Mafiascum.net

Well then we can ban it with the Red Text of Truth ruling.

In post 25, Cheery Dog wrote:

I still don't think that works. (that sentence structure is only useful on mafblack for this purpose)

Well then we can ban it with the Red Text of Truth ruling.

That's why I use green text.

It's because that is a slippery slope of encoding a final message using your role name as a key.

In post 27, iraonavp wrote:It's because that is a slippery slope of encoding a final message using your role name as a key.

It has nothing to do with encoding, iron.

Well, if that was allowed you could invent your own Housedings font, and use it instead to an unconstitutional advantage...

Let's say I am you, and I don't know how to use Wingdings... Is it fair that I can't read your posts? No, now it is a game of fonts instead of a game of mafia...

In post 29, iraonavp wrote:Well, if that was allowed you could invent your own Housedings font, and use it instead to an unconstitutional advantage...

Actually, I couldn't.

In post 30, iraonavp wrote:Let's say I am you, and I don't know how to use Wingdings... Is it fair that I can't read your posts? No, now it is a game of fonts instead of a game of mafia...

This 100%.
lBreadcrumbing is the only exception to cryptography, and it is well-known and has proper reasoning behind it.

Great rule of thumb - if you have to use some other site to translate what you post here on MS then it violates the Cryptography rule.

cryptography is annoying and unfun

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.

That's a bit unfair. The point of not having daytalk is so they can't coach, or something. It's not to completely shut off private communication. And even then, what about breadcrumbing as cop or doc?

In post 33, MagnaofIllusion wrote:Great rule of thumb - if you have to use some other site to translate what you post here on MS then it violates the Cryptography rule.

This.

This argument has been done before at an even more ludicrous level where Adel offered a plan for everyone to encrypt their contribution to massclaim, and once everyone was done they would all post the key. Concurrently, he tried to start a trend where he would make encrypted posts with his reads and such and offer the key at some convenient time in the future so everyone could marvel at how genuine and necessarily secret those reads had to be.

Without saying these weren't good ideas, the general community response was "plz no" and people amending their rulesets to ban strong cryptography.

Conclusion to another argument had at the same time: you can't actually stop people from breadcrumbing in any enforceable way (i.e. "it's legal if the mod doesn't catch you"??) so etc. It's like saying "you cannot make posts while you're angry, drunk, or insincere; or refer to your previously made posts as such".

Personal gripe: with all of the above said, a mod should be able to recognize lorem ipsum and not care about it.

In post 35, MichelSableheart wrote: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.

I wonder how far this goes. What about 'codes' in the most basic sense, e.g. saying in advance in the private thread that "If I call you Michel I'm just acting, but if I call you MS I'm really trying to tell you something"? Is this still against your rules?

That seems to be what he's banning, but breadcrumbing goes beyond happenings in private threads.

Using wingdings for a post seems kind of like self voting in that it's strictly antitown but so obviously so there's a bit of a loop there. I'm not aware of any benefit a wingdings post contributes that is protown.

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.

You could slightly revise over from "breadcrumbs is banned" to "claiming to have breadcrumbs is banned" and then maybe it's enforceable. You could also ban claiming other people's breadcrumbs in thread, like hey look, this guy started each letter of a sentence like so. I don't know if I like all the implications of that though. Picking up on a breadcrumb and not being able to say anything about it would generate false dissonance that frustrates scumhunting (say if you stopped pushing a player and could give no reason why).
I don't see any obvious downside to banning the claiming of your own breadcrumbs though. Hm. I think I kind of like the idea of a ban only on identifying your own breadcrumbs to prove you planned a claim long in advance. Really they aren't even communication when they are used that way, they're like, hard evidence generation. Forcing townies to breadcrumb more opaquely has a risk of scum catching the crumb and shooting them for it.

Well is softclaiming okay? You know, saying you townread or scumread someone heavily when you're cop?

As a listmod I rule that it is okay to ban cryptography.

I HAVE SPOKENNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

There's more than one sort of breadcrumb.

A basic, and very effective breadcrumb, can be "Player X is now my #1 town read." This was dropped by a Cop in day 2 of an old Newbie I played in (I can't remember which offhand), and everyone mostly ignored it at the time. Once the cop flipped, we went back through their posts and realised that it was the cop trying to give a hint as to their investigation. I don't, however, think you can reasonably ban something like that. Does a Cop have to not allow their investigation to affect their play at all?

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.

Only amateurs can't breadcrumb or false-breadcrumb information as scum.

Similarly, only amateurs need a code to convey results when lacking daytalk. (Tied to the above.)
If the rules ban you from setting up a code to your scumbuddies (which I think is patently ridiculous, the whole idea of an informed minority is that they're fucking ; they have that talk for good reason, but I digress), then you can just as easily convey this information by how you treat the player you were targeting the next day. This can be something as subtle as buddying them if they're a PR and distancing from them if they're a VT, or vice-versa, and the mod would be none the wiser; that's just one obvious way to do it, but there are many more.

I have no problems with posts that spell out, for instance, "MASONS". I've used this before as a mason. (Not that it was needed.) Because there's nothing stopping scum from doing the exact same sort of thing. Which I've done. (Not as a mason, but as other roles, like ascetic. For someone who's done it before as scum, see kuribo.) It holds the exact same risk as both alignments: being discovered at an inopportune moment. It holds the exact same reward as both alignments: the chance to be believed easier. But it's something town and scum can do with equal skill, so it's idiotic to say they shouldn't be able to do it...

...Especially given there's a whole level of subjectivity to it. If I link to a video that features Simon from Firefly, then at a later time claim that was a doctor breadcrumb...who are you to, subjectively, say whether that is or is not a legitimate breadcrumb? Some will believe it, some won't. (Admittedly, there is a gray line. I believe it was Oversoul who used to post things like TTGOXTSV and later claim, "that translates into a strong townread on X because of what Y, flipped scum, did here". But one, he did this as both town AND scum, and two, there was no key he used to prove that's what he meant, only his own word. So, for all we knew, he was making shit up.)

Where is the line drawn?
At things that are literally written into the damn site rules. No trust tells. No outside influences. No BBCode to hide messages. Nothing invisible, usually nothing that is gibberish, and nothing that scum would never do. Which basically translates into...

In post 33, MagnaofIllusion wrote:Great rule of thumb - if you have to use some other site to translate what you post here on MS then it violates the Cryptography rule.

...This. Most of the other stuff is fair game.

When all else fails: be loose about it and don't go into specifics..., include a rule in your rules which punishes loophole exploitation, and if someone tries to push something which isn't okay, point to that rule, disallow it, and if necessary, appropriately punish the asshole who was stupid enough to try and do that.

In post 41, MichelSableheart wrote: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.

In Graveyard Shift Mafia, one of my scumbuddies noticed the vig's breadcrumb.


I outted him the next day when I was getting lynched.

I mean, the scumteam had already figured it out, so really it was just me telling the town HEY BRIAN SKIES IS THE VIG AND THE SCUMTEAM KNOWS IT

In post 47, mastin2 wrote:(Not as a mason, but as other roles, like ascetic. For someone who's done it before as scum, see kuribo.)

for next-level scumplay, breadcrumb several roles in the event you need to re-evaluate your claim later down the line