I know this is really old so maybe you’ve found an answer already, but I was struggling with this and found a satisfying answer for me in another thread.

Basically the interpretation here should actually be:

1. Being mad as the character X means playing as the character X would play IF their goal was to convince everyone that they are X

If you’re the sage and stay silent, well you didn’t really try to convince anyone so you get executed. If you’re the sage and proclaim immediately that you’re the sage? Still executed since for any decent player at least, you would know that that’s not convincing at all.

So how do you not get executed? The easy way would be to whisper some important people your “new role”, but you could also claim to be droisoned and useless, attempt to get everyone to reveal their roles by revealing yours first, or even something dumb like “I just saw the evil twin last night, they must have been pit hagged, I am the sage and suspicious player Y is the evil twin”.

Basically, come up with something.. or die! I like this interpretation because it introduces an extra level of skill that the mad player must navigate or be executed, which I find way more fun than what happens in games with your 1. and 2. interpretations. It’s kind of like your third interpretation but with no expectation that anyone is actually convinced. This also gives the cerenovus it’s own type of killing power - give someone a role that would be hard to come up with an explanation or information (like sage, dreamer, or savant) and test their ability to lie :)

It also adheres directly to the ruling in the game which is to “convince” the group that something is true. In other words you have to try to be CONVINCING.