Well, I think it's time I finally give my reads list. I'm going to have to go on an errand soon, so I don't have the time to go through everyone's posts again. As a result, I'm not going to give a read for every player, but only the ones that leave an impression on me. Once I'm free again, I'll probably take the time to look through the posts and provide a a complete version of this list, while fleshing out
Dolores: Town-lean so far. Scum hunts aggressively and is keen to verbally whip the town into playing better (at least based on his definition of playing better). A mafia enjoys an incompetent town, so I doubt they would try as hard as Dolores does. If this is how they usually play though, then maybe they're just keeping up appearances for meta-reasons
Fallacy of Urist: I'm finally coming around to the idea that they might be town. Emphasis on might. They dropped that silly act at the beginning of the game and are actually trying now. In my opinion, he's managed to make the most persuasive argument for lynching Tric, yet has the awareness to know that our goal is to lynch scum, not 3rd parties. He's not settling for a Trickmagic lynch the way Vector is.
There are things I find questionable though:
Revealing his french fry powers. The main downside of a role reveal in mafia is that the mafia knows what you're capable of and will try to play around it. That's why roles that can't be punished by the mafia very well tend to be imbalanced (I'm still salty about the self-targeting transporter). What this means though is that scum have less to risk with a role reveal, and so such reveals should be scrutinized. A good townie will only reveal their role when doing so can provide a tremendous benefit to the town, like a cop who's making a pivotal accusation. Threatening people with an ability that Fallacy himself admits to be weak does not provide a tremendous benefit to the town. We can't even consider the possibility of him deliberately understating the power of his ability to stay out of the scum's radar, because he actually used it. If any of the four people fallacy targeted are scum, then the entire scum team knows what he's capable of. It doesn't matter if Webadict took it back. Once that information is out, you can't hide it anymore.
That opening play: I still think it was a bad idea. You say that it was a trap to catch scum who overreacted. Has it actually benefited you in any way? Give a summary of the benefits if you can.
... there's actually a Hat In Time villain who uses contracts - the Snatcher. Not sure if it's likely to be relevant, but it's an interesting thought.
Definitely not relevant. That Hat in Time villain is named Snatcher, not Beelzebub.
Trickmagic: Definitely third party. Some people say he's scum and I'm just not seeing it. I know role names aren't alignment indicative (maybe hat kid got caught in another contract again), but abilities can be. An item shop usable by everyone and an ability that automatically harvests macguffins from dead players both give me 3rd party vibes. Can any of the veterans here tell me if there's a precedence for people with this kind of ability being scum?
The fearlessness behind the reveal is still scummy though. If any of the scum team has a hat, then TricMagic has an incentive to want them dead that can't be talked out of. They can of course give him the hat, but why do that when you can just kill him? Not a problem if Tricmagic is scum though.
If that were the case though, scum would have already given him their hats and given him a head start on his stated goal of becoming more powerful. I don't think Web would let this happen, so if Tric were scum somehow, then the hats would all belong to townies. Since all items are give able, you would suddenly have an easy way of confirming town.
Since a random hat distribution and a town-only hat distribution both lead to absurd mechanical exploits when Tric is Scum, I have to conclude that he really is a third-party. Unless Tric has massively lied about how his role works. That's also a bit absurd from someone like Tric, but I think he may have done this before. Can any of the veterans confirm if this is the case?
He could also be town, but-
Bahahahahahah! Sorry, I couldn't say that with a straight face. It's more likely than him being scum, but it would be hilarious if that were the case after everything that's happened.
So, since Tric is third party, what should we do about him? As far as I know, the badge shop benefits the town more than scum, and the hats do not seem like they can do much actual
harm. The most dangerous ones are Time-stop hat, Dweller mask, and Brewer's hat, while sprint hat and ice hat are outright altruistic. I don't think Tric is lying about what the hats do because the person who has the real thing would have called it out.
To me, the decision all revolves around whether he has a night-kill. If he does, then we need to get rid of him cause a third party would totally murder Iceytea for their hat. If the worst thing he can do to town is vote though, then I'm totally keen to leave him in search of bigger fish.
Notquitethere: Hasn't posted much, but what little he has gives me scum vibes.
heydude6 do you play well under pressure?
