Wingdings

[xyzzy]

I think anything that players can discern after someone is no longer in the game should be considered absolutely acceptable; there's a big difference between, for instance, saying, "callforjudgement is my #1 town read," and having the first letters of each sentence in a post spell out "cojtown".

also, part of being able to interpret a claim is determining whether the claim is consistent with the things the player has said; there is tremendous value in being able to assess whether someone's claim lines up with the things they've said throughout the game.

I think that acrostic-style breadcrumbs are fine, because once one is revealed, it's very much in the town's power to see whether the same player left any other similar breadcrumbs; it's theoretically possible for scum to breadcrumb multiple fake claims in this way, and it's theoretically possible for town to detect that, and these are both skill-testing concepts. something like an algorithmically encrypted message really isn't skill-testing, because 1)it's blatantly obvious when someone posts an encrypted message, so doing multiple and trying to avoid getting caught isn't feasible, and 2)it isn't possible for town to interpret what the rest of the encrypted information is even if they get one of the decryptions.

basically, I think the litmus test should be this: if scum used a particular tactic to hide information, would the method used to hide that information be one that involved making specific, game affecting choices, and is it feasible for town to correctly interpret whether other hidden information exists and has not yet been revealed and to determine what that information is? note that the former doesn't have a threshold for how much it has to affect the game, and the latter doesn't have a threshold for how feasible it is for town to actually accomplish that.