Heh. Self-ISO'd to try and find the stuff Tammy was looking for. I guess I do have some things that I'd consider to be my classically eager town self tells:
Quote from Az »
Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeead it. Read it read it read it.
This is what I used to do. Not really who I am anymore, but it's who I was. Whole scum teams routed by end of d1 multiple times, etc. See if the analysis speaks to ya, and make up your own mind.
--
RE: Sloth, yeah, he's good. But I think I may be seeing some distinguishing marks between his playstle, some very subtle things that look like town tells in his posting here that are NOT present in his scum game. Gonna iso that to be sure.
That's not going to move anyone I expect, but that's the old essence of scum-hunting me. That's town Az, getting excited about the shiny information that he found and wanting to share. Still stuff like that in my history you can look at in future games.
Back to finding Tammy's stuff.
Looks like I addressed this point from Tammy multiple times about supposedly superficial analysis, but this is the most recent reply to that point of hers. Here it is:
Quote from Az »
GJ misrepped the case against himself heavily and you bought his spin. The case was never that he was afraid of me as an analyst. It was that he seemed too incurious about my alignment, too confident in my being townie. Much like KJ was questioning me on my read on him. Like, dude, where is this strong of a read on me coming from, is the sense of it.
And Bur was never intended to be a case. I've mentioned that two or three times already.
I don't arrive at fully formed cases and then try to back-justify them. I read posts, and I think about them, sometimes pondering for several minutes at a time.
Sometimes I think I understand the post. I recognize a pattern. Sometimes I don't, and I ask questions. On a few occasions, I'm just stumped and confused.
If you go back and read the Bur analysis again, you'll find no ultimate conclusions. No calls to take his head off. What you'll find, is a few bits of commentary, interspersed with questions. Because at that point in time, I wasn't sure what to think of him and those posts. Hence, lots of "hmms" and not much commentary.
It's not superficial analysis. It's incomplete. I couldn't get a grip on him.
Later, the lack of satisfactory answers, coupled with subsequent posts, and a very poor voting record, and an attempt to raise a very misplaced language issue as defense, haven't led to much that gives me confidence there afterwards, whatever the role info is that some have been given.
If you want a more accurate read on me, go back and take a second look at it, through that lens.
Correct reads depend on empathy, being able to put yourself in my shoes and understand what I'm thinking and why, whether from a town or scum perspective.
I know you don't respond well to lectures, not trying to be tedious. I wrote an article years ago that sets a lot of this out in more detail. It used to be easily found on the OP, and I suppose a version of it still is, although the nested quotes were broken.
But in it, I talk about how most players start off doing what you're doing, looking for things that seem weird, or anti-town. Tells.
That's fine as far as it goes, but the next level above that, which the best players I've met use, to considerable success, is mindset analysis. It's not dipping litmus paper into water and turning blue every time you see someone, for example, tell a lie. There's the old rule, lynch all liars, right? Seem like a decent rule to catch mafia, right? In actuality, terrible rule.
With mindset analysis, you are trying to think like your enemies, or friends, think. Put yourself in their shoes. Can you understand what they were thinking, when they made that post? Does it seem more likely to come from one alignment, or another? What kinds of emotions, instincts, feelings do you expect from each alignment? Does that change, based on your read of that individual, because every individual is different and unique.
That's where the beauty in the game of mafia comes in. The effort to understand on an intimate level the workings of another mind - even through nothing more than words on a web page. That's the magic. That's what's kept me coming back to this game - the thrill and the challenge of doing that, of trying to understand others.
But here, it feels almost as if I'm in a foreign country. Because most of the people who practiced this art, who know this language, who can pick up those telltale signs and see inside me - they're gone. Dead, retired, out of time, out of willpower.
And I know that without that art, the town is hopelessly outgunned. The rudimentary methods are heavily unsuccessful. When we started this sub, the towns were very unsuccessful. Hardly anyone knew what to look for, how to get a correct read. Town won maybe 20, 25 percent of the time.
Flash forward five or ten years, and the tides had completely changed. The game was well balanced, with even wins on either side. The town's had learned how to do this, how to read mindset.
And in our invitationals? Where you had savants like Iso at play? Multiple 2nd day victories. They literally killed the scum and won the games faster than we could lynch them. One game, we didn't even lose a single townie.
