Newbie Mini Mafia VIII

On April 12 2012 15:57 Xatalos wrote:
/confirm

I strongly disagree with people saying this discussion has been "idle chat" or "pointless discussion". There's only so much you can do 7 hours into the game, but what I've got from these posts has been VERY useful: in fact, after reading all the posts in one go, I'm already ready to cast a vote (not just a fake pressure like KharadBanar).

The person I want to lynch the most right now is: ArcticFox. Here is what I got from his filter so far:



On the surface this looks like friendly advice to fellow townies, but this is EXACTLY the kind of posting I did on A Game of Thrones Mafia as a Mafia Framer. His attitude seems like he wants to appear useful, but he doesn't really say anything useful - the opposite of actual townies who want to be useful, but don't care as much about their appearance. The overall feel I get from this post is "please don't lynch me, I'm being useful!"



First of all: why discuss about blue roles at all? This is the same mistake I did in A Game of Thrones Mafia - we kept talking about blue roles in the Mafia chat, so subconsciously I mentioned possibilities about the blue roles even in the normal thread. And what do you mean with "idle chat is not good"? So far this "idle chat" has been very useful (certainly much more useful than silence or the trolling/flaming we had in A Game of Thrones Mafia...). Also, you keep mentioning policies, which is something Mafia loves to do - you can appear somewhat useful without actually contributing anything.



There he goes again, talking about blue roles. It's too bad it probably ends now after I mention this, but I would have wanted to see how many times he can talk about blue roles / blue reads during the game, since this is the second time already in only 7 hours... And if you think Dittert is Mafia, why not vote for him or even put any real pressure on him? It looks like you just want to fake pressure an obvious target (a suspiciously acting townie) or put some distance between yourself and a fellow Mafia (if he gets lynched, you can claim you "pushed for his lynch" all along).



You look like you want to make a policy lynch, since you keep talking about policies, but still try to appear as if you "want" to lynch a Mafia player (if something too obvious comes along and you have to bus your teammate).

I got a pretty solid Mafia read already in just a matter of hours, so this discussion is definitely not "useless"...

##Vote: ArcticFox

Other people I'm going to keep a close watch on: Dittert, yomi. Neither have contributed to the thread, but still tried to appear "active" enough to avoid being lynched. yomi even had a strange OMGUS reaction to BroodKingEXE after being suspected, without ANYTHING to back up his counter-suspicion. Also, this:



Exactly the same kind of tactic I employed in A Game of Thrones Mafia... You want to apologize for your mistakes and noobish play (why would a townie ever need the urge to make a public apology?!) to make people think of you as a noob townie. I can feel the fear and hesitation pouring from this post.

I would also want to hear your opinion, Acrofales. You were VERY active and talkative in A Game of Thrones Mafia, but so far you have been inactive. What do you think about my case on ArcticFox? Do you have your own Mafia reads that I might have missed?

On April 12 2012 08:54 vonKlaust wrote:
Alright people, start typing! We know you're out there. So far only a handful of us have posted.

On April 12 2012 08:56 vonKlaust wrote:
Just noticed that the game had been going for 50 minutes. Lol, maybe I should be a tad more patient.

So what I was thinking was that it would be better to wait for a while, since it's pretty natural for people not to have posted yet, and putting out a vote later when the person you're pressuring have actually made posts which you can use in your pressure-attempt. I can't imagine that you would feel very pressured by the kind of pressure vote KharadBanar made.
Thinking about it, what you say makes sense though. I guess throwing votes around seemingly lighly is a pretty good way to get lynched yourself.

What Willz wrote was pretty much what I was thinking.

On April 13 2012 03:34 willz22912 wrote:
If you want to be more active and useful for town yourself, take a moment and just pick a player (preferably someone not already under suspicion) and post your opinion on that person (including me if you want) whether he is looking pro-town, neutral, or anti-town. Don't lurk for fear of nothing to say. Try and contribute, and getting posts down where people can judge your reasoning and have a mental history of your opinions will be the reason you stay alive versus being targetted for lurking. This is targeted towards the players with less than a page of filter at this point. It's still midway through D1, but you need to step it up.

