Elcenia Mafia Game Thread

[Shoal]

I'm rereading the last few pages post coffee. I read them precoffee and not a lot stuck.

About the Finnah might be a candy vendor thing: It's an actual mafia role http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Fruit_Vendor and I think it would be hilarious to see it in the future. That said, it's pretty clear I'm not Finnah because I would have been giving candy to people at night and people would be saying "hey wtf I got some penly last night" and modrony would have seen me visiting people.

About Eret: http://wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?tit ... ful_(role)

(About the other options I'm not linking to the vanilla townie page because everyone knows what a vanilla townie does)

Preview-edit: I think that just about seals the case on Paradox. I am happy with where my vote is. I'll go through other player's posts too and give comments/feedback, etc.

[Shoal]

Unofficial vote count:
not voting: 3 (anthusiasm, michaelblume, paradox)
Shoal: 2 (modrony, tamien)
Paradox: 2 (shoal, jalapeno_dude)

Navigation:
Morning 1
Evening 1/Morning 2
Evening 2/Morning 3
Evening 3/Morning 4
Evening 4/Morning 5
Evening 5/Morning 6

[modrony]

Would really appreciate it if Paradox posted responses soon.
Will likely switch to him otherwise.
I do like the arguments. And being that quiet today is really suspicious.

will note that jalapeno being saasnil is difficult to prove.

Both of you going for him makes me believe I may have made an error in my innocents.
Perhaps that is the purpose. It's not impossible that I did.

[modrony]

Yeah ok.
I don't think saasnil is pointed at by jalapenos list at all.

I don't know why he he would think we could arrive at his logic.
His conclusion on Paradox depends entirely on something we had no way of finding out (if it's true)

I think that is a hole in the list system I hadn't previously thought about.
When the list is too short eventually a time comes when only your own name remains. Scum can then claim that name and say you lied in the original list.
Not saying this is necessarily the case here. If it's true it is likely to be very convincing evidence for jalapeno.

What this does make clear is "if jalapeno is town Paradox is guilty"
Unfortunately I don't think jalapeno is town.

jalapeno did post his thing now when he could have waited for the 2 hour mark. That actually carries a lot weight when the argument itself does not.
This would have been convincing if I didn't have time to think about it.
I still would have discarded it for being last minute evidence.

You may be seeing a trend here. If you have stuff to say and you want me to actually take it into account.
Don't wait.


I think Shoals arguments against Paradox are more believable since they depend on public information.

@anthusiasum, Tamien
What do you think about Paradox?

[modrony]

Had an idea about how jalapeno could convince me about Paradox with a very high confidence.

He could go over his own list and show how we could arrive to saasnil from that.

If he had posted his thing in the beginning of the day he would have done that. If he was town.
Now he likely won't have time to.

[Shoal]

I would also really like to hear from Paradox.

Anthusiasm's posts start here: http://alicorn.elcenia.com/board/viewto ... a&start=80

Anthusiasm

---

I want to start this off by saying that Anthusiasm had/has pneumonia and I remember one time being that sick, it was about 6 years ago and it was awful. I had enough cognitive function to play those stupid facebook games where you just click click click pointlessly and nothing more. I was sleeping about 23 hours a day, unable to keep anything down, waking up to try to get some liquids in me and click click click and then falling asleep again. I seriously thought I was going to die of dehydration (I don't know how likely that was, probably not nearly as likely as I thought at the time but I was feverish and couldn't think straight and was panicking) and I couldn't leave the house to get food for myself. Eventually some friends helped me get to a doctor. It took a few months after that before I was strong enough to go to the farther away shops, I had to pretty much stick to my block for a while.

