance between very specific reactions and general agreeing/bouncing off that feels a bit like ~blending in.

Spoiler: show

I also think I can town-lean Thunal33 so far.

His explanation didn't match what I think a scum would be possibly inclined to say.

What do you think a scum would be inclined to say?

I also think I can town-lean Thunal33 so far.

His explanation didn't match what I think a scum would be possibly inclined to say.

can you expand on this a little bit more? how would you expect scum to react to your question, and how did her answer differ?

I think a scum would point to my aforementioned level of experience in FM games with regards to my comfort level in response. As in, that would be the easy argument to make; a new player who's scum may be more uncomfortable than most players.

Instead, Thunal33 starts talking about themselves in comparison, and that's why they think my comfort level can be AI at the moment.

As to whether that's something they can do as part of one's "scumrange", I don't know and time will tell.

For the moment though, I think that process of thought or reasoning was more likely to be from town than scum.

That makes sense, I don't think I would talk about how I'm often nervous at the start as scum if I'm nervous scum.

The second post (it's the answer to post #1) feels really weird. It's like, acknowledging it for the sake of acknowledging it and the way Thunal is agreeing with the townread on her doesn't feel super natural, especially since the initial question was not answered.

although i do not find the behavior that carotte is outlining here to be scummy, i do consider it to be a good/thoughtful observation, and i like that carotte is exploring unique angles. but how does carotte follow up this early suspicion on thunal?

I like Thunal more today.

I'm not sure if everyone understands that the person sent to the grassland only gets to shoot *among* the persons in the grassland? (most voted, least voted, sent by scum)

I think tutuu & nutella are town. I liked Nanook/SPF/nova/LC/JJJ with no particular order.

I have some mixed feelings about Alison. I think that the only thing I really disliked is how she asked Hally why I wasn't on their read list (I thought it was pretty evident that they jsut didn't have a read on me) and then not really followed up when Hally answered that they didn't have a read yet.

well, she doesn't - she says that she likes thunal more today, but it's extremely unclear how she got from point A to point B in her read on thunal. when hally asks carotte why her read on thunal shifted, carotte gives this response:

where did carotte switch to tr’ing thun? did i miss that? why did that happen @Carotenoid?

I said that I liked them more today here
It's not really a townread though. I... don't actually remember what I liked but there was some posts I liked.

this is so non-descript that it makes me concerned that carotte is not playing with a town mindset, or with a town thought process. it especially concerns me that carotte goes from making this observation about thunal to immediately questioning thunal again in her very next posts. when i describe carotte's scumhunting as "aimless", this is what i mean

and when i describe carotte's scumhunting as dissociated from the broader context of the rest of the game, i'm specifically referring to posts like #318, where she drops a ton of reads on the players who have been focal to the discussion today without any sort of analysis or visible thought process. it's not that carotte isn't talking about the people in this game who are focal to the discussion - she is. but her analysis of those people feels shallow and like she's throwing reads at a wall more than anything

this may come as a shock but i totally agree i feel similarly about her post highlighting jay’s martin progression as sus. the observation itself is... fine? but also not something i really find scummy? and i don’t see what carotte is like... doing with it or how she’s incorporating it into her broader read of jay

[Hally]

Man u kno wat im tired af of this vote tally thingy, imma just [VOTE: Carotenoid] aubergine and im not voting myself, if u guys pick someone else over me then they get sent anyway cuz im like top poster so all good. And i might be online to self vote myself later on if needed, if it even bcomes necessary iight kewl

Not voting yourself just basically means you're voting yourself as the person who should get the gun. Which is reasonable for you to do, since you're in my doc pool anyway. I'm going to go ahead and lock a vote on myself since I don't think it's likely I'll get the gun.

[VOTE: Alison] aubergine

Currently I'm deciding between Sloonei and Thunal for my second vote. I'll do a formal vote on them nearer the deadline when I'm certain of my choice.

where did your early sr on carotte go, alison? i haven’t seen you talk about her again since then despite her getting a lot of suspicion since. how has your read on her progressed?

