I was a bus driver.

I asked what your power was.

You had to choose one of your powers you felt safe claiming.

You chose "Bus Driver" which was true...but unfortunately was a duplicate town power.

It's similar and used as a way to determine scum in all games on the 'realms, think about it:

"You are "such and such name" a character who is really cool. Because you're so cool you are the town "Roleblocker". You may target a player and their action will fail for the night."

Then in game...

who are you? "oh, I'm "such and such name."

Orlly? What power do you have? "oh, I'm a Roleblocker".

Both are ways to bust players.

In Archer Mafia I was pressured and had to claim "Burt Reynolds" as a townie. Once I did, JackOfHearts had no problem rallying everyone against me and voting me out. The mafia complained in that game because there was almost mass claiming early, but they just killed off all the big names and won the game.

Honestly, Girathon claiming "Bus Driver" is why I started in on him in the first place.

Should we not demand a power claim either because the mafia has NO CLUE what powers the town may have?

Should we not demand name claims because the mafia has no clue who might be in the town?

I mean, I ultimately see Girathon's point in a way. Which I why I did say I'll watch out for it in the future...

But the blanket statement "don't quote your role PM" seems to be assessed and applied differently in every game here with a great degree of variable leniency...so it's tough to see where the line is for players.

Just look at the division of players in this game and their opinions on what I asked.

It is interesting to see what people think of as acceptable and what people think is unacceptable.

For example, I think it is totally acceptable to ask a person how their role justifies their power, asking for a summary. "I am a role blocker because my pokemon attack stuns" or something like that. Asking for names of things is asking for specific text, so I would find that unacceptable.

Keep in mind, this is an armchair discussion for me. I like theorycrafting.

This mirrors my own thinking. Paraphrasing is ok, direct quoting is not.

Technically, stating your exact name and power every game is "direct quoting" of text. Semantics, I know, but I think it creates a bit of the variable leniency I was speaking to.

I actually ran a few games where the players could not quote their direct name, but they could summarize it. This way one of my tropes games. The names were stuff like:

"Reluctant hero who inherited his father's magic sword, and is the hero of prophesy."

This mirrors my thinking as well.

Indeed.

However, terms like "roleblocker" or "bus driver" are both universal in HCRealms games and rarely duplicated in the same game.

So there's no way to prove someone town because their pm said they were a roleblocker because everyone says roleblocker. Even differences like "commander" vs "controlled misdirector" would never be enough to give you the slightest amount of suspicion.

So none of you - being Ice beat me to it - will ever state your name, power role or alignment?

Again, common terminology or lack of duplication prevents these from being effective and unfair scum catching tools.

Fake claiming a character someone else has is the only issue, which should be corrected with open themes, safeclaims and/or janitors.

First, you and I simul-posted but ok. Being you didn't want to acknowledge that...

What about games where there are miltiples of the same ID? (Eg: The Prisoner, Paranoia, Archer, etc)?

Universal terms is fine but names aren't universal and there are multiple names by which Pokemon could have justified a power. It's not like this was a game where the source is just obscure enough that when Ice says "I'm not asking you if you busdrive I'm asking you what they called your power?" it was tough to gamble, "Let's look at the Pokedex and see some of my moves."

There are -ample- games where the Town has some information the Mafia did not and people don't say it was foul sportsmanship if, say, you ask "What exactly is your win condition" (seem to recall at least one person in this game having done that in prior) because they knew it was phrased oddly.

Every time you give the results of an info PM you're quoting from the mod. "You may not quote your role PM" is widely accepted as "Don't quote the whole PM". People are quite fine picking and choosing bits. It seems the parts they're ok with tends to vary based on game results. Figuring out a power name is part of a role PM isn't much different than figuring out the Town has a unifying ID, ergo the OMAC example.

Would quoting a faked role PM be grounds for modkill? I can't believe it wouldn't have been attempted yet, similar to the fake edited posts.

This is true. It's a subjective view, where different players and different mods would have applied the same standard differently. But with as many players and mods that we have, I don't know that there's a universal right way.

This makes sense to me.

I see asking for an exact power name as more of questioning the formatting than the content. So name, power and alignment is content, and it's content that's shareable unless your role says otherwise. Anything more than that is a grey area. Paraphrasing flavor text or a power justification is different than verbatim power names.

Well this is clearly jumping off the deep end. What I've been gathering is that a lot of people feel it's crossing a line to ask for flavor as opposed to game mechanic stuff. There are exceptions -- like character name -- that make sense, but that's the gist.

The idea is to not penalize a player for the mod's choice in role structure/wording.

For example, I would feel uncomfortable asking a player what exact time their role PM was sent. I don't see much, if any difference between that and asking what someone's power is "called" like happened here.

There are plenty of flavors we could have added. Say, a RBer is given the power: "Poke-block" and a busdriver is given the power: "Poke-driver". That's not something a mafia member could figure out. I think of it like a townie using a lie-detector power that the mod never gave them.

Wait, I thought asking "What exactly is your win condition?" was the classic example of what you can't do.

Also, I know I learned what OMAC stood for a few years ago, but I thought it referred to someone claiming a character that had already been killed?

Totally allowable: "I'm a neutral survivor" is what any sane person would state. "I have to give gifts to everyone." Looking for the gist is different from looking for the phrasing.

The first goes to the concept and the second goes to wording, which is trying to get around the 'unable to post your role' restriction.

When a player is trying to meta-game based on phrasing and word choice, that is the illicit meta-gaming discouraged and prohibited; when the player is trying to get an understanding of the role, that is the permissible and useful play that is encouraged.