So I'm really inclined to give anthusiasm a get out of participation free pass for pretty much the entire game, and I don't think it's alignment indicative for her, but I will comment on all the stuff that she did/didn't do. If she's town, this is free advice on how to do better next game. If she's not, this is a case for or against her (I won't know until i'm done which it is)

She also has a kinda weak opening, wanting to do no lynch, but I think she's arguing against using the RNG which is something I agree with. semirandomness is for sparking discussion not being the final arbiter, and true randomness interferes with sparking discussion based on the motivation behind the semi randomness. I'm not entirely sure I follow her logic about if we'd killed BSS day one then 50/50 we would have lost last game because presumably someone else would have lived in her place, except maybe for the double voter thing. She argues against killing Tulip in particular because she was killed early last game (I have by now forgotten most of the order in which things happened last game but modrony and andais are the two that stuck out for me, I think they were the first two. This was in response to Kappa doing private RNG stuff and landing on Tulip (which is funny in retrospect because Kappa was town and Tulip was scum) but if she were mafia it could be seen as an early defense of Tulip.

Her next post is agreeing that we should lynch on the first day (Good) but disagreeing with the totally random part of randomly, which is my own position so I think this a good post. :D okay seriously I'm not townreading people for making arguments I agree with and scumreading them for making arguments I disagree with. that's actually why I abandoned tamien's method of shuffling the entire list of people by evaluating each post: I found that when I did that I was more likely to start grading people on how much I agreed with them instead of what I thought their motivations were. Anyway she also promises me to get an avatar in this post which is good for helping to tell her apart from futurevision (And everyone else but my brain tends to be consistent about who it confuses with each other)

She asked for help with the avatar thing which was good and people helped her which was also good.

She liked modrony's idea of the suspicions posts and clarified that she's likely to be influenced by other people's opinions. I am too actually and it's pretty hard but I'm hoping playing mafia will help me get better at it. In my second newbie game on mafiascum I mentioned it early on that I have trouble thinking for myself and someone called me out on it. He said that it's always better to do your own work, even if you're more likely to be wrong than not, for several reasons: If you're more likely to be wrong than not, you could also be wrong that the person you're sheeping is town. You're trusting someone whose alignment you don't know to do the thinking for you, but you're trusting your own judgement that the other person is more capable of thinking than you are and is on your side. If you're scum, agreeing with someone can prime them to like you more. After you flip scum, it can make other people more suspicious of the person you were sheeping because they're now associated with you. If you're town but the person you were sheeping flips scum, people are going to be more suspicious of you! Sheeping is really lose-lose if you're town and if you're scum and get caught doing it can cause you problems.

I know what it's like to feel like thinking for yourself is playing against your win condition. In my first two games on mafia scum, as a town player, I was on the lynching wagon of every townie that was lynched. It's a terrible feeling to think you're letting your team down no matter what you do: if you think for yourself, lose, if you sheep someone else, the person you were sheeping might be scum so still lose. So I know it's hard. But try to remember that it's just a game and because it's a game it's safe to practice, and it's better to do your own work and be wrong than to let someone do the work for you and still be wrong. Also, if we penalise sheeping it will make the game harder for scum. Harder for town too in the "this is more work" sense but not in the "harder to win" sense because mob mentalities are not intelligent mentalities.

Since our voting is "whoever gets the most votes is lynched" instead of "simple majority", everyone thinking for themselves is more likely to end up in about 5-6 wagons early on that can solidify into 2-4 wagons later in the day. This doesn't have to be like American politics where there are only two major wagons and both are wrong. if everyone is working for themselves and coming up with different names then a lot of different arguments will be put forth, a lot of people will be responding to pressure at once, and we'll be able to derive something from that.

Anyway back to critiquing Anthusiasm in particular (the above paragraphs could be said about most of the players including myself). She tentatively commits to the RNG thing. We'd both made some waves about the RNG thing earlier and maybe she was out of wavemaking for the day. I can relate. But there is value in practicing standing your ground.

Speculates that Hallai might be mafia.

She was reluctant to kill Aestrix but voted for Aestrix anyway. She found Aestrix's wishywashiness suspect.

Aestrix responds to her and Anthusiasm is really nice in her reply to Aestrix but she still stands her ground against her here. She clearly feels bad about having to vote against her friend but she does it anyway because Aestrix was behaving strangely. She explains her thinking very well here: if Aestrix was a power role she should have claimed it instead of waffling like that.

She says she's working on being less passive this game and it shows that she's trying to do that. Respect. She raises a problem with listposts (hard to summarise roles).

Asks someone to make a countdown timer.

