TL Mafia XXVIII - Page 9

Let us delve into the mind of scum. The pattern for a normal, general scum that doesn't go out of his way to do anything out of the ordinary is quite simple. Lay low on the first day or two and slowly come out with accusations. Be very careful of jumping on bandwagons as it may arouse suspicion. Rather than openly coming out and making a case on someone on the first day/two, try to find someone that is making a fool of themselves and make a small case to see if it gains momentum. I think we can all agree that this is a standard way of playing as scum, keeps the suspicion low while still contributing information.

Now let us look at chaoser's early game. One of his first posts is to abstain. This vote does not change for the entire day. Fits perfectly in line with my 'lay low' theory, especially (as the wonderful Pandain pointed out) as chaoser was so against my 'no lynch' strategy. One would have to wonder why he didn't simply vote for someone if he was so against it. He raises the counter argument that voting to abstain is different from voting to no lynch, which is a moot point in my opinion really.

Cool, chaoser wants information from voting lists on the first day. In fact, he even points this out to the public. So why does he not vote for anyone? Oh right, abstaining doesn't label you as 'against' someone. Good stuff in my opinion, I'd probably do it too if I was scum.

So up until early Day 2, chaoser continues to bring in a wealth of information (such as the voting history of certain people etc.) but doesn't actually accuse anyone. All he does is make some accusatory comment that doesn't really have any flair to it. See below.

chaoser to BB:

So early on in Day 2, after a small group of people (Divinek, DTA and Amber[light]) already vote for BB, chaoser joins in and mounts a small case against BB.

After a page or two a LOT of people jump on the bandwagon. It's uncanny. Chaoser realises that if BB is lynched and he flips town then things will look bad for him, so he switches his vote to Subversion, another bandwagon being formed at the time. It's funny, after using that argument against BB he immediately switches to Subversion after seeing the possibility that he might be labeled as mafia (note: someone actually said that the '3rd/4th person on the bandwagon tends to be mafia' and could have affected chaoser's thoughts). The argument he uses against Subversion is one that has already gained traction from BC/Protractinium and so it's easy to ride with.

Pandain then mounts an argument against chaoser, who responds by responding to each and every point. I believe they continue this argument via PM and sort it out there and Pandain drops his case on chaoser (I attribute this to Pandain being new to this game and not being very good at picking out lies/deceit etc.). Anyway, what does chaoser do now? Of course, he abstains. Oh, the joy of not really voting for anyone.

A common trait of mafia is that they won't contribute too much in the accusations etc. early on. They will however, try and 'appear' to be useful by posting stuff that doesn't really cause them any risk in any way (ie. pointing at someone of being scum). They will often side with someone else or pick on a player that seems to be causing a ruckus which won't be seen as suspicious. In addition to this, scum will go to great lengths to defend themselves. Think about it (directed at newer players), if you are scum you are much more willing to come back to this thread and try to shake off any accusations against you. This is why RVS is quite helpful in smaller games. Often scum will 'lurk' meaning they'll browse around, read everything but won't post too much in order to stay under the radar. However, accusing them and voting for them will force them to come out and defend themselves profusely. We can see this in DTA, he was town and everyone started voting for him. He didn't reply in the thread for a looooooong time (I actually pointed this out but I was ignored /yay), indicating that he was in fact, not lurking but actually AWOL, which is a townie trait.

Chaoser falls into the above mafia category. He immediately comes out of his 'useful/informative' shell and starts defending himself a LOT. His posts start becoming a lot of the 'discussion' going on. This continues for a long time, only defending himself and never accusing anyone asides from the occasional "your arguments are weak, why are you trying to get me lynched so bad? Are you scum?" type of argument. Now it's actually really painful to go through skimming page by page but the general trend I see right now is that a lot of people start jumping on the chaoser bandwagon. It's funny, he votes for DTA because he's getting a lot of votes for him. He then states:

Look at this from a scum perspective. He knows DTA is town. He knows that if DTA is lynched then he'll get an even worse image than before. So what does he do? He tries to side with DTA to lynch someone else that already has a lot of people voting for him. This is actually a good play by mafia as he had already taken the side of voting for Subversion earlier so if questioned, he could retaliate by saying "I already had my suspicions on Subversion before!"

+ Show Spoiler +

Blah blah DTA ends up getting lynched (one of the final votes by chaoser, although it could be argued that he did it to save himself) and ends up flipping town.

I know I've always been wary of chaoser but I'd like everyone to read my analysis of him. I'm not going to analyse Night 3 'cause that was just a big spam fest and lots of people probably have an ill image of me now. I'd just like you all to trust me for once (I was right on hyperbola/DTA even though it doesn't mean anything, yes I know) and vote for chaoser. I would also like to mention that I believe infundlibsuvxkum and chaoser are linked but that discussion can be saved for another time.