Yeah, but I'm not really interested in cars.

Wait this is the year where I will be born. But Joe said I am absolutely normal? So am I now a timelord? Or anyone else here?

well, the Loa work in mysterious ways, my friend!

In theory! Although a theoretical scum-turned-town might have an unfair advantage...

deadline thursday. (towards nearabouts the end of thursday)

Ok, time for some theory:
hypothesis 1: one or both of dedo or micro was scum.
hypothesis 2: we'd only have less scum left so one of the townies became scum
hypothesis 3: none of the scum became town as that could be potentially game-breaking (they would know who the scum are).

Very good. I was waiting to see who would mention this first.

Major Town points for blotunga for the hypotheses.

What's going on? Role change is confusing.

Was your role changed?

I have given this some thought and arrived at some conclusions, but wanted to see if anyone else mentions this first. Now that blotunga mentioned it...

So here is what I came up with.

There are 3 possibilities of what had happened

1) No player changed allegiances
2) Scum turned into town.
3) Town turned into scum.

(The fourth logical option that scum turned into town AND town turned into scum is extremely unlikely that I wouldn't even consider it).

Did (2) happen? I highly doubt it. It would completely unbalance the game since that townie would know who the scum are. If the removal of Micro and dedo necessiated the turning of a scum into town to preserve balance, Joe would have simply rerolled all roles and restarted the game. It's still at its infancy.
There is another reason why this is unlikely. What's the probable number of scum in 12 player game? 3. In 14 player game? Also 3. Four would have been too much. Therefore if there were 3 scum originally, there is absolutely no reason to turn scum into town to rebalance.

Did (1) happen? Possible, but I don't think so. If no player changed allegiances, Joe wouldn't have reset the vote count, escpecially since the highest player was at 2 votes and there were no real wagons. He'd have simply rebalanced roles which could easily be done (possibly without even informing everyone about it; just the people concerned). He'd have simply PMed X and told him "Yo, Mr. Vanilla, You're now Town Doctor" or "Yo, Mr. Cop, we needed to nerf you so you're now just 1 shot." Only because it's in Haitian, it would have been something like "Yon kravat! pa mwen an Docta". I mean there was no Night yet and barring a crazy Day-action role, no actions have been taken.

So (3) must have happened. In particular dedo or (inclusive or) Micro was scum (out of 3). This would have left the scum team with 1 or 2 players, so for rebalance, a townie had to be moved to the dark side.

The above doesn't take into account Neutrals, but I don't think they'd change anything. If dedo or Micro were a survivor or serial killer, then Joe would have simply let them be removed.

I would also assume (if no one has stated this yet) that the shuffle pool only contained Vanilla Townies. Switching a Cop to Scum, for instance, not only means that the OP would have to shuffle Cop, but that scum would know a cop was in play.

Joe, of course, is pulling a "Well maybe I did stack it against Town, who can tell", but I lean towards balance.

Hmmmm, I dunno about that. I think I would have reset the votes anyway so it couldn't be read into. But that's just me, perhaps Joe just isn't that smart.

Read into how? The "player X is removed from game without flipping" is fairly common way of dealing with absentees. People might wonder "X had to have been Town" otherwise balance would be affected, but they can't know for sure. Not much to read into.

It's not a good way of dealing with it though. Better to do what I think Joe did which is to suggest the possibility that rebalancing was needed (regardless of if it was) and then reset the votes. That's what I'd do anyway.

True. And Joe is experienced enough to know it.

I'll concede (1) is possible. But (2) definitely did not.