Halloween Mafia 2021 - The Party Trap - Day 7

[boomfrog]

@Bessie: Don't worry, what could be more BoomFrog then maintaining a consistently inconsistent persona for 15 years for a forum game.

Regarding Snide Sniper: I was at scum lean but Suzaku convinced me to town lean.

@Sniper: I'd still like to know what you think town gambit and Mafia gambit means.

@patzer and @Bessie: My real question I was trying to ask indirectly was, which scum group do you think has which flavor? How do you match up mafia, cult and survivor to Madge's Maniacs, Sabrar's Socialites and ??? ?

@huay: Bad luck getting made so quickly as scum D1. I feel slightly guilty body slamming you so hard immediately.

Town:
LaserGuy - Vibing
Somitomi - Vibing
Suzaku - Defense of Snide Sniper is pro town unless TSS is exactly Mafia
JimBob - I've liked their energy and I liked that they were willing to do setup spec so casually when that could have revealed TMI. On careful reread my original tell is probably invalid but I'll explain it later anyway.
The Snide Sniper - Slight town ping pointed out by Suzaku, slight concerning post about my "Mafia gambit" but I'll await explanation.

Bessie - I haven't seen any alignment indictive content here at all.
Wam - Also nothing has stuck out. I'd like to see more evaluation of other players.

Moody - He's putting in the work but I'm not vibing, by PoE this is a very possible place for scum to reside. He was always planning to let me off them hook for the RVS vote which is very slightly scummy in a "trying too hard to be casual" sort of way.
Patzer - Needs improvement, see me after class.
Huay
Scum

[jimbobmacdoodle]

Requesting modprod on The Snide Sniper and heuristically_alone

(There may be others who haven't posted in a while, but those are the ones I'm most aware of).

As mentioned earlier, I was hoping for another round of responses for those two before I posted my Snide Sniper plans. I'm going to start writing it now, but may hold off to post it until the morning, to give a slightly chance for them to comments, as I'm afraid what I might say may taint things. However, if there's a request from other players, or they post again, I'll post it before I go to bed.

[moody7277]

patzer's high content volume -> townieness model is going to be broken so hard when she runs into scum!Sabrar. The bottom end of her list being mostly (if not solely) based of this model makes me a bit nervous, especially since that's where you'd pick elimination targets from. I still have her as votable, but I suspect heury will be my vote du jour because of where I had him plus him going dark.

Since I hadn't already assigned him a value, Suazku I feel comfortable putting at a +2. His point about Snide making what I've heard referred to previously as a town slip is interesting in that it bucks some of the groupthink that has developed about Snide. Being contrary is something we can check back on in case of an elimination*.


*Cynical View here: Unless of course the scum team is Snide-Suzaku

[boomfrog]

heury: Something about his vibes is pointing me towards lean scum. For example this message is needlessly teasing at the possibility of him not being town, and I don't see why a townie would do that even as a joke.

Actually I really don't like this read. It's pilling on against someone vulnerable but not for any reasons I agree with. It's predatory.

Unvote heuristically_alone
Vote Patzer

[boomfrog]

@moody: Join me voting for Patzer.

[moody7277]

Alright then.

Vote: patzer

[LaserGuy]

@Suzaku, why do you think Snide Sniper is newbie town?

Wait, why do

we

think jimbob is town?

Allowing that we accept that TSS is a newbie, I don't think newbie scum (who would know, or given multiple factions, at least strongly suspect, that you are town (assuming you are, of course)) would make a comment like that, especially so early in the game. When asked to expand he does, and gives reads. Nothing particularly original, certainly, but I get the impression that they come from an "I don't know anything and am trying to process", rather than an "I know who's who but don't want to let on" perspective.

Maybe I'm giving too much leeway for being a newbie, but I'll stick to my townread unless something happens to make me reassess.

I'm not sure that this should be put higher than null. I don't really see any particular reason that newbie scum wouldn't see a weird read out of nowhere like this and question it. Especially considering SS was not interested in the answer at all: They never follow up on it despite BoomFrog never actually revealing his reason, and when they actually post reads, jimbob isn't even mentioned. The usage of the word "we" in that question is also strange and I'm not sure how to evaluate it.

I think this is a very weak tell to assume newbie Town. On the other side of things, for example, I find it suspicious that SS is not more paranoid about people scumreading him. Often newbie Towns will assume that the people who are going after them are mafia and will OMGUS like crazy. Newbie scum are much more likely to townread people that are pushing them. SS's paranoia level feels very wrong to me.

[madge]

It is Noon.