She found me suspicious for jumping on PDV about the 3 night kills thing. I just checked and she is the first person in the thread to find me suspicious so she's clearly thinking for herself here. I like that. Daniel agreed with me about the PDV thing but Anthusiasm didn't find him suspicious for that; she found him suspicious for participating less this game than last one.

She speaks out against voting based on intuitive suspicions on day 1. She's right that on day 1 we don't have much to go on, but random chance is literally the worst we can do. But she is right that certain players are going to be at a disadvantge for their writing voice: andais, alphabeta, and on mafia scum in my second game there was a player that seemed so scummy everything about him was suspicious. he was dropping scum tells all over the place. Whenever someone voted him he was voting them right back and casting suspicion onto everybody in a way that seemed more like deflecting attention off of himself and onto everybody else. We tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and work with him but he wouldn't work with us. I had been watching his previous game so I knew he was probably just like this but people were starting to think I was scummy because I was the last one defending him and I knew I was town and I didn't know he wasn't scum and it was costing me too much so I gave up. He was town.

But I think as we all get to know each other better we'll be able to avoid that problem. We'll know that alpha and andais are just like that. Eventually we'll see both of them as scum and both of them as town and both of them as third parties and we'll get to know them well enough to tell when they're just being like that and when they're actually scum. and on day 1 there is some room for being wrong; the game would be completely broken if the entire thing hinged on day 1. So she's right here in sticking up for alpha as just like that, and was right in particular this game because he flipped town, but I think in time as we get to know each other better, our intuitive suspicions even on day 1 will be a lot more valuable.

She also finds kappa suspicious for being a town leader. I think that while it's right to be a little suspicious of everyone and to scumhunt everyone, we can't penalise being organised and taking action to try to make sense of things. We should ask questions of townleaders, we should ask them to help us find the town motivation in a post of theirs where we're not sure how it helps the town or if it helping the town, we should probe deeper into why they're suspicious of people and evaluate whether they're onto something or just making things up. We have to determine not only whether they're town or scum but also whether they're incorrect or correct. I also think that since kappa was town after all there is mafia motivation in discrediting townleaders. I also think that the question of whether a townleader is scum or town can be partially worked out by how long they live: if a townleader is being consistently correct they'll probably be nightkilled (in the absence of doc protection). A competent townleader who is otherwise a vanilla townie is sometimes a bigger threat than a player with a power role, but it's an honour to be nightkilled for being too dangerous to the scum.

Her position on aestrix was that the people who didn't vote aestrix were more suspicious. sounds reasonable at the time.

she was suspicious of michael and wolffreak for lurking. It's true that they were both lurking and lurking is antitown (though town and scum both do it).

She then voted wolffreak based on those reasons. From her post I think this is around the time she was getting sick.

She later unvotes wolffreak but doesn't want to hop on the PDV wagon because she's trying to think for herself. She votes michael instead.

She speculates that PDV might have a posting restriction. I am seriously going to ask after the game if there were any posting restrictions because I still think there is some kind of restriction in place. The "can only speak if spoken to" thing someone mentioned sounds really plausible at this point, but "has to post the bare minimum they can get away with" might be another alternative.

In her next suspicions post she is suspicious of modrony for being a townleader but recognises that kill all the smart people is what the mafia wants, not what the town wants. suspicious of kappa for posting less than before but acknowledges that she's also been posting less. She mentions that she's sick here, and says that one of the reasons she kept her vote parked on michael was that people were finding absentions suspicious. I think that vote parking is only a little bit better than abstaining but she's sick and she's tired and voting is better than not voting and I think mafia should try to filter their thoughts a little better: "I'm doing this so you guys won't find me suspicious" is something mafia doesn't want to say in their out loud voice.

she spends a while practicing spoiler-boxes (they're hard and unintuitive, i agree). She believes modrony's roleclaim. I think her reasons for believing it aren't stellar (if we could narrow down which claims were safeclaims by sorting between minor and major characters then the game can be broken and almost trivially solved on day 1 by massclaiming. we consider everyone who claims a main character conftown, then we lynch from the "who the heck was that character again?" pool until we run out. True the mafia can just pick off the powerroles that way but it doesn't matter. Lynching in order of most to least obscure would win the game and the power roles wouldn't even need to use their powers, unless there was a vigilante who could help get rid of the obscure people faster.)

