Since the only distinction that matters to us is townie/werewolf, trying to deduce other roles only helps the wolves.
Just popping in to say “put me on the list” for Game #2.
I don’t think I understand why the Masons should remain silent about who is and who isn’t a Mason.
All Masons know is that they and a couple of other people are innocent. We non-gifted townsfolk don’t know it. The werewolves do know it already. The only value the Masons have is to pull a couple people together in shared immunity from lynching. If we believe one of them we believe them all.
So, why not speak?
Okay, I guess if someone is a Mason, they are also not a Seer or an Angel. Is that the reason?
But if we know who is also a Mason, we know who isn’t a werewolf. A Mason is necessarily not a werewolf.
Hey now…I’m originally from Humboldt, doncha know. 
My family still lives there, and someday I’ll be returning there to live in rural bliss. But you’re right. We prefer to think of it as the “middle of nowhere”, or whatever keeps the yuppies from colonizing. 
I’d like to play next round, and see if I can not die and screw over my faction the first freaking day. (I shall be avenged!)
What the third faction? Is it vampires? Witches? Oh, let’s have it be witches.
Pretty much, yeah. If the townies know who all the Masons are, the werewolves also have a smaller pool of candidates from which to try to find the other townie specialists. Generally speaking, there are only two situations when you should take the risk of outing yourself: One, which we’ve just seen with Wanderers, is when you are in imminent danger of being lynched. The other is when you think the werewolves are weakened enough that outing yourself will influence enough votes to guarantee a townie victory. In this latter case, you better be sure about it, because if you screw up it could hand victory to the werewolves.
A werewolf pretending to be a townie specialist would do so whenever they think it would do the most damage. That could happen at any time, and is highly dependent on current circumstances.
Oh, and I’ll play next round. I’d be OK with moderating it too.
names added by me for clarification
actually, JSexton was the first to vote Menocchio.
I’m up for another round. I’ll have a better idea of strategies and the like by then… 
No, no, a thousand time no. The wolves kill someone every night. Ideally for them, someone who is not a vanilla townie. Do not make this job easier for them.
Because the wolves want to kill power roles at night. A Mason is a power role. Exposing them unneccesarily means they probably die, and we lose the voices of people we know we can trust.
If we don’t know they are masons, we don’t know we can trust them. Once we do know they are masons, their only function is to tell us who else we can trust. Once both of those things are done, they aren’t worth any more than a “vanilla townie” so why would they “probably die”?
After further review, I’m letting my vote for **JSexton **stand.
There were a few others that aroused my suspicion, but after rereading the thread, I couldn’t find enough evidence to vote for someone else. Maybe I’m just being stubborn, but there are still some things JSexton said that just don’t seem right, so for now I’m sticking with my first instinct.
I don’t know if I should really spell this out, but I’m guessing at least one of the scum has figured it out. A big portion of this game is confirming townies. Masonhood is one way to do it. Seer results are another. Those are the only 100% ways. The more confirmed townies we have alive, the less places there are for scum to hide, metaphorically speaking. Say we have ten people alive. If we have two of those people confirmed then we need only examine eight posters for scumminess.
“But,” you say, “why not have all the masons claim now, so we can elminiate them from consideration right away?”
The reason is that the relative power of a mason goes up proportionally to the number of players left alive. Keeping them secret makes them more likely to survive till the endgame, when they become even better. Say we’re down to 5 people left alive, and we’re hunting for our last scum. Say we’ve miraculously kept our other two masons alive and unclaimed. All of a sudden, they claim, and now we only have to look at three people. Do you see how much better that is than the scenario in my first paragraph?
Because if it turns out that they’re lying, we just lynch them tomorrow, having made a neat 1-for-1 trade that’s very much in our favor.
Can you point out what those things are, so I can explain?
Because, as I said, lynching a claimed Mason is almost never the right play. There are some odd circumstances where it’s right, but they’re rare, and not at all resembling what we have here. I unvoted out of reflex, basically.
Why witches? I think vampires would be more fun.
I don’t see why Wanderers would lie about being a Mason at this point, but then again, I haven’t even looked at the online strategy stuff that other people have (maybe later). But I’m gonna unvote moonstarssun and put in a vote for Ogre. I was momentarily suspicious of him on Day One, but not for long enough to put it into a post.
I’d like to sign up for next game, too, if there’s still openings.
A question about game mechanics. Sorry if this should already be clear to me.
Does an individual have any reason to save his/her own life in particular? Or is it all just about which team will win?
-FrL-
Actually, you’ve explained most of them as we’ve gone along, and generally quite well. Perhaps that’s the problem. You seem to know an awful lot about the game, how it should be played, why everyone should do this or should not do that. If we would all just listen to you and follow your lead, the werewolves wouldn’t have a chance.
It just seems a bit over the top. You come off as too condifent, too helpful, and almost always ready with a well thought out answer to any question. You just seem too good to be true.