The Snide Sniper and Heuristically Alone have been prodded.

Votals:
boomfrog (1) - heuri
suzaku (1) - Patzer
the snide sniper (1) - jimbob
heuri (2) - somitomi, suzaku
Patzer (2) - boomfrog, moody

11 players alive, 6 to eliminate.

Dusk starts in 2 days, 9 hours, 50 minutes.

[heuristically_alone]

Had a crazy couple days. went over 30 hours without sleep, but now fully rested. Here's a quick reads list before I run off to work.

Town to Scum List
Laserguy - I like they're pressure on me. Feels very town Laserguy.

Jimbob- Their first post was phrased in a way that I would expect a townie to interpret the OP and town role.

Somitomi- As scum likes to ask lot of questions and here I've seen less than I normally see from their scum game.

Wam - More active than the last game I played with them. Usually wam gets pretty hard scum read d1, and it seems wam is trying harder than past games I remember. Does wam tend to try harder as scum? Still reading as town as I their mindset is scum hunting.

Snide Sniper- This read is based off the knowledge that snide sniper has experience playing mafia but not forum mafia. I interpret snide sniper's asking why Jimbob was being read as town as a townie sincerely trying to understand how things work here. The meta of town of Salem is so fast paced that mafia tend to wait for a scum accusation than join the bandwagon. Not a lot of question time

Bessie - Sounds normal town Bessie. Not a real town read but I'd still put a hair above neutral.

Suzaku- True neutral. Haven't paid much attention to them yet.

Patzer- True neutral. Haven't paid much attention to them yet

Boomfrog - No real gambit. Must be scum


A rushed reads list. I know there's question for me I haven't answered yet so feel free to re-ask them and I'll get to them tomorrow.

[heuristically_alone]

Sniped by Madge

[LaserGuy]

@heury: So everyone is Town?

[patzer]

@patzer why do you associated activity with being town?

This is a very tentative list where I've got nothing else to go on. It's feasible that scum could be less active to fly under the radar, but it's not a strong indication; the issue is that nobody else other than heury and laser have pinged me as having any scum signs, and for laser it's all mixed so I didn't want to put him further down than I did.

[The Snide Sniper]

Sorry I haven't been able to post in a bit; I had some life stuff to deal with that meant that I didn't really have time to post here. I should be able to make a longer post tomorrow morning.

[jimbobmacdoodle]

As promised, here's my The Snide Sniper analysis.

Okay: first up, when I posted my original comment and vote accusing The Snide Sniper, I had no real belief that they were scum. Indeed, I was viewing them largely as newbie town.

So, why did I do what I did? I breadcrumbed it a bit for those with experience, when I said I was channelling my inner SDK - this was a gambit to a) test TSS to see how they'd react to some pressure, and b) test other players to see if they would go along with my scummy reads, when I had nothing backing it. I was hoping one or two others would catch onto what I was trying to do and join in the voting to increase the pressure, but nobody chose to. Of note though is that a few players started reading him as scummier at some point between my vote and now.

Unfortunately, my ability to channel SDK just about ends there - I'm unlikely to be able to build up a cast-iron case from this, on any player, but hopefully it should be able to drive some reads.

Let's start with The Snide Sniper themselves. Notes are in the spoiler below:

Spoiler (Show/Hide)

Post 1: No forum mafia experience, but has experience in Town of Salem.
Post 2: Why do we think I'm town?
Post 3: Confused about cult versus Mafia.
<I posted my vote between these two posts>
Post 4: Questions my vote on him.
Post 5: Difference between forum versus Town of Salem.
Post 6: Some reads, prompted by my request. LG & wam seem like town (lots of reads); BF very weak scum lean - thinks he's doing a mafia gambit; bessie lean town, but not many posts so uncertain; patzer lean scum, at least if heury is scum, due to heury read too weak; heury could be just clueless town.
Post 7: RL issues, promising a longer post tomorrow. No meaningful content.

Snide Sniper really hasn't posted much. I don't think this is in and of itself scummy, given he is new to forum mafia. On his initial reaction to my initial post, I'm inclined to think it feels townie to me. I think newbie scum would have reacted more defensively in some way than he has. That being said, there isn't much to go on. I'd have hoped the recent further pressure from other players would have pushed him to be more defensive as scum, if he'd actually posted anything meaningful since then.

