I'm all up for clearing these bad feelings!

Post 211 - I'm putting my two cents about the whole thing with wagon positions on the table, saying that the voters themselves should be noted and gave HSL in Captain Sapphire as an example. The whole thing with "scum kickstarting a wagon" concerned the speed of scene's wagon building up. I'm saying that if one or two scum participated in it when it was already at five votes, all it could have taken is either two scum if one was on the wagon or one scum and one reckless Townie to seal scene's fate...you know, without even seeing a singular post from dedo and Micro on D1. That's my concern with the wagon, that scum could have been setting up for a bum rush.

Post 247 - This is what I mean by scum setting up for a bum rush. While it may contradict my claim that wagon positions should be prioritized less to who voted, I needed to acknowledge that one-vote wagons wouldn't take off the way scene's did, not without scum helping the wagon get on its ground this quickly.

Post 351 - Why? Because I saw blotunga to be leaning Town? I thought his argument that he should make his posts AI to sound more town than scum, as well as the play he had going for him. Him backing off scene's wagon when I told him he brought scene to L-2 sealed it even further for me, as well as the reasoning for it. Not to mention that it didn't take long for scene's wagon to suddenly shift to blotunga and get him done with, and MAFIA-SirPrimalform voting on him can be taken as indication that they did move towards him.

Also, please do that follow up on me!

Post 794 - I was more concerned that Joe put me as least towny when he mentioned that Flub being utterly wrong about GameRager appeared questionable, but all he had on me was "why are we assuming Pooka's town again?" eventually explaining his rationale to be "nothing UNdamning about you, Pooks." A couple posts later, he remembers my alarm on scene and puts me higher up on the list. Then again, if one follows-up on me, they might remember or even find new UNdamning things about me.


I actually don't see dedo as all that memorable in the scope of this game. gogtrial is memorable in the way he goes about with his business, but again, if I were to take his individual stances, I remember none other than his dabbling with scene. This is especially the case right now, especially with the lack of his promised relevant take on Today, now that the distractions are out of the way.


Let's see. I noticed half of your issues here must be because I didn't really nail what I found interesting to the ground (thanks to being sleepy and at the end of the day), so I'll expand more on these.

About the early Flub claims, yes I can't make sense of them. Obviously the names are a start to something. Why would flub throw around contradictory claims, yet is bewildered by scene saying that his Ripper claim was a joke? On D1 nonetheless?

I remembered the Captain Sapphire game, where flavor names played an important part, especially at the last Day when HSL pushed the lynch of SPF (by claiming SPF had the name HSL actually had). If flub was trying to throw some light shade on scene with the Ripper thing, then what didn't strike me well with the whole Ripper and the joke thing is that scum have to put effort into finding out the town PRs, much less their names. Which means scummy scene couldn't have "known" if Flub was indeed joking or not.

About the doctors thing, notice that Trent on D3 has stayed on flub's wagon whereas Joe went for you. I'm taking this to imply there's a high likelihood Trent was the one to block the kill while Joe didn't use the one-shot protection on N2 (either used it on N1 or it died with him, latter more probable to me). If Trent was staying on Flub's wagon because he actually prevented the kill, then who was that nightkill and why did it make sense to stay on Flub? That's why I found the whole two doctors thing interesting.

About the no stands or opinions thing, I'm not really up for a mislynch toDay. Scene and GameRager looked undoubtedly scummy, yet they were MISlynches. I do have a stand, in that the stuff I found for flub pegs him as slightly scummy, but I don't want to jump the gun by calling him part of the scumteam. I want that input so we don't end up with a mislynch when we're at MyLo.


Give me a bump.

Bump.

Thanks!

But being the first to answer your question by claiming VT? Well, look, I won't convince you to take my words at face value. Rather, I'd like you to look over my posts in the game in a "rolefishing" kind of way. Watch for any breadcrumbs for power roles from my end. They should make sense for a VT who is only playing his second game proper (as in, lived beyond N1). Try reading it from that perspective and compare it to the scummy!Pooka perspective.

I confirmed the town roles by claiming VT followed by you and gogtrial also claiming the same. You're now at a point where everyone has claimed and no counter-claims arose, thus confirming the power roles. Two doctors fell dead, we had a roleblocker, and here we got a one-shot vigilante who jumped the gun and wasted it. Basically just from these claims, we know that town have used all their hands, and thus the mafia will have their nightkills unimpeded. This is information I want to be out in the open as town, so nobody can deceive us into thinking we've still got a power role to turn things around.

