Spooks, Day 1-7.

[J.A.Poisson]

I hope 'dress down' means something different to you than it does to me, J.A .

Bollocking, shout at, point and laugh at all the flaws of..... http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&de ... d=0CBMQkAE

[Blip]

Blip I've got to ask

A) how did you know I changed my online status?
B) How come you didn't try and pull oblivion into a voting block against me?

a) I looked. Oblivion always posted with her online status hidden too: like I said, I should have gone with my gut instincts

b) Because you fooled me and I went for Ani instead. Whatever others may say, that last vote of yours for Oblivion was the killer move for you guys Whose idea was it?

[Blip]

I hope 'dress down' means something different to you than it does to me, J.A .

Bollocking, shout at, point and laugh at all the flaws of.....

That's what it means to me too. I don't wholeheartedly join in light-hearted games to be bollocked, shouted at, pointed at or laughed at

Just sayin' as I'm sure you're just joshin'

Thanks for organising this - I know it takes a lot of commitment and work - and once again my apologies to my team mates and my sincere congratulations to a dastardly cunning winning team

[oblivion]

Blip I've got to ask

A) how did you know I changed my online status?
B) How come you didn't try and pull oblivion into a voting block against me?

a) I looked. Oblivion always posted with her online status hidden too: like I said, I should have gone with my gut instincts

b) Because you fooled me and I went for Ani instead. Whatever others may say, that last vote of yours for Oblivion was the killer move for you guys Whose idea was it?

I've been telling him not to hesitate to throw me under the bus. He went for at the perfect moment.

[Uselesstwit]

Blip I've got to ask

A) how did you know I changed my online status?
B) How come you didn't try and pull oblivion into a voting block against me?

a) I looked. Oblivion always posted with her online status hidden too: like I said, I should have gone with my gut instincts

b) Because you fooled me and I went for Ani instead. Whatever others may say, that last vote of yours for Oblivion was the killer move for you guys Whose idea was it?

We'd talked about it earlier as a way to get me into the final day. Most of the ideas were from Oblivion, she definitely was one of the best players here. If magicziggy thought he learned a lot this game, just wait until he's on her team sometime.

[oblivion]

I hope 'dress down' means something different to you than it does to me, J.A .

Bollocking, shout at, point and laugh at all the flaws of.....

That's what it means to me too. I don't wholeheartedly join in light-hearted games to be bollocked, shouted at, pointed at or laughed at

Just sayin' as I'm sure you're just joshin'

Thanks for organising this - I know it takes a lot of commitment and work - and once again my apologies to my team mates and my sincere congratulations to a dastardly cunning winning team

I'm glad he's never hesitated to bollock me. I've learned a lot from J.A. and from a few other players who tell it like it is.

[irretating]

Good game, scum.

I'd like to add my voice of disappointment for the way Skinny Puppy was treated in the game. A lot of players enjoy the game thread so much that they take the time to post humorous and interesting posts (not strictly required for mafia game strategy) even though they are aware that quieter players tend to survive longer. I think that says a lot about what people get out of the game.

Oblivion: I was onto you just at the point you killed me. It was interesting watching you play out the game, knowing you were scum.

[oblivion]

Good game, scum.

I'd like to add my voice of disappointment for the way Skinny Puppy was treated in the game. A lot of players enjoy the game thread so much that they take the time to post humorous and interesting posts (not strictly required for mafia game strategy) even though they are aware that quieter players tend to survive longer. I think that says a lot about what people get out of the game.

Oblivion: I was onto you just at the point you killed me. It was interesting watching you play out the game, knowing you were scum.

Yeah, I knew you had to be starting to wonder.

I think you pick up on scum better than average here.

[J.A.Poisson]

I hope 'dress down' means something different to you than it does to me, J.A .

Bollocking, shout at, point and laugh at all the flaws of.....

That's what it means to me too. I don't wholeheartedly join in light-hearted games to be bollocked, shouted at, pointed at or laughed at

Just sayin' as I'm sure you're just joshin'

Would you like to see the WOT I've been writing during this game that will tell you how to play the game properly, or would you like to keep playing a rpg while you wait for the seer to out?

I'm asking you this quite seriously as one of towns better players here.

Thanks for organising this - I know it takes a lot of commitment and work - and once again my apologies to my team mates and my sincere congratulations to a dastardly cunning winning team

yw

[Uselesstwit]

I hope 'dress down' means something different to you than it does to me, J.A .

Bollocking, shout at, point and laugh at all the flaws of.....

That's what it means to me too. I don't wholeheartedly join in light-hearted games to be bollocked, shouted at, pointed at or laughed at

Just sayin' as I'm sure you're just joshin'

Would you like to see the WOT I've been writing during this game that will tell you how to play the game properly, or would you like to keep playing a rpg while you wait for the seer to out?

I'm asking you this quite seriously as one of towns better players here.

Thanks for organising this - I know it takes a lot of commitment and work - and once again my apologies to my team mates and my sincere congratulations to a dastardly cunning winning team

yw

I can only talk for myself, but I'd like to see it. I know I made some mistakes and liked it when oblivion pointed them out.

[Blip]

Would you like to see the WOT I've been writing during this game that will tell you how to play the game properly, or would you like to keep playing a rpg while you wait for the seer to out?

I'm asking you this quite seriously as one of towns better players here.

You are very kind, J.A.P. I get the impression that you wouldn't say that lightly, so it's good to hear.

I don't know what a WOT is, but I deduce it's a commentary? That would be very interesting indeed.

[J.A.Poisson]

I've been writing this throughout the game, as things occur to me, so if it doesn't flow brilliantly, that's why.

This has been an incredibly frustrating game to GM. I want to try to explain why.

