Finished Mafia LXI: Forest Fire: Game Over!
- Thread starter NinjaPenguin
- Start date
- Status
Day 5 End
Final Vote Count:scattered mind (3)-Jabberwock, Ephemera, bbninjas
Jabberwock (1)-scattered mind
Not Voting: Jadethepokemontrainer
Vote History:
#20-Celever voted bbninjas
#23-Amici voted Celever
#27-Ephemera voted Celever
#30-Vom voted Fiery_Lugia
#32-Ephemera voted Vom
#41-Ephemera voted Ephemera
#42-Ephemera voted Vom
#47-Vom voted Ephemera
#51-Jadethepokemontrainer voted MegaPod_781
#55-Celever voted Ephemera
#81-MegaPod_781 voted bbninjas
#102-bbninjas voted Ephemera
#120-Ephemera voted bbninjas
#123-Ephemera voted MegaPod_781
#139-MegaPod_781 voted Ephemera
#151-Scattered mind voted Amici
#162-Ephemera voted Celever
#244-MegaPod_781 voted Celever
#249-Jadethepokemontrainer voted Celever
#268-scattered mind voted Fiery_Lugia
#276-Ephemera voted bbninjas
#288-scattered mind voted Celever
#297-Celever voted bbninjas
#302-Fiery_Lugia voted Celever
#304-Celever voted Amici
#23-Amici voted Celever
#27-Ephemera voted Celever
#30-Vom voted Fiery_Lugia
#32-Ephemera voted Vom
#41-Ephemera voted Ephemera
#42-Ephemera voted Vom
#47-Vom voted Ephemera
#51-Jadethepokemontrainer voted MegaPod_781
#55-Celever voted Ephemera
#81-MegaPod_781 voted bbninjas
#102-bbninjas voted Ephemera
#120-Ephemera voted bbninjas
#123-Ephemera voted MegaPod_781
#139-MegaPod_781 voted Ephemera
#151-Scattered mind voted Amici
#162-Ephemera voted Celever
#244-MegaPod_781 voted Celever
#249-Jadethepokemontrainer voted Celever
#268-scattered mind voted Fiery_Lugia
#276-Ephemera voted bbninjas
#288-scattered mind voted Celever
#297-Celever voted bbninjas
#302-Fiery_Lugia voted Celever
#304-Celever voted Amici
#308-MegaPod_781 voted bbninjas
#320-scattered mind voted bbninjas
#348-bbninjas voted MegaPod_781
#353-Amici voted Ephemera
#357-Vom voted scattered mind
#358-Ephemera voted bbninjas
#390-Jadethepokemontrainer voted MegaPod_781
#392-Ephemera voted Amici
#395-Vom voted MegaPod_781
#320-scattered mind voted bbninjas
#348-bbninjas voted MegaPod_781
#353-Amici voted Ephemera
#357-Vom voted scattered mind
#358-Ephemera voted bbninjas
#390-Jadethepokemontrainer voted MegaPod_781
#392-Ephemera voted Amici
#395-Vom voted MegaPod_781
#404-Vom voted scattered mind
#405-Ephemera voted Amici
#418-Jadethepokemontrainer voted Amici
#420-bbninjas voted Amici
#405-Ephemera voted Amici
#418-Jadethepokemontrainer voted Amici
#420-bbninjas voted Amici
#453-Jabberwock voted scattered mind
#454-Ephemera voted Jabberwock
#513-Ephemera voted bbninjas
#517-bbninjas voted Vom
#538-Ephemera unvoted bbninjas
#566-scattered mind voted Jabberwock
#567-bbninjas unvoted Vom
#574-bbninjas voted Vom
#587-Ephemera voted Jabberwock
#607-Ephemera voted scattered mind
#613-Ephemera unvoted scattered mind
#624-Vom voted scattered mind
#651-Jabberwock voted Vom
#454-Ephemera voted Jabberwock
#513-Ephemera voted bbninjas
#517-bbninjas voted Vom
#538-Ephemera unvoted bbninjas
#566-scattered mind voted Jabberwock
#567-bbninjas unvoted Vom
#574-bbninjas voted Vom
#587-Ephemera voted Jabberwock
#607-Ephemera voted scattered mind
#613-Ephemera unvoted scattered mind
#624-Vom voted scattered mind
#651-Jabberwock voted Vom
#702-Jabberwock voted scattered mind
#770-Ephemera voted scattered mind
#781-bbninjas voted scattered mind
scattered mind was eliminated. They were:
Town Tree
Night 5 Start
The animals returned for yet another day of debate, but something happened that would cause them to change their mood. The animals all began to make speeches about why they were animals and why they should not be kicked out of the council.
A majestic crimson bird flew into the center of the clearing and began to speak:
"I would like to say, first of all, that kicking me off the council would be a cardinal sin."
"A cardinal sin?" another animal chuckled, as the members of the council burst into laughter.
"You know, I really don't think it would be such a sin. In fact, I'm leaning towards going in a cardinal direction today," another added.
"Stop it!" the cardinal shouted, "This really is a decision that a lot hinges upon!"
Though the cardinal was once again unaware of it, he had managed to make another punalbeit this time in Latin, and the rest of the council again began to laugh at him even more.
Out of some combination of anger at being made fun of and frustration over what had happened the last five days, the cardinal let out a song. The other animals recoiled. There was no way a normal animal could have made that noise, they thought. It must have been some human having problems synthesizing a sound.
And so they promptly voted the cardinal out of the forest council, suffering yet another failure in their quest to eliminate the humans in their ranks.
A majestic crimson bird flew into the center of the clearing and began to speak:
"I would like to say, first of all, that kicking me off the council would be a cardinal sin."
"A cardinal sin?" another animal chuckled, as the members of the council burst into laughter.
"You know, I really don't think it would be such a sin. In fact, I'm leaning towards going in a cardinal direction today," another added.
"Stop it!" the cardinal shouted, "This really is a decision that a lot hinges upon!"
Though the cardinal was once again unaware of it, he had managed to make another pun
Out of some combination of anger at being made fun of and frustration over what had happened the last five days, the cardinal let out a song. The other animals recoiled. There was no way a normal animal could have made that noise, they thought. It must have been some human having problems synthesizing a sound.
And so they promptly voted the cardinal out of the forest council, suffering yet another failure in their quest to eliminate the humans in their ranks.
Do not post in the thread during the night phase.
The following players missed the average of two posts per day standard and should increase their activity level in Day 6 or risk being subbed out:
@Jadethepokemontrainer
Last edited:
Game Over
The "fox" (or, more accurately, the human controlling it) stood in the middle of the clearing, contemplating his next move. He had gotten the animals to go after each other for so long, but would he have the ability to avoid suspicion the next day? He knew it was time to execute his plan.
The fox first went up to the owl's tree. He lifted his paw and out slid a silver lighter, which he struck. The bottom of the tree immediately burst into flames. "Nice," the fox muttered to himself, not taking the time to realize that the kindling he had taken the time to place so carefully on the first night was totally gone from the upper portion, leaving the owl unscathed.
Next, the fox went to the raccoon's tree. Once again he struck the lighter, and this time, when the tree caught flames, it spread to all the branches, leaving behind only a charred stump.
Then came the beaver's tree. The poor beaver was the one who had noticed on the first night that the owl's tree was disturbed, and took the time to eliminate the hazard. But he had failed to notice any similar occurrence on the future nights, and it would prove his undoing, his tree going up in flames.
Finally was the porcupine's tree. Though the porcupine had tried to take some steps of self-defense, lining the bottom of its tree with sharp quills to prevent anyone from climbing up, they too were unprepared for the fox's machinations and their tree quickly burst into flames upon being ignited.
The fox watched the carnage from the center of the clearing, the fur slowly burning off to reveal its robotic skeleton underneath. It had taken him and his colleague five days and nights of 24/7 work, an exhausting cycle of fooling the animals in the daytime and priming the trees to burn in the night, but the forest council would serve no threat to their plans any longer. As the only member remaining, after all, he could simply disband it.
All that remains of the forest council is a circle strewn with trees and ash. And for the humans, that was all that mattered.
The fox first went up to the owl's tree. He lifted his paw and out slid a silver lighter, which he struck. The bottom of the tree immediately burst into flames. "Nice," the fox muttered to himself, not taking the time to realize that the kindling he had taken the time to place so carefully on the first night was totally gone from the upper portion, leaving the owl unscathed.
Next, the fox went to the raccoon's tree. Once again he struck the lighter, and this time, when the tree caught flames, it spread to all the branches, leaving behind only a charred stump.
Then came the beaver's tree. The poor beaver was the one who had noticed on the first night that the owl's tree was disturbed, and took the time to eliminate the hazard. But he had failed to notice any similar occurrence on the future nights, and it would prove his undoing, his tree going up in flames.