His reads post is weak, although that could easily be excusable by being new to the media. I don't necessarily agree with his conclusions though. In particular, his excusing of heuristically_alone as possible clueless town feels a bit off. If heuristically_alone flips Mafia, this post points towards a possible HA/TSS partnership. OTOH, if heuristically_alone flips Town, I'd put TSS as unlikely to be scum - it would have been easy for him to join the bandwagon on him, and I think newbie-scum!TSS would likely have done so.

Suzaku's recent comment about TSS's confusion about people reading me Town mostly agrees with me. I don't agree with LaserGuy's argument against this point. For a start, I did a similar thing re. "we we we" in my opening post, admittedly around setup spec, but I think it's perfectly natural for Town members to refer to themselves as part of a team. Of course, it could be from scum too, but that's not my feeling on the matter.

Unvote

Now to look at others' comments on TSS. In alphabetical order:

bessie:

Spoiler (Show/Hide)

Post 1: welcomes him.
<My vote post>
Post 4: points out issues with TSS's town reads of LG/wam (scum can do reads too), and BF's gambits are NAI. Responds to my request for her thoughts on TSS: thinks he's a newbie who thought the game would be more casual, won't be an elimination candidate without a convincing scum tell.

There's not much here to go on. bessie is too good a player to be caught jumping on a bandwagon though. Her D1 stuff relating to TSS seems not unusual for her. No particular conclusions in other words.

BoomFrog:

Spoiler (Show/Hide)

Post 3: explains cult to TSS.
<My vote post, including an invite for BF to join me>.
Post 5: Turns down my request to vote TSS, indicating he's busy (voting for HA).
Post 7: Queries TSS about doing a gambit for mafia, and asks him what he expected re. town gambit.
Post 8: References his previous question re. gambit.
Post 9: TSS was at scum lean, but convinced by Suzaku to put him at town lean. Still wants difference in gambits from TSS. (TSS hadn't posted since the question). Posts town read of TSS, based on Suzaku's town ping, but slight concern about "Mafia gambit".

I'm guessing BoomFrog picked up on what I was doing, which was partly why I asked him to join me in voting for The Snide Sniper. I don't think his failure to do so is a tell in either direction. I think his prodding on the gambit question maybe suggests that he isn't mafia buddies with TSS.

heuristically_alone:

Spoiler (Show/Hide)

Post 1: Answers The Snide Sniper re. why we think I'm town (my question is coming from a town mindset).
<My vote post>
Post 11: Reads TSS as town based on his response to BoomFrog.
Post 14: TSS not going to be his vote today.
Post 15: Only votes for people he thinks are scum (implying he doesn't think TSS is scum).
Post 16: reads list, including TSS as town (along with pretty much everybody else). Thinks the implications of TSS's confusion re. me are that he is town.

I don't know/remember heury well enough to know if scum!heury would be unlikely to bus his team-mate. Beyond that, he's not interacted with The Snide Sniper at all directly, as far as I see. His Town read on him could be genuine for town!heury. I don't think scum!heury would be so strong in his opinions of town!TSS though, which suggests to me scum!heury might indicate buddy!TSS, especially given the lack of direct interaction.

mafia tend to wait for a scum accusation than join the bandwagon.

This may be an unfortunate typo. Given the context, I think you mean "then join", right? Would you say scum!TSS is going to behave differently here? Why/why not?

Aside:

Will the flavor of the two separate parties take form in the setup of the game?

This was in heury's second post, and it feels forced, as if it's coming from someone who knows more than the average about the setup. Spotted it whilst reading through his other posts.

This is where I got to, and includes all comments by the above-mentioned players up to now. Will finish off later in the weekend.

@heury: So everyone is Town?

My question exactly. Will wait for heury's response before posting further comments on implications.

Jimbob- Their first post was phrased in a way that I would expect a townie to interpret the OP and town role.

I've posted a lot more content since my first post. What do you think of that? The discussion of the OP and interpretation thereof also sits oddly with me, given the post I quoted further up with heury's setup "thoughts".

[Wam]

@heury: So everyone is Town?

This so much this.

@jimbob did wonder if you were reaction fishing.

More later been fighting a cold yesterday brain is much more in gear today.

[boomfrog]

Yeah, I saw you were reaction fishing but didn't want to take pressure off Heuy at the time, that's why I asked LG and Suzaku to assist you.

@Heuy: Do you actual think I'm scum? Do you have a non joke reason to keep your vote on me?

[The Snide Sniper]

Figures that you were just fishing for a reaction.

@madge, could I make a countdown clock that doesn't have ads?

@Wam, you keep using the word "ebwop". What does it mean?