On April 13 2012 03:23 willz22912 wrote:
I'm leaning strongly towards imallinson at this point because he hasn't posted anything unique for himself, he's been hiding behind supporting your case against Arcticfox. Other reads I have now I am not willing to divulge at this point so they don't get defensive early, I'm curious to see how some of my suspects proceed as we still have 29 hours to go till deadline. I'll post a case on my vote target after I collect more evidence.

On April 13 2012 06:19 willz22912 wrote:
I'm waiting on responses from at least half the thread, I'm not going to make a case based on this little posting, that's not going to convince anyone. I will have a case written up and posted at least 4-5 hours before deadline tomorrow(~1-2pm est), so that's enough time for discussion. Specifically, I'm calling out Yomi, BroodkingExe, HiroPro, imallinson, trumpetarm to post something, at least either their top town or scum read and their own opinions. I'm tired of seeing people pick on the easiest targets with little to no explanation.

On April 13 2012 02:58 willz22912 wrote:
Newbie town are scared to voice their opinion so they latch onto a strong leader, but then if that leader is really mafia, then we have a bad situation for town.

On April 13 2012 04:06 vonKlaust wrote:



This is fallacious. Of course it's better for the crooks to try to put forward some solid evidence together with joining a lynch than to just, as you put it, sheepishly vote once a very easy target has been found. Not only does it make the chances of the target actually getting lynched, but it also makes them look towny. I can accept that you would rather focus at ArticFox, but this explanation is NOT sufficient for dropping your suspicions on Iamallison
To me this looks like a potential scum slip.

On April 13 2012 04:46 vonKlaust wrote:


I went back to research Xatalos filter after this incident:
+ Show Spoiler +
And found this piece of text. This strikes me as pretty awkward. Not only is he trying to justify his case by saying that it generated discussion, but he also proposes to push another lynch target, not because he thinks that ArticFox is a bad lynch, but because "It would make it too easy for Mafia to blend in".

Of course pushing for lynches generates discussion, but that does not justify pushing bad lynches. Of course you can use votes to pressure, but your vote against ArticFox don't really come across as a pressure vote to me. Also it feels a bit wierd that you seem so decisive while still saying stuff like "By no means is ArticFox a must-lynch for me" and "I'm all for pushing another lynch target".

Especially when you earlier in the game wrote stuff like:





It feels like you're trying to get out of the lynch-train you created in the first place, while still maintaining ArticFox as a prime suspect. As far as I can tell, you didn't really ever back down from your claims. You just went defensive when people started to criticize your case.

On April 12 2012 21:36 vonKlaust wrote:
Ok, I must disappointedly admit that I feel pretty lost. So far I think most cases have felt a bit rushed, but I guess that could be because I'm simply not used to this kind of speculative reasoning. I do however think that Xatalos case on ArticFox seems to carry some truth. If I would have to vote right now, I would probably go with this.

+ Show Spoiler +

Both the blue-talk and the policy lynching-talk seems a bit odd. I guess you could agrue that ArticFox could be blue himself, but it doesn't strike me as very natural behaviour to talk so much about blues if you are one yourself since you would desperately want to stay hidden. I'm not quite as confident about this as Xatalos seems to be, but to me this seems to be the best analysis so far.


Some people have been critical towards Dittert and his RNG-talk. To me he comes across more as a nervous newbie(no offence, I'm pretty much a nervous newbie myself!) than scum. I think he's sincere about the claim that he was actually after sparking discussion rather than actually pushing for RNGing.

On April 14 2012 15:26 imallinson wrote:
Well now the BroodKing thing has settled into my head a bit more I will post my thoughts on the current situation. Honestly this lynch sucks if we had lynched either Willz or yomi we would have got info from it, lynching Brood and him turning town. I'm not entirely sure about Willz's idea about all the scum voting for Brood because absolutely everyone who was here in the hour before voting pretty much instantly switched to Brood. Also it's perfectly possible a scum member wasn't here near the end or was lurking super hard and didn't feel the need to come out of the shadows because the Brood lynch was obviously going through.

Now my thoughts on some of our other townsmembers.

