LEGO Movie Mafia - Game Over - Town Win

[hamfactorial]

Az, I understand what you're doing. But why did you take time out from the MoJo/Dechs pincer to address GR? It seems a low priority avenue to me.

[( G_R )]

Hey guys, I'm in Costa Rica right now. I started writing a post when I learned about the death of one of our drivers. I'll try to check back later today or tomorrow.

[Mogadishu Jones]

His read is gr as scum so if hes town youre also def town and ill shoot gr.=

*throws hands in air* Do you HAVE to unilaterally shoot people this game? Like, maybe extract a claim, and get a consensus from the town? I think GR's a decent candidate, but if I had a vig-shot, I wouldn't be pointing it at anyone right now. We have too little to go on. Unilateral vig shots are the techy once-in-thirty-games-it's-a-smart-play play, not something that you do just because.

Like, people have started specifically designing vigilante roles that are somehow restricted from firing unilaterally just so that Rambo-vigs can't savagely lose the game for the town so often.

And hey, GR, since you're reading the thread, you should probably take a position so that when all this is over you can claim credit for being right about Az being town after all, or join the wagon b/c it's reached critical mass. That's much better scum play for you than hanging around backstage, waiting to see how the wind blows.

Why do you care what GR is doing and his optimal scum play?

You're taking that post at face value, when maybe you shouldn't.

To be fair I havnt unilaterally shot anybody yet. Not saying that I wouldnt if I could.

[Azrael]

Az, I understand what you're doing. But why did you take time out from the MoJo/Dechs pincer to address GR? It seems a low priority avenue to me.

I consider poking at GR to be the most useful action I can accomplish right now, possibly more important than my own defense, actually.

To be fair I havnt unilaterally shot anybody yet. Not saying that I wouldnt if I could.

That's true. And I hope you don't, even if it's GR. Even when I'm pretty certain someone is scum, there's too many times where having a more thorough investigation will change my mind completely.

[Dechs Kaison]

Az, don't try to talk to me about the odds.

Two out of nine are scum, which means each of us has a 22% chance of being scum. That's not the point.

You made (what looks like) a blunder. As far as I'm concerned, you're at about 50% chance of being scum right now. You've also proven that I can't read you to save my life. So here's my math:

If you are scum, you're a huge fucking threat. ScumAz alive means we lose.
If you aren't scum, this perceived blunder will nag at me the entire game and cloud my judgement from here on out. TownAz alive means that even if he's the best scumhunter here, I won't really trust him.

You're a risk either way. I won't chance it.

[Azrael]

Also, obnoxious self-serving self-quotation time:

http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/outs ... fo-and#c10

There's a lot of good info in there from multiple authors, but in particular, this bit seemed apt to the current situation:

The next category, possible tells, differs in one significant way from universal tells. Similarly to logic tells, they rely on assumptions. If such and such is the case, then that player may be committing some universal tell, such as defending a scum buddy for poor reasons. There is an additional logical step involved in believing that it is a true scum tell: we must believe in condition X, in order to think that Y is a scum tell. These assumptions more often than not prove to be false rather than
true.

For instance, in the game with Pale Mage, a number of players involved with his lynch pointed to the difference between one of his short, acerbic replies and a longer, more nuanced explanation he offered later, as a sign of his being coached by his fellow mafia players. IF their assumption that he was coached was true, then it would be a scum tell. But if their assumption was false, or ungrounded, then it would be not be a tell at all. Once again, it is absolutely critical that the basis for the assumption is carefully examined. The change in his posting style could easily have come from any other number of variables, and in time that proved to be the case. But because they made that paranoid assumption, something that should never have been considered a scum tell to begin with was used to create a senseless mislynch.

And as relates to Dechs:

Logic tells

*snip*

Logic tells are frequently caused not by alignment, but by idiosyncrasies
of the player. For instance, ManbearPig in one of the examples from Chapter one refused to respond to further attacks after answering them several times, what many players would call a clear-cut evasion tell. But the reason behind the “tell” was that he felt that he had replied to them sufficiently and at length already. While a scum might feel similarly, the existence of a very reasonable townie rationale weakens the argument that his refusual to respond indicated a scum alignment.

It is critically important that townies recognize that the negative effect of an activity, such as ad hom or misrepresentation, is not the best indicator of whether it is a genuine scum tell. The best indicator of whether a tell is genuine is if there is not a more reasonable and more likely townie explanation for the action. For instance, MBP was an inexperienced player, and he was signaling frustration with the debate throughout his posts. Many players ignored these subtle signs and instead assumed that the reason for his
evasion was that he was attempting to hide from exposure. However, there was no concrete reason to believe that he was trying to hide as opposed to simply being inexperienced and frustrated. The context of the activity actually supported the townie rationale most strongly.