Finally was the porcupine's tree. Though the porcupine had tried to take some steps of self-defense, lining the bottom of its tree with sharp quills to prevent anyone from climbing up, they too were unprepared for the fox's machinations and their tree quickly burst into flames upon being ignited.
The fox watched the carnage from the center of the clearing, the fur slowly burning off to reveal its robotic skeleton underneath. It had taken him and his colleague five days and nights of 24/7 work, an exhausting cycle of fooling the animals in the daytime and priming the trees to burn in the night, but the forest council would serve no threat to their plans any longer. As the only member remaining, after all, he could simply disband it.
All that remains of the forest council is a circle strewn with trees and ash. And for the humans, that was all that mattered.
bbninjas was incinerated. They were:
Town Tree
Town Tree
Town Firefighter
Which means that the remaining Mafia Arsonist, who has emerged victorious, is:
Jabberwock!
Night Actions:
Mafia:
Night 1: Prime Vom
Night 2: Prime bbninjas
Night 3: Prime Jadethepokemontrainer
Night 4: Prime Ephemera
Night 5: Ignite
Night 2: Prime bbninjas
Night 3: Prime Jadethepokemontrainer
Night 4: Prime Ephemera
Night 5: Ignite
Night 1: Extinguish Vom
Night 2: Extinguish Ephemera
Night 3: Extinguish Bbninjas
Night 4: Extinguish Jabberwock
Night 5: Extinguish Bbninjas
Night 2: Extinguish Ephemera
Night 3: Extinguish Bbninjas
Night 4: Extinguish Jabberwock
Night 5: Extinguish Bbninjas
Chats:
Mafia Chat
New Player Spectator Chat (Forest Fire channel)
Congratulations to the winners! A postgame should be up tomorrow!
You may all now speak.
Last edited:
That was one fun game! It was intense but also respectful and enjoyable.
Congratulations jabber! NP- Thank you for hosting and the great flavor. (That who who joke gave me chuckles)
Congratulations jabber! NP- Thank you for hosting and the great flavor. (That who who joke gave me chuckles)
Good game, y'all!
It's been a bit since my last mafia game and I had some free time these last few weeks, so I was happy to jump in when NP reached out. It was a lot of fun to play again! Y'all are excellent.
Fwiw, the reason I extended the game beyond D4 was because I thought there was a >50% chance Jade had saved bb on N2, directly following the Mega elimination. Turns out they ended up saving Vom on N1, so right decision even if for the wrong reason \o/
@scattered mind sorry about the D4/D5 wagon Dx
I have some more thoughts but I wanna take a bit more time to get them down, so I'll be back later with that. @NinjaPenguin and @everybody else, thanks so much for a hugely fun game.
It's been a bit since my last mafia game and I had some free time these last few weeks, so I was happy to jump in when NP reached out. It was a lot of fun to play again! Y'all are excellent.
Fwiw, the reason I extended the game beyond D4 was because I thought there was a >50% chance Jade had saved bb on N2, directly following the Mega elimination. Turns out they ended up saving Vom on N1, so right decision even if for the wrong reason \o/
@scattered mind sorry about the D4/D5 wagon Dx
I have some more thoughts but I wanna take a bit more time to get them down, so I'll be back later with that. @NinjaPenguin and @everybody else, thanks so much for a hugely fun game.
Thanks for playing, scattered! I'm glad you liked the flavor; I ended up doing a different style than normal by putting the flavor in the updates rather than the Role PMs and was worried nobody would read it at all haha! (The flavor for the game ending is now up)
Thanks for subbing in here, Jabber! You played amazingly and I'll go over this more in postgame, but the way you worked your way up from being one of the next couple to be eliminated when you subbed in to getting two formerly consensus townies killed ahead of you was incredible!Good game, y'all!
It's been a bit since my last mafia game and I had some free time these last few weeks, so I was happy to jump in when NP reached out. It was a lot of fun to play again! Y'all are excellent.
Fwiw, the reason I extended the game beyond D4 was because I thought there was a >50% chance Jade had saved bb on N2, directly following the Mega elimination. Turns out they ended up saving Vom on N1, so right decision even if for the wrong reason \o/
@scattered mind sorry about the D4/D5 wagon Dx
I have some more thoughts but I wanna take a bit more time to get them down, so I'll be back later with that. @NinjaPenguin and @everybody else, thanks so much for a hugely fun game.
Would also like to just in general thank everyone who played and tried their hardest! There was super good activity for a nine player game and the townies and scum both played well, which made this a really intense and high-quality game. I hope to play with all of you again some time soon!
Last edited:
Thanks so much for hosting NP! This was just a fantastic and smooth and very well done game. An absolutely brilliant choice of setup too - both very difficult (because there's so many more options) and very rewarding (since you don't just get nightkilled or lynched and it's game over), it's great.
And congratulations to @Jabberwock! You played masterfully and how you managed to keep all of that suspicion off your back while also appearing to be very actively solving... I don't understand how you pulled that off! It was really 50/50 toss up between you and scattered in the end there. I'm sure NP will bring to light some of the possible scumtells in his postgame. I found it so hard to read you since their seemed to be a plausible town and scum motivation for nearly everything you did - and perhaps that should've been the biggest tell - cause you never did anything that was explicitly town! Better tweak that scumdar for next time. Also lol at that coaching that never actually happened rip.
Thanks so much to everyone else for playing and being so active and solve-y in this game (and putting up with me, especially @Ephemera) - I reckon I would've lost interest very quickly if it was for that. There was such a strong core of players (Mega, scattered, Eph, Jade, Vom, Jabber) and it was so much fun to hunt with you all again! Eph hope there's no hard feelings after me pushing and discrediting you so much - I was giving it some thought and I think I went a bit unfairly overboard there. I genuinely enjoyed playing with you, and I'mma be memorising some of those one-liners you put out there ("This post is interesting... and by that I mean weird, so let's get into it" made me chuckle).
Sorry @Vom for pushing you so much as well at the end. I'm going to posit that it was still a good case but I didn't really look for town-indicative posts to counteract it, and that's probably the downfall. That's a lesson from this game to be honest - I should trust my circumstance-based townreads a lot more than I usually do. Apologies also to @MegaPod_781 - I know I was pushing super aggressively then and I'm not even sure how accurate the case was - I know how it feels to be scum getting eliminated over a case that just didn't even seem to match reality, and it sucks.
I was really enjoying your posts and insights @Amici (especially that push with intent to elim vs without intent to elim) and it was great to see @Fiery_Lugia give it a go (first scum is hard man!), really hope to see you guys around!
@FourteenAlmonds I was trying to figure out why you hadn't subbed in yet considering how often you were reading the thread - forgot spectating was a thing xD
And congratulations to @Jabberwock! You played masterfully and how you managed to keep all of that suspicion off your back while also appearing to be very actively solving... I don't understand how you pulled that off! It was really 50/50 toss up between you and scattered in the end there. I'm sure NP will bring to light some of the possible scumtells in his postgame. I found it so hard to read you since their seemed to be a plausible town and scum motivation for nearly everything you did - and perhaps that should've been the biggest tell - cause you never did anything that was explicitly town! Better tweak that scumdar for next time. Also lol at that coaching that never actually happened rip.
Thanks so much to everyone else for playing and being so active and solve-y in this game (and putting up with me, especially @Ephemera) - I reckon I would've lost interest very quickly if it was for that. There was such a strong core of players (Mega, scattered, Eph, Jade, Vom, Jabber) and it was so much fun to hunt with you all again! Eph hope there's no hard feelings after me pushing and discrediting you so much - I was giving it some thought and I think I went a bit unfairly overboard there. I genuinely enjoyed playing with you, and I'mma be memorising some of those one-liners you put out there ("This post is interesting... and by that I mean weird, so let's get into it" made me chuckle).
Sorry @Vom for pushing you so much as well at the end. I'm going to posit that it was still a good case but I didn't really look for town-indicative posts to counteract it, and that's probably the downfall. That's a lesson from this game to be honest - I should trust my circumstance-based townreads a lot more than I usually do. Apologies also to @MegaPod_781 - I know I was pushing super aggressively then and I'm not even sure how accurate the case was - I know how it feels to be scum getting eliminated over a case that just didn't even seem to match reality, and it sucks.
I was really enjoying your posts and insights @Amici (especially that push with intent to elim vs without intent to elim) and it was great to see @Fiery_Lugia give it a go (first scum is hard man!), really hope to see you guys around!
