Color = Black

[Fiasco]

Seems to me that if you put enough time into it, you can settle on a code for any inter-scum communication you want, without being noticed. If they can do it already with a lot of time expense, maybe it's more logical to just allow scum to talk via PM by day?

[Fiasco]

On hidden claims in early posts: yes, in theory anyone could do that, but in practice, the fact that you went to the trouble does indicate you're more likely to have that role. If everyone coded their roles into their early posts, scum would either have to decide on their fake claims before having enough information, or they would have to encode all possible claims they might want to make. So it seems to me to be game-breaking, and should be either outlawed or considered unethical.

[Fiasco]

That said... if the scum try

that

hard, then surely they deserve rewards?

Not sure... I think scum should be rewarded for clever play, not for just putting a lot of time into thinking up a code and following it. (They should be spending that time participating in games instead. )

Maybe the best thing is not to allow day-talking, *and* not to allow codes. But that seems hard to define objectively. It's probably best to say that such codes are unethical and against the spirit of the game, and rely on the players not to use them too much.

[Fiasco]

I would suggest that in this case, it is up to the mod to ensure that the game is not broken by such ploys.

What if that isn't possible for the kinds of game we like to play on the site?

Anyway, clever scum could code multiple roles in different ways.

I think this is as much a matter of having enough time to kill as of being clever. I can see it becoming a chore to do at the beginning of each game. A scum would have to foresee all the roles he might want to claim later, and put them all into his posts.

One way to hide multiple messages is to make more or longer posts, but that would look suspicious in itself; also, if you point at a hidden message in the third sentence of ten, people are going to ask whether you hid others in the other sentences. Clever townies will make an obvious first post that is not long enough to hide multiple claims in.

Another way is to hide multiple messages in the same amount of text, but that will make it sound awkward quickly. And once you've pointed at one message, people are going to look hard for the others...

PS: I do agree that players should get away (ethically as well as modkill-wise) with things like this if the mod has not explicitly stated otherwise.