I think it should be added that they have to do so by PM, not in the game thread.
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It is I, the rulebreaker, may irony flatten me a 1000 times, for I have come to ask for loopholes to be patched (also, this is a joke not roleplaying).
Soooo, I agree with @yebellz on a few concerns about the witch character. I do not wish it to be removed, only understood clearly.
Extreme example, I say (at some point): when I am bewitched, I’ll pretend to be X. Some time later I am bewitched and pretend to be X.
Another, more reasonable example: I am evil pretending to be innocent. Then I get bewitched and I simply continue pretending to be innocent.
I understand you mentioned good faith. On that note my main question would be if any previous action trying to loophole the witch character will count as “revealing that you’re the witch” (in the first example, then I’d have to pretend to be something else or be forbidden to make any such statement in the first place).
If I understood correctly your answer to @Haze_with_a_Z’s question, then the evil faction is not allowed to discuss their strategy during the day?
Does it also mean that they can’t discuss strategy at all, even at night, other than who to kill?
I must become the pedant myself this time in russellian style:
The bodyguard can die instead of those who cannot prevent death upon themselves. Can the bodyguard prevent their own death?
Presumably, the bodyguard guarding themself means that they cannot die?
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How do you prevent the witch from getting killed themselves? They are part of the innocent team and their spell only helps the evil…
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It might even be best for the innocents for the witch to reveal themselves, however they are not allowed to do so according to the rules.
What if the players suggests the strategy that everyone must say “I am the witch”?
I think the rules prevent the witch from saying that, but the other players can say it and it would just be understood as a lie.
Then, if only one person remains silent, they must be the witch. Maybe a werewolf might choose to remain silent as well to create doubt about who is the actual witch (since I think the presence of the witch helps the wolves), but that would not be a wise strategy, since the town is likely to vote out those that chose not to speak up.
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You could solve that by prohibiting saying
for everyone.
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The rule isn’t that the witch can’t say they are the witch, it’s that they can’t reveal that they are the witch. In this instance not saying “I am the witch” would reveal it, so I would think in order to follow the rules the witch would just say it along with everyone else. Nothing revealed.
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I think the mechanics of the witch are a bit tricky since it requires restrictions on how players may reveal information. There is also a lot of grey area about how one might be able to drop hints, and confirm things by omission or indirect statements.
Another way to make it harder for the town is to add randomness/uncertainty into the investigations by the detective.
However, to dampen the power of role revealing, I think ultimately the game just needs more players, which would reduce the ratio of special roles to regulars, and naturally weaken the strategy of revealing roles earlier in the game.
Similarly, one person could also directly ask everyone “Are you the witch?”, and all of the innocents that are not witches should know to reply “Yes” (lying of course, but understood to be lying). In this case, would the witch be compelled to say “No” or “Yes” (along the lines of reasoning that @RubyMineshaft gave)?
Or should even asking such a question “Are you the witch?” be prohibited? Should all players be prohibited from trying to discover the witch?
Another possible strategy by the witch would be to remove themselves from the game as quickly as possible, since they view their power as detrimental to the innocent team. Could they claim to be a werewolf on day 1 and ask everyone to vote them out?
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I think @RubyMineshaft’s suggestion is better than prohibition of discovering the witch.
This would be an example to my question
I think it is very hard to achieve that goal without having very restrictive rules.
Maybe add a rule: The innocents loose, if they kill the witch. (Instead of prohibiting the witch to reveal themselves?)
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Yeah, that was kind of my point as well. Whether it is focus on information/epistemology rather than strict adherence to a word.
I suggest players shouldn’t try to ‘glitch’ the witch nor the bewitched. A possible in-game justification is that witchcraft is somewhat taboo in this superstitious town.
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What if the witch was both? By night is evil, by day is good.
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Suggestion: voting-based detective and protector
Maybe not for this game, since it is a very drastic change, but at least a thought to consider for future games.
Detective: each night, every player casts a secret vote (via PM with the GM) on who to be investigated. If a person receives a strict plurality of the votes, the investigation is conducted and the result is privately told to one of the surviving innocent players at day break. Alternatively, the players could also vote on who gets to receive the information.
Protector: each night, every innocent player casts a secret vote (via PM with the GM) on who to be protected. If a person receives a strict plurality of the votes, they are protected from attack by the werewolves on that night, and will be informed if they were attacked and saved.
Players are allowed to discuss voting strategies and how they voted/what they learned from previous nights.
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And if this is the case, it seems that it is possible for a stalemate endgame with just the protector and one werewolf remaining, where neither can kill the other.
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What does that mean? What do I say in the 2 sentences? Besides that I think I want to join this game.
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Ok, I see the witch is too difficult for people to understand, since the focus towards looping around the rules is apparently larger for some than the focus on playing a game “naively” and as it is supposed to be.
The thing that I want to achieve, is to not have one player completely dissect the game in the first round, having everybody know exactly how they have to play to win, and then watch as the town follows a recipe that in the end just depends on a few dice rolls.
That’s not a fun game. That’s why I invented the witch character.
I see no problem with this. It’s in line with what I suggested. The only pretence is that you have to avoid claiming your actual role.
This is the in the rules: during the night phase only the evil players are allowed to discuss with each other.
The bodyguard can guard themself, but this will have no effect: they will die when attacked. I’ll fix this Russellian error in the rules.
See it as a curse 
As Ruby said: this would be the witch revealing themself. Stop trying to find loopholes in the rules, please
I see it like this: the point of asking “are you the witch?” is similarly useful to asking “are you evil?”. You will not get an answer from the witch that reveals they are the witch.
This can be a good strategy. Of course the witch has the power to vote, so I’m not sure if the strategy is actually good.
This is interesting for the next round of werewolves, indeed.
It’s to make sure people actually participate with the game. In previous rounds we saw people who didn’t speak at all during the day, or only said a single word. This rules asks people to at least participate actively.
You can say whatever you want in those two sentences, feel free to say nothing at all. It’s the doubt whether someone is participating or not that’s problematic, not the lack of information.
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If the witch is too troublesome, I have an alternative suggestion for the witch character: Instead of a witch, the GM (me) decides who is cursed (randomly). A cursed player can only use smiley’s to communicate.
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I actually like that suggestion. 
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I think that is an better idea 
Forcing one of the 
to lie will give the 
a great advantage. Whether that makes sense depends on the number of players. But forcing someone to communicate with smileys will be fun in any case 
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If not we could always add a rule to not exploit loopholes.
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Oh I like this idea.
And just to keep teasing you (with loopholes) 
, I’ve had a pet project for quite some time now, to create an actual conlan entirely based on emoji. That’ll be a great time to kickstart that project again. 
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