@FourteenAlmonds I was trying to figure out why you hadn't subbed in yet considering how often you were reading the thread - forgot spectating was a thing xD
Full thumbs up to this — I think the setup was well balanced and made for an extremely exciting game even with only nine players. The existence of the doc introduced a lot of variance (or at least I perceived it that way), but it was mitigated somewhat by the fact that the player pool didn't drop as rapidly as in most other games (one player removed per cycle vs two), so they didn't get significantly more powerful as the game went on. I do really like that somehow, with a 9-player setup, we achieved a 5-day game. I think that's a mark of a good setup.
One of my big takeaways was realizing toward the end of the game that wallposts tend to do more harm than good — for instance, actual alignments notwithstanding, I legitimately did not have enough time to read through bb's posts and understand the case on Vom at the end of D4. By a similar token, I think my wallposts kept people from engaging with the case on scattered in D5; we went back and forth for like two pages without other people chiming in.
There's also the fact that, if I'm understanding correctly, the wallposts were the main reason scattered stopped responding to the case, which I feel bad about. I understand they're a pain to read through and a pain to respond to, and I'll do my best to keep my posts more concise in the future. It's never my intention, even as scum, to stifle discussion.
@Celever and @Amici I'm gutted I didn't get a chance to actually play with you guys; I definitely hope to have the time to play again sometime soon. ^.^
@Ephemera I'm curious about your thoughts on playstyles now that we're at the end of this game! You started off quite chaotic, which ended up doing you more harm than good, but it seems to me that you settled into a more comfortable playstyle by D3 or so. What are your thoughts on the chaotic playstyle? Did it accomplish what you wanted it to accomplish, or in hindsight would you have done something differently? How would you characterize the playstyle you settled into? It was just really neat to see your growth as a player over the course of the game, so I'm curious to hear how it went for you xD
I love the concept of a spectator chat; I think it's a great entry point for people to learn how to play. @FourteenAlmonds what'd you think / you gonna join a game soon?
This is so true. What's even worse is that I am completely aware of how anti-town wallposts are, yet I still find myself making them (tips please?). I don't even wallpost very much on other mafia sites! @NinjaPenguin had a really interesting strategy for skimming wallposts that he mentioned in the spectator chat, so maybe I should just cut out everything between the first and last sentence in every paragraph I write so everyone is forced to skim (rip). I'm also wondering whether just "spoilering" everything that is not the tl;dr could be a way around it. Then if people do want people to read further, they can, otherwise they can skim.
I do think that wall-ISOs are inherently anti-town unless you can explain why you're doing it. Vom made a case earlier on with just three quotes from their ISO and labelled them exhibit a - b - c and had a concluding tl;dr ; I think this is the best way to do it.
Don't worry I'll bribe him@FourteenAlmonds what'd you think / you gonna join a game soon?
I love the concept of a spectator chat; I think it's a great entry point for people to learn how to play. @FourteenAlmonds what'd you think / you gonna join a game soon?
>.>
It was certainly an interesting watch, but I think I'll need to get more familiar with the game before I jump into it. I had a couple of decent townreads over the course of this run but I couldn't pick out Mega as scum at all, and while I was second-guessing myself big time I'd settled on Scattered as mafia in the spectator chat (though you can read over all that if you want).
I can see myself joining a round of mafia once I get enough experience watching and my schedule frees up though -- perhaps some time after BB10 is over I'll put my name down for it
Okay, I said I had postgame thoughts, and it's postgame.
...what were my thoughts again?
hm
First of all, sdfhksadflhkjasdljfk I should have trusted the rule of weird more dfsjkldasfjfdsa I literally said it:
When there's a weird case and one that makes sense, and they're crossvoting, it's normally town that's haphazard. I know this! And yet I still confbiased my way to a scattered vote. Bleh.
Thoughts about this game in particular:
I didn't count paranoia as the possible reason – but Vom was saved. Bleh, we could have elimmed scattered D4 then, then caught Jabber D5. Oh well.
Uh
I usually make more walls of analysis than chaotic one-liners
Like I said, I was trying something new.
On D2/D3 I reverted since all that was doing was getting me shiny new scumreads
But it turns out I was actually more accurate D1 than I was D3 onwards.
So
???
I'll have more thoughts on this once I let it sink in a little more.
edit: some more coherent thoughts on my playstyle.
At first I wanted to be deliberately chaotic. I planned on questioning everyone's thoughts, provoking them into explaining more, and generally getting under people's skin so they would... talk. I knew PB was – still is – a pretty inactive place for mafia, so I wanted to combat it.
I also thought some things I saw from other players on MU were pretty interesting: one player makes first post snapreads and honestly has pretty good instincts for those, so I decided to try that. Another player, JJJ (who is proven to be a pretty great player, he's currently in semis and made it to finals in Season 2), makes rainbows and trust exercises, so I lifted those too.
Then I got widely scumread. Wheeeee?
I toned down the chaos D2, but I really shouldn't have switched over to writing walls D4/D5. They're extravagant and pretty cool, but they're a waste of time, no one reads them, and honestly get things done much slower than good interactions and discussion.
Basically: I should really just stick to putting down mental thoughts over making multi-quote walls. My mental analysis can be long or short (see: my towncase on bb D5), but it's much much more effective than multiquote walls.
...plus my reads on D1 were correct and I should never have voted amici/scattered, my top 2 townreads. Bleh.
Thoughts on the setup:
At first I thought it was mildy townsided: after all, town gets to have confo-townies who can continue solving after death.
However:
Scum gets to prime all the players they want – and firefighter has a bigger pool of people to protect than scum has to prime, since previously primed players aren't known.
Plus this game treestumps weren't particularly active, but I don't think that would have helped too much.
We were basically playing nightless – so town literally had no idea whose reads were correct besides scum interactions, and given that it was Jabber, we didn't have any T_T
So, yeah, nightless + the fact that scum on like D4/D5 can kill 4 people in one shot. A little scumsided, imo.
Basically, I think town needs NK flips. They give a glimpse into the mind of scum, and since we didn't have that here it was immensely difficult to cross-check mindsets.
Still a really fun game, and honestly the most fun mafia game I've played on PB.
The most active one too – we reached 40 pages, we never do that anymore.
@FourteenAlmonds and anyone else spectating: come join us next game! More players = more fun setups
I have more thoughts but I forgot, so I'll put them when I remember.
Good game Jabber, and thanks to NP for hosting!
(also sorry scattered for confbiasing my way to voting you)
...what were my thoughts again?
hm
First of all, sdfhksadflhkjasdljfk I should have trusted the rule of weird more dfsjkldasfjfdsa I literally said it:
When there's a weird case and one that makes sense, and they're crossvoting, it's normally town that's haphazard. I know this! And yet I still confbiased my way to a scattered vote. Bleh.
Thoughts about this game in particular:
Good game, y'all!
It's been a bit since my last mafia game and I had some free time these last few weeks, so I was happy to jump in when NP reached out. It was a lot of fun to play again! Y'all are excellent.
Fwiw, the reason I extended the game beyond D4 was because I thought there was a >50% chance Jade had saved bb on N2, directly following the Mega elimination. Turns out they ended up saving Vom on N1, so right decision even if for the wrong reason \o/
@scattered mind sorry about the D4/D5 wagon Dx
I have some more thoughts but I wanna take a bit more time to get them down, so I'll be back later with that. @NinjaPenguin and @everybody else, thanks so much for a hugely fun game.
I didn't count paranoia as the possible reason – but Vom was saved. Bleh, we could have elimmed scattered D4 then, then caught Jabber D5. Oh well.
Uh
I usually make more walls of analysis than chaotic one-liners
Like I said, I was trying something new.
On D2/D3 I reverted since all that was doing was getting me shiny new scumreads
But it turns out I was actually more accurate D1 than I was D3 onwards.
So
???
I'll have more thoughts on this once I let it sink in a little more.
edit: some more coherent thoughts on my playstyle.
At first I wanted to be deliberately chaotic. I planned on questioning everyone's thoughts, provoking them into explaining more, and generally getting under people's skin so they would... talk. I knew PB was – still is – a pretty inactive place for mafia, so I wanted to combat it.
I also thought some things I saw from other players on MU were pretty interesting: one player makes first post snapreads and honestly has pretty good instincts for those, so I decided to try that. Another player, JJJ (who is proven to be a pretty great player, he's currently in semis and made it to finals in Season 2), makes rainbows and trust exercises, so I lifted those too.
Then I got widely scumread. Wheeeee?
I toned down the chaos D2, but I really shouldn't have switched over to writing walls D4/D5. They're extravagant and pretty cool, but they're a waste of time, no one reads them, and honestly get things done much slower than good interactions and discussion.
Basically: I should really just stick to putting down mental thoughts over making multi-quote walls. My mental analysis can be long or short (see: my towncase on bb D5), but it's much much more effective than multiquote walls.
