Reads Lists: A personal perspective

Type: Play Author: LicketyQuickety

What are reads and how do you do them

See how to makes reads in this article, mastin2's Recognizing Reads: Confidence and Caution

What is a Reads List?

A Reads-List is a comprehensive list of Reads for all remaining players left in the game. It should be noted that this is my own personal perspective on what a reads list is and how to do one so YMMV.

How To Organize Your Reads List

Strongest Town Read(s) to strongest Scum Read(s)

Simple. Prioritise your Reads into either strongest Scum Read to strongest Town Read or vise versa while giving your less strong reads in the middle

Why Do It This Way

Its good to do it this way to show who you would most like to lynch and who you would least like to lynch

Categorically

Another way to do a Reads List is by separating your reads into as many categories as you would like, but it is most typical to have 3 categories consisting of Town, Null and Scum.

Why Do It This Way

Doing it this way will let people know right away who your Town/Scum/Null Read are.

Combination

Within the categories of Town, Scum and Null (or whatever categories you might have them in) You can within each category give a list from strongest Town Read(s) to strongest Scum Read(s)

When to do a Reads List

You can really do them at any time, however, it is sometimes beneficial to give a reads list a key points in the game such as end of the day (especially if its looking like you're going to get lynched), beginning of the day, middle of the day or just when you feel there is a lot of pressure on you.

Sometimes there is a string of reads lists given by players in the game and that's a good time to do one as well. That allows people to see how a lot of players are reading people within a relatively short period of time in between posts.

Why do a Reads List

The answer to this is really very simple which is for the convenience of Town. Ever had a game where you couldn't quite remember what Player X's read on Player Y was? Well a Reads List solves this problem giving your complete unbiased opinion of everyone in the game all in one convenient spot for Town to observe.

General Advice On Doing A Reads List

You usually want to include a short summary of your thought process on all the players left in the game as well as something that tells what you think their alignment is. This is largely dependent on the game you are playing, what players you are playing with and the overall feel or flow of the thread.

It is not uncommon to have people question your reads and a Reads List is no different from that. A lot of the time people are going to ask about one or more Reads you have provided in your Reads List so be prepared to answer questions about your read on individual players.

Reads List As Town

You always want to think through your reads when doing a Reads List and you always want to be honest about your reads as Town

And never provide a Read on someone who you do not really feel Reads that way to you if you are Town. Sometimes the best thing to do is just say you don't really have a read on that person one way or another if you don't actually have a Read on them.

Reads List As Scum

For me, the idea of providing a Reads List as Scum is to make it impossible for Town to POE your reads to find the rest of the Scum team.

As Scum, Providing a reads list is a great way to confuse the town if it looks like you are about to get lynched as scum. I'd suggest if that's the case to not give a reads list where you have all your Scum buddies as the same alignment since people will be able to POE that pretty successfully if you do.

You also want to make your reads look as believable as possible. If you are providing a change of a read on someone so people cannot POE your reads to find Scum, make sure you provide as legitimate reasons for why your read has changed as possible.