He asks me if I struggle under pressure, and when I say yes, I soon afterwards get pressure in the form of the contract double-target that pits Iceytea and I against eachother.
Another thing I had a problem with was his vote analysis.
All Player's Current Cases and Their Reasons
FallacyofUrist - 4maskwolf (low content voting), heydude6 (random vote?),
IcyTea31 - Jim Groovester (random vote with more reasons added later), Toaster ('scum slip')
Luckyowl - Nirur Torir (hasn't answered questions yet), NJW200 (for buddying IcyTea hard), Juicebox (bizarre playstyle), TricMagic (inconsistent logic - 4th vote on the wagon!)
Toaster - IcyTea31 (not having a town mindset), FallacyofUrist (random vote),
ToonyMan - dolores (disengaged style)
TricMagic - Leafsnail (posting from a scum mindset), ToonyMan and Vector (for persuing a 3rd party wincon)
Juicebox - Luckyowl (writing a wall of text is scummy?)
Nirur - notquitethere (low pressure pressure vote)
===
Quick Summary of How Bullshit These Cases Are In order of Most to Least
1 - Cases Of Dubious Substance
LuckyOwl, Leafsnail, Toaster, Jim Groovester, IcyTea31
2 - Low Effort Pressure & Random Voters Who Still Need To Form A Case
NQT, Heydude6, Nirur Torir, FallacyofUrist
3 - Cases That Don't Actually Hunt Mafia
Toonyman, Vector (third party hunting isn't necessarily bad but it is something that's very easy for scum to do productively while seeming active)
4- Cases Which Might Go Somewhere
NJW200, Juicebox, IcyTea, 4maskwolf, TricMagic, dolores
So right now I'm thinking, lynch out of #1 pile, and expand the pile to include any of #2 that don't come up with anything good. Review #3 on later days, and reassess #4 as and when new developments arise.
He claimed that my vote on fallacy was a random vote, and ignored the fact that I voted him because the tunneling strategy he claimed to be using at the beginning of the game was very bad, perhaps deliberately bad as an excuse to avoid having to properly hunt scum.
Iceytea also had a problem with his analysis and when he asked him about how it was actually done, he said this.
How does one read these tables? Are you reading people's cases only on where their votes are?
The first list was a current vote count with all the reasons for each vote listed. Talk is cheap, I mostly just care about votes. The second list was a list of how spurious I thought each of the cases was.
Iceytea states the problem with this response in a very elegant manner.
Thing is, most cases are the whole conversation preceding and succeeding them, not just the single post with the actual vote. This is a very non-holistic method of evaluation, and also very different from the methods I've seen you use in the past. What's changed?
A lot of people seemed to have been happy with the list, but that makes sense. If you're trying to damage a person's credibility, you should only focus on a small amount of people. If you used these kinds of methods on everyone, no one would put much stock into what you have to say.
There are also some cases of blatant rolefishing.
Luckyowl
Well, if I'm going to die. I'll utilize my role.
TricMagic I just used my day action on you. When I use my action a passive skill is trigger that allows me to choose another player. I chose IcyTea31.
What does your ability do?
Tric, a lot of players think you're 3rd party. You're quite likely to die today or at least catch a hostile night action at this rate. Do you want to claim what your role really is?
I already explained why rolefishing benefits scum, but I am particularly bothered by the one done against Tricmagic. In addition to a really threatening tone, if he really is gonna die tonight, then we'll find out on his flip. This question only has a point if Tric survives, but who would be benefiting from that knowledge in this case? Without his hats, Tric can't really do much. He definitely can't help the scum tonight. I think this question is only being asked because scum wants to know if Tric could become a threat to them in the future. If they have one of his hats, then he is already their enemy. The only question left to ask at that point then, is whether he needs to be taken care of. If they really want that information though, I'd rather have them waste their scumkill to get it.
It's not an ironclad case, but I think there is room to doubt
NQT's intentions. Something I haven't seen anyone do so far.
Damn. This ended up being bigger than I thought. I'm not even close to done, but I put off my errand long enough.
NQT isn't my only scum read, but it's the simplest case I can make.