M1007 — "Mafia, She Wrote" Game Thread

[teacon7]

@ND I totally understand your distate for me right now, considering my criticism of your gameplay earlier. I stand by my earlier posts about what I value as useful/not useful gameplay. That isn't to say, however, that your gameplay going forward has to be the same.

@espresso - I think ND made clear in his EoD1 analysis that he's capable of putting a lot of thought into the game. This might be a particular feature of forum mafia, but the capacity to look crazy while still thinking rationally can be used as a tool to generate responses.

I thought ND did this pretty well d1. It was a hassle to read. You make noise and get scumread. draw out people. Get reactions. When all he's doing is making lots of noise... it's a way to hunt for scumslips or catch people who don't care about solving the game, they just want to live another phase.

For town, I call it the "lightning rod" position for a player to play. It sets up as an easy d1 lynch to catch people who just want to lynch someone - anyone! - but their scumteam.

problematically,some people are lightning rods without realizing it, because they DO flail irrationally and aren't actually helping. That's bad for town. I guess my point is that doing it on purpose CAN be good for town.

[teacon7]

When have I ever been a high poster?

tbh, I wouldn't know. I'm meeting you for the first time.

What's your town meta like?
What's your scum meta like?

[teacon7]

The only things on me right now are people annoyed I don't devote my life to Webdip Mafia. I have two times in a 24 hour period set apart to check the mafia thread, and the current end phase time will never be in those set apart times.

plz don't get offended. I've been in a similar situation all weekend.

[teacon7]

And @teacon, with your comment on school being forced, obviously people choose to play Webdip Mafia, but they cannot choose between Scum and town. Ergo happiness is maximized when there is no preference between the two, as there really isn't anything one can do to get either role.

Aren't you the stoic!

Yeah, it doesn't make a ton of sense to care that much about stuff you can't control. But people aren't 100% rational.

We do have preferences for things, liking some more than others.

[teacon7]

C: last 2 scum in 'not sure' and evil categ., but I'm really confident in a 1 scum guarantee in Mosc/tea

why is there 1 scum in that category? I feel like you're posting this right after those two people were instrumental in lynching the godfather.

maybe you should answer too:

@vapor: why would scum lynch their godfather d1?

[teacon7]

@teacon, how do you think scum would try to draw a scan onto their godfather?

Great question.

It's a good play for scum to try to draw a single-use cop onto the godfather. It negates the scan, and more or less "townclears" the godfather until people wonder in the late game why he's not dying.

to draw the scan, I'd say play more like a power wolf or a lightning rod. I thought for a while ND might have been mafia godfather - he was playing really differently than I remembered. It'd work by getting lots of attention. Taking more risks. Don't act scummy enough to get lynched, but act like... like someone the cop would want to know who you are.

That said, it's all moot now because town lynched well and mafia shot the cop.

[teacon7]

But, when you iso damo, it's really striking how few people he interacted with. Damo plays a very shy scum, so I really would not be surprized if he limited his interactions to his teammates.

@xorxes -


Do you think shy scum interacting only with his teammates is good scum play?

Do you think that'd be a liability for the scumteam?

[teacon7]

teacon seems to have studied last game very carefully. I said last game I never saw scum coach other scum openly in the thread. teacon here (and I think elsewhere) coaches damo openly in the thread.

I told damo to be more verbose in his reads, by way of encouragement from something he said after last game.

If he's more verbose as town, we have more eyes on the problem
If he's more verbose as scum, we have more rope to hang him with.

How is that anything but pro-town?

[teacon7]

tbh that last quote from xorxes is a great example of picking a case first, and then going digging for reasons to confirm. It's either tunnel-ey confirmation-bias town play, or scum looking to get someone lynched and digging for quotes.

I'm pretty sure xorx, who is very dangerous at this game, is better than putting himself into a tunnel of confirmation bias.

That leaves very few other options to interpret his series of "hunches" today.

[teacon7]

So why would xorxes suddenly start bussing damo, the GF, and help get him lynched? Maybe he felt damo was being suspicious enough that damo would get lynched soon anyway. Maybe Percy Williams is scum also, and with both of his teammates already getting pressure, he thought he had to make a bold move for scum to have a chance. Maybe he didn't, but we should not assume xorxes is town for "catching" damo.

This is spot on. How was xorxes so certain damo was scum?


I have a theory on this, but I've yet to see xorxes answer this question:

Why would scum bus their godfather d1?

[teacon7]

I think this makes Moscow-teacon an unlikely pair.

teacon explains here that his push on ND (who was at the time a leading lynch candidate) was not really based on him scumreading ND, but it was more to see how others reacted. This post (and others) will make it very difficult for teacon to vote for ND when it was 4-4 with damo and he had to break the tie.

I see what you're saying, but that's silly.
1) I didn't vote ND because I didn't really scumread ND.
2) damo was already in my lynch pool.
3) a tie was avoided.

Do a cost-benefit analysis on this. Which is more worth it for scum!me to do at EOD: risk looking worse in order to save the godfather, or bus the most important member of my team to death?

Maybe you would play it differently as scum. If you were scum, Xorxes, under what conditions would you bus the godfather?

[teacon7]

So why would xorxes suddenly start bussing damo, the GF, and help get him lynched? Maybe he felt damo was being suspicious enough that damo would get lynched soon anyway. Maybe Percy Williams is scum also, and with both of his teammates already getting pressure, he thought he had to make a bold move for scum to have a chance. Maybe he didn't, but we should not assume xorxes is town for "catching" damo.

All good points. It would be the first time I bus my teammates so brazenly, but I will have to try it some time as scum.

