Tree Stump

Tree Stump Alias: Stump Alignment: Town Role type: Voting Communicative Choice: none

A Tree Stump is a player who has lost all of their abilities as a player except that of being able to post. In essence, they are a dead player who can still post in the game thread. Any Night Actions that player may have had before becoming "stumped" are removed. As Tree Stumps cannot vote, they are not counted as living players for any purpose.

Exactly how one becomes a Tree Stump varies from game to game and role to role. Some examples:

• A player may, as part of their role, declare themselves to be a Tree Stump inthread.
• Instead of a normal kill, a killing role may instead turn players to Tree Stumps instead.

It is, of course, possible to kill a player before they declare themselves a Stump.

The ability to turn oneself into a Tree Stump is generally given to pro-Town players, especially if a person becomes stumped after a death-like flip so their alignment is known. Mafia-aligned Tree Stumps (or other nonparticipating roles) will sometimes continue to try to actively manipulate the Town, but most will simply not bother to post (especially if their alignment is known).

Variations

Mafia-aligned Tree Stumps may be allowed to continue contacting the other Mafiosi privately. Depending on how good a strategist the Tree Stump is, this can be nightmarishly powerful for scum.

Use and Power

Tree Stumps are in practice not considered much of a power role at all, but rather a way to get out of being eliminated.

To that end, one form of breaking strategy in games where every player can become a Tree Stump is to simply force people to Stump themselves when they would otherwise be eliminated. As Stumping does not end the Day, the Town thus gets pseudo-infinite eliminating potential.

Once stumped, as town, in the common case where you are alignment-confirmed, you can make use of your confirmed town status to scumhunt and push reads without people worrying about your alignment. A confirmed scum treestump's best option is to generally be annoying, trollish, spam up the game thread, etc.; making it hard for people to play will make it hard for them to scumhunt.