THAT is what an educated, skilled, mindset-analysis wielding town can do. They can work miracles. They can read minds.
I'll see if I can't link that article for you guys. We could use a little bit of that old magic about now.
TL DR; I think you're mischaracterizing my positions in very similar ways to how I've mischaracterized your own posting history. But the threads of those conversations have been dropped before they went anywhere.
Tammy, I did directly explain that the Bur "analysis" was me not being certain how to take those posts, that I wasn't certain how to interpet some of them and was trying to get more info from him before I could come to any conclusions. It was never intended to be comprehensive, because I couldn't understand those posts at the time.
I went into a lot more depth on that and your other points on a previous post, and I don't believe you ever responded to it.
KJ, my base assumption (maybe this no longer holds true) is that every player reads every post in this game, no matter who it's directed to. And that therefore, if I address a question that one person had, that was very much related to a question that someone else had, it will answer their concerns as well.
I understood exactly what you were saying - not a strawman - the same criticism applies.
I am not saying it's town indicative. I'm saying it's not indicative of anything. There is no special scum-based explanation that makes it more likely this comes from scum than town. That's what a tell is. We're dealing with some pretty basic definitions here, but they have pretty important implications. This is one of the most frequent ways that townies screw up their reads, through conflating oddities with tells.
What is the scum motivation for this activity supposed to be? What's my objective that I'm trying to achieve, as scum, from not flagging/addressing you directly, while still answering your question?
If you're looking for idiosyncrasies in my history, you will definitely struggle. Because I'm full of oddities and idiosyncrasies under either alignment.
The things that tend to be real tells on me are:
1) Lack of motivation. I enjoy playing as town, and figuring out the game. I get passionate and interested. That's a more complicated inquiry now that I'm also time-strapped. But traditionally, that's how people caught me. I would put in a ton of time and effort, but then just slowly decay in terms of interest, revising those reads, keeping up with appearances. Stamina just wouldn't last through the whole course of the game.
2) Wording. The final tell in that mafia article I cited earlier, was Nai absolutely WRECKING me with wording analysis. He was able to pick out exactly what the subtext of my post was, where I was discussing a POE elimination chain, that would have resulted in the town losing. The town didn't put enough creedence in it, so I escaped, but he used my own weapons against me to devastating effect.
3) I wouldn't recommend relying on emotional analysis too heavily. I'm so well aware of it from my own analysis work, that I sometimes go to the effort of seeding false tells there as scum, in certain posts. Usually not throughout my entire history though.
4) Inability to faithfully mimick my town playstyle. It's unique and different, but very distinctive. Tons of pivots, curiosity, confidence, and being highly opinionated. If I'm not making noises about having solved pretty much the entire game by a certain point, that's not a good sign. If I'm not paranoid about being killed off, that's not a good sign. Traditionally, there are also usually gambits and deception included whether I'm town or scum, and information-gathering stunts. That's perhaps something that may change if I join another game and roll scum at some point, because I don't think there are enough people familiar with my meta anymore to expect those gambits and conversation-gathering stunts and be alarmed by their absence.
5) Inability to town-read me. Generally speaking, in the past, people were able to town-read me pretty easily as I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I was a pretty well-known quantity. That seems to have diminished a fair bit, as my time/abilities have declined. Used to be that I'd be dropping very thorough PBPAs dissecting players in minute detail. More recently, I haven't had the time to do that, so instead of showing my work, I've pivoted more towards informing myself about who the scum are with the time I have, rather than a ton of time showing my work and progress with others. That's creating a series of problems I'm going to have to get creative about addressing, like posting a standard boilerplate disclaimer about what my meta is and what is/isn't alignment indicative for me, such as over-confidence, factual mistakes, easy town-clears, etc.
IDK that that's terribly helpful to figuring me out, thinking it over I think that basically just signals that I'm a much harder read than I used to be. There's not many people who are going to be using high-level wording analysis on me the way that Nai did, there's not many people familiar with me from a meta standpoint, my town/scum games have blended closer together over time. Wish I could think of more to help you give you some more tools there, but it seems like the most I can do is tell you the things that really aren't AI for me, based on my verifiable past meta.