Concerning my boomfrog read, it wasn't a very strong read, and others have indicated that it's not really something to be concerned about, so I've put him in neutral now.

you explained why you commented on bessie. If I hadn't asked you about bessie specifically, would you have given a read on her? What should we take from the fact that you didn't give reads on about half the game?

For those that I didn't do readings on, it's probably because I don't have much to say, i.e. a completely boring neutral read. Bessie is one such person.

Just a quick check-in to ask anybody who hasn't given their opinion on Snide Sniper to do so before tomorrow evening UTC time. No need toe explain it I'd you don't want to at this stage. I plan on revealing the why behind my vote at some point tomorrow evening.

I think he’s playing like a newbie that perhaps was expecting the game to be more casual.

This is actually spot-on. I think I got in over my head here.

Revised but abridged reads list:

Town: LaserGuy, Wam, jimbob, Suzaku
Neutral: somitomi, bessie, BoomFrog, moody
Scum: heury, patzer

[boomfrog]

@Sniper: I still want to know what you meant be turn gambit and Mafia gambit. It's important for me to understand your thinking so I know you're not just making stuff up.

[boomfrog]

@Bessie: Do you think you will be able to make a woof to grr list by the end of day?

[patzer]

@patzer and @Bessie: My real question I was trying to ask indirectly was, which scum group do you think has which flavor? How do you match up mafia, cult and survivor to Madge's Maniacs, Sabrar's Socialites and ??? ?

Just noticed this question. I think it's more likely that pizzazz lovers would try to convert more people to like pizzazz than it would be for posh people to turn other people posh- so I think if there is such a one on one mapping, the posh people are the mafia and the lively ones are the cult.

[bessie]

Sorry I was tired last night and didn’t make my daily catch up post.

As I said, exactly on meta as far as I can recall And a null-tell, as I'm sure I've seen you do the same as scum.
Good point about somi, though. Maybe just that his individual posts are shorter, or maybe my subconscience is saying "You'll never get a read on bessie so don't even bother'

I like to think I play the same as any alignment, even if LaserGuy thinks otherwise. Either way, I don’t think meta is a valid excuse for not attempting to try and read me, especially when there are other experienced players in this game that can play fairly consistently too (scummy or townie).

FWIW, this is my suspected setup spec, more-or-less, with the Cult limited recruitment possibly being replaced or in addition to the Cult leader dying meaning all Cult members die or are unculted. As implied by my initial post, I'm assuming the Cult are the Pizzazz group. I'm assuming Madge's "19 members in the Pizzazz group" comment was a background way of saying "The Cult has 1 member", and we're supposed to just arbitrarily map it, though I have no specific evidence beyond my setup spec and the 1 Cult member mod confirmation.

Ok I see what you’re saying about the Pizzaz group but I will be watching for an interesting Madge mechanic.

He made a couple remarks that feel a little too cheeky to come from mafia, but otherwise ignoring my questions could go either way and I'm really hoping to reevaluate based on what he posts next. This silence is a bit concerning.

Ok. But do you think they’re too cheeky to come from mafia!heury specificly, who is kinda always cheeky in an endearing way?

@patzer and @Bessie: My real question I was trying to ask indirectly was, which scum group do you think has which flavor? How do you match up mafia, cult and survivor to Madge's Maniacs, Sabrar's Socialites and ??? ?

I will come back to this question.

I'm not sure that this should be put higher than null. I don't really see any particular reason that newbie scum wouldn't see a weird read out of nowhere like this and question it. Especially considering SS was not interested in the answer at all: They never follow up on it despite BoomFrog never actually revealing his reason, and when they actually post reads, jimbob isn't even mentioned. The usage of the word "we" in that question is also strange and I'm not sure how to evaluate it.

I think this is a very weak tell to assume newbie Town. On the other side of things, for example, I find it suspicious that SS is not more paranoid about people scumreading him. Often newbie Towns will assume that the people who are going after them are mafia and will OMGUS like crazy. Newbie scum are much more likely to townread people that are pushing them. SS's paranoia level feels very wrong to me.

My thoughts are similar to this post by LaserGuy, and I don’t see how this case convinced BoomFrog to town lean Snide Sniper. I have been thinking about the use of “we” since page 1 and if it could be addressing a partner since factions do not have day chat (Private Message Rule #6). However, even if newbie town are more paranoid than newbie scum this would of course be dependent on the individual player. I said in this post that The Snide Sniper wasn’t on my elimination list today because my newbie reading is stronger than any alignment reading.

Wam - More active than the last game I played with them. Usually wam gets pretty hard scum read d1, and it seems wam is trying harder than past games I remember. Does wam tend to try harder as scum? Still reading as town as I their mindset is scum hunting.

