Because there's more than one way to contribute to the game as town?
Yeah, there's finding scum and there's killing scum. Funnily enough, one of these is a soft requirement for the other, so for the most part we can consider them to be the same thing and don't need to draw a distinction.
Actually no, finding scum does nothing to help town, except that it makes it easier to kill scum. There's killing scum, which is primarily done after finding them. That's it.
That's a very reductive way to look at it. And it's wrong too.
Many players also emphasize the importance of finding reliable Town which your explanation doesn't account for. If you want to say that this is covered by "finding scum", then you're explanation is reductive to the point of uselessness.
Calling my meta-stuff game unrelated is a little unfair considering the fact that in my post I pointed out that scum have more power to create a narrative than usual. It was something I believe needed to be said because in the past when I played Secret Hitler, many of fellow players ignored this fact and as a result often lost. It doesn't matter if a few townies know truth if the rest of the town joins a bandwagon the scum started because it superficially looks more convincing, so I tried to inoculate against that.
Do you, like, think that the more experienced players in town wouldn't call attention to this if it came up? There's a lot I could say about mafia theory. There's a lot I have said about mafia theory. Mostly, I'm not talking about it in the thread (where it's not come up as part of RVS) because it's not relevant to the thread, and if it became so I'd talk about it.
Do you envisage a scenario where you (since you're clearly about to point this out) and everyone else that's aware of these facts you feel you're giving us is going to be dead and unable to post about it in the thread while the specifics that you are warning about are actively taking place? Is that why you thought to write a post about that instead of any of the content that's actually in the thread and about the alignments of the players in the thread?
The experienced players are some of the juiciest targets for scum, and some of them will be on the scum team too which invalidates them as potential advice givers. Advice like this also less likely to be listened to when it's being given in order to talk people off of a bandwagon rather than in a time when things are more peaceful.
You frequently talk about how important it is to say the important stuff as soon as possible. Bringing up your alternative win-con ahead of time so people don't think you're pulling it out of your ass later on. Sharing your opinions on lynching lurkers so you have an easier time pushing it when you feel like it has to be done (though thankfully it doesn't seem like we will need to do that this time).
I did that for the same reasons. How can you not get this?
This time, I thought it would be better if I could use my first post to put more players in the spotlight. As a matter of fact, that's what you believe I should be trying to do considering the way you criticized fallacy.
Okay, so do it. You asked a few mostly inactive players and Jim. It seems like you're following up on Jim, and at least fielding the questions thrown your way, so that's a fine start. Basically, what it comes down to is this: either the case against Jim will or won't shake out. If you're not 100% convinced that Jim is scum and you don't get any steam behind the wagon or get convinced he's town, will you have an opinion on the alignment of every other player?
Now, a lot of players are plenty active and some others it's currently more or less impossible to know anything about the alignment of, but that's the thought behind it. You should be preparing a better information set about the players here, and in a first post early in the game that usually involves asking them questions.
I've been making reads if that's what you're saying here, and I have opinions on the alignments of many players too. I also asked people questions. It was too early to tell how active or inactive certain players were going to be, but Fallacy, juicebox, and Jim were all active at the time I posted so it's not like I only asked inactive players.
As a matter of fact, now that I look back on it only 2/5 of the players I asked were inactive at the time I posted, but the way you phrased this question:
heydude6: any particular reason you chose to ask a game-unrelated meta question to a bunch of people, mostly inactives, rather than follow up some strand of analysis that already existed in the thread which the games you linked clearly indicated you are able to do?
made it sound like I was deliberately trying to ask inactive players to avoid having to deal with their non-existent responses.
That's dishonest
Dolores. How do you justify that?
The purpose of Day 1 in my opinion is not to lynch scum (since you're more likely than not going to lynch town anyway)
Wrong. Wrong. The first point in the next quote is also wrong.
Purpose of every day is to lynch scum. D1 is only any harder to lynch scum on because D2+ come after D1, where you already found all the scum during the daygame. Super easy, super possible. The least secret information exists in the game during D1, so everyone with secret information (i.e. scum) is going to act the most out of character with the rest of town. Killing scum is also even more valuable D1 because it shuts down the scumteam's access to their rolepowers, so passing over every last scrap of a chance to get that opportunity in favor of literally nothing is completely against town's interests.
Broadly speaking, it's never acceptable to worry about anything other than killing scum as town. Killing scum is how town wins.
That's an interesting take on Day1 that I've never heard before. A lot of the stuff you say makes a lot of sense though, and I appreciate the insight. The problem is that what you're saying is an ideal that only the top players can successfully put into practice. In all of the games I've ever played in, there has never been a day1 scum lynch.
Of course, things are different here. We have tons of expert players, a very long time for day 1, and plenty of activity. But even with all those in place, there are cracks which give this opportunity a chance to fail.
Right now, I'm in hot water because the scum decided to maliciously target me with a day action (and possibly Iceytea). I'm doing my best to defend myself, but because of my lack of experience I can very well still fail. The only thing stopping your ideal from falling apart is me, someone who you see as an idiot.
Of course the ideal won't fail if I'm scum, but scum!heydude must be quite a moron then. What was the purpose of scum!me pretending to receive a pm from webadict? To confirm that I'm town? Why would I create such an elaborate lie and risk getting it discovered when nobody really suspected me? Why would I risk receiving the potentially ruinous wrath of webadict?