You should be able to find my lack of hesitance to stand out as much as being hesitated would.


This shouldn't be a thing to be happy about, it means that if a roleblocker exists, their work is done and they can now focus on the killing without worries!

I find it unlikely, and I doubt their new-claims would go down well.

I'm still vanilla town. Shoo!

Aaand that's it? What about all the prior posts? In fact, I doubt you have done something like Post #931 before. You don't seem like you can muster up the effort to write something similar...

SAGE12345 is your name?
Other than that, that's...an interesting way to leave breadcrumbs.

Ouch. You know I have feelings right??

Since I've only participated in 40 some odd games on this site alone... you're probably correct in your assumption.







Also, it's a game and I play for fun.

Feelings? Sounds like delicious food if I ever heard of one.

I've no idea what you were up to in those games.

Then they lied, which they should absolutely not be doing at this stage of this game.

AH HA! I KNEW you were just pretending to be an old man on the internet!

It is nice to see the breadcrumbs, though the claims have made them unnecessary (still a good habit to practice).

In other news: who are your picks for the scum team?

Hear that, Gogtrial? We're home free!

...I mean, Go Town!

;)

I was wondering if I was seeing some last minute distancing, or if I was seeing confirmation bias.

I bet you are! :D

The thing is, if several scum jump started the wagon, then there aren't any scum left for a bum rush. That simply takes too many scum, and I was seeing an undertone of you assuming there were more than two scum. I wanted to see if (and who) you would accuse of being scum based on your jump start theory.

You mean a group of townies can't decide to start pushing a wagon, especially when a player is making some of the statements Scene made? It requires scum to get going?

I'm referring to the "Checking up on Pooka" line. I mention this post as a marker that you were a concern. I had a general sense of unease about you instead of last game's sense of town-ish.

I was pointing to my first sentence, where I agree with Flub's statement and I also note that you are making me uneasy.

I'm pointing out 351 and 794 as evidence that my thoughts toward you aren't something I manufactured here on D4.

Dedo has put together several posts where he comments on events and gives his own interpretation. He has been fabulously wrong on facts more than once, but he's demonstrated he's at least trying to do the legwork.

Gogtrial, likewise, has been proactive about trying to work through events and providing his own impressions and interpretations of things.

For example, look at Dedo's Post 906, where he does everything but crow "Flub, you glorious bastard, I finally caught you!". He found something, he laid it out, he took a stand. He was wrong, laughably so in this case, but townies are going to be wrong quite frequently. Dedo has laid out a few other analysis posts as well.

Continuing our example, Gogtrial called Dedo on his wrongness. Gogtrial has also been pushing people to explain their comments, and he has provided posts with his own analysis.

Be aware that I'm not memorizing their actual arguments. If I want details, I'll just go back and read the post again. I'm looking to see the thrust of what they are doing, how they are going about playing the game, trying to guess their motivations.

Can you show similar posts where you take a stand, take a risk, present your opinion to be judged by the masses? Maybe make an accusation or two (before D4)? I've done it; I've managed to get 3 townies lynched already, but people can look back and see what I said about why I wanted to lynch them.

When the things you're interested in revolve around flavour, you're generally going to find me a very hard sell. Especially when the mod says the flavour doesn't matter.

Allow me to demonstrate my above statements about taking a stand: I think Flub was giving Scene a hard time for focusing on PM shenanigans. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's my interpretation of the situation.

By contrast, you profess confusion and have no idea how to interpret it. Intermittent cases of confusion can be forgiven (sometimes you just don't know what to make of something), but professing confusion about everything isn't useful. Town has to form ideas and take guesses, and there are other townies around to serve as sounding boards for those ideas.

Ah ha! Taking a stand! This is what I'm talking about. :)

Again, you actually lay out a theory here, instead of saying "This is noteworthy! Someone figure out what it means!" like in your prior post.

My response would have been "Standard doctor rules say the doctor doesn't know whether his protection worked if his target doesn't die. Trent couldn't have known why his target survived, so he couldn't safely assume his target was town."

