The Syndicate

Alison wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:16 pm This is leaning me towards a Cassowary exe over a Jiwon one. This is the kind of post mafia makes to shade a townie. It's an indirect way of attacking them ("you seem pretty ill at ease") that is difficult to defend yourself against or pick apart (because the snap response is, "hey, that's just how I felt"), but is also couched in a hedgy way ("I'm not sure what to make of you...") that removes accountability for the read if UG flips town.

This is a post that wants us to narrow our eyes at UG, but without making us think "Cassowary wants us to vote UG". That's scummy.

cassowary wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 4:59 pm also why does it say aubergine whenever people vote lol

Dragon D. Luffy wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 4:00 pm

Alison wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 8:19 am I agree that Wilgy's content feels forced but I'm not sure I agree it's mafia indicative. This game has the usual problem of all games with post caps, which is that people can't just post whatever they want because they have to be mindful of the post cap, so they have to sort of stifle themselves and artificially restrict what they want to post, which ends up making content feel more forced.

I'm not sure if that logic applies to Wilgy, though. If he ever made 33 posts in a single day it wasn't in the last 2 years at least.

cassowary wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 8:01 pm

Carotenoid wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 7:07 pmhmn okay. Do you have any other reads at the moment? What do you think of the Starmen crew so far?

Most of the starmens have been really quiet :< U-G and Chardonnay haven't even said anything at all yet!

PSI's convictions on cayvie seemed to fold very quickly under pressure. Or, not even pressure, but just other people having different reads. Feels a little bit like trying not to stand out too much. Maybe a slight scumlean.

Neutron has really only made one substantive post, want to reserve judgment until I see more.

I'm feeling you and cayvie as town mostly for gut reasons right now.

Alison wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 2:25 pm The fact that absolutely nobody has commented on my Jiwon push one way or another gives me confidence in it. If you trust me, follow me onto that wagon. It's our best lead imo.

I like the fact that a few people have expressed vague gut scumreads of Cassowary. My own feelings towards them + the thread's feelings towards them. feels a bit like ColonialBob in Philosopher's Mafia.

nutella do you have specific reason to be paranoid of Carotte or is it just general respect of her scum range?

Ultimate-Gamer wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 1:04 pm Also! I've noticed that the term "lynch" has fallen out of vogue recently in the mafia community for good reason imo. Is there another term people typically use for "lynch" here?

chardonnay wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 2:40 am

DrWilgy wrote: ↑Wed Sep 02, 2020 2:13 am Acceptance of Carotte into towncore felt off.

Oh! Can you better explain this somehow?

Im craving more nuanced reads on Carotte in general. She seems townie, but im also tinged with some gut bad vibes.

Alison wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 5:24 pm PSI seems too eager to please. I don't get why they're doubting the cayvie read because like two other people townread cayvie. I don't read them as being that easily swayed in general. I'd be happy with a push there.

DDL's hedge on me pinged me and I think the stuff about cayvie's post helping vigilantes and so forth came off as slightly pockety behavior on someone who racked up a couple of quick townreads. I was hoping he was a wallposter so I could sort him really quickly off his opener but he isn't. I still lean scum there slightly for the above reasons though.

nutella and LC are null. They're doing the same things they do every game regardless of align. Not sure how to read DJ or Cassowary yet, I'll sort them in a bit.

Carotenoid wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 5:18 pm

cassowary wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 5:15 pm

Long Con wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 4:44 pmI just gave an example of how it could be a mafia-advantaged role. I did not have difficulty picturing it.

Sorry, yeah, I think I misread your original post and thought you were proposing the role as a potential disadvantageous role for mafia. I now see that doesn't make any sense in context, but to be fair, I hadn't had any caffeine yet.

At this point I still think Alison's claim is more likely to come from town than scum, tho.

omg is that the legendary coffee tell

cassowary wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 2:45 pm Hi I am here! Intro post! I know some of you already, but always nice to play in a different context!

I don't think flavor spec is that sketchy given there's a bunch of weird stuff this game... noting that the elements aren't divided evenly between characters is a handy thing to be aware of.

I believe Alison's claim as towny for now, I'm having difficulty picturing a universe where mafia votes are hindered in a way that actually makes sense, since mafia's actions tend to be more deliberate. Like, what's the point of having some kind of weird role that's negative-utility for the mafia side? Seems very strange. So I'm inclined to trust Alison's claim at least for now.

Carotenoid wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 1:18 pm What is PPE? Personal Protective Equipment? Profit Per Employee? Post Poop Euphoria?
--
Alison, no, I haven't played any full game with DJ yet.
--
re: mech talk
I mean. I don't think anyone is saying we should be *exclusively* setup speculating. I do think Alison that in your reply to cayvie you twisted her words a bit so I can relate to her frustration because it seems pretty clear to me that this is not what she meant.