...plus my reads on D1 were correct and I should never have voted amici/scattered, my top 2 townreads. Bleh.
Thoughts on the setup:
At first I thought it was mildy townsided: after all, town gets to have confo-townies who can continue solving after death.
However:
Scum gets to prime all the players they want – and firefighter has a bigger pool of people to protect than scum has to prime, since previously primed players aren't known.
Plus this game treestumps weren't particularly active, but I don't think that would have helped too much.
We were basically playing nightless – so town literally had no idea whose reads were correct besides scum interactions, and given that it was Jabber, we didn't have any T_T
So, yeah, nightless + the fact that scum on like D4/D5 can kill 4 people in one shot. A little scumsided, imo.
Basically, I think town needs NK flips. They give a glimpse into the mind of scum, and since we didn't have that here it was immensely difficult to cross-check mindsets.
Still a really fun game, and honestly the most fun mafia game I've played on PB.
The most active one too – we reached 40 pages, we never do that anymore.
@FourteenAlmonds and anyone else spectating: come join us next game! More players = more fun setups
I have more thoughts but I forgot, so I'll put them when I remember.
Good game Jabber, and thanks to NP for hosting!
(also sorry scattered for confbiasing my way to voting you)
Definitely join! Just based on your spectator analysis, you are already much further ahead compared to most of us (myself included) when we were just starting out.It was certainly an interesting watch, but I think I'll need to get more familiar with the game before I jump into it. I had a couple of decent townreads over the course of this run but I couldn't pick out Mega as scum at all, and while I was second-guessing myself big time I'd settled on Scattered as mafia in the spectator chat (though you can read over all that if you want).
I can see myself joining a round of mafia once I get enough experience watching and my schedule frees up though -- perhaps some time after BB10 is over I'll put my name down for it
Remember that you'd be scumhunting with other people, so it really doesn't matter whether you correctly pick out scum as scum or town as town, because there's plenty of other people trying to hunt with you. Also most of us had settled on Scattered as mafia so I mean, your intuition is probably alright
I suspect you got scumread mostly because you had a lot of tone or OMGUS snapreads, not because of your change in playstyle per say.
LOL being honest part of why I kept going after you so much D1 was that I found that really annoying.
Thanks NP! And gg Jabber.
Oh nice, Jabberwock won this for the mafia Awesome going, Jabber, and good game to everyone else!
Thanks for hosting, NP, it was a really interesting setup. I’d have liked to be in for it longer, but I guess I didn’t really bring my strongest scum game. Part of it was that I definitely got busier than I would’ve liked, buuut, also I think I’ve been getting pretty rusty at this. So no hard feelings, bb It was nice to give this another go!
Awesome going, Jabber, and good game to everyone else! Thanks for hosting, NP, it was a really interesting setup. I’d have liked to be in for it longer, but I guess I didn’t really bring my strongest scum game. Part of it was that I definitely got busier than I would’ve liked, buuut, also I think I’ve been getting pretty rusty at this.
So no hard feelings, bb It was nice to give this another go!
god this is a mood. What's really bad is the fact that I probably would have done the same thing on D4/D5 if I were scum: promise wallposts, get them out or not, try and prove others town so people read me town, etc. etc. And my ISO wallposts ended up being completely useless.
Learning: ISOs should be on the backend of your process. Don't show them off in your posts, it'll be very hard for people to follow you if you show every post you covered in your ISO. Just say your thoughts upon completing the ISO, don't quote anything – if you have to, only quote up to 3 posts – and elaborate further if asked.
Now, if only I could actually do that for once in a mafia game.
GG to Mega and Jabber, as well as Lily (maybe consider playing again sometime?
)!
Dang, gg Jabber, I was honestly sure it was Scattered towards the end. Whelp.
I feel like I should apologize for my activity levels as the game went on. I do this almost every time where I just lose my motivation and end up dying off, and while I feel like I've done better in my past two games regarding this, I still don't think it's very fair to the other players and the host. My reason is mostly Irl stuff that came up that took away most of my time, then my internet went whack. But mainly, I just tend to lose motivation, or the game stresses me out hugely when I try to solve. I think I will be taking a break from Mafia for a while. There are times that I enjoy it, but I found that the majority of the time it just caused stress. I am going to try to work on balancing this better though.
That being said, I did love the flavour and the setup of this game! Thank you NP! I think this was a really fun mechanic as well, even if the stumps weren't the most talkative, it was still really fun to have the eliminated town still be able to speak. The activity of this game was also amazing. Stressful, but amazing lol. It was great to see almost everyone really playing and trying their best.
Gosh dangit I just said more in this post than in some of my actual in-game posts
Good game to everyone again and thank you NP!
I almost extinguished bb night two, and then again almost went for Ephe night 4. Dang. I ended up going for Ephe night 2 because I felt good about him and off about the way bb was tunneling Ephe. Night 4 I realized there was a good chance they'd prime someone I'd already extinguished and was torn between Ephe and bb, but I ended up going against my gut and extinguishing Jabber partly because I wasn't sure and partly because I didn't think it mattered. Okay but hey at least I managed to extinguish Vom that first night. I guess I shouldn't have thought so much into it :U
I feel like I should apologize for my activity levels as the game went on. I do this almost every time where I just lose my motivation and end up dying off, and while I feel like I've done better in my past two games regarding this, I still don't think it's very fair to the other players and the host. My reason is mostly Irl stuff that came up that took away most of my time, then my internet went whack. But mainly, I just tend to lose motivation, or the game stresses me out hugely when I try to solve. I think I will be taking a break from Mafia for a while. There are times that I enjoy it, but I found that the majority of the time it just caused stress. I am going to try to work on balancing this better though.
That being said, I did love the flavour and the setup of this game! Thank you NP! I think this was a really fun mechanic as well, even if the stumps weren't the most talkative, it was still really fun to have the eliminated town still be able to speak. The activity of this game was also amazing. Stressful, but amazing lol. It was great to see almost everyone really playing and trying their best.
Good game to everyone again and thank you NP!
Postgame
Welcome to the postgame! I wanted to go with a different format than I'm used to doing in a postgame by focusing on what I as a host saw as the most compelling themes of this game rather than looking as much at individual play, so let me know what you think and if you want an individual critique let me know and I'll give you one. I also think most people have covered my setup opinions (interesting semi-nightless atmosphere, but because motivation declines after being eliminated, having Treestumps around really isn't as useful as it seems) so I won't spend much time elaborating on that except to say that I think interesting open setups like this are a good fit for PB games at the moment.I want to start by giving my disclaimer that I am just a human with opinions and what I think isn't always objectively or subjectively correct. It's infinitely more easy to sit on the sideline knowing who the scum are and say how they could be caught than it is to play the actual game and try to make a guess and nobody should feel bad about having messed up in any way. I might be harsher or more blunt than I intend to be and I apologize in advance for that.
Town Dynamics:
One thing that really stuck out to me while reading this game was the lack of cohesion in this town. What exactly do I mean by this? I feel like this game, and a lot of PB games, have missed out a lot on cooperative solving. I think walls and case mentality are the things to blame for this. Instead of putting the onus on interactions and real, honest conversations, walls are built solely for pushing a specific argument, which discourages dialogue and instead encourages fighting.
I think a lot of this comes from the psychology behind building a wall. When you make a wallpost, you naturally get tunneled in your opinion being right in the process of it, locking in your viewpoint and leaving you filled with confirmation bias (and even sunk cost fallacy). (As an aside, I think ISOs are similar; if you go into an ISO with a certain read, you will see everything that agrees and ignore everything that doesn't, which helps nobody.) The point of a wallpost is to be convincing but I think it's actually just damaging to the game state. This is especially relevant for walls that reply to walls, lists of proven/disproven points, etc. If someone does not understand your defense, I recommend you just calmly explain you don't think they understand what you're trying to say and ignore them if they continue to push it because writing about it five more times will not help them understand anymore. If someone has a bad argument, don't go point by point to disprove it, just quickly state you disagree and why (and don't get into the mindset that just because there's a bad case on someone, that person must be town, since that mindset only causes factionalization).
What do I recommend from a town dynamics standpoint? It's the same advice I've been giving for a while: cooperative solving and PoE building. Talk to your townreads, make a towncore, and speak to them in a way that's not built on convincing them but instead on both of you getting to the right conclusion, whether or not you were wrong at the beginning. I think the best way to apply that to this game is to look at Day 4. On Day 4, both BB and Ephe had found eachother as town, along with scattered and Vom respectively. If they had provided their points and gotten on the same page, they could have been able to realize that they were both right and eliminated the player who neither of them had any strong reason to townread: Jabber. But instead, they let themselves become factionalized, allowing both of their townreads to die and for scum to slip through.