Then you either accept my explanation, you try to demonstrate why my explanation is wrong, or you provide further support for your theory to demonstrate that my explanation isn't sufficient to counter your theory.

Here's the thing. Town doesn't have a choice. We have to make a decision and risk a mislynch. If we stop lynching, then we lose anyway after two more NKs.

Either you be proactive about trying to find the scum, or you be a sheep and follow someone else (who might be scum). Don't be overly hasty, but do actually think about things.

-----

I got distracted rereading Deep Smelly Dungeon. Fun game.

I'll address Pooka's other big post in a bit.

Red herrings.
1) As you were the most scummy among the three of us, I was planning for you to claim first anyway.
2) I don't believe you've been rolefishing over the course of the game, at least not actively.
3) I'm not putting much more than minimal effort into hunting for breadcrumbs. If you left them, then I'll leave it to you to reveal them. As you may have seen from Microfish's crumbs, they can be hideously obscure.
4) By your own admission, this is your second game so if you aren't lying then I haven't seen a scum!Pooka. :)

Let's turn the question around for a moment. Pretend that you wanted to prevent confirmation of town PRs. What would you have done and/or claimed?

Lack of hesitance, especially when mass claim is being seriously discussed and one is making a completely safe claim, is not AI.

Hesitance, when one is the only person left to claim and scum would already know whether one has a role (if not which one), would be an oddity.

So...Gogtrial and Microfish. Waiting on you two.

So, here's where I was at yesterday. You can basically skip this post, as there's no conclusion, and the conclusion I think I'm reaching isn't based on anything in here. I thought about tossing it all, but am posting it anyway; mostly for references, and to document my thinking, as Pooka was questioning its lack.

So here's my reads-list from yesterday, as it would've been immediately following scene's lynch, with a willing to lynch line added:
* flub
* TOWN-Joe
* dedo
* microfish
^^ ---- willing to lynch ----- ^^
* bookwyrm
* TOWN-trent
* Pooka
* gogtrial

microfish, by removing Joe, brought us to mylo - but he also took a kill away from scum, hitting someone deep in the grey zone, rather than someone who's generally townread, and confirmed himself town. Not bad for a night's work.
If he hadn't taken the shot, there'd have been a decent chance of mislynching Joe or micro (or flub if town) today, with scum removing another player on the towny side of things.

situation now:
* flub
* dedo
^^ ---- willing to lynch ----- ^^
* bookwyrm
* Pooka
* micro (confirmed town due to lack of counterclaim)
* gogtrial

one of many potential situations tomorrow if micro hadn't taken the shot; something like this is what mafia was aiming for before our vig upended their plans:
* flub
* dedo
* micro
^^ ---- willing to lynch ----- ^^
* bookwyrm OR Pooka
* gogtrial

Of course, the "willing to lynch" line is gone in the real now situation, as everything bears examining with fresh eyes in light of all available information.



I've also looked into if Joe or trent breadcrumbed their N2 protection target. Joe wrote this gem as the very first post of D3, which I don't know how to interpret given his flip. If anyone sees any clear interpretation in it, please speak up:
Bookwyrm is namedropped, so maybe he protected Bookwyrm? But that doesn't make much sense with his final vote, nor with placing Bookwyrm halfway through the reads list; also namedropping bookwyrm simply makes sense in the context of his blahblahblahblah frustration.
He lists me as most towny in #755 and #764, so maybe he protected me? Mafia might've thought that I'd copped GameRager on N1, and thus was protecting him so fiercely? It makes some sense (though given the possibility of a godfather, only some - then again, we now know there's no godfather, so mafia might not have thought that through), but of course there's a high chance that Joe used his protection on N1 or N3 instead... Didn't see anything significant at his start of D2. Maybe he's just telling us, "I know nothing about this result, because I already used my protection on N1"?

trent barely posts at all at the start of D3. He quotes Joe's first post and asks for reasons, he asks for a vote count, he votes flub, and then in #788 he points to his read's list in #547, where he lists scene, GR, me and Bookwyrm as town.
I was thinking that with him reading Bookwyrm as town with a 90% probability, he might've protected Bookwyrm on N2, and gotten that high likelihood from it, but of course he should also have known that it might've been due to another doctor or due to a roleblocker.

