M1020 — Speed Run Mafia GAME THREAD [HIDDEN]

[Squigs44]

You freaks had Ghug as the major main wagon.

Why didn't you kill Ghug?

DL pushed a darg wagon, Bona and Sabi followed. I consolidated at the end.

[dargorygel]

Tbf I followed damo with an end vote, which was idiotic. And it looked scummy. So the scumteam hardly had to work to get town to dk me.

[snowy801]

Wow reading snowy in the God thread is exhausting.

Like if you're so much smarter than everyone else and so good at reading into what motivates people, maybe you should have been able to see that your actions would get you miskilled. You tried something, I think a fair thing to try, and it didn't work. You might to want to consider why that happened and try to improve, just as the people who miskilled you should consider why that happened and try to improve, or I should consider why I was so utterly unable to fake emotion this game and try to improve.

I've already done this, other people just don't really get to see it unless you're psychic or something

But my mistakes does not invalidate those of others

[snowy801]

I'm just of the opinion that the first step to improvement is the understanding of your own imperfections, which I think this community as a whole sorely lacks

There's such a certainty to the way people announce their methodology and I found it repeatedly shocking

[snowy801]

Remember guys, doubt is not a weakness of character or admission of inferiority. We are our own best critics

[snowy801]

Sooooooo

Should I stick to this style of play or should I do something different

I think you did fine overall. Like I said you just need to assign purpose to your many questions. Floating information is fine but if you're not sure how to make use of what you got after the fact then it just goes to waste

You also just stopped playing entirely during the Thanksgiving period, which while understandable it's better to be low level consistent than drop off the game entirely at points because every phase needs to be pitched into for a game of mafia to be successful

[Squigs44]

I'm just of the opinion that the first step to improvement is the understanding of your own imperfections, which I think this community as a whole sorely lacks

Again, if we're talking about your public image, you just posted many many times in the god thread saying town sucked and shouldn't have voted you out, then you come out and say this. I'm sure you do improve your game after each play, but can you at least see why we take issue with how you are framing things?

Multiple people in thread said they played terribly as town, I will take responsibility for at least 1 and probably more of the miskills.

[snowy801]

After reading the God thread, I'll say that I think Snowy is correct in a lot of points he is making, but missing out on some other important things. To me, town needs three things for success:
1) The ability to generate information
2) The ability to process information
3) The ability to persuade

I think everyone is better in some areas than other. I think Snowy's ability to process information this game was much better than his ability to persuade (at least this game, I dont know Snowys other games).

For me, I think my strength is more on my ability to generate information. Well, usually. I like making cases and putting pressure on people to get reactions, get people talking, force people to weigh in on conflicts. My problem this game was that everyone I tried to pressure (Bona, food, Celaph, Sabi) were all town. Also the scum were not reactive players.

Also, I'll just blame the rust I've accrued over the past year and a half.

I want to live in a world where people can come to the right conclusions even when I don't move them to make the right votes

And I suppose I'll continue working on that world as I always have

[snowy801]

I'm just of the opinion that the first step to improvement is the understanding of your own imperfections, which I think this community as a whole sorely lacks

Again, if we're talking about your public image, you just posted many many times in the god thread saying town sucked and shouldn't have voted you out, then you come out and say this. I'm sure you do improve your game after each play, but can you at least see why we take issue with how you are framing things?

Multiple people in thread said they played terribly as town, I will take responsibility for at least 1 and probably more of the miskills.

I do, and I also prioritize the emotional weight such commentary will carry in people's heads over whether people like me as a person

[ghug]

I'm just of the opinion that the first step to improvement is the understanding of your own imperfections, which I think this community as a whole sorely lacks

There's such a certainty to the way people announce their methodology and I found it repeatedly shocking

This whole post feels deeply hypocritical however you choose to parse it.

[ghug]

I also just take enormous offense at the allegation that I worsen my towngame to aid my scumgame and I really cannot abide your saying it.

To self-reflect a little: You had me dead to rights this game, which I respect, but I've found that my scumteams do worse when I focus on getting the snowies and HRs of the world to townread me rather than everyone else.

[President Eden]

This game kinda sucked all the way around, except for the mafia who had a solid outing. This includes me GMing.

There were a number of preventable errors on my part:
• I should have had a sub lined up in case anything happened; darg more or less got pressed into service so that I wouldn’t have to modkill on day 1 and disrupt the balance of the game too much. The game was not conducive to his holiday schedule at all and I think that contributed to the endgame malaise. But that’s not his fault—I should have had something lined up from the start.
• I needed a co-GM to handle vote counts while I was traveling. The bot made it functional, but I like to do better than leaning all the way into it like I did. snowy volunteered to handle a flip which was greatly appreciated, but it shouldn’t have gotten to that point. And wouldn’t have if…
• The game should have started earlier. We held out too long on M71. This should have wrapped up by Thanksgiving rather than running into it. That’s on me as well.