I am not liking these reads. I’m especially not liking this Wam read. You are asking about Wam’s meta as an excuse to support a read. Like how you asked about BoomFrog’s meta earlier in the game, then you did not even acknowledge my detailed response, perhaps because it is not the answer you wanted?

A rushed reads list. I know there's question for me I haven't answered yet so feel free to re-ask them and I'll get to them tomorrow.

I have a question. Do you have any actual scum reads?? Or if BoomFrog is an actual scum read, can you give an actual reason???

This is a very tentative list where I've got nothing else to go on. It's feasible that scum could be less active to fly under the radar, but it's not a strong indication; the issue is that nobody else other than heury and laser have pinged me as having any scum signs, and for laser it's all mixed so I didn't want to put him further down than I did.

Fortunately there are at least two pages since you made your list, so you have some more content with which to reevaluate your reads!

Sorry I haven't been able to post in a bit; I had some life stuff to deal with that meant that I didn't really have time to post here. I should be able to make a longer post tomorrow morning.

We’re a pretty understanding group when it comes to RL issues.

Suzaku's recent comment about TSS's confusion about people reading me Town mostly agrees with me. I don't agree with LaserGuy's argument against this point. For a start, I did a similar thing re. "we we we" in my opening post, admittedly around setup spec, but I think it's perfectly natural for Town members to refer to themselves as part of a team. Of course, it could be from scum too, but that's not my feeling on the matter.

Really? I’m usually suspicious of this, as I am of any unprompted town claim especially on Page 1.

I don't know/remember heury well enough to know if scum!heury would be unlikely to bus his team-mate.

Let me ask you this, how likely do you think it would be for anyone to bus a teammate in this setup?

@Wam, you keep using the word "ebwop". What does it mean?

Edit by way of post. Editing any post for any reason, even if you just posted it and want to correct punctuation, or if you posted by mistake, is strictly forbidden.

This is actually spot-on. I think I got in over my head here.

You’re doing fine considering this is not exactly a newbie-friendly setup. We’re happy to have you in the game, so don’t get discouraged! Just give thoughts as you have them. Not every post needs to have detailed analysis or talk about every player. The most important thing is that you post.



I too miss being able to multi quote, but I feel this is a small loss in comparison with how happy I am to be able to sort posts by author.


Ninja’d by BoomFrog. Let me work on it. It’s like 94 degrees where I live and I wasn’t feeling well today to begin with. I’ll be back when it cools off a little.

[madge]

@madge, could I make a countdown clock that doesn't have ads?

Please always put questions for the mods in bold or we may not see them (you got lucky this time!)

If people have suggestions for a countdown clock without ads then by all means, as long as it doesn't force me to use a different time zone (I'm fine if it's "countdown 72 hours", but not "count down to 4pm" where 4pm is in an arbitrary timezone, unless that arbitrary timezone is UTC+8 I guess).

[Suzaku]

Just a few quick reactions, because weekend.

I like to think I play the same as any alignment, even if LaserGuy thinks otherwise. Either way, I don’t think meta is a valid excuse for not attempting to try and read me, especially when there are other experienced players in this game that can play fairly consistently too (scummy or townie).

I'm definitely not going to not try to read you, don't worry. I'm just stating for the record that I find it hard to do so.

On the use of "we" being a tell or not - I absolutely don't see it that way. An explicit claim of "I am town" is meaningless, as town is the default public position for all players (in most games, anyway). It may be marginally more likely for a (particularly newbie) scum player to make such a claim, but I'm not sure that even that is the case. However, even if it were the case that town claiming was scummy, simply using "we" is such a weak form of it, that I will hold it to be totally meaningless in terms of alignment indication.
And in any case, it can just as easily refer to "we" the group of players.

@patzer - I was the only player who hadn't posted when you made your vote, but that's no longer true. Any reason it's still there?

[LaserGuy]

@patzer why do you associated activity with being town?

This is a very tentative list where I've got nothing else to go on. It's feasible that scum could be less active to fly under the radar, but it's not a strong indication; the issue is that nobody else other than heury and laser have pinged me as having any scum signs, and for laser it's all mixed so I didn't want to put him further down than I did.

Can you elaborate on what you are feeling is suspicious in my play? You've mentioned this before but haven't really pointed to anything specific.

[LaserGuy]

Just a note for deadline planning: The deadline is at 2:00 am my time and will be even later for people east of me in the US/Canada, so I expect a bunch of us will probably not be around for the last several hours of the day phase.