Good Roles & Bad Roles [for hosts]

[#HBC | marshy]

@ #HBC | Laundry

godfather isnt just a weaker version of naive cop. the role pm and the information of

you will be investigated as innocent by cops

may affect how that scumbag will play. i think the difference in approach to the above information may cause lends itself to interesting play. it may be as simple as a player whos usually unwilling to bus his mates suddenly 180ing on that. this happens regardless of a cop existing in the setup. im not as crazy about this argument as i prolly seem considering i dont really like cops but the effect on players i just described would have me consider using a godfather on a team

@ #HBC | Ryker

you know how i ball. you too can find salvation. come holla at me when youre down to stop tolerating towns bein burned by claims

@ #HBC | Red Ryu

sure. im not sure what youre getting at tho cuz most of the games here are closed

 

[Xatres]

I'm going to have to agree with Overswarm here. I've pretty much hated Godfathers since I first found out they existed.

In general, I've found the only acceptable excuses for mods spreading disinformation is 1) for flavor and 2) for the lols (or both if you can manage it).

 

[Jdietz43]

@ #HBC | Laundry

godfather isnt just a weaker version of naive cop. the role pm and the information of

you will be investigated as innocent by cops

may affect how that scumbag will play. i think the difference in approach to the above information may cause lends itself to interesting play. it may be as simple as a player whos usually unwilling to bus his mates suddenly 180ing on that. this happens regardless of a cop existing in the setup. im not as crazy about this argument as i prolly seem considering i dont really like cops but the effect on players i just described would have me consider using a godfather on a team

This. People underestimate the power roles just existing can have.

I remember the very first game I played in was an all red-herring setup Vanderzant ran where we as scum saw we had a Godfather and a Ninja, and our play reflected the assumptions we made off that heavily.

 

[Vult Redux]

Meta should probably move toward giving cops "inconclusive" results to investigating a godfather or miller. I.e. Roughly equal to the result he should get if he is roleblocked when investigating. It's much more honest and also still maintains the utility of weakening the cop.

Alternatively: inform the cop in his role pm that there *may* be roles present in the game that can distort his results. Because if you don't he might assume (depending on his experience) his results are 100% solid and it's not only uncool to let that happen but it also hurts your game.

These suggestions are comparable to the solutions to the long-past problem of mods using "Mafia-Masons". That **** was unhealthy for the meta and thankfully shifted toward Neighbors as a valid role (similar to my former suggestion). The meta could have shifted toward the awkward honest-ambiguity of "this is your mason partner and he's probably town like your but there's a smidge of a chance he might not be" (similar to my latter suggestion). But that would have been really lame and it's good that that's not a thing.

 

[#HBC | Gorf]

You should play some mafia again

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

This. People underestimate the power roles just existing can have.

I remember the very first game I played in was an all red-herring setup Vanderzant ran where we as scum saw we had a Godfather and a Ninja, and our play reflected the assumptions we made off that heavily.

Just because it could be there doesn't we should always assume it is there. At least with a ninja town can figure that out.

How does town figure out there is a godfather? Role cop? That is a lame role if your set-up makes mafia roles obvious, then a role cop is basically just a cop.

If there is something screwy going on, town should be able or have tools to figure it out rather than assumption.

 

[Jdietz43]

Just because it could be there doesn't we should always assume it is there. At least with a ninja town can figure that out.

How does town figure out there is a godfather? Role cop? That is a lame role if your set-up makes mafia roles obvious, then a role cop is basically just a cop.

If there is something screwy going on, town should be able or have tools to figure it out rather than assumption.

I'm talking about the idea of "Counter Roles" like Godfather or Ninja and the effect that can have on individual play where no role to counter even necessarily has to exist , entirely different topic.

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

Meta should probably move toward giving cops "inconclusive" results to investigating a godfather or miller. I.e. Roughly equal to the result he should get if he is roleblocked when investigating. It's much more honest and also still maintains the utility of weakening the cop.

Alternatively: inform the cop in his role pm that there *may* be roles present in the game that can distort his results. Because if you don't he might assume (depending on his experience) his results are 100% solid and it's not only uncool to let that happen but it also hurts your game.

These suggestions are comparable to the solutions to the long-past problem of mods using "Mafia-Masons". That **** was unhealthy for the meta and thankfully shifted toward Neighbors as a valid role (similar to my former suggestion). The meta could have shifted toward the awkward honest-ambiguity of "this is your mason partner and he's probably town like your but there's a smidge of a chance he might not be" (similar to my latter suggestion). But that would have been really lame and it's good that that's not a thing.

I miss you.

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

@ #HBC | Ryker

you know how i ball. you too can find salvation. come holla at me when youre down to stop tolerating towns bein burned by claims

Half the fun in this game is cracking the set-up. You want investigatives to mislead town based on their results, **** outta here. Hosts just shouldn't include them if you are gonna use them to preach at me.