She goes back and forth for a while trying to decide whether to make a listpost. On the one hand, there is modrony's arguments against them which by now in hindsight were probably true. On the other hand, people are finding her suspicious for not posting one and if she's town she doesn't want to be mislynched and if she's not town she definitely doesn't want to be lynched. She eventually writes that if michael makes one then she'll do it too, and that she doesn't like the arguments against futurevision but will happily jump on another wagon if one presents itself. noooooo. It's good that futurevision flipped town here because if she'd accidentally said that about pistachi0n or tulip she'd be in a lot of trouble: I don't want to vote my buddy but I'll hop on any other wagon that presents itself. She has shown a lot of signs of thinking for herself this game but I think by this point she's getting really sick with the pneumonia and that's making it hard to keep doing it.

She then posts a listpost after all.

She writes that she thinks the listposts aren't why people were targetted, citing daniel. PDV and wolffreak had both already publically roleclaimed and tau surviving a lynch was pointing to dragon there too. I think we won't know for certain who is right here until after the game.

She requests that people don't bandwagon her at the very end of the day when she's in class and unable to defend herself. Mad scrambles at the end of the day are bad,I agree. I think this request is okay.

She is one of the people who voted against michael that day. While it's true in hindsight that he's not much of a threat it's also still not certain whether he's town or mafia (pistachi0n did seem eager for his slot to be replaced or for him to start posting more or something, but futurevision probably clears him), michael still being in the game in LYLO does create a problem where we have 7 people alive but one of them is not voting and if he's town then it's 3 vs 3 (ignoring the demon) which is unfortunate, but we can't kill him because you can't policy lynch in LYLO; it's game over if we're wrong about him. and he was sick too. michael's slot shouldn't have been allowed to live this long but there's nothing for it now.

On May 4th she says she's had pneumonia for 2 weeks. I don't know if she's still sick but it's possible. it can take a while to recover from that kind of thing. She voted modrony based on cached suspicions (fair enough with pneumonia, but otherwise it would be better to update suspicions before voting if possible).

She didn't like the futurevision wagon (good, since futurevision was town), didn't like the arguments against Tulip (unfortunate, but if she's town, then town can be wrong sometimes), was suspicious of paradox (good, since paradox is almost certainly mafia), believed modrony was Leekath but still found modrony suspicious and didn't unvote (this would be bad, except for her next post where she explains herself:)

She doesn't unvote because while Leekath is very plausible, it's also possible it's a safeclaim, like last game with Matilda. She realised the flaw in her reasoning I pointed out above on her own. :)

She later wants to unvote but it's getting towards the end of the day and she doesn't want to cause a mad scramble, and I think Leekath wasn't actually in danger at that point so it's fair enough. I think it's better to make sure your vote is always where you want but I've been scumread on mafiascum for doing exactly that at inopportune moments (as town).

Then she decides to vote anyway (good) and votes for Paradox, who I think was also not in much danger at that point so this is just getting her vote where she wants it to be.

She points out that Paradox is making insightful arguments but only tends to show up when Paradox is in danger of being killed, which is insightful.

She then changes her mind and goes for MTC. At the time I thought this was weird because MTC was conftown but then MTC flipped demon so this was clever.

Posts her suspicions list and gives reasons for why she thinks people are suspicious. Mentions she's in exams now too. I couldn't really tell at the time who she was suspicious of since it seemed to be a lot of towns and a lot of nulls, but she clarified it for me readily when I asked her to.

She votes for Tulip.

This game day she mentions what i mentioned above about michael and wonders if he might be mafia but comes to the conclusion that we can't afford to go after him on the off chance that he's mafia after all.

Then she spends a while trying to decide if she should do her ironman thing or not. She's townreading pretty much everyone at this point which is a hard place to be. I hope her silence means that she's been rereading the thread (or recovering from pneumonia/acing her exams). This is THE most important day of this game but ultimately it is just a game and real life comes first.

