Random Lynch - when we select someone purely at random from everyone else

Semi-Random - When we exclude people as bad targets and then basically randomly pick one, with the assumption that instead of 3/12 or 25% chance of getting one we bump that up to maybe 35% or something, I usually consider 50% and above on day 1 to be an auto-kill because a 50/50 chance of killing a scummer is winning odds earlier in the game. The advantage semi-random has, if you do a final random pick off criteria, is its harder for the scum to eliminate on of their own from the final list.

Now, there's a trick to this when you're scum, is that you can not only guide someone into the pool but you can guide one of your guys out of it... this is actually kinda tricky to do so that I haven't noticed many others doing it though I've seen some attempts or apparent attempts which clued me off on that person. But doing this sort of thing is what I usually credit as the main reason why I've never lost a scummer ally on day 1, and that includes Bergioyn, a weird sort of proof of innocence, but a fairly realistic one.

Picking the right criteria to exclude people, as a scummer, can be tricky. I won't detail the how on that but its generally not a problem to come up with a set that does that then ramp up the pressure on the now townie-only pool of possible dead people. We've never actually randomly selected a person either, rather we get an exclusion list you could off that and typically the other people on the list, town or scum, gangup on someone, that townie's do it too is one of the things that makes it a bit rougher to find the scum in the list. That's what happened here, if anyone wants to pretend with 20/20 hindsight that Berg actually came off as real scummy that's their own affair, but there were two exclusion lists we were going with, the LD one, which had 6 people on it and all 6 voted to lynch Bergioyn (case in point) and the low poster one by you, ranangrande has a bottom 6 posters of -
Yunalesca: 8
Bergioyn: 7
ranagrande: 7
Stephen: 7
Fanatic-Templar: 5
Hobo: 4

Of which 5 of the 6 voted for Bergioyn... and yes I'm including Bergioyn. Point being that both of those criteria were legit criteria, untampered with - utilizing beet's post table decreases things but yours was a better model for non-participation anyway. When less active players compose the lionshare of lynch votes, there is a motive, and in this case I say it was mostly a desire not to be the target, you probably also remember me mentioning in our scummer strategy sessions that I could usually lever a couple of votes by implying a case on those persons and suddenly they become more receptive to a lynch... so case in point again I saw this, and the train was moving fast considering it was based entirely on low activity and Berg came up tied for third to last place, with you, on your chart, and was 9th of 12 on Beet's chart. He was a weird selection since everyone he tied or beat on either chart except for you was also from my LD case. He was not the logical pick, and most players who voted did not give reasons. Your Why we should vote for you post actually was a pretty complete list as things finally went down, and then there's Beet's case for Berg when he voted, if people want to take a minute to remember how thin that was, then, suddenly, lots of votes by people who were all on the criteria list I'd assembled.

So I saw that, put on the brakes to at least get a RC and such from Berg, and he suicided in the middle of that. Berg was no less suspicious, or more suspicious, then simply being on the criteria list, nobody ever presented more reasoning then I saw, and finally he would have been tipped simply because 'claimed vanilla, if true we're losing a less active player with no role powers'. He saw that and presumably killed himself either out of a desire tog et it over with or knowing doing so would deny one of the non-voters a chance to be on the list, or both. As I said, when I pointed out that I was currently most suspicious, its really all overly simplistic spin that's possible because Berg died scum, if he hadn't I'd be looking pretty town, but all it means is that a bad lynch went down and came up lucky, usually when the scummers are in a position to manipulate it they do and a lynch like this comes up with dead townie. My big defense really is that I acted exactly like a townie should have, and that Bergioyn would probably not be dead if he and I had been scum together. I didn't put any real effort into defending him at the end there because he was off my list and I did want our casualty out of there and the day over with and I figured if he died town I'd have all the inertia I needed to interrogate the heck out of the voters. That's pretty much it.

Removing the post-luck hindsight history rewrite, this is basically what I did on day 1:

Asked some questions
Pointed out a flaw in Gher's LD test
Pointed out that certain people's responses to it were improbable as scum
Suggested we pick criteria to exclude people then pick one of them as the lynchee, randomly or otherwise.
Notice a wagon was rolling and asked a delay for the usual defense and info acquisition
Notice the composition of the voters was almost exclusively people at the deep end of the lynch pool
State that Berg's defense didn't offer anything that changed the equation, that I still thought it was thin, and that I'd hammer pre-deadline if nothing new came up because I believed he was a bad candidate but better than random thus better than no lynch.

I could probably write this up on just about anyone else and have them come up looking less rosy... now someone can use the usual "But its Isaac" rebuttal, which is fine, I really would have done much of that as scum too, or similar, but when we're implying guilt by basically saying "Can do Xanatos Gambit" it is only fair to apply that backwards and request to know how Bergioyn got dead at all. Realistically if he was my ally, why suicide then too? Assume you're scum and I'm your ally and I suddenly pop up to delay a lynch, realistically that's kind of like eating a bullet when you see the cavalry arrive, why do that? From a he's a scum I'm a townie perspective, he heard me question the lynch and ask for a defense, he gave it, no one was swayed into unvoting, I said I'd vote for him, he killed himself to get it over with and prevent anyone getting the hammer. Simple. From a scum alliance perspective... weirdness. Initially I arrive and ask for delay to sort, all is well, he gives a quick defense and I... do nothing?

Why? If I'd basically been telling him I can't/won't help him, why not just hammer then myself? And why not him delay to give me or our remaining ally the chance to hammer too, since I'd already said I would, and if the other scummer had already voted for him, bussing would certainly be on his mind. And why not help him? It wouldn't have been hard, and if I decided not to, wouldn't I have done something a little more affirmative to avoid this very situation? The base evidence does make me a bit more suspicious but it falls apart when analyzed, others might use the 'even I fail' line but you were an informed part of the lynch that took me down a few games back, so you know that that failure was off being copped and actually lynched and managing in spite of that to avoid dying for a week while even more firmly entrenching my two bussing allies as townie and uncovering all the investigators and marking two townies as prob-scum, it ultimately failed by simple bad luck in follow-up night actions, as failure models go its not a good comparison to one which required me essentially twiddle my fingers thens top only long enough to make myself do something more suspicious for no apparent gain. Not a good example.