Dittert:
After his last post I'm really not convinced about the dumb town thing any more. Someone who isn't confident about their ability doesn't chastise people and call them idiots.



I will admit there have been some fairly weak arguments (yomi, Xatalos and myself have all been guilty of this although Dittert is as well) however it's day 1 in a newbie game we probably aren't going to be seeing any Holmes-esque deductions yet.



I think ArcticFox said it best here "That was the dumbest thing I think I've ever seen." He's right it was a dumb slip by Brood whether he is town or scum. Looking back at it it's easy to say it was a stupid thing to go for.



It's not just because he started posting more. He actually put up some sort of defence (in between the moping), then yomi started looking more suspicious so the vote started to move to him, finally Brood posted his dumb slip and the vote moved to him. This all makes sense from a town perspective, everyone voted for who they thought was most suspicious at the time.



People did vote for yomi and I don't think anyone has switched off of him. He is certainly high on my list of suspicious people (more on that later).



A lot of this has been said before in the cases against Willz and yomi. This reeks of trying to be helpful while not actually contributing.



This read of yours is both well before he slipped up and after he flipped town. You didn't have much reason to suspect him in the former and have hindsight in the later. You seem to be using the fact you weren't here when the vote flipped to Brood to show you as innocent which I'm not buying. It's easy to say a vote was stupid after it has happened if you had responded as such while it was happening I might take your accusations a bit more seriously. That whole post seems scummy to me

##FoS: Dittert

yomi:
I'm really not sure about you at the moment. There have been decent arguments against you you never properly responded to but your posting is so erratic and nonsensical that I think you might just be a really bad town player. I would think scum would be more careful and considered in their posting. That being said you are playing so badly currently I'm thinking you wouldn't be a terrible lynch / vig shot. I would really like to get some calmer some reasoned stuff from you.

Xatalos:
The one good point, although not conveyed well, that yomi made is about you Xatalos. You have actually been suspicious of, to various degrees, or have voted against everyone except yourself and trumpetarn who barely counts because he stopped posting midway through day 1. I can't see a reason why any town would be so suspicious of everyone around him. I understand being wary and throwing a few accusations around but you have taken it to an extreme. I'm not sure whether you
are town or scum but I really would like to know why you are so suspicious of everybody.

Willz:
Everyone seemed to let you off the hook somewhat after yomi became suspect #1 and I will admit you were definitely helpful in what you thought were your death throes posting your reads on others but the mopyness and self voting really helps only the scum. I don't know whether you are town or scum at the moment but you need to cut that shit out.

I'll just post short thoughts on everyone else as I don't have mountains to say about them.

vonKlaus: You strike me as fairly town. You have defended your self well and haven't been afraid to makes cases.
ArcticFox: Again you seem town for the same reasons as vonKlaus.
Acrofales: You are probably my strongest town read. You made an excellent well reasoned case against Willz.
KharadBanar: Your posting can be a bit sporadic but is helpful when it exists. I hope to see you really shine now we are past day 1.
HiroPro: I don't know what to say about you, you barely post. You also seem to flop about a fair bit with your voting mainly following other people.

On April 16 2012 06:01 vonKlaust wrote:
Alright so here's my try at an general analysis:

Dittert:

I have up until now thought that he was a newbie townie, and I’ve been standing by that read until his last posts. The way he got all overly defensive and rude really doesn’t look good to me. Especially this part bothers me:


For one thing, it was not idiotic to vote for Brood. What he did was pretty outrageous, and it’s not strange that we chose to change out vote to him. I would have thought it pretty scummy if Dittert hadn’t at least acknowledged the fact that Brood was very likely to be mafia after he made that post which made us all switch to him. Also, I don’t remember anything about anyone talking about what they feel is right. The one thing I can recall was me saying that I felt that Willz defence was reasonable, but that I wasn’t gonna act on my feeling since Willz could just as well be a mafia with good rhetoric.
The way he tries to collect town-points by claiming that he was sure Brood was town makes my scum-radar tick. If he would have said this before we lynched Brood it would have made me highly suspicious, and it really doesn’t make it better by saying it in retrospect.

