Mafia Roles

[Sentran]

JESTERS
Yes, I am aware they are nearly universally reviled in the game of Mafia. I, however, find them an amusing diversion if they can be handled properly. With that in mind, I tried to figure out a way to balance the role so that it could be used fairly in a standard game. I may have come up with something.

What if in the initial game post, the moderator included a line such as the following?
There is exactly one jester role in this game.
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Sentran
"Speaking of double negatives, I haven't read greylab yet today." - Lifeinmomland

[Zag]

OMG! You really want the first day to go on forever, don't you?

While I agree that that ameliorates the problem somewhat, the real issue is that if you are playing and suddenly the game is over because the lynch you just made is a jester, it's just unsatisfying. If you lose the game because somebody played really well, whether it is a townie who made clever deductions or whether it is a mafia who just seemed so innocent the whole way, you feel that you were beaten by someone who played well and deserved it. When its a jester, it just seems dumb.

His whole goal is to make a scummy slip, but not so severe that it looks like he did it on purpose. So townies are looking not only for a slip, but then they have to reject some slips they see. It's just annoying.

Just my $0.02.

[Deception]

To remedy the Jester situation I suggest perhaps when you lynch a Jester, you have the Jester win. However having the game continue till another faction wins (mafia, town, etc). This way you can have the mechanic in the game and yet still not have something that can end the game in such an unsatisfying way.

Just say that town gets bonus points for not killing the Jester or something

[Zag]

Well, that makes it slightly less annoying, I guess, but it still leaves a bad taste in your mouth. I'd rather just forbid the role altogether.

[itisally]

What if the Jester had to die on a particular day? Have to be craftier then. I do disagree with Zag though, to appear scummy but not too scummy, that is a trick in itself. If I have fair warning it is coming then it would have to be well played. What I don't like about it is the sudden early ending, and with the warning it effects the power balance.
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I could agree with you, but then we would both be wrong.

[Deception]

You guys are probably better at making interesting roles than me but here's what I suggest (I'm just bouncing ideas off, this is a very raw idea) is:

Win con:
To get lynched on either odd or even days

My idea is that you have one fool for odd days and one for even days in the same game with 1 mafia. Then you balance around that. So maybe the mafia has a small ability like RB. Yeah I think RB is a good role for the mafia.

1 mafia RB
1 odd day fool
1 even day fool
1 town watcher
1 town cop
however many VTs you think

fools show as guilty on reports
fools can visit 1 person every night but their visit does nothing but show up on watcher reports

I have to go i'm low on time but I'll elaborate on the setup theory later. But I think this is it.

edit: I call it Lesson in Fools 1.0

edit2: Here's the logic. Cop serves 1 purpose: To clear town. Gulties will only bring up fools/mafia which is good. However clear towns > fool/mafia confirmed. Watcher serves two purposes. To protect cop from death, or to try and catch mafia/fools messing around.

There is a lot of wifom and I don't want to disclose all of it, but fools would have a choice to make. If they get caught roaming around at night on a non-kill, then they might look bad. However remember, that Mafia has a non-killing night action, so dont mistake the fool for the RB!

It's a setup full of scumhunting based on motivation (fools want to be lynched on a certain day, mafia don't want to get lynched, town want to find scum/fools). In this setup, a fool lynch DOES end the game. This adds more tension in deciding who to lynch. I believe this is far because they are just odd/even night fools and it's hard to put those tells down.

Total reveal on death. So you are told if it is a odd/even night fool etc. Starts on day 1. So, it'd best to have something like 9 people meaning 4 VTs I think. But I could be wrong, I've never modded a game before so I don't really know what makes the most sense (help in this area?). This way there is town motivation to lynch, too big a game leads to not enough motivation, I think.

Oh, and not to mention, beware of the fool-mafia joint!

I think this game has a lot of potential if the idea is fleshed out some more. Anyone have comments on how we can make this setup better?

Oh yeah also this would be an OPEN setup. So everyone would know all the roles before the game even starts, which is why I have no problem fleshing this out in public.

edit 3: I've done some thinking and I think that there's a good chance that town would NL anyways in this setup. If this happens I think the setup will be fine. Whether or not town lynches will not be toxic for the setup.

edit4: Also thought about the event that watcher or cop die the first night (especially after NL) and I don't think the game will be toxic even then. This isn't PR oriented at all, rather scum oriented. Perhaps knock it up to 6 or even 8 VTs so that town has more MLs, although my reasoning on only 4 was that town don't need MLs, as there are fools, what they need more than that is concentrated amounts of scum to work with. Although due to mafia joints I can see logic against it. But even if there is a joint, that is 2v7, 2v5, 2v3, which means 2 MLs including the reports to hit the 1 scum. Although I recognize that with the two fools that this setup makes it much harder to hit the scum. So maybe 6 VTs so we have 2v9 at maximum implying a joint, 3 MLs would definitely be sufficient I think and 11 players is probably the max, 9 or 11 I think are good numbers. They make town (especially 9) want to lynch day 1 so they don't lose a lynch, but there is plenty of logic for both paths. I know some people don't like having VTs because it's a 'boring' role, but I am of the opinion they are very important roles that help the game. Basically, more VTs = harder to hit scum for town but also = delays joint longer, although with fools that might not be towns' biggest concern. 4 is my ideal amount of VTs given the theorycrafting I've done, but I am listening to all comments.

edit 5:

I've done some talking with people on another site and there are some fundamental issues with the setup.This is what I'm currently thinking now.