First, the set up. This should have been an easy game for town. With 2 bombs, a seer and 16 town to 4 scum with no further distractions, it should have been a cakewalk.

1. Mafia is not a game of sitting around role playing while you wait for the seer to out and tell you who to vote for. Seer views are a big help, but
they are far from the be all and end all. I've played plenty of games with no seer (and some with no specials at all). Or sometimes, as here, the seer is just
really unlucky (at no point til very late did sifaka have more than one living player to out a view of). They are still winnable games for town.

You need to learn to spot tells, and why they are tells. Scum were dropping plenty of them, but the big problem was that town were too. Town needs to learn
to play like town so that scum stand out more.

2. So how do you play like town? First, accept you will make mistakes. You don't have enough information not to, that's the point of the game. Voting for
innocents every time is not a scum tell. Especially when all anyone is doing is lynching innocents. Stop all the apologising for lynching the wrong
people. That's usually a scum tell (and such a common one it has it's own name. It's the cheerleader tell). Some town will get killed in this game. Live
with it. If anything, having a perfect record of voting to lynch scum is a scum tell in itself. (This is not as true if the player actually is significantly
better at the game than most of the people there. All scum tells have caveats).

On the subject of toughening up a bit, a couple of people have left the last couple of games in a huff over some perceived slight. If you play mafia properly,
you need to put people under pressure to see how they cope with it. Scum will not want to be lynched, nor will specials. Town shouldn't mind so much.
But putting people under pressure often means sledging will go on. Don't take mafia personally, don't meltdown over it, don't carry grudges, whether it's from one game
to the next or from one game to outside the game. Scum are under more pressure than town and trying to make them crack under that pressure means some trash
talk will happen. Live with it.

Sitting there saying "I'm obviously innocent so therefore anyone voting for me must be scum" is so wrong it's untrue. First, you're not obviously innocent to anyone
except you. Second, scum will never vote in a block like that. Ever. Third, it's usually a scum tell to say something like that, because it's a
demonstrably wrong sign of desperation. Here, it's just another example of scum getting away with dropping tells cos town are playing so badly.

3. Learn who to trust and why. One of the biggest mistakes town made was trusting Oblivion for so long because she's a better, more experienced player than most of you.
You should have DIStrusted her more than anyone for exactly that reason. You should have put her under way more pressure than anyone else even. Especially
since you went 5 days without her finding a single scum. You should have been all over her for her bad play, but no one even fosd her for it til day 5.
Trust people based on them being viewed, or their game play. Never ever trust someone based on their reputation.

4. Voting patterns are a decent way to hunt scum, it's true. If the scum is a relative noob, anyway. Noobish scum will not want to stand out by starting
bandwagons on townies, so if you have, say, 4 townies with 1 vote each on them from other townies, for example, and another townie votes for one of them,
the scum will want to be early on the bandwagon without having to justify it. That's why the 3rd and 4th votes are good locations for scum hunters to look.
If someone is consistently 3rd on a wagon early in a game, lynch them. (That's how I first saw Rapping Agnostic as scum in the lolcats game). But "You keep voting for
town" is not a tell.

But voting patterns are not the only, or even the best way to hunt scum. Scum will usually feel under much more pressure than town throughout the game... they have
to keep up a pretense that they don't know what they in fact do know, and will often say things like "I'm so confused, I don't want to lynch a townie, but the only
person I trust is myself, so I'm voting me for mayor and no one for lynch". This is a tell, because they've said 3 times in one sentence that they don't
have much info, which is protesting too much, and they don't want to look scummy for lynching a townie. Town shouldn't worry about lynching townies, or about
how they look. They should worry about hunting scum. This is, however, yet another tell that gets lost in the noise of town doing the same thing.
For another example of how easy it is to overact, look back at the lolcats game. I know you guys are not used to no pm games, but every single person
who was bemoaning how hard it was without being able to PM each other actually could PM someone. They were all scum or mason. The people who couldn't just
got on with it.

5. Learn some consistency. Local traditions do emerge in this game from board to board (like, "We always vote so and so for mayor on day 1") and this is fine,
as long as you realise scum will learn to exploit those memes if they can. But at least be consistent in your thinking from day to day. On day 1, you were convinced
that scum would be laying low and so would be the people with the lowest post counts. On day 2, you were convinced scum would be active, so they would be people
with the highest post counts. These 2 cannot possibly both be true. But even ignoring that, go and look at the posted post counts. Now that you know who scum were,
tell me if you can see a pattern there. Which leads to

6. Town often move in herds. Scum don't. Scum will not all be on one bandwagon, nor will they all be colluding in moving together. They'll be actively trying to distance themselves
from each other so that you can't link one to the next. EG on day 5, Blip linked DP and Sifaka because they seemed to be posting together. If 2 people are doing that, and
one of them is scum, the other almost certainly isn't. If you've been catching scum like that in other games, then scum have been playing really badly, and basing your gameplay
on the assumption that scum are bad at this game isn't going to take you very far.

[J.A.Poisson]

[oblivion]

the odds are that you'll be town most of the time. My scum game isn't nearly as well developed as my town game. This wasn't an easy win (J.A. will beg to differ), but it should have been much harder given how poorly town as a whole was playing. If I hadn't done a single scummy thing all game, I still should have been caught out by the meta. Based on everything I've learned about the game I almost *had* to throw a teammate under the bus by day 5 at the absolute latest to avoid being lynched for not playing up to my abilities. Sometimes I have off games when I'm town, and it sucks to be me. But, usually I get night killed fairly early and don't have to worry about lousy gameplay at the endgame.

Making it that far without having caught a single scum was...well...amazing.

[J.A.Poisson]

They all stopped reading, oblivion