Wingdings

[MichelSableheart]

TBH, I even ban breadcrumbing in the games I mod.

Basically, if a pair of players doesn't have daytalk, it should be impossible for them to communicate during the day without the other players knowing what is being communicated. The public thread is not the place to exchange private info. Cryptography, invisible text, unreadable fonts and breadcrumbing all allow players to put information in the thread without the other players having clear access to it. They allow players to daytalk who should not have that ability, and are therefore banned in my games.

[MichelSableheart]

breadcrumbing is indeed against my ruleset. If you want to claim, do so. If you don't want to claim, don't. But anything in the public thread should be public. I've never seen someone spot a breadcrumb before it was pointed out to them; as such, I don't think it has a place in my games.

Is the rule unenforcable? I don't think so. Sure, I probably won't notice it when someone breadcrumbs, but I definately will notice it when they support their claim by breadcrumbs they made earlier. And it's when they use the hidden information to gain an advantage that I really have a problem with it, so that's early enough to step in.

[MichelSableheart]

They allow the exchange of private information without the other players even knowing that information is being exchanged. That's functionally equivalent to daytalk.

As an example: In a game I played a couple of years ago, I was a mafia role cop, and had claimed role cop publicly. I knew I was going to claim a fake guilty on a player, and I knew there was a significant risk of that play backfiring. So I decided a simple rule with my mafia partners: If my investigation that night was vanilla, I would start my first post that day with a vote. If my investigation showed powerrole, I would end my first post with a vote instead. There is simply no way for town to spot that difference. "Vote [player], I have a guilty" and "I have a guilty, therefore Vote [player]" are both completely logical ways to write such a post. Yet my scumpartners would get to know the most crucial part of my investigation. That is the equivalent of a private exchange of information.

Similarly, it is simply unfeasible to check every single post in a 50 page day 1 for possible breadcrumbs with multiple possible ways of signaling. Yet when a player points out a breadcrumb, it is relatively simple to check that it's there, and it's impossible for that to be accidental. Sure, breadcrumbs might be found from time to time, but that doesn't happen often. And when they don't get found, they have the exact same effect as cryptography: It's provable that you posted the information now, but the information only becomes public at a later time.

I feel that the information in the public thread should be deducible for other players. With signalling and breadcrumbing, that simply isn't the case.

[MichelSableheart]

[...]

I still disagree that it is a private exchange. The exchange of private information has already happened, in a private thread. The other players weren't present, and therefore would not know of what has been discussed, and won't understand the meaning behind the scums/masons posts, which makes sense. Example, if I naked voted a player, no player would understand the meaning of it. They can't deduce much from it unless I explain it later. Let's apply your example to mine. If I had a PR result, I'd use a naked vote. If I had vanilla result, I'd use a reason. I don't think that is against any rules.

The difference between your naked vote and the example I give, is that your naked vote is clearly visible to everyone. The other players may not be aware WHY you're making that vote, but they do know THAT you're making that vote. By contrast, in the case of breadcrumbing, it's not just that they don't know the meaning, but also that they don't know the information is there in the first place.

I wonder, how do you apply this as a rule? When and where do you enforce it? Is it possible to go around your ruling?

The ruleset I used in previous games included the following rule:

It is also not allowed to use coding, small or invisible text to hide information in your messages inside the thread. (note that coding includes simple codes such as hiding a word in the first letters of each paragraph of a post)

My basic assumption regarding enforcement is that players will follow the rules I set out, and not cheat. In the below, I assume that the rulebreaking was unintentional. If I feel it was intentional despite knowing it was against the rules, that player will be dealt with by force replace/modkill (depending on the impact on the integrity of the game), be blacklisted, and reported to the listmod for further review.

If a player makes a breadcrumb but nobody ever references it, I won't notice, and therefore won't enforce. That's fine, as that breadcrumb did not affect the game in any way.

If a scum, mason or neighbour team discusses breadcrumbing in their private topic, I will point out the existence of the rule, and my interpretation of it. This should again prevent the breadcrumb from affecting the game, and therefore needs no stronger reinforcement then that.

If a player makes a breadcrumb, and that breadcrumb becomes public info and gets discussed, there is a potential problem regarding game integrity. In that situation, it's possible that players have received information they should not have received. In that case, I will estimate the impact this particular crumb has had on the game. Depending on my estimation, I may give a (public or private) warning not to do that again if I feel it didn't have much impact, or I may modkill the player who broke the rules if his actions gave his team a significant advantage.