If dedo is mafia, what does that say about...
- His opposition against my clearing Pooka, microfish and GameRager based on lack of SPF comments directed toward them makes a lot of sense. He realizes SPF made an actual mistake there, and is trying to do damage control. (Hardly anyone commented on my theory, but dedo's opposition - while still quite mild in itself - was strongest. ( #821))
- His reaction when I thought I'd caught him felt pretty strong. I attributed it to soreness over his perception that I was blaming him for early absence, but of course it might also have something to do with being right.
- His question to ZFR about cross-roleblocks is interesting, since mafia is certain to have a roleblocker. ( #605) - he calls it a brain fart 5 posts further on.
- dedo hinted that trent might be a cop ( #589, which trent denied ( #614). Since mafia doesn't have a godfather, a cop was extra threatening to them. Was dedo hunting?
- him staying off the scene wagon despite an earlier claimed desire to join might've been deliberate for the purposes of wagon analysis
- he misunderstood the mechanics of the available roles; twice. ( #639, #906). "Mafia doesn't need to read, because they believe they already know everything."
- trent was right
- Joe had him on the town side first ( #764), but that changed ( #787)
- I would've actually had one mafia correctly pegged during the game, however fleetingly!
- Reaction to the lack of N2 kill: "Also, lol @ no night kill."

If Bookwyrm is mafia, what does that say about...
- Other than some references to me in #55, with this being payback, I've got nothing. He'll have played a flawless game.
- His bloodlust reputation allowed him to hide in plain view on every wagon. ('course, being on wagons is something that all of you have in common.)
- trent was wrong ( #847)
- Joe was right ( #860)
- I've been quite wrong about him
- The way he's framing Pooka; particular ping: referencing Joe's "forgettable" read of Pooka, but not the followup (or was there some other time where Joe found Pooka forgettable?) where he remembered why he town-read Pooka and moved him quite far up to town, and then even further to the town side ( #787).
- Reaction to the lack of N2 kill: none

If flub is mafia, what does that say about...
- His crucial contribution to both the blotunga and GameRager wagons: gutsy, but as I wrote earlier, "he's not usually that wrong". I also remember someone "questioning" that. *searches* Ah of course, that was dedo.
- His enigmatic playstyle allows him to hide in plain sight ever more effectively; all of us do the hard work for him, convincing ourselves that we can discern pure intentions.
- trent was right ( #815)
- Joe was right ( #787)
- I was right to be suspicious of him ( #809)
- Reaction to the lack of N2 kill: none

If Pooka is mafia, what does that say about...
- He did an extensive reread and summation of me-scene D1 interactions, which formed a major part of my early townread for Pooka. As mafia, he would've known it was either town-town, or potentially town-serialkiller interaction, so following Bookwyrm's argumentation, a "safe" way to score town points and to seem busy without taking a stand...
- He directed several comments my way about paying attention to my theories and admiring me ( #595). This might've been deliberate pocketing. Is Pooka that capable? (Hrm, at least one of the comments I remembered was actually made by micro, which means that my memory of Pooka isn't clean, and I'll need to check references even more. >.< )
- His reads list at the end of D2 is all kinda of "neutral", "iffy" and "possible". ( #595. Scum hedging bets makes as much sense as uncertain town.
- Joe was wrong ( #787)
- scene was wrong ( #826)
- I've been totally wrong about him ( #809)
- Reaction to the lack of N2 kill: "I see no Town players were killed. That's a good thing!"


Next up, flub and dedo's behaviour today.

Keep in mind that Joe would have known there was at least one more doctor out there for sure. Trent would not have known. 1-shot Doc requires a Doc, but Doc does not require a 1-shot Doc.

The Dedo points are interesting.

So, at the end of yesterday I was basically convinced that scum had run out of room to hide due to micro's vig shot, and the neat and simple solution was flub + dedo.
Bookwyrm posted that he didn't see them as a team, due to dedo's conviction that he'd caught flub. I, however, interpret that conviction as false. I think dedo was deliberately aiming for a wrong derpclear, based on making the same mistake with the way mechanics work as he'd made before.
I don't know how much people were paying attention to it the first time as the conversation spanned quite a few posts ( #620, #639, #651, #779), but after that back-and-forth, dedo really should have known/understood how the setup works.

