I was literally not softing RHM even
okay how the absolute fuck did Wazza live all game
well played but the amount of completely absurd arguments that town let slide is… wow
also how does Wazza always get neutral
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Hi everyone!
As several people speculated in dead chat, I am in fact Arete; out of respect to the rules I didn’t discuss this in dead chat, but I wasn’t really trying to hide it in dead chat either (as evidenced by the fact that I switched from talking like Estel to talking like Arete).
I have some thoughts both about alt things and about townplay on this site; no one reads wallposts so I’m breaking this up into a couple of smaller posts.
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Alts
Since a few people have already asked: the Canadian flag was to make me look like not an Arete alt. I went with a Canadian flag because it communicated approximately the correct idea for what time zone I was in while being similar enough to Minnesota it’s not that similar but we in Minnesota like to pretend it is that I wasn’t going to say anything blatantly culturally incorrect.
I decided to go with the ‘I’m from Mafia Colosseum’ excuse because I’ve actually played there, but unlike MU I didn’t think people here really played very often on it. Except … I forgot that several people from here do actually play there regularly. lolEstel.
A thing I noticed this game is that in a lot of ways it felt less like playing FM, and more like roleplaying? Like, in some ways I was trying to Be Estel rather than trying to Play The Game, if that makes sense. Part of this is that Estel wound up with a couple of opinions like ‘not being helpful and solvey is always scummy’ (which was >rand true in this game) that I don’t entirely hold, but I think part of it is just a problem of alts.
This isn’t really new but this site overrelies on meta, and alts kind of make that clear – like, Estel tried asking people for explanations of their meta-based reads, and never really got them. Weirdly, I wound up relying on meta a lot less due to being in a position where I couldn’t make meta-based arguments (which I wasn’t really expecting to affect the arguments I was making to myself in my head??) although in a couple places I did end up using them and having to talk around that fact – my read on Italy and my read on Vul are the clearest examples (I was really worried about being called out for TMI on the latter).
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Townplay Part 1: The MyLo Situation
I’m going to talk about this first because it was more recent, because there were a few clues that could have brought town to the correct answer in this situation. Weirdly, despite normally overrelying on mechanics, I think this LyLo was largely lost by not relying enough on mechanics? In any case, a summarized list of things that could have gotten the town to the correct answer:
- Backreading the dead townies. If you’re alive in LyLo and someone else isn’t, there’s usually a reason for that. In this case, that’s less applicable, since most of the kills were controlled by groupscum while you were searching for the NK. Still, nearly every dead villager had had Intensify among their top townreads. Nearly every dead villager had either had Apprentice and Wazza as scumreads, or as ‘they can be town for now but kill them if they live too long.’
- Looking at whether people’s claims actually make sense. Like, we had a game full of classes like ‘2-shot tracker’ and ‘Odd-night bodyguard’ (note: not elite bodyguard, but bodyguard) and ‘voyeur,’ and then we had Wazza claiming every-night alignment cop with no real drawbacks. The power level of Wazza’s role was vastly inconsistent with every other role in the game, which is generally a sign that someone is fakeclaiming absent rare scenarios (e.g. the dreaming gods).
- Looking at whether people’s actions make sense. The misexecuted target, Intensify, was able to explain why they chose the people they did, and even if you disagree with their reasoning it at least makes sense. Meanwhile, you had Wazza claiming to have checked the single most obvious villager in the game on N2, because ‘Vulgard is a strong townie.’
- Actually re-reading the game. Re-reading the game might have allowed the town to notice that overall, Intensify was extremely villagery and Wazza and App were … not.
- Questioning why a player is still alive. Wazza outed as every night alignment cop on D2. He was still alive on D6, while most of the people who died were, for example, Estel the 2-shot tracker who had outed as ‘a weaker role than Italy.’ Scum never let an every night alignment cop live that long.
- Considering each player’s approach to the MyLo/LyLo scenario. App not caring about the game until D6 should have been a warning sign. Wazza in particular was somewhat scummy in that he didn’t really care who was executed as long as it wasn’t him or App, although to be fair there were townies that were doing essentially the same.
One thing I like to do in LyLo/MyLo scenarios is look at each player, and my reasons for thinking that they’re town, and my reasons for thinking they could be scum, and potential counterarguments. Basically the only thing going for App was Wazza’s green. Basically the only thing going for Wazza was that he’d redchecked some scum members. Meanwhile, the argument with Intensify was ‘what if the obvious villager had gotten a fakeclaim from the hosts,’ which even if true didn’t eliminate their overall villageriness.
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Townplay Part 2: Broader things
So early in this game I kind of had the thought that the reason our townplay is so bad is that everyone just sucks at making reads, which was kind of an uncharitable thing to think but probably gets at something real. Like, I saw a few townreads handed out for things like ‘they aren’t really pushing people’ when that is … a scum-AI thing to do… In any case, in terms of actually actionable things, it would probably be helpful for people here to familiarize themselves with some of the level-1 signs of towniness and scumminess.
Another thing that hurt town this game was that a lot of townies weren’t trying to solve, which meant that all the scum that also weren’t trying to solve could essentially skate by. Like, almost none of the wolves were actually “doing anything” in terms of legitimately trying to solve the game (Kyo is basically the one exception), but because so many villagers were also not doing anything, that meant that it was hard to pick out which was which.
Additionally, this is kind of a specific/niche point but people were clearing an awful lot of people based on spew when the things they were clearing for were pretty easily distancing. Like, it’s one thing to say ‘Player A spent all game trying to get Player B executed, so Player B is spewed town,’ or ‘Player A and Player B got into a massive fight where they started insulting each other, so Player B is spewed town,’ but (for instance) people were clearing sulit for Hippo parking a vanity wagon on her, and that’s … not really clearing.
With that being said, there were definitely some good plays from town here, and from individual townies. Town did a good job this game in the early days of backreading dead players, even if it fell down on that front on later days. TBE and Centuries in particular had some very good plays + reads as dreaming gods. Most of the townies that were alive in endgame had done a good job of being obvious town, regardless of the quality of their reads.
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okay I’m done posting wallposts
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- Nerd
- Ily
- I agree with basically everything I read the game enough to have an opinion on
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my issue is that most of my town games im the only one who actually isos dead scum (i should also iso dead town more, i do it but i dont post about it) but i actually suck at finding spews so like itd be good if i wasnt the only one doing that
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I had one green that died
Also, I recommend just removing alts, I don’t know why we still have them.
the villagers are dead for a reason
NKA’s job is to determine whether it was a good reason or not
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I mean I tried to read into stuff like Mist’s death but I didn’t see anything so I was like
eh
whoa
I just got an almost-out-of-likes message
I haven’t gotten that message in months
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