I think cayvie is townie because in a t!Alison world a wolf would probs be more likely to believe the claim immediately rather than try to undermine it. (her reply to your post was like 2 minutes after) Her motivation seems to be heavily experience/~emotions based in a way that's more "townie being careful" than "scum trying to discredit".

cayvie wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 1:00 pm

PSINightmareEmpower wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:57 pm As an outside eye, I can confirm that Alison was not being condescending,

mild w/w ping for PSI/Alison here

PSINightmareEmpower wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:26 pm Hello everyone! I'm excited to play this game with you all--although I will say up front that I joined this game for playing mafia and not for flavor. I don't know squat about A:TLA outside of my own role and one random YouTube video that was a compilation of all the times in the show that someone made fun of Toph for being blind. So don't expect me to know anything about this stuff.

Since I'm new here I'll start with a mini-introduction. I come from a small forum dedicated to the Earthbound/Mother series, where we also play mafia. It's a very laid-back site, so it's not great for getting competitive in mafia, but it is great for playing casual games. I've played 3 total games on that site--two as mafia and one as town--and this is my first time playing off-site. Cassowary, Chardonnay, DJ Neutron Star, and Ultimate-Gamer are all players from my home site, and Carotenoid, who played in Starmen's most recent game, invited all of us here.

I'd been reading a little of Philosophers' Mafia to get a feel for Racket games, but didn't get very far, and I've also been following along with Radiohead Mafia but they got way too many pages ahead of me and I can't keep up anymore lol. So I have a little bit of a feel for Alison, Long Con, and Nutella's playstyles. So not a bad number of people to be familiar with for my first off-site game.

A quick summary of my playstyle would be that I work mainly off of intuition, so I'm more likely to get an odd tone from a post than I am to notice the scumslip. I tend to be very open with my reads and say something as soon as I get the read rather than waiting until later to flesh out a case; however, I always think maybe I should try to be more reserved and see how well that works out for me, so don't be alarmed if I don't always follow the open-reads pattern. Lastly, I'm usually very active (as in, twice as many posts as the second most active poster), but as this game is running at the busiest time of the year for me, I may be less active compared to my previous games (saying that for the benefit of those who've played with me before).

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cayvie wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:10 pm you're the one who said there was likely to be more vote manipulation *shrug*

i fundamentally disagree with your premise that talking about mechanics/roles is antitown. *especially* in a role madness style game.

and i am irritated by your condescension toward me out of the gate. i knew that was going to be an issue coming into this game, so i'm trying to avoid tunneling you for it. but i would at least appreciate it if you toned it down a bit.

Alison wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:20 pm

cayvie wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 12:10 pm you're the one who said there was likely to be more vote manipulation *shrug*

i fundamentally disagree with your premise that talking about mechanics/roles is antitown. *especially* in a role madness style game.

and i am irritated by your condescension toward me out of the gate. i knew that was going to be an issue coming into this game, so i'm trying to avoid tunneling you for it. but i would at least appreciate it if you toned it down a bit.

1) No idea what you're talking about with this condescension stuff. I think you're scum, that's all. If I wanted to talk down to you I would make it a lot more obvious. If you're reading condescension into my posts, it isn't intended. (No clue what "that was going to be an issue coming into this game" means either.)

2) Talking about mechanics/roles isn't antitown. I talked about mechanics in my opener. I'm saying the way you're going about it is antitown because it's likely to induce people to leak information.

3) I don't disagree that there's more likely to be vote manipulation, I just think it's absurd to believe that scumhunting is an iota less important because you think vote manipulation exists. If anything it's doubly important because you need to nail scum really hard before they can seize control of the exe with their abilities like they did in Pyre Mafia.

Jackofhearts2005 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 01, 2020 11:54 am Was planning on posting this in the champs finale but it applies here and everywhere so I might as well do it here and repost to champs so people don’t assume I’m doing some fancy ass wolf gambit or am overly concerned with being scumread there.

Here there be self meta.

Spoiler: show

The amount I tell jokes and the amount I get down to business actually has next to nothing to do with my alignment.

I tell jokes when I see something funny. This happens more with certain flavor. Or if people set me up for punchlines. Or when I play with people like Mac, Sprityo and Epi, who I feed off of really well. I stop telling jokes when I become interested in doing things beyond telling jokes. So if I see super scummy behavior, I will stop telling jokes and start pushing the player in question. And if I see something funny, I’ll start telling jokes again. If there are serious goofy ass mechanical things, I’ll probably spend some time being serious about that. Etc.

It’s a function of the thread, not my alignment. That’s why you tend to see “Jack got serious way earlier/later last time he was town, therefore he is a wolf” said about town me. See: SF1. See also: Every game where I was onto a wolf D1.