The following roles have no place in Mafia...

[Nemesis]

Discuss:

1. Jester
   
2. Scum Mason (unless Masons are
   explicitly
   told: "He/she may be Scum")
   
3. Survivor win conditions (except for an SK)
   
4. Millers, who do not know they are Millers (unless the existence of a Miller is publicly announced to the Town at the start of the game)
   
5. Any random role

You will never see any of these in a Stoofer game.

Ok, but all Stoofer games will lack the paranoia that gets Sane cops lynched because they might be a Cult leader that doesn't die when trying to recruit scum, he just fails. Plus he's unnightkillable with a post restriction that he must claim cop.

That paranoia is funny.

Anyway:

Jester - Kind of messes with people trying to find scummy people. So I guess that one has no place is mafia. (Although it adds an interesting spin on the game. A day 1 claim of scummy is always funny to see and jesters add massive WIFOM options.)

Scum Mason (unless Masons are explicitly told: "He/she may be Scum") -Hate, hate, hate... This one is out.

Survivor win conditions (except for an SK) - It's not game destroying, but isn't a particularly nice role. I don't really have a problem with it.

Millers, who do not know they are Millers (unless the existence of a Miller is publicly announced to the Town at the start of the game) - Is nasty, that one should be out too.

Any random role - I like random roles... Although I'm not sure which random roles in particular you have in mind. Ones with dice rolls at the end of the day which make something interesting happen are interesting. Ones with a 25% of killing yourself when you didn't actually know that 25% existed, is a pain in the ass. But if someone knows there is a 50% chance they can protect someone, 25% chance they will do nothing and 25% the person will die, they can choose how and when to use their ability. On the other hand, targetting people without being told what could happen is fairly bad, I'm not that keen on those.

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Cults - Ewwww. Out.

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Exceptions: Any game called "Bastard Mod Mafia" all bets are off and any game that points out obviously that such roles exist. Also, strong hints or roles fitting makes them ok because they are guessable.

As long as the mod wasn't bastardly to me while lying about it, I don't mind.

If I have Masons in a game where there is a possibility for one or more of them to be scum, I won't call them Masons...

Now I need to make up a new rolename...

Brotherhood was used somewhere, although it's not on the wiki here. I'm sure I learned masons = confirmed town, brotherhood = talk at night... I'm just trying to remember where.

2. Scum masons are fine. More then that, the possibility of scum masons is absolutly necessary, IMHO.

Posting: "You are in an ante natal class with X and X, you don't know what weird cravings they are getting." Doesn't confirm them as town, but it doesn't confirm them and that's fine, even if they are town.

On the other hand posting: "You share a room with X and X, you are with them all night and are a light sleeper, you know they arn't doing anything at night." is 100% wrong if they are scum or even power-roles because of the lie you just told. People only know what their role is because of what the mod tells them. It's totally wrong.

There's nothing wrong with calling someone a doc and making him a vig, either. At least, not in a large game where he's got a fair shot of figuring it out before he wipes out a third of the town, heh. It kind of a nasty surprise, sure, but it's also fun and requires people to think about what's going on; and of course, you've got to balance the game with the ASSUMPTION that the paranoid doc will knock off a good guy or two before he figures out his role, but that's ok.

Bah, then why do you even assign roles? Why not give everyone the same pm:

Congratulations, you have no clue what you are, who you are, what you do or what you want. You can target someone each night, but you have no idea what it does... You have no idea what you win with or whether it is even possible to win at all. Good luck.


The game is based on the mod's pms and posts. It gives the game structure. If no one knows what they are doing, then the game is messy. It's ok if people are half expecting the game to get messy, but bastard modding is generally bad.

1. The only worthwhile use for the existence of the jester role is to get someone to say "wait! he might be a jester!" when the clueless-noob attracts all the votes on day one.

The last time I remember seeing the "are you a jester?" was at MBF in an ongoing game. (And it was a question, which made it doubly awesome.)

The beauty of masons imho is that they know they are each town so it provides an end-game impediment that scum must find and eliminate. If I don't know my mason buddies' alignment I don't see the point.

Yep, the usefulness of masons is pretty much all about the alignment confirm, IMO. Otherwise they don't do anything useful and just have something to do when the game goes to night. (Unless they do have other roles and the cop is one of them and investigates his mason buddy and uses him/her as a way of logging his/her results. Although being paired up with an investigation immune scum would really hurt then.)

