True, true
upon the scumslip part of the post I’d like to add that you shouldn’t be considering how likely it is they’d make that slip as scum, consider how likely it is they’d make that slip as town
One time in a game on ToS someone scumslipped as an investigator claim by claiming the wrong set of results, then argued their way out of it by saying “I would be way more careful as scum”, it was a situation that could have easily been avoided if anyone had considered the fact that there was literally zero reason he would make that slip as town
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How to read scum players when you are town?
This is a @Flameo callback post particularly inspired from JOAT^2. Disclaimer that this will be a heavily opinionated post, but constructive criticism is duly appreciated to improve it. See this as a checklist if you want to get yourself a different perspective on how to read someone. This could be an asset for the reads that really matter, as in, who is top wagon or who you are deciding to use a night action on. Ensure your reads are supported from multiple angles, so try and tick multiple of these boxes before you make a conclusion. This prevents “SCUMSLIP” and “THEY VOTED TOWN, SO = SCUM” singular focused bad reads. They can be valid points, but a broader picture should guide your reads instead.
READS SHOULD BE MULTI-FACETED:
– Effort/Volume/“Wants it More” –
Town usually puts in more effort than scum, because they actively have to solve and not just try and show that they are solving. This is a very easily observable point by just looking at postcounts up top. This tends to be heavily related towards meta and real life circumstances, so as any point on this list. Use more than just this to read players.
– Progression –
Does the player have a level of consistency in their reads? Are they pushing players that they were pushing a day earlier as well when no new information has arisen? Did they suddenly swap a read 10 posts later when a wagon was going a different way? Bad progression is typically an indication of fake solving, thus pay close attention to how players compare to their earlier play. If it does not make sense, try and reaffirm how they currently feel and only then point out how it contradicts earlier points. Players can and should re-evaluate, but it is on how they do it that is important.
– Individual Vote Count Analysis –
Votes are the bread and butter of social deduction. They are signals that show a person’s cards. Do votes align with their reads and are substantiated? Specifically does the timing of the vote make sense? Is a vote being followed up on? Is a vote not working out, being cared about? Votes that are made when a player is not being scumread are especially important, because they cannot be in anti-spew. This is another fairly easy trackable point as votes are literally bolded.
PSA: Meme votes obscure vote count analysis heavily, so if you’re town just don’t. Yes, this is a preachy fun police post. 
– Wagonomics –
Is a player late on the wagon that hit scum, whereas it had basically already been decided that that player was going to flip? Minus town points. Are players opportunistic and act to change their reads suddenly if it serves the current wagons better? Did someone instigate a last minute change of votes that ended up hitting town on the counterwagon? Check whoever was the main wagon before and relate that towards whoever made that last minute change. Wagonomics is a point best used in the mid to late game, where you have a better idea what the scumteam was doing (because some have hopefully flipped).
– Nightkill Analysis –
Just like votes are signals that show a person’s cards, so are nightkills showing scum’s cards as a whole.
Who was killed? Summarize their reads for yourself and their primary pushes. Did they soft being a strong class? Knowing why a person was killed can teach you about what the scumteam is doing and what drives them.
Who was not killed? Is a strong player that has claimed a strong class or has gotten many scum lynched before still alive late in the game? I haven’t been killed and it’s nearing the end game. Should I reevaluate my reads?
This is a point that is a lot harder to get right, because it says something about multiple players (the whole scumteam) and not one individual. This is usually best used mid to late game and is heavily influenced by if there are protective classes in the game.
– Mechanics –
Throne of Lies Players should be well versed in this already, so this one can be brief. If mechanics exclude a player being of a particular team, take that into account in your reads. If you need to make too many unlikely assumptions to assume a player can mechanically be scum, they are unlikely to be scum.
– Claiming Mechanics (Reactiontests) –
If it walks like a scum, talks like a scum and acts like a scum, it is probably a scum. Does whatever the player claim mechanically match up with how they actually have been playing the game? Did they support their townreads, block their scumreads, investigate their nullreads, hid their power role, softed their actions? A more specific layer is if they lie about a mechanic, did they have a good reason for doing so? Do you think you could have done the same thing if you were that specific class in that scenario with their frame of mind?
– Meta –
Humans are habitual creatures. Does a person remind you of another game you played with them and they were town there, while simultaneously not being similar to the game where they were scum? Give them some town points! This point is best used if you have multiple games of evidence. Particularly important is that those games include them being from differing alignments. This can also get very murky if they were lost wolf/3rd party/power role, so again refer to other points on this list for a full read.
– Intentions –
Identify posts and try and grasp what the poster was intending to accomplish with a post. Were they trying to look towny? Did they have a goal in mind and were voicing a scumread with good or bad reasoning? Who were they pushing and does it make sense for them to be pushing this at that time. This is a lot easier with dense posts, but can be done by just grouping multiple smaller posts.
– Associations –
Flipped scum can be treasure troves of information. Just go digging. Did they act particularly unnatural around certain players? Did other players give this slot a particular treatment that was not well deserved? Did they ignore players altogether? It’s my experience that new scum typically do not interact whatsoever with their scum buddies.