I think we did the right thing with Brood. It’s damn easy to say that it was stupid after the fact that he flipped town. I mean seriously, this was all he ever wrote about Brood(as far as I’ve found in his filter anyway):



This is NOT enough to call us stupid for lynching Brood. If he is serious about this comment on Brood being stronger than Broods very scummy comment on lynching Willz, then I don’t know what to say to him.

Him martyring and acting like an idiot saying stuff like

doesn’t help at all.

Verdict: Scum.



Yomi:

I don’t know man. Most of the time he has been defending himself, and this is not very weird since he has been tunnelled pretty hard most of the game. Maybe if Xatalos could actually give him a chance to post something productive, he would be able to contribute. As far as I can tell he hasn’t contributed all that much to the thread. There is his case on Dittert, but I think that it’s pretty weak. After that Xatalos began tunnelling him to no end. I’m actually starting to lean more towards Yomi being innocent. To me it definitely could be that he has just been to pressured to focus on making reads. On the other hand, it should be clear that it would be better as town to focus on making reads than defending yourself I guess.
I have a hard time taking a concrete stance on this guy. It seems he has started to try to contribute more lately too. I’ll keep my eyes on him.

Verdict: 50/50



Acrofales:

This guy has without a doubt been the biggest contributor to the thread. I have a hard time seeing him being mafia. He has made a couple of really good cases and has been calling people out when he thinks they have been acting badly. To put it shortly: He has been making the best cases so far, and has been the guy to most successfully keep the thread on track.

Verdict: Town.


Xatalos:

In my opinion the most interesting player in the thread. The thing that is bothering me immensely is that I and others for a long time have been trying to make him calm down with his posting. He has not been calming down. This is to me deeply disturbing, and I’m starting to lean towards him being a sneaky, sneaky crook.

I’m not the first one to point this out but his posts have been ALL OVER THE PLACE!!! He has done a top notch job in clogging up the thread with useless discussion and tunnelling. On top of that he seems unable to notice his own confirmation bias which is fucking up his cases. Even though he have been accusing pretty much everyone, he always been acting as he is 100% confident in his reads. I called him out on this earlier and he wrote:





And I’m perfectly aware of this, but this does not really answer me. The problem is that he is overconfident in his reads, and suffers from severe confirmation bias.

Since Xatalos have not yet started to act on my and others advice to start to take it a bit easy on the accusations and stop to tunnel people I’m starting to lean towards scummyness. His play just doesn’t make sense to me.

Verdict: Scum.


Willz:

My opinion on him hasn’t really changed. He is still possible scum in my eyes. I’ll watch him closely D2 to see if he shapes his posting up. For right now I’m still suspicious. Still, he seems like a guy who could be useful. I have liked the way he has been calling people out. It’s just the hypocrisy I’m bothered with.

Verdict: Scummy.


KharadBanar:

Kharad has kind of been hovering under my radar since the beginning of the game, and I haven’t really had an opinion on him. However, I like
KharadBanar's Comprehensive Scum Probability List™
and I agree with a lot of what he’s saying there. Checking his filter, I think it looks good. I can’t find anything I think is particularly weird.

Verdict: Town





Imallinson:

Reading through his filter he hasn’t really been contributing that much.
There is this one:
+ Show Spoiler +
But that’s pretty much it as far as I can tell. Like Kharad Imallinson have been one I’ve not payed a lot of attention on. I’m unsure. It doesn’t seem he have contributed that much, but I can’t really find anything really bad either.

Verdict: Not a town read, but not a scum read either. I’d say this is 50/50. I have to take a closer look at this guy.



HiroPro:

This guy have been confusing to me from the start. Right now I’m leaning town since he have been stepping up his posting, and he actually starts to seem pretty reasonable. His filter is a bit thin and I would like him to get posting a little more. He was reasonable in our discussion about Xatalos’ case on me, and I like his recent case on Xatalos.

Verdict: I’m leaning town on him. 70% town.


Conclusion:

I’ll be voting for Xatalos for now. I want to put an end to his posting madness, and this vote is gonna stay right here until that happens. If Xatalos starts making more constructive posts, this vote may very well be put on Dittert instead.

##Vote Xatalos