The mod shouldn't lie to the players.

I totally agree. Unless the game is "Bastard Mod Mafia", in which case all bets are off. But the clue is there... A regular game with the mod lying all over the place is totally wrong.

However, if you reveal information that was yours as part of a previous alignment -- the names of your former cult buddies once you've been deprogrammed, for instance -- I will BURNINATE you.

But you still know. Replacing while knowing who is scum is bad... I'd prefer the role to be mod killed rather than to be replaced by someone who knows all the scum's alignments.


Edit:

Whenever I use quote="name" more than 5 times, I have a 75% chance of messing up the tags... You should make that one of your laws Stoofer. *Sigh.*

[Nemesis]

Scum masons shouldn't be so common that masonhood is worthless, but everyone should understand at all times that it is a perfectly reasonable possibility.

I agree with this. The only thing I dislike about scum masons are if the mason is told by the mod their partner is a townie and (s)he isn't.

There's nothing wrong with calling someone a doc and making him a vig, either. At least, not in a large game where he's got a fair shot of figuring it out before he wipes out a third of the town, heh. It kind of a nasty surprise, sure, but it's also fun and requires people to think about what's going on; and of course, you've got to balance the game with the ASSUMPTION that the paranoid doc will knock off a good guy or two before he figures out his role, but that's ok.

Bah, then why do you even assign roles? Why not give everyone the same pm:

Congratulations, you have no clue what you are, who you are, what you do or what you want. You can target someone each night, but you have no idea what it does... You have no idea what you win with or whether it is even possible to win at all. Good luck.


The game is based on the mod's pms and posts. It gives the game structure. If no one knows what they are doing, then the game is messy. It's ok if people are half expecting the game to get messy, but bastard modding is generally bad.

Eh, an insane doctor is only borderline bastard modding. Another one of those things that's just there to make players more paranoid, to make them avoid trying to break the game with "day 1: cop claim, doc protects him" stratagies, ect. And basically what ends up happening is that the town loses a person or two, and then the doc realises he's really a vig and the town gains a vig. Which isn't a balance problem in a 24 person game or so.[/quote]

Doc sanities arn't that uncommon, I'm not keen on making a doc a full fledged vig without any hinting in a role pm. It has all the problems of Miller, Mason with a "confirmed" mason buddy that is actually scum and Paranoid Gun Owner.

I tend to dislike any lies the mod tells. The more unexpected and bastardly, the worse it gets.

Roleblocker to Doc would be a fairly mean one, vig to doc would be another. Doc to vig would be really really really bad if it was unheard of, and even though it has been done before, it still sucks.

Oh...and on a side note, one of the big problems with Jester roles is that they don't really work, because the town dosn't have any reason to NOT lynch him. I mean, if someone claimed Jester day 1, I'd lynch him anyway, because the town's better off with him dead even if he's telling the truth.

People don't like lynching them though. Maybe it's something about the Jester actually winning and the rest of the people playing for second place or something.

If a 3 person mafia game with a SK, townie and Jester was going, then the townie wouldn't want to lynch the Jester. (For the sake of this example, self votes arn't allowed.)

[Nemesis]

Call it something else.

I don't see it happening. Although some mods do leave the word "mason" out of role pms.

His town-ness is what makes the role what it is. As opposed to "random night-talking dude."

Yeah, masons that don't have mod confirmation of each other's alignment are pretty much vanilla townies that can talk at night.

They lose most of their strength. But they are slightly more interesting than vanilla townies... However, they are as fine as vanilla townies because they arn't broken/pointless/etc.

[Nemesis]

No, because they are still townies and therefore still vote and try to find scum. They just arn't as interesting/powerful.

[Nemesis]

Enlighten us?

(Given that your mason buddy could be scum, what would be the point of masontalking? To have a good idea of their alignment or to give them snippets of role without actually giving them a reason to kill you?)

[Nemesis]

I think talking to them to gauge their activity is a protown thing to do there, just for the sake of doing something...

[Nemesis]

No, it's not a powerful thing to do. Just moderately useful and pro-town. Kind of like a gender cop in most games.

[Nemesis]

Though "mason" itself (without any special characteristics other than the possibility of being scum) is already practically on the list of roles you won't see in a Kelly game.

What else is on that list?