As for in-game issues:
• I have to be very careful about how hard I am on town when I start with all the answers. The fog of war leads you down some very strange paths. But I find it difficult to see the snowy miskill as anything other than a huge and entirely preventable mistake by town. He already spelled out the total lack of mafia motivation for his behavior. I think it’s very fair to say he was mostly unproductive town, and that his play didn’t help make things easier, but if that’s enough reason to kill somebody then 3/4 of this game should have been shot.
• There were a lot of bizarre “just-so” rationalizations for what ended up being incorrect votes that didn’t make a lot of sense to me. If anybody cares enough for me to go back and highlight some examples I will, but the basic takeaway here is that nothing a person says or does is intrinsically suspicious. What makes something suspicious is its misalignment from town incentives or alignment with mafia incentives. A common shortcut that came up was “X is thinking differently from me —> I am town —> X is not town,” and this simply does not follow, as if X and I are both town, we have different GM-confirmed information (our role PMs) and different mental processes (we are not the same person) which both very plausibly lead to different conclusions. Reconciling these conclusions to find the underlying truth is the name of the game; writing off the other’s takes because they aren’t in accordance with yours and suspecting them for it is the opposite of what good towns should aspire to do.
• I don’t really fault the activity dropoff, holidays are more important than mafia, the fault for that lies with the GM for scheduling when he did. I think this game is notably different if it doesn’t fall when it does on the calendar; as badly as town played, it still had a realistic shot at winning until the game actually ended.

On the bright side, mafia played well as a team. Llama did particularly well all game. damo had a bit of a cold start IMO, but town didn’t punish him for it, and he finished strong. ghug struggled some and was certainly catchable, but he still brought a lot of value to his team by misdirecting daykills and steering discussion in the right places for mafia, and ultimately being “catchable” doesn’t matter if you are not in fact “caught”—and caught he was not.

There were some solid individual town performances amidst the mess. Sabi took a big step forward and did two big things right—becoming widely townread, and pushing discussion forward. The solving will come with time but these are the building blocks to success. bozo had a great game from a solving perspective, and I’m not really sure what he could have done differently to avoid a miskill, as I don’t see what he was doing that was objectively incorrect.

Overall a game that I think most of us would prefer to move on from, but some bright spots were present that I didn’t want to get lost. Sorry for my part in the game not being great; there were preventable errors that I’ll work to correct for future games.

[DeathLlama8]

aight so a few end of game notes

- this is the first game I've won as scum here where I actually showed up (I won M5 by lurking for four days and then getting carried by maniac) which is nice

- admittedly I also probably could've been replaced with anyone else and scum would've won comfortably (ghug pushed a lot of important miskills and damo avoided pressure from everyone and would've won KILO easily) but I held my own at least which is nice

- I don't think town was significantly worse than e.g. M1019 town if you disregard the result, which is obviously pretty bad. I think a relatively experienced scumteam just managed to stay well-hidden for the first two days and then coasted due to everyone correctly choosing to spend the holidays with their family instead. KILO is really hard as town (we basically just needed to convince sabi to follow one of us today even if everyone else stayed on ghug), and even if they found ghug, there was no way they were getting me and damo on consecutive days. It's also just easier to play once you have connections to go off of, which is how they ended up flipping the other two scum last game

- That being said, one thing town can work on is figuring out actual scum motivations to act in certain ways. I sent this to the God QT around D3:

I think one reason town has been so off track this game (looking like TvT again today lmao) is that people tend to naturally associate people playing differently than them as scum. You end up with "this person did something weird (i.e. not something I would do as town) -> they're not acting out of a town mindset -> they're scum" a lot. I've kind of been hiding behind this a lot this game since I noticed I was doing it too often last game as town.

(the part about wanting to rethink my town game was genuine, since part of why I hid so well was because my town game is pretty bad and replicable)

- bo and snowy weren't great daykills but at least for snowy I can see why people who weren't around for M1019 might view his play as weird? Anyone who was in M1019 where he died N1 for no reason would know that it was at worst NAI (I think he plausibly could've done it if he rolled scum this game fwiw)

[dargorygel]

Can one of the GMs end this game for the bot? Thanks

[President Eden]

for the bot:

GAME HAS ENDED

[Durga]

I'm glad you all had fun but who's running the next one? I know I said I would but I wanna play one because life is boring and slow rn

[dargorygel]

I'm glad you all had fun but who's running the next one? I know I said I would but I wanna play one because life is boring and slow rn

Are you implying, inferring, or speculating that playing is more funnifying than GMing?

[BesharamSabi]

This game kinda sucked all the way around, except for the mafia who had a solid outing. This includes me GMing.

There were a number of preventable errors on my part:
• I should have had a sub lined up in case anything happened; darg more or less got pressed into service so that I wouldn’t have to modkill on day 1 and disrupt the balance of the game too much. The game was not conducive to his holiday schedule at all and I think that contributed to the endgame malaise. But that’s not his fault—I should have had something lined up from the start.
• I needed a co-GM to handle vote counts while I was traveling. The bot made it functional, but I like to do better than leaning all the way into it like I did. snowy volunteered to handle a flip which was greatly appreciated, but it shouldn’t have gotten to that point. And wouldn’t have if…
• The game should have started earlier. We held out too long on M71. This should have wrapped up by Thanksgiving rather than running into it. That’s on me as well.