Cooperation isn't easy, and sometimes you have to do things that might hurt your ability to convince others for the sake of a healthier threadstate. But I believe that teamwork and thread environment are far underrated components of playing as town. When everyone can play at the best of their ability and we recognize our reads aren't perfect and others might hold a solution (while still holding enough trust in our own reads), we as a group will see much better results.
Mafia Play:
This is the part where I pretty much give a massive shoutout to Mega and Jabber. Even though Mega got caught on being a bit opportunistic, his posting was strong and convincing and shouldn't be overlooked just because strong town players caught him.
But the focus of this section will be on Jabber because I thought he played this about as perfectly as he could have. Before Jabber's sub-in, we had a ton of quite accurate PoEs: Ephe's post #261 would have worked as an early effective PoE, as would BB's post #311, Ephe's post #405, scattered's #416, the list goes on. (Fair warning if you reread that these posts contain lines like "vom/scattered are never scum. i've said this so many times, but i'm not gonna stop saying that." and "I'm reading both Jade and Vom as locktown... Scum!Vom could have easily dropped their vote on the bbn wagon instead of the Mega wagon, so breaking the tie wins massive townie points in my book" that are bound to look sad in hindsight. It's okay; your reevaluation is a testament to Jabber's play, not something you should feel bad about.)
Jabber went into the game with a single agenda: expand the PoE without making himself scummy. And he did that absolutely brilliantly. Jabber's posting is the kind of thing that you can't form a scumread on when you read him on microread content. He avoided any typical scumtell we see on PB, kept his reasoning logical and without a gap, and brute forced two people who were seen as extremely likely town when he entered the thread into the PoE on sheer rhetorical force and encouraging paranoia. Slowly but surely, he moved his way up the read lists, pocketing townies by agreeing with their viewpoints and engaging them in conversation, and got townies killed while always having a plan for future days. On both early Day 4 and early Day 5, the reads people had meant that he was a very likely elimination, but he summoned really high effort and fought his way from a weak position into a winning one. It was a great display of how to play as scum and I congratulate him on his success.
Reading Philosophies:
The largest theme I saw in reading this game, however, was a strange mindset I saw in this thread around the relative validity of arguments and read styles. This is a mindset I have extreme disagreements with. When we focus on a singular style of reads that are valid, it means that scum only has to look good viewed through that singular lens. When we have a lot of tools at our disposal, we can see things through different lenses and thus get far better reads. And so I wanted to give a brief overview of some of the best/most common styles of making reads that I've seen and how they could have been applied to this game:
Before I start, I want to give a quick reminder that bad play does not equal scummy play. Just because something makes no sense or is wrong doesn't mean there's a scum agenda behind it. We hold townies on this site to a standard of having to themselves provide brilliant arguments and remember every single post they've ever said and why they said it. That expectation simply isn't realistic and for that reason, contradictions and logical flaws aren't scummy the far majority of the time.
I also think we hold players in general to way too much of a standard of evidence. When we require people to build elaborate cases to kill their scumread, we turn the game into a contest of who has the most rhetorical ability and can steal the stage more. Mafia is not a game of how many bullet points each side has in their case; it's one about identifying scum. To say otherwise encourages townies to grab at straws rather than be honest. By Day 5, scattered and Jabber had both gotten to the point where they knew their wincon was getting the other one killed and staying alive themselves. Why should either of their posts matter at that point considering they had the exact same knowledge and aims? By focusing on which one of the two can gather evidence, the automatic conclusion was that Jabber would win, regardless of what their alignments were.
Read Philosophies Commonly Seen on PB:
Scumtells:
What are they?
Scumtells are reads made on individual posts that fit into a certain archetype of posts that scum typically make.
Why do they work?
Scumtells work because for whatever reason, certain types of posts truly do come from scum more than town. This is especially applicable to new players.
When do they fail?
Scumtell-based reads tend to lack in accuracy for a couple of reasons. First, many commonly used scumtells on PB are less scumtells than playstyle policing. Yes, AtE and reasoning based on WIFOM are annoying and not convincing arguments, but they are absolutely not scumtells (in fact, they are typically the opposite). The other gigantic issue is that once a player is aware of a scumtell, them doing it becomes NAI. The reason Jabber was impervious to your scumtells is because he knew them already.
How could they have been used in this game?
-Mega's post #119 was highly guilty of Information Instead of Analysis, a scumtell where a player just posts a summary rather than any actual analysis
-FL's post #204 contained a "player salad", where newbie scum just lists a ton of reads without any thought behind them
NP's Subjective Opinion
I think that scumtells are highly overrated and incorrectly applied the far majority of the time. They serve best as good proxies for alignments for new players, but the idea that you can simply use the same formula with players every single game makes you super easy to fool as scum. Additionally, scumtells have no equivalent for getting townreads, which means they inherently give an incomplete view of the game state and will naturally lead to scumreads on people who post more.
Scumtells are reads made on individual posts that fit into a certain archetype of posts that scum typically make.
Why do they work?
Scumtells work because for whatever reason, certain types of posts truly do come from scum more than town. This is especially applicable to new players.
When do they fail?
Scumtell-based reads tend to lack in accuracy for a couple of reasons. First, many commonly used scumtells on PB are less scumtells than playstyle policing. Yes, AtE and reasoning based on WIFOM are annoying and not convincing arguments, but they are absolutely not scumtells (in fact, they are typically the opposite). The other gigantic issue is that once a player is aware of a scumtell, them doing it becomes NAI. The reason Jabber was impervious to your scumtells is because he knew them already.
How could they have been used in this game?
-Mega's post #119 was highly guilty of Information Instead of Analysis, a scumtell where a player just posts a summary rather than any actual analysis
-FL's post #204 contained a "player salad", where newbie scum just lists a ton of reads without any thought behind them
NP's Subjective Opinion
I think that scumtells are highly overrated and incorrectly applied the far majority of the time. They serve best as good proxies for alignments for new players, but the idea that you can simply use the same formula with players every single game makes you super easy to fool as scum. Additionally, scumtells have no equivalent for getting townreads, which means they inherently give an incomplete view of the game state and will naturally lead to scumreads on people who post more.
What are they?
Associatives are reads based on analysis of interactions between players to determine if their posting is compatible on a scumteam or not.
Why do they work?
Scum do not interact with fellow scum in the same ways they interact with townies for a variety of reasons. Scum have no need to convince their fellow scum of anything, nor do they accomplish their wincon by having their fellow scum be eliminated.
When do they fail?
Scum, of course, are tricky and try to mess with you by treating townies like they would partners and partners like they would townies. To be correct on an associative read, you have to have a good grasp of partner dynamics and try to grasp the intent behind specific interactions.
Additionally, a common misconception of associative reads is that there is such a thing as a town-scum interaction. This does not exist. The only types of interactions that can actually be categorized out there are "possibly scum-scum" and "not scum-scum". This sounds like semantics, but you can read a set of interactions between two players and see them as both scummy but use associatives to say they aren't on the same scumteam, leading you to think one player is a townie and one is scum, but that is not a conclusion that works from associatives alone.
How could they have been used in this game?
-Mega's very open thread buddying of scattered, putting him as a top townread and taking effort to agree with his points and use his arguments, was a clear example of pocketing and connecting oneself to a townie, rather than a way partners interact (a "not scum-scum" interaction)
-Mega's Day 1 vote of Ephe and subsequent shift away from it, along with Ephe pointing out a major scumtell of Mega's on Day 1, was another "not scum-scum" interaction
NP's Subjective Opinion
Associatives are very strong tools, but must be applied properly. Remember that the scum have goals besides what they simply state and that gauging the motivation behind how a scum treated a player is crucial for finding that player's alignment. Additionally, making a read of someone based on an associative before the player that associative is with has flipped (e.g. "they're not scum on a team with my scumread, so they must be town") helps lead to tunneling mindset and can be quite dangerous and should typically be avoided.
Associatives are reads based on analysis of interactions between players to determine if their posting is compatible on a scumteam or not.
Why do they work?
Scum do not interact with fellow scum in the same ways they interact with townies for a variety of reasons. Scum have no need to convince their fellow scum of anything, nor do they accomplish their wincon by having their fellow scum be eliminated.
When do they fail?
Scum, of course, are tricky and try to mess with you by treating townies like they would partners and partners like they would townies. To be correct on an associative read, you have to have a good grasp of partner dynamics and try to grasp the intent behind specific interactions.
Additionally, a common misconception of associative reads is that there is such a thing as a town-scum interaction. This does not exist. The only types of interactions that can actually be categorized out there are "possibly scum-scum" and "not scum-scum". This sounds like semantics, but you can read a set of interactions between two players and see them as both scummy but use associatives to say they aren't on the same scumteam, leading you to think one player is a townie and one is scum, but that is not a conclusion that works from associatives alone.