*snip*

Logic tells should be used to support cases only in rare and exceptional circumstances. They will mislead you more often than they will help you.

[Azrael]

Az, don't try to talk to me about the odds.

Two out of nine are scum, which means each of us has a 22% chance of being scum. That's not the point.

You made (what looks like) a blunder. As far as I'm concerned, you're at about 50% chance of being scum right now. You've also proven that I can't read you to save my life. So here's my math:

If you are scum, you're a huge fucking threat. ScumAz alive means we lose.
If you aren't scum, this perceived blunder will nag at me the entire game and cloud my judgement from here on out. TownAz alive means that even if he's the best scumhunter here, I won't really trust him.

You're a risk either way. I won't chance it.

You don't have to trust me. You just have to avoid killing me
long enough for either Kpaca or the scum to get around to it, or for me to make a big enough dent in terms of clearing townies to give the town a fighting chance to make up for it. I'm far from infallible when it comes to catching scum directly, but where I do tend to shine is identifying players, like you, who are townie and can be cleared from consideration. After I've worked through clearing enough players, I can usually attempt to use process of elimination, narrow my search to a handful of remaining players, and more often than not the set of remaining players contains all the scum and they can be pinned down from there.

My being alive doesn't stop you or anyone else from conducting analysis on every other living player in the game. For about nine years, I fell into the same trap - wanting to analyze one wagon at a time, and finish it before going on, not wanting to proceed to analyzing the game as a whole. That's a good way to blind yourself to information and limit the rate of analysis you can
bring to bear. If you can't analyze one person successfully, go on to the eight others in the game.

[Azrael]

Az, don't try to talk to me about the odds.

Two out of nine are scum, which means each of us has a 22% chance of being scum. That's not the point.

You made (what looks like) a blunder. As far as I'm concerned, you're at about 50% chance of being scum right now. You've also proven that I can't read you to save my life. So here's my math:

If you are scum, you're a huge fucking threat. ScumAz alive means we lose.
If you aren't scum, this perceived blunder will nag at me the entire game and cloud my judgement from here on out. TownAz alive means that even if he's the best scumhunter here, I won't really trust him.

You're a risk either way. I won't chance it..

A mistake is not the same thing as a scum tell. Otherwise, I
would be reading you as scum, like half of the rest of the thread currently is.

Does it look like the situation involves a mistake that would only come from scum? Are there viable competing explanations? Is your theory strong so much stronger than the alternatives that you feel confident staking an entire lynch on your interpretation of a single interaction? Are there corroborating pieces of evidence, based on tone, motivation, and other suspicious behaviors, or is there mitigating evidence?

These are the types of questions you should be using to evaluate cases. If you dumb down the analysis to the point that your logic chain is "looks like a mistake, I can envision the mistake coming from dumb scum, therefore scum", mistakes will be made.

[Stardust]

@Mod - What's the game's replacement policy, if we can't find replacements for our 3-4 lurkers? Mod-kill? Getting to be the point where we need prods, I think.

Uh, nope. 72 hours to a prod is my standard policy and everyone posted yesterday at the latest. If someone doesn't respond to their prod or if they're prodded multiple times, I'll start looking for a replacement. If I can't find a replacement, they will be modkilled. Not everyone can post every day and I'd like to accomodate those players to a small degree at least.



Votecount!

hamfactorial (1): RedNihilist
Dechs Kaison (1): ( G_R )
Azrael (3): imopen2, Dechs Kaison, Mogadishu Jones
( G_R ) (2): Captain Murphy, Azrael
Captain Murphy (1): hamfactorial

Not voting: Lord_Mcdonalds

With 9 alive, it's 5 to lynch.

[RedNihilist]

Oh, right.
Unvote

[RedNihilist]

I've got mixed feelings about Azrael but I don't think I'm okay with hanging him right now (nor today, probably).
So, let's try this: Azra-kum, who's your top choice as non-GR scum?

[( G_R )]

So apparently I'm getting lynched or shot at.

I already said that my official position is that I won't take a position D1. But if you really want to know my train of thought here it is:

First Az post is obviously "Let's not have silly RSV", which I like and gives you town points in my spreadsheet. But then I start saying to myself: "This is Azrael. Scum Azrael could easily do that on purpose to get the aforementioned town points, while making us look into RN with the townie comment". WIFOM. So screw your edgy play, I'm just gonna see how others react to it. So I poke RN.