In The Middle/No Specific Reason to Like Or Dislike
Bur
Cuth
Cantrip
Wisp
Wisp
Maybe Leaning Bad
Sloth
Tubba
Leaning Bad
Az
Raisins
Tammy: In general I've liked her posting. I've liked her questions, where her mind goes, etc. Just a generally townie seeming person.
Vaimes: There were a few posts that had some questionable content. Not outright scummy, but more of a makes me headtilt type. But his posts in the past 24 hours are reminding mr of townie Vaimes so I'm dropping the headtilting as likely wrong.
HR: General aggressiveness in play is weird for scum, with specific reference to wanting Wisp REALLY dead for a good portion of the game.The recent prompting me to do things is good as I believe it shows a desire to read me, ergo he probably doesn't know my alignment, ergo, probably town.
Anak: So he's been up Az's ass all game, and I've failed to see really why, but weirdly enough, Az made a good case that he's town. I believe that Anak is probably town independent of Az's alignment if Az is scum.
Boom: His play has been... eh. I'm mostly just trusting his claim in a for now sense, given he's one of the few protectives, and I'm scumreading one of the others. In the back of my head is the thought that his claim is actually a scum trueclaim as well as that Doctor that has apperently claimed to Tammy. This townslot will have to be earned in coming Days.
Bessie: I haven't really spent too much time talking about her, nor has she really engaged with me much. This position is kind of a... gut thing? Something about where she is in relation to everyone else in the game positionally kind of makes me think... maaybe town? Like, she's floating by not super noticed, but she's also been decently aggressive, which is good.
Bur/Cuth: Kind of occupy the same headspace for me. Neither has done anything I really consider super noteworthy save for Cuth's claim, but that's just kinda weird instead of alingment bearing.
Cantrip: I can't actually remember anything he's done this game.
Wisp: Neutral. Don't really care too mcuh about him.
Sloth: Sloth is kinda a new addition here. I was not terribly impressed with his catchup, and the thing where he extended past a simple question to draw false conclusions is a reason I am keeping an eye on him. I wanna read more into him, but he's def not in my townpile atm.
Tubba: Tubba had only a few posts that I've liked, most are just memes (null) or blah. I've not noticed the conviction I'm used to seeing in Town Tubba.
Az: Az is notoriously hard for me to read, but I feel like he's... IDK. When he made a post to me asnwering my question, but then started talking to someone else without like... saying he was changing @people doesn't feel... natural. Also he's got a strong townread of me for a stronger reason than I feel he should have, and it doesn't make sense for him to have came to that conclusion naturally.
I don't recall you ever mentioning before that I'm a tough read for you.
How is addressing multiple people in the same post remotely something that comes from scum az and not from town az? This isn't remotely a tell. This is mafia, not Goosebumps. Things you can't explain are things you need to investigate, not kill.
I'm short on time. I take shortcuts.
Second, the guy who tries to analyze entire playerbases in two weeks is scum for reading you too quickly?
You can always argue I'm wrong or the read can't be trusted, but this is what keeps forcing me to go back and make statements that HR can twist to try and make me sound pretentious. I just don't have the same playstyle, habits, and perspectives that most other players here have, on account of needing to compress my analysis into a short time-span due to constantly being murdered in a previous life.
You're attempting to lynch me for a skill that I used dozens of times previously, in games that could easily be cited, such as Cyan's impossible mafia, the invitational games, etc.
Don't just lynch anomalies. Ask and learn about them.
This is why Iso semi-retired as well, as he mentioned in this same game. Explaining every game why he does things so differently, and why he has the confidence that he did in his reads to people who don't understand where the comes from - it warps the nature of the game. You become the circus freak, and it causes people to want to kill you simply for being yourself after finding a technique that works for you. Intensely frustrating.
For the record, while I would prefer not to die yet, it'd be pretty satisfying if Cuth went down with me.
Also, we should probably have a designated wit or skill partner pairing set an exact time to simul-post the double lynch at a set time, if we can achieve that.
If you wait all the way up until 5:00 pm EST, someone could screw with us. If two people do it at like 4:53 EST or something, much less likely anyone can tamper with us.
Maybe GJ isn't a wolf, and it's just highroller, since that post howlssss.
Oh really? Tell me, is it worse than claiming you're not town? How would you rank it compared to my one previous post, which you also said was suspicious without any explanation?