How could they have been used in this game?
-Mega's very open thread buddying of scattered, putting him as a top townread and taking effort to agree with his points and use his arguments, was a clear example of pocketing and connecting oneself to a townie, rather than a way partners interact (a "not scum-scum" interaction)
-Mega's Day 1 vote of Ephe and subsequent shift away from it, along with Ephe pointing out a major scumtell of Mega's on Day 1, was another "not scum-scum" interaction
NP's Subjective Opinion
Associatives are very strong tools, but must be applied properly. Remember that the scum have goals besides what they simply state and that gauging the motivation behind how a scum treated a player is crucial for finding that player's alignment. Additionally, making a read of someone based on an associative before the player that associative is with has flipped (e.g. "they're not scum on a team with my scumread, so they must be town") helps lead to tunneling mindset and can be quite dangerous and should typically be avoided.
What are they?
Content-based microreads are reads based on the content of a single post. This includes judging the validity of an argument, thinking a similar thought as you before you've stated it (mindmelds), and more.
Why do they work?
You're a townie and you have a certain group of thoughts. So if someone else shares those thoughts and makes good points, they must also be town, right?
When do they fail?
The whole point of being scum is to fake content that looks similar to your thoughts as town. There's some super complex logic a scum might be unable to fake, but scum are perfectly capable of pocketing and making coherent thoughts and these reads often fail because of it
How could they have been used in this game?
I uh don't have any specific examples of how these could be used in this game but I have a decent theoretical one. When I saw Jabber push scattered for "grabbing towncred" by pointing out his D1 Amici push, I thought it made no sense, since a scum would never grab towncred by pointing out a D1 vanity wagon. Jade mindmelded with me on this in post #732, which indicates he was coming from a similar mindset as my own and thus more likely a pure one.
NP's Subjective Opinion
I don't think these reads are any good, since decent scum can fake having ideas and arguments. Mindmelds are reliable towntells, but even then, they leave you prone to possible pocketing and there are better ways to develop reads.
Content-based microreads are reads based on the content of a single post. This includes judging the validity of an argument, thinking a similar thought as you before you've stated it (mindmelds), and more.
Why do they work?
You're a townie and you have a certain group of thoughts. So if someone else shares those thoughts and makes good points, they must also be town, right?
When do they fail?
The whole point of being scum is to fake content that looks similar to your thoughts as town. There's some super complex logic a scum might be unable to fake, but scum are perfectly capable of pocketing and making coherent thoughts and these reads often fail because of it
How could they have been used in this game?
I uh don't have any specific examples of how these could be used in this game but I have a decent theoretical one. When I saw Jabber push scattered for "grabbing towncred" by pointing out his D1 Amici push, I thought it made no sense, since a scum would never grab towncred by pointing out a D1 vanity wagon. Jade mindmelded with me on this in post #732, which indicates he was coming from a similar mindset as my own and thus more likely a pure one.
NP's Subjective Opinion
I don't think these reads are any good, since decent scum can fake having ideas and arguments. Mindmelds are reliable towntells, but even then, they leave you prone to possible pocketing and there are better ways to develop reads.
What are they?
Metareads are reads where a player's town game and scum game are compared, to see if that player's posting in a current game fits one or the other better.
Why do they work?
Some players have things that they just aren't able to fake as scum, whether that's energy, sophistication of thoughts, etc. When one of those things is known, it can be a very reliable tell.
When do they fail?
The far majority of things are not specific to a player's range that they do as town or range they do as scum. Reading metas on a macro level can help, but even then, it's hard to find a reliable meta tell
How could they have been used in this game?
Ephe has problems at times faking certain parts of their natural posting style as scum. The fact that their posting was so natural after the middle of Day 1 would have been a strong indication they were town for me.
NP's Subjective Opinion
Meta can be overrated in most instances, but definitely has value when you know how to apply it properly. Some players have really good reads on a specific other player because they're able to understand how that player thinks and read their motivation quite clearly.
Metareads are reads where a player's town game and scum game are compared, to see if that player's posting in a current game fits one or the other better.
Why do they work?
Some players have things that they just aren't able to fake as scum, whether that's energy, sophistication of thoughts, etc. When one of those things is known, it can be a very reliable tell.
When do they fail?
The far majority of things are not specific to a player's range that they do as town or range they do as scum. Reading metas on a macro level can help, but even then, it's hard to find a reliable meta tell
How could they have been used in this game?
Ephe has problems at times faking certain parts of their natural posting style as scum. The fact that their posting was so natural after the middle of Day 1 would have been a strong indication they were town for me.
NP's Subjective Opinion
Meta can be overrated in most instances, but definitely has value when you know how to apply it properly. Some players have really good reads on a specific other player because they're able to understand how that player thinks and read their motivation quite clearly.
What are they?
Progression reads look at the ways players change their reads on other players according to the circumstances of the game.
Why do they work?
Town players often change their reads in distinctive ways that scum players do not. It's a quite difficult process to fake the nuance of a slowly evolving progression and react to/reevaluate based on new posts in a way a normal town player does.
When do they fail?
Progression reads fail when they expect consistency rather than progression. Town players change their minds all the time and can easily shift their reads. There's no one progression that townies have but rather a range of viable ones.
How could they have been used in this game?
-BB had a very townie progression on Ephe over the course of this game. He used new information to reevaluate himself away from a scumread on Ephe to a defense when Ephe was most vulnerable to being miselimmed, and when he suspected Ephe again on Day 4, he used a reread to once again put Ephe out of the PoE, solidifying the fact Ephe could not be miselimmed.
-Mega's progression on Ephe, on the other hand, was much more shakey. BB did a great job at explaining this in post #351, but the way Mega reacted to Ephe's vote on Cel and swapped their spot in the readlist was unnatural
-Jabber's vote jump onto Vom was sudden and actively went against everything he had been saying earlier in order to accomplish an agenda of getting a more difficult miselim on that day, an example of bad progression.
NP's Subjective Opinion
Progression reads are really difficult to make, simply because of the fact that townies are so weird and irrational. I find these reads are most useful when townhunting and identifying when a player has an incredibly townie progression, rather than using them to suspect a player.
Progression reads look at the ways players change their reads on other players according to the circumstances of the game.
Why do they work?
Town players often change their reads in distinctive ways that scum players do not. It's a quite difficult process to fake the nuance of a slowly evolving progression and react to/reevaluate based on new posts in a way a normal town player does.
When do they fail?
Progression reads fail when they expect consistency rather than progression. Town players change their minds all the time and can easily shift their reads. There's no one progression that townies have but rather a range of viable ones.
How could they have been used in this game?
-BB had a very townie progression on Ephe over the course of this game. He used new information to reevaluate himself away from a scumread on Ephe to a defense when Ephe was most vulnerable to being miselimmed, and when he suspected Ephe again on Day 4, he used a reread to once again put Ephe out of the PoE, solidifying the fact Ephe could not be miselimmed.
-Mega's progression on Ephe, on the other hand, was much more shakey. BB did a great job at explaining this in post #351, but the way Mega reacted to Ephe's vote on Cel and swapped their spot in the readlist was unnatural
-Jabber's vote jump onto Vom was sudden and actively went against everything he had been saying earlier in order to accomplish an agenda of getting a more difficult miselim on that day, an example of bad progression.
NP's Subjective Opinion
Progression reads are really difficult to make, simply because of the fact that townies are so weird and irrational. I find these reads are most useful when townhunting and identifying when a player has an incredibly townie progression, rather than using them to suspect a player.
Read Philosophies Rarely Seen on PB:
Vote Count Analysis (VCA):
What are they?
VCA examines how players use their vote, the manifestation of their voice in the game, in order to try to find the general spots of where a player has voting power and what faction their vote ends up helping.
Why do they work?
At the end of the day, the goal of the scum is that the player eliminated is a townie but also that they aren't blamed for it. This obviously applies in that the majority of scum vote town in scum-town wagons, but other well known examples of VCA are scum being frequently found in the 3rd-5th vote on a town wagon and being ambivalent/voting off the wagons if they are town-town.
When do they fail?
VCA reads fail when they are treated as an assumption, rather than just another tool. VCA, like any other method of making reads, is just another piece of the puzzle.
How could they have been used in this game?
-The way Mega voted Ephe in post #139 used his power to cement the Ephe wagon as one in major contention for the day's elimination, a move a scum is exceedingly unlikely to do with a scum partner
-Jade's vote in post #390, Ephe's unvote of BB in post #392, and Vom's vote in post #395 were all incredibly townie. Jade's vote made Mega a viable wagon, Ephe's unvote made Mega tied for the lead, and Vom's vote sealed Mega's fate. At a time when any of the three could have simply not posted as scum and not taken any heat for their vote, their decisions which doomed the scum at the end of Day 2 were super townie.
