View original postHe talked with Kronin about it right after his lynch. He thought it would allow him to draw out and identify scum. It worked too; he correctly identified you, and I think Yuna too in his note to Kronin. His plan would have worked perfectly, but everyone jumped on the bus and lynched him before he had a chance to explain. I knew something like that was going on too. I tried to convince people to hold off, but no one listened. That game was my first loss.

We all always know something like that is going on because we contemplate dozens of options and permutations and only recall the ones that were memorable. Being right is pretty memorable. Just as I said I was both drooling and paranoid at the trap, many townies were glad for an admission and yet also wondered if it was a lie. Problem is new players often make mistakes of that sort, admitting to being vanilla or trying to be overly clever before they've some practice. It's understandable, even admirable, but it doesn't make the plans good.

Now if he'd followed up, it might have achieved something but I doubt it, by game 15 "Isaac/FT voted for me first on Day 1" was not suspicious, it was normal, it was true 90%+ of the time, and I'd have just said "He admitted to being scum, so he's scum and we lynch him, or he's a liar and we lynch him. At a minimum this sideshow has been anti-town distraction." Many players thought, myself included, that he was 'up to something', the problem is that didn't make it pro-town. Nobody ever twisted the thumbscrews on him, he just never offered a good explanation. Now if he had, since I was scum, I'd probably have pressed the matter, or not, it would have depended on the explanation, but he didn't, so it was a bad plan.

Hopper: Vote: Hopper Aes Sedai
Trust me, I'm mafia.

Isaac: Okay, Vote: Hopper Aes Sedai NM
then DK expressed concerns it might be a joke, asked about Ackbar "Its a trap!" and I replied

Isaac: It's a trap!
I'm guessing it was as you say, a joke, but I'm content to leave my vote in there, it could also be an attempt at strategy that isn't working as meant - I could see declaring myself a DF as a joke to convince people I wasn't one, though I don't think it would work well. But how well it works is not too relevant, in my experience, as to whether or not someone tried it anyway. If today ends up random, well, hopper will work fine, and it gets conversation going.
Katie: I think right now everyone is waiting for Hopper AS to say something about it, sooo we'll wait and see I guess.
Hopper: And I'm waiting for people to vote for the mafia, or say why they are NOT VOTING FOR THE MAFIA.

That was his 4th post of the game and he only had 6, including a posthomous, #5 was further encouragement to kill him. By then I think most of us were expecting his death to be pyrotechnic and were grateful Gher agreed to hammer. Whcih scored him some good will rather than suspiscion, and of course Gher turned out to be a murderous Alien. Lucy never said anything suspisicous in the exchange, just after I ran through the 4 jester or not-jester options she suggested a fifth option of bomb.

And that was that, people discussed the options, bombs, jester, lie-lynch, etc all got brought up and after giving only one rather uninformative reply we asked who would hammer and Gher said he would. That was only two days later but dozens of posts later too, we moved faster back then. Still even in only two days, throwing out a trap like that, you need to be around to monitor it. And it didn't prove anything, hindsight 20-20 is normal in the game and usually badly flawed. It wasn't a good plan, it was suicide, heck we used "Lemming" as a scum code word for the rest of the game.