Thing is... cult in a mini is insane, and a terrible fit for the flavour. When someone flips alien (and pink, whilst not the usual mafia colour, is associated with the aliens in X-Com) in a game where the flavour is two-sided, you usually deal with it. Tbh, I did think cult after several days of only one death- Tentaculat is the TFTD version of the Cryssalid, right? When everyone claimed VT, I pretty much knew it was one scum left- vs 3 groupscum and a third party, town needs a fuckload of power to balance it. That said, you still have to play worst case scenario- and I had reasons beyond plausibility of being one of a pair to suspect claude.UncertainKitten wrote:TOLD YOU! TOLD YOU GERHARD WAS THIRD PARTY!
Hell, I think I even called cult on him!
Surprised at only two scum though :S. Ah well.
However, the cult variation this had was better than a normal cult by several million miles- the alt system allowed the Tentaculat to take over the account, without the original player's wc changing (so no problem with a player playing for one side all game then getting culted at the death).
The fact that being 'fully' culted required a positive action on behalf of the player, and that if that didn't happen the player could continue playing as normal, but counted towards the Culter's WC, was cool, as was the fact that if they didn't choose to lash out, the player could warn the town of the cult's existence.
The biggest of my many problems with the cult mechanic is that they actually have very little skill involved- usually, one of two things happen- either the CR dies early on, and it's a nonfactor, or it gets discovered too late, and town's basically screwed through no fault of its own. (Seriously, CRs seem to be N1 NK targets for scum far more than chance would suggest). Very rarely does the town know there's a cult, and still have time to do anything about it.
I think I'm going to nominate the role for a scummy.
I kinda feel sorry for Malth, cause obviously the cult mechanic must have been 80% or so of the interest in this game for him, and then the bastard goes and gets crosskilled N1.
On a side note, Chaco- I hope you can see why i changed my mind on you. In early game, a player who avoids a bad wagon, and says they suspect the scum, looks townish. If that player then doesn't run the scum up when given the chance, the picture is completely different. Whilst you may have felt Igor was scummy as hell, the way he was playing made him almost the perfect target for scum looking for an alternative to bussing his scumbuddy- and in fact, that's precisely what happened. It just wasn't you. That was part of my town read on Jaime, too- he looked like exactly the kind of player scum would try to push as an alternative to themselves.
Also, I've only used it as an argument in thread a handful of times, but the 'middle of the pack scum' tell has never yet been wrong. (I'm sure it will be at some point- but i still think it's damn useful).
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