And then you PM'd shorty and decided to block no one 😛
To be fair, that had less to do with PM pocketing and more to do with the fact I had been committed to the AM plan, and needed to be sure the block wouldn't interfere with any passive abilities related to the plan.
When I got to the PM and learned the "secret" and the mechanics assumptions being used, I was pretty disappointed honestly. But to be fair very difficult to have worked through everyone sketch and everyone with better village cases to be made.
If I was sure it wouldn't have affected the plan, I would have blocked her just on principle. My concern was that AM's plan only had a chance of succeeding if the supposed night avoidance was in place, and I was concerned a block might actually block that. I haven't seen that, but many games I play here each one will often have at least one mechnical thing I have never seen.
Note that I didn't exclude her from blocking in my other decision making.
No one was left out of my analysis, and no one was above suspicion.
But notice how when I do try to think through these things (like theorizing about April or Shorty) I get shut down by some players, often being told VCA or mechanics or tone makes them not worth considering. It's frustrating.
I got shut down on considering Shorty any further mainly because of VCA. But I will stand by it, rather than not thinking it through, it's important to consider under what circumstances anyone might be wolf, what would have to be true for that to be true, articulate it, and then comparing the likelihood of sets of the different sets of conditions. I went through this process for every player and attempted it with Shorty and got shut down.
Personally, that's been the only way I've ever been able to avoid being boned like we were this game. It wasn't too much mechanics analysis or talk per se - it was reliance on too many assumptions and not considering all the angles. Too much reliance on VCA.
Deep wolf damage (and I will call Shorty a deep wolf here because she had being in the village bloc and VCA going for her) can only be limited by careful flow of info by PM, heavy skepticism looking for how any mechanical happening CAN be wolf or villager (I think it's necessary to consider it BOTH ways and never only consider the one case, AM did do this well in considering how my block of her led to a no kill night, ie wolves just did not exercise kill power that night), and VCA should NEVER be used to dismiss observations you make of people's posts, or considering if they might be a wolf. I think a read comes best from posts, and then you can use VCA or mechanics to see if that supports or contradicts the read.
I'm not saying, oh, we would have caught Shorty. I'm just frustrated that it feels like whenever someone wanted to go down that line of thinking, it was like, how dare they even consider it. That's a bad way to play in my opinion. If I hadn't caved mostly out of lack of time and effort, I would have thought more about theories of how could Shorty be a wolf. I brought up 3P, that she shot a packmate, basically theories of how does someone have a kill power and they're not immediately a village vigiliante. I shouldn't have been deterred by being discouraged and should have read her posts more closely or ISO'd her, and that's what I'm frustrated by in my play here.
When I bring up a farfetched theory, sure, I want someone to counter it. But I want to feel like they actually considered it seriously as a possibility even if they conclude it's not likely for xyz reason.