Let me try to provide anl account of what happened, since I was unwittingly at the center of this.
First I sent a PM to a number of players in the game asking them to sub into the Dark Cult game I am currently hosting. Jackson was included along with four others. Jackson sent the message
"Johho scanned villager.
Scan JermanTK"
I sent him a PM saying I assumed this made him a scanner and since that give him 2/3rd odds of being good he could trust me as a humble villager to out anyone he told me to and reveal the names of everyone else in the PM should Jackson be hunted. I then thought very little about it. I thought very little about the game at all for a few days. I completely missed the GM "removing" Jackson from the game. If I had seen it then I would have objected at once. I am frankly astounded that no player did. I have never seen a GM attempt to simply remove a player midway through the game.
I was then turned last night and at once told my new pack about the PM. Since Jackson had said to scan Jerman and Jerman hnd since been outed as a wolf I assumed Jackson was the seer. I also proposed Randy could be his app based on Randy being the last to post in the PM before Jackson's message. These were simply guesses based on the available facts. That's what all hunt orders are based on. As I had not seen the GM's post about Jackson and he had not PMed me I had no reason to think these facts were not available to me. I am still unaware of any rule that a player can only give information about the game in PMs marked for that game, and can find no logic for asking players to disregarde information that was freely given to them by other players.
The GM then rather than simply telling us to stop discussing the topic, advised us that our course of action might be misguided. Players play the game not GMs. I would consider it far more just for me to haven been auto lynched on the spot for daring to discussion Jackson's PM than to be told I might be over reading it by the GM. When the GM contacted me one on one to say I must stop or he would end the game, I told him I would prefer to be subbed out as I could not continue to play in game which seemed to lack integrity based on what I knew, I am sad to say what I have learned since does not change that view.
Players make mistakes that's part of the game. There was no rule to safe guard Jackson from sending the wrong message and the GM should have allowed that mistake to play itself out with zero interference. I once hosted a lite game where the pack forgot to send a hunt order one night and hadn't set a standing order. I could have sent them a gentle reminder to set an order, but I didn't They are the wolves they have the most power in the game, they don't need the GM nannying them. Predictably, the missed hunt lead to two wolves who were inactive being lynched the next day. But then a strange thing happened there were no obvious candidates for who the third forgetfully wolf was. In fact it was Aedan, but that was so unthinkable on the last day the last two villagers voted for each other and allowed Aedan one of the most memorable wolf victories.
Players should be allowed to play through mistakes.
But as GMs we are all much to quick to think we know best. In a later lite the goodies were all scanned and in contact. It was obvious who the last wolf was, all the goodies had to do was pile on and the game was over. So I ended the game. I shouldn't have done that, I completely foreclosed on any possibility of a miracle finish like what happened with Aedan. What's worst when the players rightly pointed out my error, I pestilently insisted on carrying out the last day to prove how meaningless it was....yeah. And I hope that Rysz will take the ending of this game better than I took the end of that game. And he will realize that myself, nor no one else bares any personal ill will for how this game unfolded, and instead we should all learn from it.
We all think we know how the game will play out when we GM, but we don't that's up to the players to decided and once the game has started we refrain from tinkering unless we absolutely must.
Thank you Rysz for hosting.
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