[Hally]

honestly my reads are getting a little messy this game, so im writing my quick thoughts on everyone here to figure out where my head is at. i'm also gonna force myself to take a GTH stance on each one

hally: i actually took a look at hally's ISO in the champs finale to contrast it with their ISO in this game - and the differences are pretty pronounced. i got the sense from the way that hally approached their final champ game that they were incredibly eager to align with the town consensus & not really stir the pot or radically change the gamestate. hally's strategy as mafia seemed partially to be lulling the town into a false sense of complacency - and i get a very different vibe from hally in this game. they are fiercely coming up with unique takes and thought processes that do not feel like an attempt to blend in with the rest of the game. in particular, i really like hally gunning for nutella to be a universal townread - i don't see what motivation hally would have as scum to shoot down the suspicions on nutella like they did. the only thing that concerns me about hally is a lack of content in the last day or so (which i can forgive, considering that a lot of us got distracted by the champs stuff), but so far, i do think that it's likely i'm playing with town hally. i guess there's a part of my brain that doesn't want to "commit" to my read on hally just in case im getting duped - but i would call them gth town

long con: i've been trying to figure out whether or not long con's "i am super detached from this game"-style of playing was coming from a genuine place or not. something that inclines me to think that long con isn't using their disinterest as an excuse to be lazy is the fact that they are still outing reads/thoughts in spite of being in a position where they don't ~have~ to make them. in particular, i like long con bringing attention to carotte's lack of stances on #470, because i noticed the same thing in my own readthrough. i would gth townread long con because of that

sloonei: i remember that sloonei got really flustered/frustrated by the early pushes on him in our final championship game, and my intent has been to give him the space that he needs to play the game and figure out the game on his own time. that said, i don't feel like sloonei has actually done anything with the space that we've given him. there is a distinct lack of curiosity/inquisitiveness from sloonei in this game that i saw in sloonei's game in spades in sf3 and the final champs game. i do not have a clear sense of where sloonei's head is at, and that concerns me as someone who usually has a pretty good idea of what sloonei is thinking (or at least, i assume i do :P). gth scum

thunal: i started out with a mild scumlean on thunal (because i thought the way that she outed a weird so early in the game was eyebrow raising/not coming from a genuine place), but her tone and her play has improved tenfold since then. reading through thunal's iso, she is constantly striving to clear people who aren't her, and i never feel like she's nervous about boxing herself in or feeling out of place w/the game. it's the mix of how easily thunal has integrated themselves into the game with how fluid and specific their logic is that makes me townlean thunal. gth town

alison: my biggest bone to pick with alison right now is the way that she framed her read on thunal - i don't like that she characterized thunal's tr on her as being about "confidence" when it was clearly about measuring expectations from one game to the next. still, i don't have any specific issues with alison in this game other than the very broad feeling that there is something wrong with her tone this game. it maybe feels a little bit too careful, or not as natural as i expected - but i can't actually substantiate my concerns about alison with any type of logic. i honestly need to see more from this slot to form a more educated opinion but i Guess i would gth scum

Re: read on Hally, I agree that they're town here. In the champs finale something just felt off about their tone early on and I got the sense they weren't comfortable. Here they're giving lots of takes and even though they haven't posted a billion posts yet they've made good use of the posts they did make.

Re: read on LC: I disagree with the bolded. I think every player is in a place where they need to make some thoughts and LC's already gotten some suspicion for not making them. It makes me uneasy how slowly he started the game since it reminds me of my own scum patterns so I'd say GTH scum but I'm probably not going to vote there since apparently this is normal for him.

Re: read on Sloonei, I dislike that he said he would contribute more last night and never did. I actually don't scumread him based on his early posts and I think his read on Nutella looks okay, but we gave him more of a chance and it really feels like he cares more about self-pres than solving and his content has been underwhelming.

Re: read on me: I think you mean read by weird? It definitely is my playstyle to make snap reads (generally townleans) early on as either alignment. For example, here's part of a post I made in a recent town game:

"I have a slight townlean on felicis already for leaning heavily into the cannibal flavor in his first post, especially the "tasty deduction" part. They seem excited to play as a cannibal and I think that's more likely to be real than fake (also, most people are more excited and motivated to play as town than to play as scum)."

It was the 7th post in the game.

Re: Alison, In her town game I found her process satisfying to read and I thought it made a lot of sense (to be fair I didn't really play with Alison that game, she was a replacement and I died before she repped in but I followed the game). I saw some of that same process here but I'm actually realizing that she didn't say anything like "Sloonei is making that up" in her town game. I dislike her suspicion of me because I feel like it doesn't have a strong base and I think she's also doing what she said I was doing (making reads that seem confident without any doubt). I'm unsure of Alison.

just gonna say this - i think thun is a villager and am unmoved by alison’s push