Yeah, it was obvious that you weren't posting in good faith prior to being outed as a hostile. Right now it's plainly obvious that you're either mafia or a neutral that has me on his list.
I take 1 vit from people I don't need to target and 3 from people I do, it still requires in worlds of 7 starting vit, 3 days phases to kill someone by myself. Actually 3 day phases to set up and a night phase to off them
7 VIT?! Holy *****... I hope you're lying about this.
Bur, you realize that when people like posts, it's basically saying the post reads townie?
Turns out, by that same token, going at someone four separate times in the span of less than two hours, in addition to outright calling him "wolfy," is a push.
So maybe best not to accuse someone of posting in bad faith when your actions don't match your rhetoric. Mmmkay? Sound good?
You said you wanted to yeet Wisp second before the claim - what were your reasons? Your posts makes it look like "he's 3rder, kill it" as the only reason.
First of all, that's the only reason we should need. He's a threat to the town. Our win condition is kill threats to the town.
Second, Wisp was just obviously shifty. He has claimed me mafia and voted for me with absolutely no rationale given, and came at me three times in one page when I'd posted exactly once. It came off as opportunism, going after a low poster, which is made all the more clear with his claimed role. He's either mafia or I'm one of the people he needs dead, but it definitely wasn't coming from a place of good faith. He was clearly not a town even before he made it undeniable by outing himself.
I don’t think that highroller’s push on wisp has to come from scum. I do think that mafia are more likely to want to push the claimed third party because it’s easy and is possibly detrimental to the scum team, BUT there are people out there that legitimately think you should never suffer a nontown to live no matter what. I don’t know high roller, so I do not know if that’s his theory. I wasn’t totally ensnared with his GJ push even though it has some of the same reasoning as me for finding him scummy. I guess he felt a little too dramatic about it.
I was in a game on this very forum in which the town lost with the exact mindset being expressed here, "No, let's not lynch the neutral and instead vote for mafia."
It is singularly ridiculous to argue that a lynch that has a 100% chance of killing a hostile and a 0% chance of killing a town should not be taken.
Ohh no he claimed 3p he is anti town, thata like claiming an angel is anti town, it's just a ***** role, u shouldn't have anything to worry about if you start slinging wolves day 1 and on, in regards to the possibilities of me killing town
#gitgudmaybe
Ohh no he claimed 3p he is anti town, thata like claiming an angel is anti town, it's just a ***** role, u shouldn't have anything to worry about if you start slinging wolves day 1 and on, in regards to the possibilities of me killing town
#gitgudmaybe
What the hell? Your role's job is to kill towns!
I don't know who my targets are or there alignment, there is no way all 5 of my targets are town, and if u just lunch Mafia which is not me, then we will be fine.
We are not going to be fine, because you are a person whom we need to lynch to win, whose win condition by its very nature means we lose, who has nightkills, and, given vitality shenanigans, apparent vig-kill immunity.
We'll be fine when you're dead.
*frowns*
I mean, if HR's acting it's a hell of a performance. It seemed like a caricature almost, but that's probably more paranoia than what's probable. I don't think that's really been HR's wheelhouse.
I went back to check if Chad ever replied to my questions too, but he actually hasn't posted since yesterday. Poor timing. Come back, Chad.
Also bouncing around Cuth thoughts in my head, and I find myself in the peculiar position that I'm not a fan of the way he's putting as little effort into things as possible, which flies in the face of the brief but content-heavy posts I've come to expect from him. However, in all the games that I remember with him, he was actually scum, so the deviation here is...good...?
Someone speak on this with me.
counterpoint: i have a bunch of stuff i need to get done by friday and this is a >two week long phase
also thank you very much i am keeping track of the game and have Thoughts in my head
but they're not that in depth because of gamestate and me being busy elsewhere
and i don't really want to post a lot without depth because i'm definitely gonna want to come back and reread the game closer to EoD and the less time that takes the better in my books
Again, with the thoughts in his head, and the not sharing them. And then trying to delay providing reads until the EoD?
i think wolves are probably more likely to take the wisp claim at face value rather than pushing for a yeet there strongly on average
because having a "maybe we need to be paranoid and yeet there" is great long-term and short-term having a role that sucks vitality from more villagers than wolves is their-sided
it's a convenient thing to keep in your pocket
i just don't want to yeet here mostly because i think it's fairly likely real and pretty unfun to yeet out of the gate either way
but wisp's play and thought processes post-claim today have been
what i'd expect to see in a good way?
so i think i'm still fine with just trusting it and playing around it
and i don't really want to reevaluate that down the road purely out of fear
so if we could hit a wolf or two up front here that'd be great
First line here tends to contradict the vote he JUST made.