Then kpaca starts post ping pong with you, and I'm like holy shit is one of them scum, both or none? I said as much and stuck to my plan of watching the others when Dechs scored enough scum points to get a vote.

I still have the gut feeling that you may be town aggressively scum hunting, so I was not about to vote for you,
but at the same time, I had no strong reason to make a case for your towniness once you reached L-1 and were out of it before I could even finish reading all the walls of text.

My vote for Dechs is supposed to be weird but other than you pointing out that his counterclaim is not something that scum would do (which despite being a good point, only raises the question of whether you could be scum buddies) no one has said why those bells I heard are only in my head.

I didn't really know that he's a newbie, so I'm going to review his posts under that light and see whether I was overreacting.

[( G_R )]

Holy shit that was a long post to write on the phone.

[Azrael]

I've got mixed feelings about Azrael but I don't think I'm okay with hanging him right now (nor today, probably).
So, let's try this: Azra-kum, who's your top choice as non-GR scum?

Wish I had a better answer for you, but not enough people are posting for me to get a read yet. Ham, Dechs, Moga, GR, myself - those are the only people who have taken enough actual positions for me to even start to read someone.

How about you? What are you feelings on anyone and everyone, aside from me?

So apparently I'm getting lynched or shot at.

I already said that my official position is that I won't take a position D1. But if you really want to know my train of thought here it is:

First Az post is
obviously "Let's not have silly RSV", which I like and gives you town points in my spreadsheet. But then I start saying to myself: "This is Azrael. Scum Azrael could easily do that on purpose to get the aforementioned town points, while making us look into RN with the townie comment". WIFOM. So screw your edgy play, I'm just gonna see how others react to it. So I poke RN.

Then kpaca starts post ping pong with you, and I'm like holy shit is one of them scum, both or none? I said as much and stuck to my plan of watching the others when Dechs scored enough scum points to get a vote.

I still have the gut feeling that you may be town aggressively scum hunting, so I was not about to vote for you, but at the same time, I had no strong reason to make a case for your towniness once you reached L-1 and were out of it before I could even finish reading all the walls of text.

My vote for Dechs is supposed to be weird but other than you pointing out that his counterclaim is not
something that scum would do (which despite being a good point, only raises the question of whether you could be scum buddies) no one has said why those bells I heard are only in my head.

I didn't really know that he's a newbie, so I'm going to review his posts under that light and see whether I was overreacting.

Valiant effort sir, but this post rings hollow and without conviction for me. Vote stands.

[Azrael]

Let me break this down.

So apparently I'm getting lynched or shot at.

I already said that my official position is that I won't take a position D1. But if you really want to know my train of thought here it is:

Subtext: I'm doing you a solid by replying to your unreasonable demand to make my position public. Because I'm tots a good guy.

First Az post is obviously "Let's not have silly RSV", which I like and gives you town points in my spreadsheet. But then I start saying to myself: "This is Azrael. Scum Azrael could easily do that on purpose to get the aforementioned town points, while making us look into RN with the townie comment". WIFOM. So screw your edgy play, I'm just gonna
see how others react to it. So I poke RN.

So, we have a conscious decision to see how other players react to my play before you take an action or stance of your own. That's in line with what I figured your mentality was - and it's the classic scum mentality. Scum often experience great difficulty being decisive when it comes to taking sides on a difficult or potentially controversial behavioral analysis question, because they find it difficult to know how they would perceive the evidence, if they were town.

The natural townie response in such a situation is to be inquisitive, to gather more evidence, ask questions, like Ham was doing, in order to get to the bottom of the situation.

The natural scum response, by contrast, is what GR did. To wait and see how the wind was blowing, and how other players begin to react, and to take his cues on how best to camouflage himself and proceed based on the responses of other players.

Then kpaca starts post
ping pong with you, and I'm like holy shit is one of them scum, both or none? I said as much and stuck to my plan of watching the others when Dechs scored enough scum points to get a vote.

I still have the gut feeling that you may be town aggressively scum hunting, so I was not about to vote for you, but at the same time, I had no strong reason to make a case for your towniness once you reached L-1 and were out of it before I could even finish reading all the walls of text.

One of the characteristics of the scum mentality I described above is very evident in this paragraph here, and also in the paragraph above. Scum are very often able to identify multiple competing factors that they ought to weigh (such as my aggressive scum-hunting), or the "possibility that I'm doing it for WIFOM".

What they find it difficult to do is figure out which of those factors should be the one that persuades them.