Why would I then attack Iceytea with a day action, when he already was the runner-up for getting lynched? If that didn't happen, there wouldn't be people calling for a lynch and calling my pm a fake. If !Scum me wanted to get rid of him, I could have easily come up with a simple justification to move my vote away from Fallacy and towards Iceytea. That would break the Tie and put Icey next in line to be lynched, even if he removed his self vote.
If I did decide this was the best way to get rid of Iceytea, why did I use a method where successfully defending myself sheds no light on the guilt of Iceytea since his outburst could easily be rationalized as the mafia targeting him in order to make me look bad? It's like this plan is incredibly high risk, for only minimal reward! God, scum!heydude really is stupid! But you know, for an idiot, he sure seems to have a lot of brainpower in order to come up with these overly elaborate detailed plans.
I wonder what !townheydude's perspective must be like though.
He receives a malicious attack soon after making a big post. He decides that it would be best for the town if they were informed of this, because this a clear example of the scum taking action. He helpfully begins writing the details of the PM to let the town understand what they must look out for, when he realizes that he has an opportunity to provoke a reaction from the scum who sent it. So he sets a little trap just to see what happens. He makes sure to make the trap obvious to make his case against the person who falls for it more convincing to the town. Unfortunately, he misunderstood the rules about quoting PMs and so the PM debacle happened.
There was an unintended consequence of the PM debacle though. It gave town!Heydude's claim of being maliciously targeted more legitimacy, creating Scum's worst enemy: The confirmed towny. In a desperate attempt to get rid of him, scum decided to target Iceytea with another day action in order turn them against town!heydude. Or maybe Iceytea was scum the whole time. It sure is strange that their immediate instinct is to assume I sent it when doing so would put !scumHeydude in a lot of unnecessary danger. Doesn't that risk invalidating all of !scumHeydude's previous work at making him look town? Maybe there's something in the pm of the ability that was used on Icey that implicates me, but a malicious ability that gives a hint to the target about who used it on them sounds pretty awful. Oh well, it's a shame the ability prevents its victim from telling anyone about it, except when it allows them to share certain vague details. If Iceytea is innocent though, scum has no reason to worry. Either !townHeydude gets lynched, !townIceytea gets lynched, or maybe nobody gets lynched, but it doesn't shed light on their own identities.
Anyway, of those two scenarios which do you think makes more sense?
, but to get people talking and voting so you can use these actions and sayings as evidence for claims in future days.
Nah, this doesn't do anything. You need people talking and voting so that you can see their alignments by reading their posts. That's true. But there's no magical barrier stopping you from seeing that someone is scum and then lynching them on D1. We've got a 120 hr D1, it's not even like we especially need to work faster to do it or anything this D1, it's a virtual certainty that we'll have a substantial and well articulated case to end the day on unless it happened that the only non-town players were the inactives, and there aren't enough of them for that to even really seem possible.
Dead players don't tell you anything about the living players that you didn't already know, because you can always speculate that someone may or may not be scum and so consider how a player who may or may not be scum would post about another player if that player was or wasn't scum. Resolving the uncertainty doesn't add information to the situation, it winnows out some unnecessary information that applies to scenarios that are now known to be false. You should realistically be able to do a lot of this (filtering) yourself by considering what you have high confidence in and thinking less about the scenarios where those things aren't true. That's what townreads are for, and why good strong real genuine reliable townreads are super valuable.
It's a nice continuation of the point you made in the previous paragraph, but do you really think my flip won't have a drastic effect on how people perceive these current events and the alignments of
Iceytea and
you? If I flip scum, then Iceytea is either confirmed innocent or he pulled off one of the most epic buses in bay12 mafia history. If I flip town though, there will be more suspicion on Iceytea and some on you as well since you were one of the other people who claimed my PMs to be fake.
Excessively focusing on one person is antithetical to that goal for two reasons. One, that soup can only handle so many cooks, so other players won't feel the need to say much since once all that needs to be said has been. And two, you rob people of the ability to make a choice with their vote, since there's only one suspect. They can of course not vote, but the more real options you give a player, the more insight you receive from what they finally do choose. Consider this paragraph my own way of criticizing Fallacy.
So why aren't you doing anything in parallel to your case against Jim?
I give my opinions on bad plays when I see them. I was the first to criticize LuckyOwl's first post, I pointed out the folly in Fallacy of Urist's claimed game philosophy (though to you it doesn't count for some reason), I shared my opinion on Iceytea's slip-up. I'm doing things besides building a case against Jim. Especially now. I'm surprised you didn't notice.
Yes, your concerns about Fallacy's play are valid. No, they're not news. Personally, I don't thing they're super alignment indicative, and you want to convince me otherwise, please do so.
Compare his answer to yours. Both of you rejected my question, but Jim just brushes it aside while you at least say something constructive in your response. I find it uncharacteristically flippant. It may not seem like much yet, but we may see it in a different light later on in the game.
Jim has a lot less time that I do. Also, I never answered your question? I gave you shit for it, but it wasn't addressed to me and I don't think I ever responded to it directly.
You didn't answer the question, but you responded to it. You said it was a game-unrelated meta question, and then asked me a deceitful follow up. Jim gave me basically nothing. Then he tried to rush a hammer when he could have just lurked.
Your response wasn't direct, but does it even matter? The best responses I got were from people who it wasn't addressed to, plus Jim. You seem to assume that I asked that question with the belief that only those I addressed would answer it. In a perfect world everyone would have answered it.
I really dislike this idea you have that D1 is going to end in a mislynch. Please sincerely commit to finding and lynching scum, my dude.
The longer this day goes on, the more evidence appears to support your point. I look forward to seeing who it ends up being.