Spew is looking at the flipped scum players posts and using that to attempt to evaluate the alignment of alive players. It's uh...difficult to explain more than that, and even harder to explain how to do it. Sort of looking for interactions/posts you don't think they'd make to a partner, or say about a partner (or that they would, but that's messier to work out). Need to sort of be careful with it since good scum players can try and play around that. Best example I can give you this game was that Vaimes's attitude towards Tom/Fontisian re; the whole 75%/25% one/the other sort of spewed them town since he was trying to push/keep focus between the two of them, leave them as possible ML openings and make the assumption there's a scum inside them when there wasn't really a reason why both couldn't just be town.

 

Are you sure you're not thinking of not looking at your rolecard?

 

Oh hey look at me not getting lynched and ending every day voting scum
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Gg all

Even Newcomb

 

I think you did pretty well considering people here didn't know your meta.

Good luck for when you rand scum the first time. Just try to get people to like you and / or feel bad about lynching you, that seems to work for me.

 

@Lyric don't listen to these people. The right way to play is just do stuff til you win.
I have a moderate success rate

(Though also being town sucks)

 

Your rolecard should include knowing who your teammates are, if you have any.

The entire game of mafia is predicated on the concept of the informed minority vs. the uninformed majority. The basis for most, if not all scumreads is some form of TMI. A player not knowing who is buddies are, also doesn't know who the town are. They are, for all intents and purposes, villagers with a different wincon.

Imagine if someone had made a not w/w read on Citrus/Vaimes, based on something Citrus said before he learned Vaimes was his partner.

That read would have been correct. And we could have actually lost the game off that. Just because it didn't happen here doesn't make that not a huge, huge deal.

You have to know who your partners are because the burden of TMI is something that's required for the game to work.

 

Don't worry Newcomb, it ended up being the worst case scenario for me to do that with ignoring Vaimes in scum-chat practically all of D1 lol

I mean if you really squint at things, supposedly a perfect scum player can post exactly what they would do as town in that situation and compartmentalize information to fit that mindset. A scum player can theoretically fake something for unaligned w/w, so I don't know if that makes it a huge huge deal, although it's probably some degree of deal if the meta on a site is so incredibly strong that alignments are always known that you take it for granted and then it causes an issue.

Regardless, between the player list and my role card (like seriously, I'm supposed to be town in thread AND a freaking neighbor chat???), I was perfectly happy taking all the advantages I could get that weren't in the slightest explicitly against the rules
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To add, I think it's looking at your role card that 100% has to be explicitly forced (scum HAS to know that they are scum), but I guess the logic behind that can be applied to argue the logic behind knowing your scummates so fair enough
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I'm not sure if I was reading into something on Regfan or not with him being neutral, but I'll take yes and feeling slightly better about this game

 

I was a VT. Gemmas a troll.

 

Ah, guess I'll slink back to didn't-do-anything-right land then lol

 

The entire deal is that that's the challenge of playing scum, to fake that.

Like, yeah, a perfect scum player would be able to perfectly fake this interactions to look unaligned. The point is you're not supposed to be able to bypass having to fake it at all by actually not knowing it.

How is this even, like, a point of contention?

 

I mean you could read to the auto-merge where I realized my logic wasn't great, but yes

 

Derp, sorry. Jumped the gun. It's a pet peeve of mine. I'm pretty much the Game Integrity czar over at MU so my sensors are a bit heightened.

 

Gg all and gz town
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When did I become a professor

 

Game integrity aside, and it is a big thing, I'd also point out that especially in a 2-player wolfteam not knowing or communicating with your partner at all is pretty... suboptimal, and if not for you then for them. Part of what makes me able to play wolf without going insane is having teammates that I know I can joke with, discuss the game with, and a place where we can discuss what's going on. If someone just doesn't show up in the chat and seems to be ignoring the fact that they're part of a team, for better or worse, it makes the wolves' chances of winning substantially lower, makes me enjoy the game much less, and would probably make me care less about the fate of the other wolf when it comes down to it because they're not making the effort to play the team part of this game. Don't know how much that matters to you and I get that you were trying to make the game more playable for yourself, but it's not nothing.

With regards to "supposedly a perfect scum player can post exactly what they would do as town in that situation and compartmentalize information to fit that mindset", this again only really works if the other players aren't very good at finding wolves. A wolf player who only did exactly what they would do as town is (imo) a bad wolf player, because either they're a good villager, in which case they have to be honest to themselves and find wolves, which'll probably result in bussing if any teammates make a wrong move, or they're not a great villager in which case they don't really have an impact on the game and get PoE'd out of existence soon enough. Blending in and appearing villagery is a significant part of what you need to do as a wolf, but if the cost is not actively trying to fulfill your wincon it's not going to go that well.

Let's say you're acting like a perfect villager, everyone believes you and thinks you're lock v because you're playing just like you did that last game when you won with town. Then maybe there are a few votes on one of your teammates. You think to yourself, "ok so what would I do as a villager", and since maybe Newcomb is on there and you would probably sheep him a little you're like okay I'd always vote this guy as a villager. Rinse and repeat, then you're the only person left. Thing is, you didn't start any of these wagons on your teammates, you don't have access to any other wolf power roles, all you have is towncred. The other people alive? They probably were pretty villagery too, maybe they actually pushed your fellow wolves, maybe they're just more villagery. You're left with nothing.

It's not to say that you won't win with that strategy, or trying to emulate that as best you can, but it's entirely a passive way of playing wolf and will only get you so far. Playing against opponents of a certain calibre, good tone or being villagery only goes so far, and I question whether, say, doing things ie bussing that are actively against your own wincon just to look better to the thread as a whole is worth it if the only goal is for yourself to get to the end of the game without getting killed or found out.

Iunno.

 

I might be a special case since i dont HAVE to act like towntom when I'm a wolf since its always acting etc, but I think the most important thing is playing to your wincon rather than blending in.

Like, if you're a wolf you win the game by lynching enough townies. Period. Yes you have to Not Get Lynched but people focus on being townread like it matters at all as long as you never become the best lynch.
I live in this spot in readslists as either alignment but if everyone has you as a light scumread but has people they want to lynch more you are golden

 

tfw tom's never the best lynch but he's always the best lynch

 

Thanks so, so much for the responses everyone! They've been really helpful/I've been thinking about them a lot, really appreciate the thoughtful answers. I thinkk I have a better idea of quite a few things now.

@Regfan You are a star <3

 

(You should keep playing here. We need more women.)

 

Gg. Have words and stuff I'll post this weekend after this client is over, just posting this placeholder to hold my lazy ass to that.

 

I haven't forgotten about this. Just no real internet access until the 6th!