So I read the back-and-forth between dedo and flub ( #890 through #898) as deliberate distancing, and/or possibly trying to feel each other out if either was up for a counterclaim (as I explained in my previous post, micro's vig shot cause mafia to be in a much worse situation than they were aiming for, so they needed to do something), and then after thinking about it for a bit, dedo did his strong accusation of flub based on completely faulty reasoning ( #906), probably quite safe in the knowledge that the flaw in the reasoning would be pointed out, for cheap and effective distancing ( Bookwyrm seems to have bought it!)
Now, I do read his explanation ( #927) as tonally pure, and that's making me hesitate a lot with scum-reading dedo because of this. I kinda hate the way rule 3 is phrased in combination with dedo's final paragraph here; if I conclude he's town because of this, then regardless of his actual alignment, it'll have felt not in the spirit of things, with some tinge of unfairness toward those who don't have dedo's alignment. I'm probably overthinking things there, but am still working my way through the arguments.

Anyway, then Bookwyrm posted his analysis. I noted previously that I disagreed on at least one point with Bookwyrm.

ping 1: "when you don't know the town PR's".
Mafia from the very start of the day has known for certain that there was only the 1-shot vig left, as they know from their own composition how many PR dice slots were left to be filled. That's not the sort of thing Bookwyrm overlooks.

ping 2: by replacing himself with "TOWN", he obscures his position on the wagons. For those of us who don't keep their own notes, it might seem awfully tempting to just go with these wagons.

ping 3: Joe also followed up with "oh yeah, there was the whole D1 scene wagon speed thing!" (paraphrased), and then made Pooka one of his strongest town reads. Bookwyrm fails to note this.

ping 4: framing. This is how you win as scum (I've learned through happy experience). You drive the narrative while giving town a seemingly valid choice to pursue and argue about.

@Bookwyrm: If you're mafia, you've underestimated how certain I am of Pooka being town, and that's going to cost you dearly. (Actually, you made me seriously doubt, and had me buying into the narrative. But then I went back to D1, and yep, I'm as certain about Pooka as I was about GameRager.)

If you're town - and to all other town - please look at #279 and #282. I understand I paid more attention to those posts than most because they involved me, but really, grasp the effort there, and envision the mindsets which would've been behind it as town or as mafia. This was Pooka, at the start of his 3rd (effectively 2nd) mafia game. D1, so completely uncoached by fellow mafia. If he's mafia, does he really go and reread 278 posts to keep copious notes about stuff which totally doesn't matter in the big scheme of things? I simply can not see that behaviour and that effort from mafia; only from inexperienced town.
Now, I'm defending him here, which, hey, echoes of #55, so that's going to put suspicion on me. So, if he's uncoached mafia, and I'm also mafia, does he really go do that analysis involving me, when he'd in that scenario know that I'm fellow mafia?

Also, Pooka's reaction to the scene wagon ( #87), which was the reason Joe townread him. Again, does an uncoached new player manage to be that effective as mafia?

Yes, Pooka has been ineffective these last few days. Yes, he's flaundering. Yes, he refrains from taking stances. Yes, he asks others for what they think of interesting things he's noted but doesn't know what to think about. All the things Bookwyrm is pointing out in #982. I'm basically seeing myself in smurfia.

Now, back to the choice Bookwyrm set up. Pooka AND (flub OR dedo).
All game long we've been mislynching the weakest and most inexperienced players. Pooka would fit very neatly in that lineup. Unfortunately I believe we're dealing with an all star team of scum players, and if agent hadn't given us a fighting chance (which we happily squandered in the shortest possible time), it'd have been game over long since.

Flub has had low-level suspicion on him all game long. Both me and micro have had him as scum(my) in our most recent read's lists ( #837 and #809), and both trent en Joe read him as scum. I see some effective distancing between flub and Bookwyrm today, so if that's the team, Bookwyrm needed urgently to provide an alternative. He couldn't list "Pooka and flub" as the team, because we'd opt for flub over Pooka. By setting up the dichotomy, he's making Pooka the safe choice to vote for. And hey, Flub is going along.