NP's Subjective Opinion
VCA is incredibly powerful if you're good at it, but I'm pretty bad at it besides the basics. Here's a guide that's a lot better than I am if you want to look into it more.
VCA examines how players use their vote, the manifestation of their voice in the game, in order to try to find the general spots of where a player has voting power and what faction their vote ends up helping.
Why do they work?
At the end of the day, the goal of the scum is that the player eliminated is a townie but also that they aren't blamed for it. This obviously applies in that the majority of scum vote town in scum-town wagons, but other well known examples of VCA are scum being frequently found in the 3rd-5th vote on a town wagon and being ambivalent/voting off the wagons if they are town-town.
When do they fail?
VCA reads fail when they are treated as an assumption, rather than just another tool. VCA, like any other method of making reads, is just another piece of the puzzle.
How could they have been used in this game?
-The way Mega voted Ephe in post #139 used his power to cement the Ephe wagon as one in major contention for the day's elimination, a move a scum is exceedingly unlikely to do with a scum partner
-Jade's vote in post #390, Ephe's unvote of BB in post #392, and Vom's vote in post #395 were all incredibly townie. Jade's vote made Mega a viable wagon, Ephe's unvote made Mega tied for the lead, and Vom's vote sealed Mega's fate. At a time when any of the three could have simply not posted as scum and not taken any heat for their vote, their decisions which doomed the scum at the end of Day 2 were super townie.
NP's Subjective Opinion
VCA is incredibly powerful if you're good at it, but I'm pretty bad at it besides the basics. Here's a guide that's a lot better than I am if you want to look into it more.
What are they?
Macroreads are examinations of a player's body of work, in which individual posts are ignored and the focus is on their general thread presence and motivation.
Why do they work?
Macroreads allow you to stop focusing on the minutiae and instead take a look at the simplest quality that leads to alignment: what is the objective behind a player's posting pattern. Instead of getting fooled by posts that are individually good but fail to add up to a townie body of work, a macroreader focuses on the broad ideas, like pushing reads, forming conclusions, and attempts to push scum.
When do they fail?
Some times, even if an ISO may fit the profile of a scum, individual posts may be incredibly townie but get overlooked. Additionally, in games with lower volume, it's basically impossible to build macroreads.
How could they have been used in this game?
-Jabber's entire thread presence in this game was exactly consistent with what a scum would do. Though his posts looked good individually, it was clear he was never pushing any strong conclusions and making an effort to reduce the PoE, but instead focused his thread presence on expanding it and keeping his options open. Macroreads were probably the best way to catch Jabber as scum in this game.
-BB used his Day 4, a day in which he had complete power to get any unprimed player out of Ephe/Scattered/Jabber eliminated if he wanted and still not be targeted for the elimination Day 5 even if the doctor had succeeded, to go after Vom, a player who the lack of Night 4 ignite confirmed as primed. This thread presence was completely inconsistent with what a scum would do there.
NP's Subjective Opinion
In any higher posting game, macroreads are perhaps the most valuable tool a townie has in their arsenal. It's a lot easier to fake individual posts than it is to fake an entire ISO of solving. When we look back and examine a player as a whole, their agenda can often come right to the surface.
Macroreads are examinations of a player's body of work, in which individual posts are ignored and the focus is on their general thread presence and motivation.
Why do they work?
Macroreads allow you to stop focusing on the minutiae and instead take a look at the simplest quality that leads to alignment: what is the objective behind a player's posting pattern. Instead of getting fooled by posts that are individually good but fail to add up to a townie body of work, a macroreader focuses on the broad ideas, like pushing reads, forming conclusions, and attempts to push scum.
When do they fail?
Some times, even if an ISO may fit the profile of a scum, individual posts may be incredibly townie but get overlooked. Additionally, in games with lower volume, it's basically impossible to build macroreads.
How could they have been used in this game?
-Jabber's entire thread presence in this game was exactly consistent with what a scum would do. Though his posts looked good individually, it was clear he was never pushing any strong conclusions and making an effort to reduce the PoE, but instead focused his thread presence on expanding it and keeping his options open. Macroreads were probably the best way to catch Jabber as scum in this game.
-BB used his Day 4, a day in which he had complete power to get any unprimed player out of Ephe/Scattered/Jabber eliminated if he wanted and still not be targeted for the elimination Day 5 even if the doctor had succeeded, to go after Vom, a player who the lack of Night 4 ignite confirmed as primed. This thread presence was completely inconsistent with what a scum would do there.
NP's Subjective Opinion
In any higher posting game, macroreads are perhaps the most valuable tool a townie has in their arsenal. It's a lot easier to fake individual posts than it is to fake an entire ISO of solving. When we look back and examine a player as a whole, their agenda can often come right to the surface.
What are they?
Tonereads are a much maligned way of making reads and one that many ignore as evidence, but I believe this is from a simple misunderstanding of them. Tonereads are the evaluation of a player's posting based on "gut" and subconscious factors behind the posting. They may be inherently subjective from player to player, but that doesn't make them any less valid as a way to make a read.
Why do they work?
Though scum players have control over their content, they don't have nearly as much control over more subconscious word choice. After playing enough games, a player can begin to recognize patterns and recognize some of the harder to fake elements of posting.
Tonereads are best applied when examining posts that scum have the hardest problems faking. There's a bunch of categories of this, but some of the best are joking/other humor and interactions with a "scumread". By looking at the posts from an emotional angle, you can often more accurately view a player's belief in their posts vs their posts being forced than you can via content.
When do they fail?
Tonereads aren't easy by any means. It takes experience to be able to accurately identify tonal signs that a player is town/scum, and it can often be difficult to convey to other players.
How could they have been used in this game?
-Jabber's tone when speaking to scattered on Day 5 was not the tone in which a town player speaks to their scumread
-Amici's joke posts with Ephe were in fact natural and unforced, in a way that if they were scum may have been more forced and tryhard-y
NP's Subjective Opinion
Just because tone reads aren't easy doesn't mean they shouldn't be used. Tone reads look at the one section of posting that scum truly cannot control. It took me personally over twenty games of mafia before my tone reads started to be decent, but combining tone reads and macroreads can often help you easily identify a few townies in any given game. It's really hard to fake stuff like a natural townie flow and the belief that you are right when you know you are wrong and that fact can be leveraged for some really good reads.
When you feel like a player screams town or scum and you can't pin down why with content, that's a toneread, and it's probably right.
Tonereads are a much maligned way of making reads and one that many ignore as evidence, but I believe this is from a simple misunderstanding of them. Tonereads are the evaluation of a player's posting based on "gut" and subconscious factors behind the posting. They may be inherently subjective from player to player, but that doesn't make them any less valid as a way to make a read.
Why do they work?
Though scum players have control over their content, they don't have nearly as much control over more subconscious word choice. After playing enough games, a player can begin to recognize patterns and recognize some of the harder to fake elements of posting.
Tonereads are best applied when examining posts that scum have the hardest problems faking. There's a bunch of categories of this, but some of the best are joking/other humor and interactions with a "scumread". By looking at the posts from an emotional angle, you can often more accurately view a player's belief in their posts vs their posts being forced than you can via content.
When do they fail?
Tonereads aren't easy by any means. It takes experience to be able to accurately identify tonal signs that a player is town/scum, and it can often be difficult to convey to other players.
How could they have been used in this game?
-Jabber's tone when speaking to scattered on Day 5 was not the tone in which a town player speaks to their scumread
-Amici's joke posts with Ephe were in fact natural and unforced, in a way that if they were scum may have been more forced and tryhard-y
NP's Subjective Opinion
Just because tone reads aren't easy doesn't mean they shouldn't be used. Tone reads look at the one section of posting that scum truly cannot control. It took me personally over twenty games of mafia before my tone reads started to be decent, but combining tone reads and macroreads can often help you easily identify a few townies in any given game. It's really hard to fake stuff like a natural townie flow and the belief that you are right when you know you are wrong and that fact can be leveraged for some really good reads.
When you feel like a player screams town or scum and you can't pin down why with content, that's a toneread, and it's probably right.
What are they?
TMI reads are reads where you try to evaluate if a player already has knowledge of another player's alignment.
Why do they work?
As the informed minority, scum know the alignment of every single player in the game, yet must act like they don't. Sometimes, this bleeds into their posting.
Townies, on the other hand, will do things that scum would never do because of the fact that they are uninformed of the alignments of other players in the game.
When do they fail?