Just woke up though so I’ll actually read what he said in full later, but my first impression is too blustery. Might just be normal for him. I haven’t played with him in years, and only once or twice maybe.
The beginning of her read on me. Continued consistently on down that road, from there, tracks well.
Bolding again mine. Look at those four bottom surviving reads.
As usual, it takes Iso about two seconds to get to the same spot it takes me three days to get to. *shakes head*
You realize that with Wisp being neutral, if those three aren't exactly the team AND there isn't a fourth member, your name is next, so I don't know why you're presenting that list as anything super useful.
lol
I hadn't posted yet, Vaimes. And neutral gives off the same reads as scum.
Probably no one else is enough of an Iso fan-boy for this to sway them, but it means a lot to me.
But more relevant than the reads-list, is his meta knowledge on Bur being sure-fire scum if he lurks.
Bur isn't witted yet, either, right?
@LW - You haven't read much on the game's flavor, have you? Yes, I'm one of the naturally witted. I "got" wit from Anak, but was already naturally witted as well, and never used it.
First and foremost, shoutout to LastWhisper for trying to shade me three times in a three hour span, when it was the morning on a Wednesday.
How did anyone townread you again?
———————
Doing gold, silver, bronze with my lynch choices so far:
Gold:
LastWhisper
Silver:
Gentleman Johnny
Bronze:
Bur
Vote LastWhisper.
LastWhisper was my second choice prior to his claim, and with his role claim he has outed himself as a non-town.The town win con is to kill threats to the town. This is a no-brainer.
——————————
As for the others:
Gentleman_Johnny comes off as mafia. He also comes off as an angry Looney Tunes character.
KJ feels good for me, but ***** posting a bit much for me. Nullish
Give me more. I am grinding out these invoices.
So, to clarify, the day started less than 14 hours prior to this. Now he posts this like it's just a light shade; yet, over the next two hours, he goes from null read to claiming he’s mafia and actually quadruples down on this.
On Page 2.
Seriously.
He never lets up afterward. On post 218 - 136 posts later! - he provides this paper-thin justification:
Tammy questioning the town read on her is a relatively good look
@Vaimes: My core of hunting as town is basically boiled down to one fundamental question: Is this person trying to solve the game? Yes, they are town. No, they are wolf. I'll snag the occasional townie, but honestly, townies that aren't solving should be lynched more. Or get better at faking it, or I don't know. KJ's posts bother me because he will ask questions, and then do nothing with them. I also think he doesn't try to get people to follow him, and in particular, his response to me about no one doing anything just reads disdainfully.
He has half the team defending him from even questioning, so I don't really see a point in continuing. But I just roll my eyes and move on.
Holy *****, dude, it wasn’t even 24 hours since the first post of the day.
Then he starts throwing a temper tantrum? Did Killjoy run over your dog or something? Because that would at least provide some explanation for why you decided he wasn’t looking for mafia hard enough on page 2 of the ******* game and then proceeded to just harp on about it ever since.
It’s like a bad joke. It's like he's doing a bit, except it's clear he's serious. The only reason I’m not voting for him because we had a guy out himself as a non-town.
—————————
Then there’s Bur. Bur’s posted 24 times so far and has managed to say nothing in all of that time. He’s being that poster who hangs back and makes posts that are either solely composed of questions to other users or are just nothing-posts. He feels like he’s hiding in plain sight by making posts that usually just deflect attention to other posters when they’re not just outright non-posts.
It’s also interesting to me that GJ would have an aneurysm over Killjoy but somehow reacts to Bur in a totally different manner.
————————
I’m going to put special notice for Slothful, because he deserves to be called out for this thing:
Also @all right off the bat, I'm advocating to reach majority as soon as it feels like a reasonably good bet, which will 100% be before a 2-week mark.
