Motive indicators

[Norinel]

In a few games, the mod has made some sort of consistent indication of the motive of the role in role pms, like putting (town) or whatever after the role names. For some reason, when this sort of thing actually becomes part of the town's reasoning for whom to lynch (See Day 1 of Toybox for an example), it annoys me, since it's pretty close to pm-quoting in that it's using information outside the gameworld common to pro-town players.

I know my decision isn't universal, so what do others think about this and perhaps what can be done about it?

[Norinel]

It's not the information, it's how the information is expressed. Saying that your role pm says you're a townie is one thing, but saying that it uses the word townie to describe your motive is, in my opinion, another.

For the record, I'll be either inconsistently describing motives or making the motive descriptions, at least for the pro-town roles, public in any games I run. I'd like other mods to do the same, but if I'm the only one who has any problem with it, I'll go along with things.

[Norinel]

My general rule of thumb is "If you couldn't do it in a real, life-or-death, version of the game, try not to do it."

That's sort of what I've been going towards with my position on the matter, I just hadn't stated it that way yet.

On the other hand, one really bizarre idea I had was Meta Mafia, where the roles take advantage of things that'd be outside the gameworld and are more directly related to how we handle Mafia on this server, but humorously try to fit it in. One example role I've decided I won't be using is the Brain-Switching Mad Scientist, who has the one-time power to get another player replaced.

[Norinel]

Yeah, but this thread isn't about directly quoting the role pm, it's about when the mod makes all the pro-town role pms alike in some way and it's used to the town's advantage. IMO, Mafia shouldn't be about being able to mimic the mod's writing style/format, and there are more interesting things to worry about when modding then maintaining a generic writing style.