Okay, we need to get this game back on track. I understand that if two players come out and say they're Masons, you have to consider the case that they're a scum team. I didn't consider this much of a problem, because I thought it would be pretty clear after a bit of evaluation that BA and I weren't scum. My biggest worry about the council thing was that Ichi and/or Hydrad were scum and could somehow manipulate the situation. (I don't have a specific idea as to how, just general paranoia.)
Why you should believe we're telling the truth:
(1) Masons were a reward from killing the Witch. The reward was Council. This is a town reward, it has to benefit town in some way that doesn't just break the game. The award is to select two town members to be Masons and put them in a Neighborhood with two other players. Our rewards before this point were:
(i) A chance to protect against a night kill.
(ii) A supply of dice to hand out.
Each reward involved the entire set of living players, scum and town. In both cases, scum was involved in the selection process. In the second one, they could vote for themselves for the person to hand out dice. However, not a very exploitable situation, as they still have to hand out dice somewhere and if a scum did get selected and gave all the dice to his team, it would probably be trackable. And regardless, our entire die hoard goes up, which is generally good.
The next reward is for killing another monster, so it should be a Town benefit, but not overpowered. So, here are two scenarios for our next reward:
(iiia) [The truth, with some stipulation of details on my part] Two Town players are selected to be Masons and join a neighborhood with two other Neighbors (selected randomly from all other live players). They get a QT that night which will be open on the remaining nights. The Masons are given pseudonyms by the mod that they may use (but don't have to). Being explicitly told that the other Neighbors were selected from all other remaining players meant they could be scum, so pseudonyms would protect us from being targeted that night.
(iiib) [The ''conspiracy theory''] The scum team is forced into a QT. (Would this be different if three scum or one scum were left alive? How would this work at a general prize? No clue.) The scum team has to post in the QT and is given a pseudonyms that they can use. The scum team then decides to capitalize and claim they were made Masons.
(iiib') [A different version] Four players are selected at random, and two at random to get to use pseudonyms, or something like that.
It should be obvious that (iiib) and (iiib'), or the other incarnations of these, are silly. If I'm scum, I'm told I have to post in the QT, I just post "." and never go back again. Okay this might be a little dangerous because then the two Neighbors can figure out they should be town since the others aren't posting. I can then, of course, just kill one of them. Then there's only one person saying what went on in the QT, and it's completely useless. Or I use the opportunity to spread misinformation. Or I simply post in there as I normally would, and use the opportunity to get more insight on what town members are thinking.
In what way does this possibly benefit the town? How is this a prize?
The scenario (iiib') makes even less sense, because it has nothing to do with alignment.
Lastly, why would we be given pseudonyms at all? What's your motivation as mod!Jimmmmm to come up with that?
(2) BA and myself did not have the opportunity to come up with this ''plot''. Even if, somehow, you can possibly believe that two scum players would be given pseudonyms to join in a Neighborhood as a town prize, it does not make sense with the way things went down here.
If I had seen this as an opportunity to come up with a clever ploy, we would have had to talk about this in scum QT. The Council QT opens up at 2:30 AM. BA starts posting on his own at 3:30 AM. I have a 9-5 job; I'm asleep during this time. Why would scum!BA start posting, unprompted, on his own, in a QT that he shares with town, that he knows was awarded to Town as a Town prize, right off the bat with no plan or consideration on what it means for us and what's going on? Any scum player would wait and think things through and figure everything out---certainly stop to think and discuss with his partner about the pseudonym situation---not just start posting. Scum has to be careful and think things through, not just act and post randomly.
Give me a possible reasonable explanation for scum!BA behaving like this.
Moreover, I posted as soon as I could as well, which was the next morning while I was at work. My first post was a bit before 10 AM. My very first post was to admit that BA and I (under pseudonyms) were confirmed town to each other. Hydrad and I have back-and-forths for a bit, and BA is gone throughout all of this, until the afternoon. I'm gone while BA is posting and BA is gone while I'm posting.
I'm certainly not going to jump in the Council QT and propose that my scum partner and I were confirmed town to each other without first discussing it with him. Certainly Faust and Ash should realize this. I talk through all kinds of possible scenarios, even ones that don't really matter or are very unlikely, in the scum QT. Even the one case where I "threw an audible" in Innovation as Mafia, I had talked about the possibility with Faust on the previous night, and in that situation I felt I was cornered and I had to. It's completely absurd that I'm going to throw a wild curveball and just "hope" BA (who would be first-time scum in this scenario) would just pick up and play along correctly.
The other case, where BA came up with this himself, is not even in the same plane of existence as something possible. The confusion over the Mason role and what he was told by Jimmm is just too hard to fake. He even asked questions to and got confirmation from Jimmmm.
(3) This entire thing would be completely unnecessary as scum. We could have just not claimed anything and not drawn attention to ourselves. The QT could be completely ignored (our identities not having been revealed) or we could post there inconspicuously. There's no scenario here where we had to take this gambit.
We should be treating BA and myself as confirmed town players, because that's the scenario that makes sense. I'm pretty shocked that anyone would be so adamant against believing it (after some initial understandable skepticism), but Hydrad verifying everything BA and myself say and said should be enough to convince doubters. The fact that there are three players arguing to lynch me and BA and only two scum left is just baffling to me. Okay this was probably my fault, and me coming out and saying "I'm town start believing me" wasn't the most convincing thing, so I'm sorry. Though I kind of expected people (that had played with me before) to see my unwillingness to consider a scenario where people would think I'm not town as much more likely to come from town!me than scum!me.
The bottom line is, BA and I were unable to orchestrate such a plot, and us being given the opportunity to orchestrate such a plot is not in line with the facts of the game.
Also, especially to Faust who was so adamant about lynching the low rollers (remember Ichi?), BA and myself have played three 12's between us so far. At some point you'd think we'd store some of those and use them for scum purposes instead of town. Maybe one scum playing high rolls for town points makes sense, but both of them?
So let me ask this. Hypothetically, if BA and myself are IC's, is no lynch still the right scenario? (This isn't an argument, it's a real question. I mean, would you be coming to the same conclusion on strategy if you 100% believed me and BA right off the bat.)