Only problem is, what happens after I get lots of towncred and survive N1 and N2? I can only try that strategy in a game with complicated mechanics that could explain my survival because scum are busy with other things, fearful of saves, and so on, but in this vanilla setup early credibility for me at the expense of a teammate is of no use, because it vanishes as soon as I survive the nightkills.

Nah. You'd just spam cases looking for reasons and paint me as scum by attrition. Wear everyone down by saying that same untrue thing until it "becomes" true. Then, when I flip town, you do the same thing to ND. It wouldn't last forever, but if you had a good team mate you could probably set up conditions for enough ML's to win after you're dead. Besides, if bozo is right here, it's not like scum!xorxes has many other options.

[ND]

I seriously doubt this guy ^^^^ is scum.

[teacon7]

I highly doubt Xorxes is scum bro.

I did too. Now I'm not so sure. I'd really like someone to help me avoid an OMGUS tunnel here, but I can't figure out why he's a) not dead, b) making long-stretch cases on me right after a scum lynch my vote was instrumental for.

[teacon7]

okay I'm still not caught up to the present yet, but it looks like I'm going to have to go, uh, do real life things. I'll catch up more later on.

[xorxes]

Fair, and you have a case. I disagree with parts of it, but it’s a case. Still, there is a big difference in Damo and Teacon. Teacon seems, to me, whether you agree or not to be trying to deduce and solve the game. Damo wasn’t and was scum indicative from the start.

He was second top poster D1, very active and involved. We end the day successfully lynching the godfather. What does town do in such a scenario? Town is excited. Town looks at that scum's interactions, pulls the threads, finds the connections, tries to identify the remaining scum.

What does teacon do? Retire from the thread to write a long defense from a case he purportedly believes is not even an actual case but just a ploy from town xorxes to save himself from the kill. Sure.

[xorxes]

I'm around for a bit and catching up on the thread.

I'll leave this window open to answer questions. AMA.

I'm very interested in what you think about Vapor now that you know he is not the cop.

[xorxes]

It's a little odd how certain xorx was that damo was scum. He was everyone else's second tier scum list, but xorx was certain.

How could xorx know that D1?

Because he copied a read of mine from a previous game and town would never do something like that, I think I mentioned that already.

Are you now thinking I'm scum trying to mislynch you rather than a mistaken townie?

[ND]

I highly doubt Xorxes is scum bro.

I did too. Now I'm not so sure. I'd really like someone to help me avoid an OMGUS tunnel here, but I can't figure out why he's a) not dead, b) making long-stretch cases on me right after a scum lynch my vote was instrumental for.

a) Well, whoever the scum are either they got lucky with RD, shot in the dark, or spotted something like a crumb. For example, once when I was scum I literally killed someone with a random number generator so who knows. So, if we are dealing with some expert scums who are spotting crumbs then it would explain the kill over xorxes. Obviously if Xorxes is scum it explains why he isn't dead. Or, perhaps they felt keeping him alive was best for whatever reason. it is strange how Xorxes and Espresso both this phase have been talking about doc stuff. I noted that in my bigger post a bit ago.

b) Yes, your vote was instrumental, but so was his push, and so was my play to bring him out. Him having a hunch or inferring you are scum doesn't make it so just like you thinking he is scum for making this case (wrongly *if you are town*) makes it so.

Similarly to yourself I wonder if this Durga stuff is a red herring. Am I falling into a trap here?

1) Durga was important EOD for two things. Push the deadline back (which is odd since I was a major wagon at the time and she was voting for me) and the Percy third wagon.

-Percy Third wagon: Never started, but was floated as a possibility by Durga with Damo (GF) leading. Now, people say oh well there wasn't enough support. Is that true though? Teacon could have done it, but he looks bad (I agree with xorxes on that), EMC could have done it (he was stalling fact), Damo could have switched to Percy (presumably), Durga could have switched to Percy. Potentially 3 to 4 people could have started that wagon. With how quiet and locked in we all were it could have potentially worked.

-Durga starts D2 off by immediately lashing into me in a very hostile way. We haven't seen that D1. She was pretty cool and collected to my messages to her. Not D2. Then she basically abandons the game. These are noteworthy because a) reaction is different, why? b) she could still check in but avoids it probably in the hope that pressure will fade. Abandoning the game in the hopes that pressure goes away isn't pro-town. Defending yourself in an honest way is I would say town indicative. If you have real merit and your town it comes through.

-Vashta who does nothing all D1 comes in D2 makes his post basically sheeping my EON logic on Durga. Or genuinely thinks that. But it's a fucking weird post isn't?

-Vapor votes Durga saying he is sheeping me to glory. Kool, but what do you really think here.

-Yes maybe my plan and play D1 really exposed 2/3 or 3/3 of the scum team with their votes. MAYBE, that would be easy. But, it's so rare for the entire scum team to vote one person like that. Especially D1.

[xorxes]

hm. I'm sad xorx isn't on when I'm here to ask questions.

Did he ever answer my question to him:

"why would scum bus their godfather on D1?"

I sure did:

Maybe you told us the answer yourself:

to listen more to my own instinct and look twice over people's posts because first impressions can be wrong

Sounds good to me. re-reads are important, gut reactions are good starters, but it's worth being aware of our own biases. fwiw, another insight I had from the last game was: tunneling is bad town play. It isn't really alignment indicative, because poor town play =/= scum.

It was strange watching a basically pure vanilla game. I wonder how different the dynamics are here with 1-off cop/doc/hooker. I bet scum tries to draw a scan onto their godfather.

Anyway, do you want to join me in lynching ND?

You wanted him to be scumread so he would be a good candidate for a scan, you just didn't expect that your weak scumread would practically force you to lynch him in the end.