1 mafia RB
1 regular mafia
1 odd day jester
1 even day jester
1 town tracker
1 town cop
1 town vigilante
6 VT

Considering partial reveal (reveals alignment like third party, scum, town) but have been told that that is only for bad setups so not to do that. My main issue is that the vigilante has no protection and if he dies it may be toxic to the game.Also what is to stop the jesters from not claiming vigilante? Or the mafia? I'm thinking maybe adding a watcher. And taking out a VT. How does that sound?

Hmm... Been thinking, is cop really something this setup needs? I think that vigilante needs a way to be protected, but watcher is hardly protection with fools piling on the vigilante and mafia shooting. So I felt that this kind of setup needed a doctor. However I also felt that watcher made more sense due to all the night actions. So changes to the setup I'm thinking:

Remove cop
Remove 1 VT
Add Watcher
Add doctor

In this situation, it is not great for the vigil to claim however it isn't completely bad now that he has doctor + watcher protection. In addition, once mafia RB dies it isn't toxic to mafia because with fool shenanigans it doesn't give town a great advantage in reports. It does however make Vigilante more relevant. I'm not great on theorycrafting setups but I think that there are no broken strategies in this one. Fool claiming is bad early on, even later on as if they claim on the wrong day then town lynches on the other day. Remember that fools aren't immune to lynchings because they have days where they may be lynched and lose! Will think more on this later.

Increasing VT count to 8 from 6, found that it was too hard to win as odd/even fool. Day1, Day2, then by Day 3 we have possible endgame/lylo. Might change Vt count to 9 but this would give each fool 2 days to act on, maybe 3 given town NL. That takes us to (with 8 VTs) a 15 player setup that begins on a day. I've also thought of creating a slightly abnormal mechanic where if the mafia kills and the mafia RB targets someone for RBing, then the town tracker will see that the RoleBlocker visited two people. I'm not sure the effects of this on gameplay, noting it to keep track of for later. What I think will happen though is that it will encourage no Roleblocking early on, or perhaps more of a gambit where if he gets tracked it will be a CC claim, but he'd probably get lynched anyways. Also fools may come up and claim tracker tracked RB. However what is more intersting is that this mechanic makes trackers tracks on fools, when tracked to a non-dead target and a NK takes place, a non-mafia track. Although this is only if you know vigil didn't target the dead kill and mafia killed. Many possibilities spawn from this. I think I like it.

- possible changes: When mafia submits a night kill, both mafia will be seen as visiting the target, even the RB and if the RB roleblocks someone, he is shown as visiting both the kill target and the RB target.

[Amb]

Dear ________

You are a reincarnating townie. Everytime you die, you are reborn with a new role. So you might return as a cop, you might return as a doc. If you return as a mafiaete, your mafia will be told that you are with them, but you wont know who they are. If you die again, you might be a roleblocker, cult leader or treestump.

In this incarnation, you are a vanilla townie and win with the town.

Good luck.

[Zag]

Overpowered and goofily unbalancing.

Note that giving a townie a one-time death immunity is a fairly powerful role; yours is essentially an infinite death immunity PLUS extra powers, but with a random chance that he'll turn up as a mafia, instead. Based on what? A roll of the die? It changes an event from something that is bad for the town into (random case 1 disastrous for the town or (random case 2 harmless or even beneficial to the town.

The "recruiter" ability that I gave mafia in my game was a little too powerful. This was a one-time ability to recruit anybody to the mafia, and I put a ton of restrictions on it:
1. It had to be used on or before night 3 or it was wasted.
2. It could only be used on a night following a day that a mafia member was lynched.
3. ALL other mafia members had to agree to forgo their night activity, INCLUDING the mafia night kill, for it to work. (So it was recruit instead of kill, and they didn't get to role-block, either.)

In the case where the character becomes a mafia, then this is more powerful than my role was.

Finally, it means that the player has no incentive to stay alive. It's not quite a Jester, who wants to be lynched, but it's close enough to be demotivating for the other players.

[Deception]

[Zag]

Thanks. I added that as a balancer. If the mafia was doing so well that they hadn't lost anyone through the third day, they didn't get to recruit at all.

In a different game, I had a similar mechanic for the serial killer. On the night following the FIRST lynched mafia member, he could choose to become mafia and take over the lynched character's ability (and no longer be a serial killer).

[Garou_Kinfolk]

I'll post the roles I have created for my game here after it's over or as they get "lynched". I will post one that I decided not to go with now.

You are the Clairvoient(sp?).
During the night you can go to dead forum and interact with those there.

This role was just too over powered with how it was so I scrapped it and went with something else.
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[Zag]

I agree that that is overpowered, but how about this:

Once per night you can send the mod a question which he will forward to the dead player of your choice, and then the mod will relay back the dead player's answer. Note that the dead are under no more compulsion to tell the truth than are the living.

It might be valuable, for instance, to learn the result of an investigator's final investigation which he did not live to report. Or to find out someone's mason buddy.
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[Garou_Kinfolk]

A role I thought of today (don't worry, I won't use it) is a phoenix role power.

The player is lynched on Day 1. The player stays dead during Night 1, Day 2 and Night 2. Dawn on Day 3 the player comes back.

The player lives through Day 1, but is Night Killed on Night 1. The player stays dead Day 2 and Night 2, then comes back at dawn of Day 3.


This can be a limited use or unlimited use ability.
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Most posts made from my phone.