I understand the idea that we should make use of all the time available to make sure we're hitting scum.
On the other hand I cannot imagine a more boring hell than a 2-*******-week drag-along culminating in reaching a vote we knew we would reach several days ago.
My sweet spot is 5 days, btw. 7 for D1, and even that's like...ehhh.
”I think we should cut Day One in half for no reason!”
… No. No, we should not.
Ok, so here's an early HR post, before we're too far into the LW crusade. The main thing I'm seeing here? Anger. Just, overall - before he's even got that far into the LW mud-pit.
Anger can do a lot to muddy someone's reads and behavior. But the other thing you can see here is passion. I've been presuming he was just trying to fake that, and constantly play it up, but if you take away that presumption I'd very much be slotting him as hard, hard town.
Does HR really fake this level of emotion? Am I just tunneling back on him in response and frustrated with a myopic, angry townie? Possibly.
@Vaimes: What is my correct acronym? :thinking_face:
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I feel good about Cantrip's first post.
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@Tubba: I played a cyberpunk MUD called SinDome for a while. Highly addicting. Check it out if that's your thing.
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GJ's reaction to Cantrip feels town, and I like his early analysis of Killjoy.
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Oh god Rhand is RPing.
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I dislike Silver's conclusion of "a wolf probably followed me on to Iso but totally ignore that." Probably scumbuddies with CropCircles.
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...why did I think fonti was in this game? Hm, weird.
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Scumleaning on Tammy for reasons I'm not ready to divulge, but it has to do with her exchange with Bur.
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If CC is scum, Rhand is town.
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Bur's not lurking so he's town.
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Per tradition, Whisp's posts generate an eternal mindfog for me when attempting to read them. Maybe I'll go over him again, someday.
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Kind of like Sloth's line of questionings. This one's a town lean, for me.
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If Whisp is scum, so is Rhand.
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I like Vaimes on page 3. I disagree with his Cantrip read, but I think he's playing like townVaimes. And yes, that's mostly a meta read.
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Also, Killjoy's "only in my dreams do I get to dunk on Iso" made me chortle, but I somehow missed that post until Vaimes quoted it.
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CC seems defensive in 128. Kind of don't like the lack of overall content from him, and coupled with his bad RVS, I will probably be voting him by the end of this read barring something groundbreaking happening by then.
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@GJ: I dunno, I think I've played the most Mafia games in here by sheer quantity, though things could have changed in my absence.
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I like that Sloth's reasoning for disliking CC in RVS mirrors my own. Town read on Sloth.
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Alright I guess Killjoy can have a town lean for /barning Sloth's logic on that too.
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Anyway, that's pages 2 and 3 for me. Not gonna place a vote until I'm caught up and know what the votecount is so that I don't pull an "oops Iso did an accidentally :awesome:" moment, but consider my vote on CC, for now.
Hey, Iso gets to speak from the grave. As someone whose early game is legendary, even though these reads are from super early on, there's some things in these posts worth noting.
Bolded that read from Iso on Bur. Iso has played a ton with Bur, even more than I have. His read on Bur confirms mine, that a history of lurking is the key to reading Bur, and that Bur is far, far more engaged as town. That matches my memory, and that's a bit of a smoking gun for that slot.
Work meeting in an hour so I'm gonna try to focus on not responding to less relevant stuff. I forgot how time-consuming this game can be. -_-; Also, Tammy, tell Nacho I miss him and his Sol Badguy avatar gracing my presence.
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Ugh I don't like Bur showing emotion. Feels fake. Also don't like his lack of actually solving the game and going into math theory instead.
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It disturbs me that over 150 posts into the game and before I've actually made my first post, there are still 3 votes on me from RVS. Deeefinitely eyeing the three people still on there.
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The naked votes from Rhand on to Whisp and Whisp on to GJ do not instill me with confidence. I expect an explanation for those votes - I'll touch back on this if I remember and there hasn't been an acknowledgement of this in the following pages.
=
Pretty sure Tammy is town.
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Okay so Whisp gave the flimsiest reasoning ever for voting Rhand. "IF Rhand is scum, then he's trying to pocket GJ." ...I'm sorry, but what? Did you really just make a vote with that rationale? You are now on my scum list.
