I think I was right. Zeriel internalized Monkgate not only as a mistake, but his mistake. I disagree! Zeriel, stop denying your awesomeness.
Monkgate was a scum error.
In the game in question, scum were very close to winning. For some reason they felt the need to get a mason lynched (I still don’t understand the reasoning). Why they didn’t just let the masons be and push for any other townie I do not know, but by false claiming they set up a catastrophic risk. If Town simply flipped a coin, they would have a 50-50 chance at winning, and 50-50 shot at giving up two scum for NOTHING. The problem is, it wasn’t a 50-50 coin flip. We discussed the issue to death and in the process scum revealed far more than they probably wanted to. You would have to ask Cookies what it was that led her to find the last scum, but I feel that the whole mason discussion certainly was a good place to look for scum.
- I recall scum stating that Idle was claiming with zuma because that’s who is the mason, he couldn’t simply pick an choose who the other mason was. This statement led to the realization that, yes, Idle thoughts had to pick zuma, because zuma was the only scum left who was a viable scum candidate. All other scum had voted for or been voted by a known mason. This conclusion led to evidence that USCDiver was Town as he also was a non-mason that had not voted for or been voted by a known mason.
- I recall scum asking for Mason breadcrumbs. I recall this making storyteller’s head explode in the forbidden thread, but in game the living masons had to play it cool. The thing is, since I was a real mason I had the correct answer. (1) Masons don’t breadcrumb and (2) since I was acutely aware of the need not to breadcrumb, I had been noting of all the little incidences since Day One that ‘might have given us away.’ None of these were intentional breadcrumbs, but they were valid points showing Zeriel (and Cookies) protecting me (and to a lesser extent storyteller. He was, um, shortlived). The end result was questioning by scum towards the real masons. This made the masons look more authentic since they had good answers while possibly exposing other scum. (Again ask Cookies, I don’t know what criterion she used to find the last scum).
- I recall scum pointing out that Idle had been key in lynching the first scum on Day One. Hello bussing.
Bottom line, yeah, if scum can pull off a fake mason claim it can be powerful (one might even say game breakingly powerful). The problem is pulling off a fake mason claim is prohibitively difficult. It’s like saying “if I win the lottery then I’ll be rich… easy right?”
I think the only fake mason claim that has worked is one where the scum team were given mason claims as their ‘safe claim.’