In conclusion, while there's a lot of stuff here that could be either mafia or town, I do see her genuinely trying to step out of her comfort zone, practicing thinking for herself, trying to figure things out even though she doesn't seem to take an asking questions approach to doing that. She's wrong sometimes and right other times but she does think things through and seems to work out some theory stuff from first principles by going back and thinking about it more. She's also been really sick and in the middle of exams, but has tried to be active despite that. It's hard to tell, but I think she might be town. Being sick isn't alignment indicative either way. It means her being less active is null not scummy, though.

Preview-edit: okay this was really long. I have a different username on mafiascum than here, and so while I'd be happy to provide links to me be really long winded as town on mafiascum, I don't want to connect the two usernames publically (I use different names on each site so that if a stalker catches up with me I only have to lose one batch of friends, not all of them at once like the last time that happened when I was using one nick everywhere) I think it would be against game rules to PM people anything of that nature. So instead, if I'm town you can take this as evidence for next game when I do it that it's a thing that I do when I'm town. Or you could take the cult private thread from last game as evidence that it's a thing that I do regardless but if I'm scum then I do it in private for the benefit of my teammates. Or after this game is over and before the next one starts I will provide links by PM to anyone who asks of me making giant wall posts on the other site. Hopefully after you've played enough games with me I will have either gotten better enough at writing to not be making giant posts or you'll have all gotten used to it being a thing that I do especially in the late game because early on there is less to go on for walls, but at least I provide a summary at the end, just like we'll all get used to alphabeta and andaisq channelling the joker each game.

about modrony's posts: yeah, it would be nice if jalapeno did that. It will probably be in the final two hours if that happens which is unfortunate. My next wall will be an analysis of jalapeno's play this game. after that maybe I'll do a tiny wall about michael but it'll be short because he isn't playing and then you and tamien if there is time. Maybe Paradox will weigh in.

[anthusiasm]

Thanks Shoal :)

I'm not sure if I'll be able to post very much today. I tentatively agree with jalapeño_dude's reasoning and I want to vote for someone so vote Paradox. If I have time before the day ends I'm going to reread the post and make sure I agree with it or if I have generated any other suspicions.

[modrony]

The thing with jalapenos reasoning is that it only works if we believe his roleclaim.
I really hope he can be convincing about it if it's true. Because currently, I don't trust it very much.

[anthusiasm]

I mean, what I got from that post was that either jalapeño_dude or Paradox was mafia, since they were both claiming the same character, and I've gotten the impression that jalapeño_dude's most recent actions have been more town-friendly than Paradox's. If I get a longer break today I'll reread their posts, a lot of these arguments have been going over my head.

[modrony]

So here is where I am at.
The Paradox wagon has my choices 1,2 and 4 at. Paradox is my #3 choice.
I think it is an indication that I have made a mistake somewhere, but I don't know where.
It looks to me like an indication that Paradox is innocent, but his silence does weigh rather heavily in the other direction.

I have been going back and forth on the precommit thing.
I have decided finally to not do it. (As you may have noticed this is a matter that I take somewhat seriously.)
It is still somewhat possible that an unexpected circumstance will arise that will make me change my mind.
If jalapeno convincingly roleclaims I will vote for Paradox. (if his evidence actually exists it is very convincing) (this likely only applies before the 30 min mark. I will need time to go through his reasoning)
If there is a mod announcement I will take that into account.
If Tamien and anthusiasum are voting for the same candidate somewhere around the 20 minute mark I am likely to change my vote to match theirs.(I will be extremely surprised if at least one of them isn't innocent)

I will not be taking part in any last-minute scrambles. Those are almost certainly caused by mafia manipulations.
Please don't make plans that expect me to do so.
If you jump candidate from mine after the 20 minute mark I am much more likely to try and convince you to return than to follow you.

I consider vote splintering the worst possible thing that can happen to town. It will mean that a townie gets lynched.

So please consider me almost precommitted to moving slowly and considering things before I do them.
It's not how I would formulate a proper precommit, but then this isn't one.

People I am currently willing to vote for are Shoal and jalapeno_dude.
I am pretty convinced that at least one of those is guilty. I think it is likely that both are.