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Note to self: None of Cuth's posts are standing out in my mind. I can't remember a single one.
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Ha, glad my 3 Little Pigs game is ringing some nostalgia bells for people.
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Strongly like Sloth's response to CC RE: numbers.
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I'm like, completely glazing over page 5, so far, and I'm only 7 posts in to it.
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GJ's response to 'Synonyms With Bur' amused me because that was also my reaction to reading that post. I guess I'm fine with GJ's play so far, even though I'm not necessarily agreeing with his reasoning on some of his reads.
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Read Tammy's 215 "I'm totally going to fence sit on GJ right now" as "face sit" and was like 'uhhhhh'. That said, I like her reads explanation post, solidifying her more firmly as town to me.
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STRONGLY dislike Silver encouraging FURTHER votes on someone who hadn't even posted at that time and then just not providing any actual content beyond that. And not just because the votes would have been pointed at me.
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Vaimes you should know better.
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I don't really understand Whisp's engagement of Highroller other than to "generate interactions" between the two of them. Bad look.
That's not going to move anyone I expect, but that's the old essence of scum-hunting me. That's town Az, getting excited about the shiny information that he found and wanting to share. Still stuff like that in my history you can look at in future games.
Back to finding Tammy's stuff.
Looks like I addressed this point from Tammy multiple times about supposedly superficial analysis, but this is the most recent reply to that point of hers. Here it is:
I went into a lot more depth on that and your other points on a previous post, and I don't believe you ever responded to it.
I understood exactly what you were saying - not a strawman - the same criticism applies.
I am not saying it's town indicative. I'm saying it's not indicative of anything. There is no special scum-based explanation that makes it more likely this comes from scum than town. That's what a tell is. We're dealing with some pretty basic definitions here, but they have pretty important implications. This is one of the most frequent ways that townies screw up their reads, through conflating oddities with tells.
What is the scum motivation for this activity supposed to be? What's my objective that I'm trying to achieve, as scum, from not flagging/addressing you directly, while still answering your question?
If you're looking for idiosyncrasies in my history, you will definitely struggle. Because I'm full of oddities and idiosyncrasies under either alignment.
The things that tend to be real tells on me are:
1) Lack of motivation. I enjoy playing as town, and figuring out the game. I get passionate and interested. That's a more complicated inquiry now that I'm also time-strapped. But traditionally, that's how people caught me. I would put in a ton of time and effort, but then just slowly decay in terms of interest, revising those reads, keeping up with appearances. Stamina just wouldn't last through the whole course of the game.
2) Wording. The final tell in that mafia article I cited earlier, was Nai absolutely WRECKING me with wording analysis. He was able to pick out exactly what the subtext of my post was, where I was discussing a POE elimination chain, that would have resulted in the town losing. The town didn't put enough creedence in it, so I escaped, but he used my own weapons against me to devastating effect.
3) I wouldn't recommend relying on emotional analysis too heavily. I'm so well aware of it from my own analysis work, that I sometimes go to the effort of seeding false tells there as scum, in certain posts. Usually not throughout my entire history though.
4) Inability to faithfully mimick my town playstyle. It's unique and different, but very distinctive. Tons of pivots, curiosity, confidence, and being highly opinionated. If I'm not making noises about having solved pretty much the entire game by a certain point, that's not a good sign. If I'm not paranoid about being killed off, that's not a good sign. Traditionally, there are also usually gambits and deception included whether I'm town or scum, and information-gathering stunts. That's perhaps something that may change if I join another game and roll scum at some point, because I don't think there are enough people familiar with my meta anymore to expect those gambits and conversation-gathering stunts and be alarmed by their absence.
5) Inability to town-read me. Generally speaking, in the past, people were able to town-read me pretty easily as I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I was a pretty well-known quantity. That seems to have diminished a fair bit, as my time/abilities have declined. Used to be that I'd be dropping very thorough PBPAs dissecting players in minute detail. More recently, I haven't had the time to do that, so instead of showing my work, I've pivoted more towards informing myself about who the scum are with the time I have, rather than a ton of time showing my work and progress with others. That's creating a series of problems I'm going to have to get creative about addressing, like posting a standard boilerplate disclaimer about what my meta is and what is/isn't alignment indicative for me, such as over-confidence, factual mistakes, easy town-clears, etc.