Townies can be very very confident. Sometimes, it works in your favor (as I said with tonereads, it's incredibly difficult for a scum to push a townie and have their posts radiate pure tonal self-belief, which means you can sometimes clear someone for pushing a townie. How amazing!). Sometimes, however, a confident player having a good game can seem like they simply knew too much. Remember that TMI reads are based on if a player is faking having less certainty than they do, not on the level of certainty they say they have (in scum, this often manifests itself in a tonal gap, where players are spoken to like they are town despite scum claiming to not be confident).
How could they have been used in this game?
-Scattered's post #438 was not a scumtell, but instead a clear example of a town player with a lack of TMI. What scum in the world tries to remind every single player of their Day 1 vanity case, knowing that case is on a player that will soon flip town?
-There was a pretty good collection of cases on townies from townies that had the pure self-belief aspect behind them. Ephe's D1 push on BB especially felt this way to me, but there's more out there
-The best example of a TMI townread I can find here is Jabber's read on BB in post #453, but it really isn't that TMI-y and I've seen just as bad from townies all the time. If you really want to look at scum TMI, look at how Drac treated me in Good Cop Bad Cop.
NP's Subjective Opinion
Making a read based on TMI/lack thereof is one of the best ways to make reads off a factor that is directly connected to alignment. Here's an article from one of the best townplayers I know that talks more about TMI reads (and POE).
TMI reads are reads where you try to evaluate if a player already has knowledge of another player's alignment.
Why do they work?
As the informed minority, scum know the alignment of every single player in the game, yet must act like they don't. Sometimes, this bleeds into their posting.
Townies, on the other hand, will do things that scum would never do because of the fact that they are uninformed of the alignments of other players in the game.
When do they fail?
Townies can be very very confident. Sometimes, it works in your favor (as I said with tonereads, it's incredibly difficult for a scum to push a townie and have their posts radiate pure tonal self-belief, which means you can sometimes clear someone for pushing a townie. How amazing!). Sometimes, however, a confident player having a good game can seem like they simply knew too much. Remember that TMI reads are based on if a player is faking having less certainty than they do, not on the level of certainty they say they have (in scum, this often manifests itself in a tonal gap, where players are spoken to like they are town despite scum claiming to not be confident).
How could they have been used in this game?
-Scattered's post #438 was not a scumtell, but instead a clear example of a town player with a lack of TMI. What scum in the world tries to remind every single player of their Day 1 vanity case, knowing that case is on a player that will soon flip town?
-There was a pretty good collection of cases on townies from townies that had the pure self-belief aspect behind them. Ephe's D1 push on BB especially felt this way to me, but there's more out there
-The best example of a TMI townread I can find here is Jabber's read on BB in post #453, but it really isn't that TMI-y and I've seen just as bad from townies all the time. If you really want to look at scum TMI, look at how Drac treated me in Good Cop Bad Cop.
NP's Subjective Opinion
Making a read based on TMI/lack thereof is one of the best ways to make reads off a factor that is directly connected to alignment. Here's an article from one of the best townplayers I know that talks more about TMI reads (and POE).
What are they?
Process of Elimination reads try to find the scum by removing every single townie player from contention until they develop a pool of players (POE) that contain the scum.
Why do they work?
Though good scum can avoid looking scummy, it can be a lot harder to look actively townie. By forcing towniness as the standard to avoid suspicion, players can avoid getting caught up on surface level things and letting scum skate by.
When do they fail?
POE reads fail when scum manages to infiltrate the towncore and escape the POE. Though a POE needs to have some level of consistency to work (you don't suddenly throw away your worldview every time someone inside the POE flips town), you also need to realize when to add/subtract players from the towncore.
How could they have been used in this game?
At the end of the game, there was only one player that nobody had any strong reasons to townread and that player was Jabber, the last scum in the game. He hadn't done too much that was scummy, but the fact that at the end of the game there was still no reason besides surface level effort to TR him was a huge warning sign.
NP's Subjective Opinion
The development of a POE is a major asset to the town, crucial to cooperative solving and a great system of analysis that doesn't allow scum to skate through the game with consistent moderate suspicion. Here's an article from one of the best townplayers I know that talks more about making a POE (and TMI reads).
Process of Elimination reads try to find the scum by removing every single townie player from contention until they develop a pool of players (POE) that contain the scum.
Why do they work?
Though good scum can avoid looking scummy, it can be a lot harder to look actively townie. By forcing towniness as the standard to avoid suspicion, players can avoid getting caught up on surface level things and letting scum skate by.
When do they fail?
POE reads fail when scum manages to infiltrate the towncore and escape the POE. Though a POE needs to have some level of consistency to work (you don't suddenly throw away your worldview every time someone inside the POE flips town), you also need to realize when to add/subtract players from the towncore.
How could they have been used in this game?
At the end of the game, there was only one player that nobody had any strong reasons to townread and that player was Jabber, the last scum in the game. He hadn't done too much that was scummy, but the fact that at the end of the game there was still no reason besides surface level effort to TR him was a huge warning sign.
NP's Subjective Opinion
The development of a POE is a major asset to the town, crucial to cooperative solving and a great system of analysis that doesn't allow scum to skate through the game with consistent moderate suspicion. Here's an article from one of the best townplayers I know that talks more about making a POE (and TMI reads).
What are they?
Motivation-based microreads are reads where a single post is analyzed to see what reason the player had for posting it.
Why do they work?
Every single post in mafia is made for a reason. These microreads are able to dissect the possible hidden agendas behind a post and evaluate if a post is made to actually help solve the game or to simply look good.
When do they fail?
Motivation-based microreads can often get into a spot where a post "could be used to push this agenda". Just because it could have a hidden agenda doesn't mean it does; it just means that you're dealing with a neutral post that could come from either alignment.
How could they have been used in this game?
-The end of BB's post #176 was a very clear bait to test how opportunistic Ephe would be with cases by offering them the option of a Cel case. The fact that BB tried to do this reaction test in his post in a way that never looked for towncred indicates an intention to use his posts to solve the game even if it likely made him look worse (from his "backpedal" of criticizing the Cel wagon later), a super townie mindset
-Scattered's post #760 was not going to ever convince anyone to change their votes and probably because of this less cooperative attitude, would make them vote him. This meant that it was actively hurting any possible scum agenda for scattered there, making it quite townie.
NP's Subjective Opinion
Motivation-based microreads are likely to lead to extreme cases of WIFOM, since the far majority of posts have just as good motives for town and scum to post them. Don't use these reads on those posts! Try to find ones where a player's motivation clearly shines through for some reason or another and motivation-based microreads can be quite accurate.
Motivation-based microreads are reads where a single post is analyzed to see what reason the player had for posting it.
Why do they work?
Every single post in mafia is made for a reason. These microreads are able to dissect the possible hidden agendas behind a post and evaluate if a post is made to actually help solve the game or to simply look good.
When do they fail?
Motivation-based microreads can often get into a spot where a post "could be used to push this agenda". Just because it could have a hidden agenda doesn't mean it does; it just means that you're dealing with a neutral post that could come from either alignment.
How could they have been used in this game?
-The end of BB's post #176 was a very clear bait to test how opportunistic Ephe would be with cases by offering them the option of a Cel case. The fact that BB tried to do this reaction test in his post in a way that never looked for towncred indicates an intention to use his posts to solve the game even if it likely made him look worse (from his "backpedal" of criticizing the Cel wagon later), a super townie mindset
-Scattered's post #760 was not going to ever convince anyone to change their votes and probably because of this less cooperative attitude, would make them vote him. This meant that it was actively hurting any possible scum agenda for scattered there, making it quite townie.
NP's Subjective Opinion
Motivation-based microreads are likely to lead to extreme cases of WIFOM, since the far majority of posts have just as good motives for town and scum to post them. Don't use these reads on those posts! Try to find ones where a player's motivation clearly shines through for some reason or another and motivation-based microreads can be quite accurate.
These are very brief overviews of general styles and I'm able to elaborate on most of them if you want. I encourage everyone here, including myself, to try to incorporate a new style as part of their scumhunting.
Nobody needs to have mastery over all of these, but having more than one tool at your disposal is crucial to getting good reads. Jabber appeared very good in almost every single one of the commonly used read methods in PB, but when it comes to those used less often, he was definitely catchable.
Finally, I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for playing! Everyone played well and has a reason to be proud of their play. The fact that you got to nearly 800 posts in a 9 player game shows the amount of dedication all of you had to trying to solve, which made this a very high quality game to host, so thank you all for trying your best and try to keep this energy up in the future!
Hope to see all of you in one of these games sooner rather than later!
Last edited:
This is a fantastic postgame NP! So many constructive points there, I learnt a ton just reading through it all.
Maaaaan I even pointed this out! I guess I'm satisfied whenever someone offers an explanation that's even remotely plausible. You guys gonna get a very cynical bbn next game o.o
- Status