In this case, I think it's even more difficult for GR to fake the
correct mentality b/c there are a couple clues buried in this text that indicate he knows I'm town, and is finding it difficult to present alternatives. The best explanation he has for his confusion isn't that he's focused on the "mistake" I made that everyone else is focused on. Apparently, that's not of concern to him - probably because he knows it for an honest mistake due to his inside knowledge.

No, what he's actually struggling with if you read between the lines here is how to justify still voting for me despite what he's perceiving (a bit more easily than others thanks to the bias of his inside knowledge) as a strong scum-hunting record. Apparently, the idea that I'm capable of faking a strong scum-hunting record is enough to paralyze him in a bout of confusion and inertia? I don't buy that for a second. What he's worrying about is how to justify his vote, when all hell breaks loose in the inevitable counter-analysis wagon that would take place the instant I flip town. That's
what's staying his hand, that has him frozen on the sidelines, waiting for the rest of the town to take positions first.

My vote for Dechs is supposed to be weird but other than you pointing out that his counterclaim is not something that scum would do (which despite being a good point, only raises the question of whether you could be scum buddies) no one has said why those bells I heard are only in my head.

I didn't really know that he's a newbie, so I'm going to review his posts under that light and see whether I was overreacting.

You attempted to crucify him very aggressively for what were nothing more than innocent logic tells. Both the style and substance of the attack were far too bloodthirsty.

Confirm vote.

[Azrael]

Also, you say you didn't know he was a newbie, GR?

Because I seem to recall you laughing at his posts in the Sons of Anarchy signup thread, where he stated he was a new player, but was trying to give me some tips on how to play.

Lynch this liar?

[Azrael]

Congrats, Dechs, you helped catch a scum before the game even started.

[Azrael]

Didn't "really" know. Heh.

[Azrael]

Boys and girls, THAT's how you catch a scum. *slaps dust off his hands, walks away*

[Azrael]

Ooo. "If you really want to know my train of thought, here it is".

That's another good bit, there. It's like I'm torturing him by simply dragging an attempt to describe his own train of thought out of him.

[( G_R )]

Which vote am I trying to justify again? And you call a single vote a crucifixion?

You're confusing the fact that I have to go through walls of text while at work with scum mentality. My not wanting to take a stance about you comes from the fact that I both know what your trajectory is and how long your posts are. I'd rather deal with you when we have a better picture and probably caught a less experienced scum.

Fine, I'm being lazy, but at least I'm trying to post stuff and get reactions out of not you players.

[( G_R )]

Also, you say you didn't know he was a newbie, GR?

Because I seem to recall you laughing at his posts in the Sons of Anarchy signup thread, where he stated he was a new player, but was trying to give me some tips on how to play.

Lynch this liar?

Who's lying now? I made fun of YOUR claims to be a newbie.

[( G_R )]

Unvote Dechs Kaison

Vote Azrael

There, let's see how you flip then someone go find crumbs to shoot me with if I'm wrong.

[Azrael]

Which vote am I trying to justify again? And you call a single vote a crucifixion?

You're confusing the fact that I have to go through walls of text while at work with scum mentality. My not wanting to take a stance about you comes from the fact that I both know what your trajectory is and how long your posts are. I'd rather deal with you when we have a better picture and probably caught a less experienced scum.

Fine, I'm being lazy, but at least I'm trying to post stuff and get reactions out of not you players.

Translation: "It's not fair that I'm actually playing this game and making an effort as compared to the lurkers, and got caught because I took the high road of actually participating."

I agree, actually. It's not
fair.

But your activity level has nothing to do with the scum-mindset that's clearly evident in your description of your train of thought.

This was your Dechs vote:

[quote="GR]
Unvote RedNihilist
Vote Dechs Kaison

I don't like your use of the word "trap", your vote-hopping, nor the fact that you're trying to direct a power role.

Your light-claim is not helping your case either. [/quote]

This is pretty strongly worded for a page one or two vote. Too strongly worded, and on too thin a basis. His light-claim isn't helping his case? Doesn't even make sense. And the rest of it just buzz-words as a substitute for a real case, strung together with smilies for hyperbole and emphasis, as if it should be self-evident that the three things you mention are unpardonable sins of
some kind.

And then, you immediately back off that strongly worded read when I call it out. Those convictions weren't as strong as you'd have us believe, after all. Not when you take fire for them.

Scum plays, every step of the way.

PPE - You're dodging the point, GR. You were there for the conversation. You heard him say he was a new player. You can't write off your case b/c you didn't realize he was a newbie - you did know it.

[Azrael]

And there's the bare-naked OMGUS vote. Classic.

[( G_R )]

I didn't know him then, nor at the start of this game. He looks like FoS people and they all look the same to me until I've actually interacted with them. No racism. I honestly didn't pay attention, but whatever.

