Count me as another person who agrees with gfish's thoughts above.

I also realized (reminded by something Rokk said) that I actually ran afoul of this during Archer. I had asked if all the Archers were named "Sterling" or "Archer" in their role PMs. My intent wasn't to try to catch mafia out by not knowing the proper format (I was trying to investigate the clone theory, I believe), but it certainly could've had that effect. However, folks in thread shot it down (per the no quoting role PMs rule) and I moved on. Pretty similar to what happened here, I think.

But how was the mafia supposed to figure out what the town powers were called? They could easily have been something like Girathon mentioned upthread, or even just named for the pokemon. I could see Lapras being a bus driver, and the power being called "SWIM", "HM04: SWIM" , or just "You are known for transporting people and other Pokemon on your back. You are a bus driver" and not really having a name. How on earth is mafia supposed to figure that out?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure quoting the exact win condition is a big reason this was put into place. " You win when there are no threats to the town" vs "You are town and win when the town is safe" vs "Blahblah (town): *role info* You win when no threats to your faction remain" are all valid ways of saying somebody is town, but could also be used to catch mafia.

I don't think that's exactly true. I don't think anybody would have a problem saying "You are Pikachu and you're a bus driver? How does that work?" But when you ask for specific wording it gets problematic, because...

This is very true. Asking for an exact power name is like asking if your power names were bolded or italicized - it's trying to use information that (generally) isn't intended by the mod to be used in the game. It'd be the same thing as somehow being able to track which players sent PMs to the mod... obviously you could easily catch mafia that way, since generally actions are posted on the proboard, but that's not information the game is designed to rely on.

All that said, I'm not trying to criticize Ice in any of this. Like I said, I did something very similar recently, and it wasn't with malicious intent, so I'm very inclined to give Ice the benefit of the doubt (especially given his subsequent posts after the game).

Like gfish said, just armchair theorycrafting.

It's been done and without modkill but then I danced it very carefully so it was tough to tell for the Town.


Agreed and I don't think not only can we not get a universal standard but we shouldn't. As everyone likes to harp: it's a game of wits and deception. Why standardize it down to boardgame rules? There seems to be a bigger issue - and I would say most of us have been guilty at one time or another (eg: a set or role was fine so long as it worked out for you but man, that Xykon was far more broken than bolded Ghost Writing) - with subjectivity changing a little too much on a game by game. I can think of plenty of times people did things similar to Ice and without this fallout.

Fair enough but that grey should also give people wiggle room. Ice is being aggressive about format? Push back that he's trying to see if you'll risk a modkill because you disagree with his interpretation. If he gives his power as an example then you have info to set up your power name. It's a battle of words.

Yet on games where it's been phrased oddly, it's been done including by some current active players (heck, even the results timestamp was used but it was unreliable once people caught on).

That's one reason mods started adding win conditions to the Rules. It wasn't so you knew how to win but to prevent the question.

No. It's claiming a role that's obviously not Town but because you aren't Town you didn't realize the theme and get busted (it's origin and most egregious example is someone who didn't even pay attention to the name of the game and didn't realize it was a villain game and he was claiming someone who kills villains).

Bob, you weren't called out by the Town so much as discredited by the Mafia so not sure that's a good example.

It would be something along the lines of claiming to be "A gentile Brontosaurus" in a game where town are humans and mafia are predator dinosaurs...but the mafia thought the town was nice dinosaurs.

I didn't know that dinosaurs practiced Judeo-Christian religions.

I apologize for my lack of participation.

The night I came back, I found out I was dead in this and elsewhere.

My targets for the game were
N1- Sent in "No action"
N2- Redshirt
N3- Gira

What happened to me on Night 3 that my kill didn't go off?

No worries m8 like I said, you were at least sending in actions. Ice kept misdirecting you at the start so it was useful to know if you were taking an action or not.

(Speaking of that, how is it normally handled if someone is MD'd but takes no action? I assumed there was no target to misdirect but wasn't sure if some mods made the MD'd player target randomly instead.)

Ens Doctored Gira that night I believe. (That was the ZAPP! I. The writeup).

A MD would do nothing in that situation.

A CMD would come down to mod preference. I've seen forced targeting and I've seen no result.

My bad, man. I didn't look at the time stamp carefully.

I'm not sure what you mean, here.

I love autocorrect....

Hey. If you're focused on that, it's your career not mine.