IDK that that's terribly helpful to figuring me out, thinking it over I think that basically just signals that I'm a much harder read than I used to be. There's not many people who are going to be using high-level wording analysis on me the way that Nai did, there's not many people familiar with me from a meta standpoint, my town/scum games have blended closer together over time. Wish I could think of more to help you give you some more tools there, but it seems like the most I can do is tell you the things that really aren't AI for me, based on my verifiable past meta.
I don't recall you ever mentioning before that I'm a tough read for you.
How is addressing multiple people in the same post remotely something that comes from scum az and not from town az? This isn't remotely a tell. This is mafia, not Goosebumps. Things you can't explain are things you need to investigate, not kill.
I'm short on time. I take shortcuts.
Second, the guy who tries to analyze entire playerbases in two weeks is scum for reading you too quickly?
You can always argue I'm wrong or the read can't be trusted, but this is what keeps forcing me to go back and make statements that HR can twist to try and make me sound pretentious. I just don't have the same playstyle, habits, and perspectives that most other players here have, on account of needing to compress my analysis into a short time-span due to constantly being murdered in a previous life.
You're attempting to lynch me for a skill that I used dozens of times previously, in games that could easily be cited, such as Cyan's impossible mafia, the invitational games, etc.
Don't just lynch anomalies. Ask and learn about them.
This is why Iso semi-retired as well, as he mentioned in this same game. Explaining every game why he does things so differently, and why he has the confidence that he did in his reads to people who don't understand where the comes from - it warps the nature of the game. You become the circus freak, and it causes people to want to kill you simply for being yourself after finding a technique that works for you. Intensely frustrating.
Also, we should probably have a designated wit or skill partner pairing set an exact time to simul-post the double lynch at a set time, if we can achieve that.
If you wait all the way up until 5:00 pm EST, someone could screw with us. If two people do it at like 4:53 EST or something, much less likely anyone can tamper with us.
*frowns*
I mean, if HR's acting it's a hell of a performance. It seemed like a caricature almost, but that's probably more paranoia than what's probable. I don't think that's really been HR's wheelhouse.
Again, with the thoughts in his head, and the not sharing them. And then trying to delay providing reads until the EoD?
Whatever his alignment, that's just bizarre.
I don't mind the vote on me, but the rationale, and the weak wording in those last four lines, seems fairly contrived.
First line here tends to contradict the vote he JUST made.
The beginning of her read on me. Continued consistently on down that road, from there, tracks well.
I don't think I'm making it much further tonight.
I'm making him witted now.
I'm also skilling Vaimes my Sloth read, since that seems to be something he feels is urgent.
lol
I hadn't posted yet, Vaimes. And neutral gives off the same reads as scum.
Probably no one else is enough of an Iso fan-boy for this to sway them, but it means a lot to me.
But more relevant than the reads-list, is his meta knowledge on Bur being sure-fire scum if he lurks.
Bur isn't witted yet, either, right?
@LW - You haven't read much on the game's flavor, have you? Yes, I'm one of the naturally witted. I "got" wit from Anak, but was already naturally witted as well, and never used it.
Ok, so here's an early HR post, before we're too far into the LW crusade. The main thing I'm seeing here? Anger. Just, overall - before he's even got that far into the LW mud-pit.
Anger can do a lot to muddy someone's reads and behavior. But the other thing you can see here is passion. I've been presuming he was just trying to fake that, and constantly play it up, but if you take away that presumption I'd very much be slotting him as hard, hard town.
Does HR really fake this level of emotion? Am I just tunneling back on him in response and frustrated with a myopic, angry townie? Possibly.
Hey, Iso gets to speak from the grave. As someone whose early game is legendary, even though these reads are from super early on, there's some things in these posts worth noting.
Bolded that read from Iso on Bur. Iso has played a ton with Bur, even more than I have. His read on Bur confirms mine, that a history of lurking is the key to reading Bur, and that Bur is far, far more engaged as town. That matches my memory, and that's a bit of a smoking gun for that slot.
Bolding mine.
Bolding again mine. Look at those four bottom surviving reads.
As usual, it takes Iso about two seconds to get to the same spot it takes me three days to get to. *shakes head*