I want to talk about Bookwyrm first

I've said all game that his play has been impossible to understand. I realize he enjoys playing against-the-grain, but it just feels like he's been almost totally chaotic. EOD Yesterday I think I was just really confused, as for some reason right at the end I thought we were tied catte/Dessimu and I couldn't figure out (again) what he was doing, but I'm not sure my confusion really mattered.

Let me come back to that though

Let's talk about his role - Whatever it may be called, and yes I'm just assuming his role works as he claims it does, because it certainly seems to - he functions to create an army of treestumps. The majority of these stumps are going to necessarily be Town, as every nightkill is a Town player. If he uses his ability to hammer, you have to expect more Townies to join the cabal. He can, however, create Mafia stumps with a hammer.

Who benefits from this?

The benefits to Town are significant. Mafia tend to want to NK the strongest Town voices, and through this mechanic, they get to keep playing and advising Town, with the huge and obvious benefit that they are now confirmed Townies themselves, so their opinions can have no ulterior motive. In addition, any killed PR can still claim his results, as with dedo. From a balance perspective, that's *huge* for Town. There's virtually no benefit to Mafia from this role, as mafia stumps can potentially backfire and say things they shouldn't - although, having played games with outed mafia / mafia stumps before, my experience is that you should just ignore everything they say as usually they just try to WIFOM living townies.

As such, I don't see this as a mafia-aligned role. It doesn't appear either side is really loaded with Power Roles. This mechanic is the one "LOOK THIS IS A GOG MAFIA GAME LOL" mechanic present. It creates a really "swingy" game... if this role dies early, the whole game becomes pretty vanilla.

OK, now back to Book's play.

Back to the chaos. My own feeling is that Book has been having more fun hammering people into treestumps than actually solving the game. However, I recognize that it's just possible that I don't understand his play. I mean, he has happily hammered two Mafia.

I suspect Bookwyrm is a Neutral. With a 15 player game, I assumed from the start we would have 3 Mafia and 1 Neutral, because GOG games love Neutrals like crazy. We don't have a SK, we probably don't have a survivor... but this role? I do not know WTF this role is all about. It certainly seems to benefit Town far more than Mafia, but Book isn't playing it the way I would. I don't think I would have claimed it when he did, for example.

HOWEVER

It doesn't really matter, does it? I'm not here to get Neutrals, I'm here to get Mafia.

The point is, if he's Town, great, we don't yeet him and good for us

If he's Neutral and we end up in an F3 with him, then that's Tomorrow's problem

If he's Mafia I don't know how we're ever supposed to deal with that, but I don't see any realistic scenario in which he is the only Mafia left and just bussed his whole f'n team

Point is - not voting Bookwyrm Today