As for in-game issues:
• I have to be very careful about how hard I am on town when I start with all the answers. The fog of war leads you down some very strange paths. But I find it difficult to see the snowy miskill as anything other than a huge and entirely preventable mistake by town. He already spelled out the total lack of mafia motivation for his behavior. I think it’s very fair to say he was mostly unproductive town, and that his play didn’t help make things easier, but if that’s enough reason to kill somebody then 3/4 of this game should have been shot.
• There were a lot of bizarre “just-so” rationalizations for what ended up being incorrect votes that didn’t make a lot of sense to me. If anybody cares enough for me to go back and highlight some examples I will, but the basic takeaway here is that nothing a person says or does is intrinsically suspicious. What makes something suspicious is its misalignment from town incentives or alignment with mafia incentives. A common shortcut that came up was “X is thinking differently from me —> I am town —> X is not town,” and this simply does not follow, as if X and I are both town, we have different GM-confirmed information (our role PMs) and different mental processes (we are not the same person) which both very plausibly lead to different conclusions. Reconciling these conclusions to find the underlying truth is the name of the game; writing off the other’s takes because they aren’t in accordance with yours and suspecting them for it is the opposite of what good towns should aspire to do.
• I don’t really fault the activity dropoff, holidays are more important than mafia, the fault for that lies with the GM for scheduling when he did. I think this game is notably different if it doesn’t fall when it does on the calendar; as badly as town played, it still had a realistic shot at winning until the game actually ended.

On the bright side, mafia played well as a team. Llama did particularly well all game. damo had a bit of a cold start IMO, but town didn’t punish him for it, and he finished strong. ghug struggled some and was certainly catchable, but he still brought a lot of value to his team by misdirecting daykills and steering discussion in the right places for mafia, and ultimately being “catchable” doesn’t matter if you are not in fact “caught”—and caught he was not.

There were some solid individual town performances amidst the mess. Sabi took a big step forward and did two big things right—becoming widely townread, and pushing discussion forward. The solving will come with time but these are the building blocks to success. bozo had a great game from a solving perspective, and I’m not really sure what he could have done differently to avoid a miskill, as I don’t see what he was doing that was objectively incorrect.

Overall a game that I think most of us would prefer to move on from, but some bright spots were present that I didn’t want to get lost. Sorry for my part in the game not being great; there were preventable errors that I’ll work to correct for future games.

Wow Eden being nice to me. This is a Hanukkah miracle.

Thanks for being the worst gm. Having the game being in the holiday sucked ass on my part.

[BesharamSabi]

aight so a few end of game notes

- this is the first game I've won as scum here where I actually showed up (I won M5 by lurking for four days and then getting carried by maniac) which is nice

- admittedly I also probably could've been replaced with anyone else and scum would've won comfortably (ghug pushed a lot of important miskills and damo avoided pressure from everyone and would've won KILO easily) but I held my own at least which is nice

- I don't think town was significantly worse than e.g. M1019 town if you disregard the result, which is obviously pretty bad. I think a relatively experienced scumteam just managed to stay well-hidden for the first two days and then coasted due to everyone correctly choosing to spend the holidays with their family instead. KILO is really hard as town (we basically just needed to convince sabi to follow one of us today even if everyone else stayed on ghug), and even if they found ghug, there was no way they were getting me and damo on consecutive days. It's also just easier to play once you have connections to go off of, which is how they ended up flipping the other two scum last game

- That being said, one thing town can work on is figuring out actual scum motivations to act in certain ways. I sent this to the God QT around D3:

I think one reason town has been so off track this game (looking like TvT again today lmao) is that people tend to naturally associate people playing differently than them as scum. You end up with "this person did something weird (i.e. not something I would do as town) -> they're not acting out of a town mindset -> they're scum" a lot. I've kind of been hiding behind this a lot this game since I noticed I was doing it too often last game as town.

(the part about wanting to rethink my town game was genuine, since part of why I hid so well was because my town game is pretty bad and replicable)

- bo and snowy weren't great daykills but at least for snowy I can see why people who weren't around for M1019 might view his play as weird? Anyone who was in M1019 where he died N1 for no reason would know that it was at worst NAI (I think he plausibly could've done it if he rolled scum this game fwiw)

we basically just needed to convince sabi to follow one of us today

I hate this.

How do I fix this lol

[DeathLlama8]

we basically just needed to convince sabi to follow one of us today

I hate this.

How do I fix this lol

I didn't mean to single you out in that sense, more that everyone else had voted for ghug already and I knew you trusted me. I thought you generally played much better than previous games and obvtowned almost immediately which is the best first step for new(ish) town to take. Like was said above, next it's about focusing the effort and trying to more directly look for things that are scum-indicative (which you probably would've done had this game come at a better time).

In terms of your read on me, I feel like it was based on me trying to direct your play D1 for the better which you thought I would only do as town. Mafia me is trying to seem genuine though and would do the same thing though, so it's important not to base your read off one thing like that unless it's completely ironclad