The only possible justification I can see for this is that the game mechanics allowed you to do it. So apparently our morals and sense of fair play should be defined solely by what the game allows us to do, with no actual input from our own selves. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
I tend to agree, however, Tom's dictate that 'mechanics trump RP' suggests that mechanics should play the most important part, rather than 'what makes sense.'
Note that rulers used to be able to mechanically strip someone of all their titles and such. They can't anymore. So since we have to work within the mechanics given by the game, the framework we are given is that people
do not just follow what the ruler says is true when the ruler declares someone a traitor -- and that such words may in fact just be that, words.
The mechanics of the situation -- which in BM equals the reality of the situation, for better or for worse -- is that the judge has considerable power, and that people listen to them so long as they are still judge, and that if the ruler says they are a traitor -- well, maybe it's just politics, and maybe the judge is in the right, because the judge is the one who can ban someone as a traitor, after all, not the ruler.
In BM, a ruler only has as much power as the players let them get away with. Mechanics wise, the judge is probably more powerful. So in BM's version of reality . . . this is realistic.
So, yes, while Tom has now stated that it is against the spirit of the game (though I am not sure I understand or agree with his reasoning), I think that it is easy to see why before he made that statement, one might have thought this was a fine thing, and have a reasonable and civil discussion about it (though it is the time of year in America when civil discussion gets thrown out the window, so . . . we're doing better than that, I think).
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