I use smileys all the time in place of body language.

[( G_R )]

And there's the bare-naked OMGUS vote. Classic.

Oh yeah, that too. What else Mr. Mafia textbook? (you guessed it friends, this post)

[Azrael]

I didn't know him then, nor at the start of this game. He looks like FoS people and they all look the same to me until I've actually interacted with them. No racism. I honestly didn't pay attention, but whatever.

I use smileys all the time in place of body language.

I don't have an issue with your using smilies - it's that they don't fit where you used them.

The way you use them here is equally problematic. You call me a liar in one post, vote me, and then switch immediately to using happy faces in the next post.

Also, anyone care for the
slipping into overusing the words "honestly" and "really" tell? These are the kinds of verbal tics you see in someone who isn't comfortable spouting what they know is BS.

[hamfactorial]

I'm enjoying the fireworks but I often like to look for "honestly" and "TBH" wording, as it often suggests a self-deception in progress.

You can look up something called performatives, which are phrases inserted before a lie, commonly used by politicians.

I haven't caught any scum with this observation yet, but looking forward to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSHCdalj3Fo

[Azrael]

I haven't caught any scum with this observation yet, but looking forward to it.

That's a real thing, and you just did.

[Azrael]

In case anyone's casually skimming through the thread with a twitchy trigger finger at some point, please note that GR's OMGUS vote put us up to L-1, which I'm certain was purely accidental on his part. An unvote would be appropriate and appreciated.

[( G_R )]

I didn't know him then, nor at the start of this game. He looks like FoS people and they all look the same to me until I've actually interacted with them. No racism. I honestly didn't pay attention, but whatever.

I use smileys all the time in place of body language.

I don't have an issue with your using smilies - it's that they don't fit where you used them.

The way you use them here is
equally problematic. You call me a liar in one post, vote me, and then switch immediately to using happy faces in the next post.

Also, anyone care for the slipping into overusing the words "honestly" and "really" tell? These are the kinds of verbal tics you see in someone who isn't comfortable spouting what they know is BS.

[Dechs Kaison]

Unvote

[Dechs Kaison]

This game gets harder when the players get better.

[Dechs Kaison]

Ok, so here's where I'm at with that unvote:

I'm suspicious of both Az and GR. Obviously I didn't like GR's vote on me because it's on me. I didn't want to jump on that because I could have just been taking it personally. Az points out the real problems with his vote and it is poor justification and more than a little bloodthirsty.

I've been over how I feel about Az. It looks like he had no idea how town roles were worded. That bothers me, because if he's half the player they say he is, he shouldn't make that kind of mistake. Everything he says makes sense, but if he's half the player they say he is, of course it all would.

Then there's GR's claim that he didn't know I was a newbie. He was in the conversation; I did say I was new in two out of three posts. This looks like a huge slip and I think we should hang him for it.

But then, I feel the same about Az.

It's possible GR was only laughing at Az
getting tips on how to play. It's possible that he didn't pay attention to my being new.

I don't want to jump from one slip to another on a gut feel.

[Azrael]

In my mind, the slip is just icing on the cake of everything else going on with him. Read for yourself the posts where I take apart GR's mindset piece by piece. That's the true damning evidence - five or six different high quality behavioral scum tells occuring in rapid succession, from a very unconvincing explanation of why he's in a dilemma over taking a position on me, to lack of townie inquisitiveness and engagement, consistently exhibiting verbal tics indicating lies, difficulty weighing competing behavioral evidence, nervousness in sharing his thought patterns, to his overaggression and lack of conviction when it came to his vote against you, and his bare OMGUS vote putting me to L-1.

It's like he fell out of the ugly tree, hit half the branches on the way down, and then climbed up into it so that he could jump out of it again and hit all the rest.

Nobody falls into making that many high-quality scum mindset
tells in such rapid succession by mistake or accident - it's a pattern. In 95% of my cases, I have some reservations about whether the case is actually correct, there's almost always some lingering doubts whether or not I could be wrong, and frequently I'll change my mind as new evidence comes in. This is one of the 5% of scenarios where the clarity and quality of the evidence is remarkable.

Read those posts carefully, read between the lines for his mindset. You will not find many more obvious examples than these of what a scum mentality looks like.

[Dechs Kaison]

What is OMGUS again?

[( G_R )]

89% of statistics are made up Azrael. Keep trying to convince people with your walls of text and scholar sounding speech. I'm not buying it anymore.

[( G_R )]

What is OMGUS again?

Oh my god you suck.

[( G_R )]