– (Lack of) “Too much information” –
Scum knows everything. Town knows nothing. This is how games start out. Scum have it all figured out already and can slip that extra information burden they have. Did a player not really have a great reason at all for scumreading the flipped scum that they pushed? Bus for towncred! Is a player so consistently terribly wrong and has hard defended flipped scum, when they didn’t need to in that position? Clueless town! Does a player fire an ITA shot and not stick around to see a potential flip? Scum that already knows the other’s alignment.
– Scum dissonance/Mindmelds –
You are town, so you think like town. Players that think akin to you thus have a town mindset. Do you read a third player in a certain way exactly like the second player did for the same reasons? Good chance that they are town. This point works a lot better if you are the second player thinking alike and not the first or they may just be trying to pocket you. Sometimes you just can’t make sense of someone else’s mindset, because they are fabricating one. Investigate why they have that mindset and see if you can get behind it. If not, check other points on this list on that particular player to see if they could actually be scum!
– Listen to known town –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds You are not infallible, you have been wrong before and will be again in the future. Listen to the players that are mechanically confirmed town. This includes DEAD town. Listen to a lesser capacity to the players that you townread. Listening does not mean sheeping without question. Again, I reiterate that this is just one point on this whole list. M U L T I F A C E T E D.
– Reads list distribution –
This is slightly style dependent, but every rolelist has a distribution of town and scum. Check if reads (also your own) match up to that distribution and if not, question it. You can catch people out for only having town or only having scumreads. A more niche scenario is seeing scum particularly focus on hunting 3rd parties, because that is the only way they can “genuinely” hunt.
– Thread state –
Thread reads are very difficult and somewhat of an advanced point, because they basically require you to know everything already. Some things can still be taken from this. Has the thread had extremely little activity or just changed into purely off-topic posting or at least no active solving? This can mean that the lynch has already been decided for the day and the scum do not feel they need to change it. Are two players extremely heavily pushing each other and no one else really gets involved whatsoever? This can be a heavy town vs town that scum does not feel a need to touch. End of day is a particularly important point for thread state reads, because that is the time where it truly starts to matter where the votes lie. Votes at start of day frequently change up, so scum has the hardest need to push an agenda while it is getting close to a lynch. Is it absolutely buzzing at end of day? A scum is likely being wagoned, where scum either try their hardest to save their teammate or get the most credit from bussing their teammate. This point hones in more on how the whole scumteam is behaving and not so much individually, but it can be a powerful method to read.
– Re-evaluation –
Extremely important parts of a game to pay attention to are flips. New information comes to light with a flip and watching how players react to these or alter (or not alter) their reads is important. Has a player been tunneling in on a specific player and continues to do so after some flips prove the tunnelee right (without it being TMI)? They are likely scum. Does a player experience genuine surprise after a flip proves them wrong and they turn their reads inside out without it being part of an agenda? Likely town. This point touches upon a lot of other points here, but the main focus here is if you are at a loss with your reads, to check again how players reacted to flips.
– Tone/Emotional State –
Humans are emotional creatures and just like your alignment, your emotions seep through your posts. Was the town power role just shot by someone who was commonly townread and some other player seems to express glee/indifference over annoyance? Alarm bells. Does someone get incredibly angry over all their apparent effort when they get scumread, when they have actually been slanking pretty hard before? Alarm bells. This is a more specialized point that occurs whenever emotions run high, which doesn’t have to happen.
Example:
This was made in a real game, where I do a multi-faceted read like this (Flameo was an alt of mine).
Wagonomics:
Intentions:
Progression:
Associations, Wagonomics and Tone/Emotional State:
Listen to known town and nightkill analysis:
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The point isn’t that every read needs to hit all of these points, but that reads that are important should hit more than one point like whoever you vote to lynch or use your night action on.
3 Likes
I’ma have to say that I don’t necessarily agree with this
Scum feel the need to craft a narrative
Town do whatever the hell they feel like
It’s not worth completely ditching but this point is particularly error-prone
Beyond that I also think your “meta” point probably over-simplifies the process of using metareads on most players in general.
Otherwise solid post
2 Likes
But doesn’t town have a narrative too, they just don’t have it crafted? Town does not need to remember/keep up fake reasoning, because they actively feel like that and have lived it. Players do not always show progression, but that’s why I added the point to just ask them about it. Showing complete flagrant contradictions is probably towny again for a lack of self-awareness/too scummy to be scum, but uhh yeah, I didn’t want to add too much minutia, detracting from the point.
I’ll make this less strong, but otherwise I don’t really see what I could change there to be more specific? In any case it’d be an improvement over what I sometimes see with players having played one game with another player and any deviation from that in a next game makes them the opposite alignment.
It really depends, tbh.
For wolfhuting via progression you should look for it regarding a player’s progression on flipped wolves.
Some villagers don’t bother fully giving their reads so their progression tends to be out of place.
But you’ll also get villagers that just decide “actually I think the exact opposite now”
Sometimes they’ll do that constantly
I think it’s very hard to rely solely on progression as a point and I know that isn’t the point of this list but as its own bullet point it feels notably weaker than all the rest
Sometimes villagers will have 3, even 4 different people in the slot, which makes their “progression” be off, and cause them to be incorrectly wolfread.
This lead to a very unfortunate day 1 miselim in a champs game, so please consider this as an option.
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Ah
I thought you were referring to replacements
Given my game in S5 did indeed have a slot with three players over the course of the game
