So, since WW responded to my case, I will respond to this as well:
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.
BUt how does this Neighborhood benefit town? You argue yourself that a reward that gives no benefit makes no sense. Masons, fine, that's a reward. But how is the council itself a reward?
(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?
And here's where you're fundamentally wrong. Suppose that, in (iiib), scum doesn't post in the QT and nobody claims Alice or Bob the next morning. Then we know that Alice and Bob must be the scum. Which consequently means that neither Ichi nor Hydrad can be scum. So if Alice and Bob don't claim, they create two ICs. If they claim, well, that a good spot to start looking for scum. So do you really think the reward in this case gives no benefit? I think this makes perfect sense.
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?
The pseudonyms are obviously for scum. Just a Neighborhood is little reward at all. I think you were also forced to use these pseudonyms.
(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.
Easy. first and foremost, even under pseudonym, BA wants to appear townie. Not posting is not townie. Plus, the pseudonym protects him, so why not post and try to manipulate?
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.
See, here's where I am suspicious. Why does it take you to claim the Masons? That BA doesn't claim Masons is suspicious, because in a BA/WW scumteam, I expect you, WW, to plan such fakeclaims, since you're the experienced one.
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.
Of course as scum you want to claim quickly, in order to be able to make this exact argument. But for all we know, you
had the chance to inform BA first. That doesn't necessarily take, like, multiple hours.
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.
And his confusion is also suspicions, because to me it says you didn't explain it to him properly. If he really had a message from Jimmmmm, there would be no need to be confused.
(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.
Yes, you did, see the explanation above. Plus, if we are already at MyLo, this is a good way to get that one last mislynch.
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?
Lynching a low roller did exactly what we wanted to: Forced scum into contributing. I mean, if you make that sort of argument, you'd have to show me how the plays of the players you suspect were scummier than yours.
PPE: 9