On the other hand, I see dedo agreeing a whole lot with Bookwyrm. I remember in particular how Joe was noting that his early town read of Bookwyrm was partly inspired by dedo townreading Bookwyrm (sadly Joe never answered me just how much of his own read was because of it). Maybe with SPF's loss, the Bookwyrm-dedo team decided to just live or die together. I have the easiest time seeing dedo as scum in the flub/dedo/Bookwyrm trio, and I could see him paired with either.

So. That's where I'm at.

@Micro: I don't envy you. Lock-town, lots of confusion, and your reads are going to determine a lot. Please share your thinking, give us ample time to respond. You'll have three fellow town players to counteract the way two mafia players will try to steer you.

Been waiting for the behemoth.

Let's address both of these points in one go.
I assumed that there were two scum and three scum, but didn't get my point across clearly and continue to mess that up.
If there are three scum (our current situation), two could have started it and the last would hammer.
In the case of two scum, one starts it and the final one hammers. Now that I think about it, this theory of the wagon growth seems least likely in this context, because scum don't have the numbers to push that.

The problem isn't that. The problem is more so "why the heck did scene's wagon get to L-2 so darn quickly?" The wagon got itself going thanks to scene's statements and if it weren't for GR or blotunga, scene would have been lynched Day 1 for sure, but getting 5 votes right off the bat was worrying.

I see now. Thanks to these answers, I'm inclined to believe you're more likely to be town.

I took a stand on GameRager suddenly voting Joe. There's also my questioning blotunga's vote on scene. You also got the scene-gogtrial things. These are just quick examples where I took a stand on something. I also put my thoughts on blotunga where I thought he hesitated but didn't appear scummy to me. These were stands I have taken (and followed through as well: I didn't vote for blotunga, but voted for GR and scene).

Which, given scene's weirdness how hard it is to figure out what's in flub's head, can be just as valid as my assertion that flub was throwing light shade despite the difficulty of "knowing" names.

That's a good start!

gogtrial's post after your points implies that Joe could have protected you on N2 with his opening post, but if I assume trent was the one to carry out the protection anyway, then to help support my thought, he knows that there are either one or two mafiosos left, disadvantaged by the death of one of their ranks N1, so they weren't going to flaff about or disagree to much, they don't have the leverage to. So reasonably it stands that they would continue to nightkill without braking. Therefore, the most likely reason trent stayed on flub is because he protected someone and suspected flub was the attacker.

If we take it from the Joe perspective, he would know there is a full doctor and a dead roleblocker, for DDB. If his breadcrumb rings true, he had even more reason to believe that you were town...but again, that doesn't explain why he moved to you by EOD if he protected you. Doesn't really make sense to me.


We're in MyLo. If we don't mislynch, we still have chances to turn around things tomorrow, but if scum successfully pulls a nightkill (almost zero chance for that unless a miracle happens), we will be even worse off: LyLo. This is fun.

Which I'm doing. I know have my ups and my downs, so I'm taking this as carefully and slowly as possible.

1) What if I had asked for you or gogtrial to claim first?
2) No, I'm not saying I was rolefishing, I was asking YOU to do that for me by looking for crumbs...
3) ...which you said you wouldn't be looking for more than the minimal effort. I have got to admit that I left none. Partly because as vanilla town, I felt my actions spoke more than any crumbs. Besides, even if I wanted to leave crumbs, I don't know how. There's Micro's version which is the first time I have ever seen something like that outside of the few r/nosleep stories that use similar coded messages (which are often more obvious due to raNdOm Uppercase).
4) You have a point there.

I would have either claimed doctor (that's two more Ds filling up in the T??DDBV setup), deceiving Town into thinking that they can be protected from scum or counter-claimed Micro and prevented him from being confirmed Town. As it stands, my VT claim not only put the setup down into the ground, it also confirmed Micro, greatly reducing the pool of players that are suspected scum. If I was mafia, then I shot myself in the foot by doing that.

I see how it is. Then I'm afraid I don't have more to make me stand out as Town through my claim, other than confirming a lot of info, much to the Mafia's chagrins.

Oh, here's another tiny ping about Bookwyrm:
This is true, but of course, we need to hit correctly twice in a row, so random voting only gives us a 25% chance of winning. I can see this as mafia!wyrm trying to make us somewhat complacent.

What about "these answers" makes you believe Bookwyrm is town?
If it's purely that he documented his suspicion of you on earlier days - that's something mafia will do, too.
If it's something else, please explain.