 

[#HBC | Mac]

cop sucks

comparison cop is better, but I gotta agree with ryker, it's def still OP (maybe even more so than cop) in setups where it's only town v mafia. The longer the comparison cop lives, the more broken the role since they're getting more information as time goes on.

Cops get 1 bit of information per investigation. X is town/scum.
Comparison Cops also get 1 bit of information per investigation, X and Y are aligned / not aligned. But information from the game's lynches and just general play influence can lead to additional bits of info. I.E. Cop identifies someone as scum, then town lynches. The lynch and investigation only result in one bit of information being revealed. (This player is scum). Whereas comparison cop investigates two ppl, and if either of them are lynched OR nightkilled, the other person is then confirmed as town or scum, which results in an extra bit of info revealed to the cop. If the comp cop stays alive and attains multiple pairings, then each lynch has the potential to reveal more information then if a normal cop stays alive. Which can be incredibly powerful in endgame.

Comparison cop's best plan of action is two always investigate two ppl that he deems scummy and then tries to push a lynch on one of them in order two attain the second bit of info, whereas normal cop wants to push lynches on negative results which doesn't result in extra information. Neither will a nightkill of an investigated townie give them any extra info.

This doesn't even take into effect how having a strong scum read on one of a comp cops targets will pretty much give you info about the other target. Because of this, it's much easier to read the each player because you only really need a good read on one of the players.

All of one I'm discussing goes to **** in setups that have more than one anti-town faction though. And I guess in closed setups you can never know if that is the case. Comparison Cop still >>> Cop, all i'm saying is that it;s just as powerful if not more powerful then cop esp if they're alive endgame.


____

While godfather is legit cuz cop is a horrendous role. I think it's still a scumbag mod role since the information you're getting from your information role is incorrect which kinda defeats the purpose of an information role. I'd rather have weaker, more indirect information roles that are always correct as opposed to information roles that are just mostly correct.

 

[#HBC | Kary]

Oh god this thread again.

Times when I think a cop is ok:

Open setups that also include millers/godfathers
1-shot cops in large PR-lite setups.
In complex high powered setups (many strong PRs) with lots of **** going on.


I love you guys please don't fight.

 

[Ashemu]

iremember reading this thread when i first joined, basically marshy is 100% right about godfather. the mod lying to players is fine if there's a believable precedent for it, gf has a precedent in standard games because it's been a basic role in them for years

i think cop is a bad role on paper but isn't an issue if you balance the set-up around it. godfather adds a rly interesting dynamic to the game by affecting how the player who rolls it tackles the game, keep in mind that if the gf is caught on dayplay the ngenerally clears are trustworthy again, which furthers this. since the meta accounts for it it's not really a dickpunch like varying sanities are. sanities are a lot more comparable to what vult said about scum masons than godfather is, with sanities your results mean nothing whatsoever without a flip or two, with godfather there's just a sliver of doubt in your mind which is why you go by dayplay instead

as far as im concerned cop generally should not even be told the player's alignment directly, just whether they scanned "guilty" or "not guilty"

also ninja is an objectively worse role than godfather since rather than changing up ur playstyle for your role like in gf you just make tracker unable to find the kill until u die (and tracker is already pretty weak)

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

If you balance a setup around a cop, what happens if the cop is lynched D1?

 

[Ashemu]

i dont know, what happens in any set-up when a strong power role gets lynched d1? this ****s just a problem with mafia, not cops

tbf "balance the set-up to accommodate for it" wouldve been better wordong <_<

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

I will not be baited into this discussion again. I will keep this family together, for Kary's sake.

 

[rid****ulous]

Ryker preventing chaos and closing down avenues of discord?
It's a delayed easter miracle

 

[Xivii]

iremember reading this thread when i first joined

lol.

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

Ryker preventing chaos and closing down avenues of discord?
It's a delayed easter miracle

Dude, I'm the most upstanding DGamer! Just don't give me a gun if you don't want me to shoot it.

 

[adumbrodeus]

Dude, I'm the most upstanding DGamer! Just don't give me a gun if you don't want me to shoot everyone with it.

Fixed for you

 

[#HBC | Amidamaru]

If you balance a setup around a cop, what happens if the cop is lynched D1?

You tell the cop to play better next time. (Even if it's me)

 

[#HBC | Laundry]

why did you feel the need to respond to a post from 3 months ago

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Added Friendly Neighbor as used in Rockin's Sleepover Finale among the 'good in most setups' roles.

 

[ranmaru]

Bump: Can we talk about my recent setup:

5 vts
2 masons
mafia rolecop
mafia goon

I know Gheb stated it wasn't good but I want more discussion on it so we can learn from it.

---

Also I'd like to see what setup you guys would be interested in trying next.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

What do you wanna talk about specifically?

 

[ranmaru]

1. Why is it not good?
2. Can it be improved?
3. If so, how can it be improved?

 

[#HBC | Laundry]

Masons are extremely, extremely powerful in general but become much stronger in smaller, closer set-ups. Imagine your game going without Sprite getting rolecopped N1 and Drew having to claim D2. Town wins that game no questions asked because the Masons made it to D3 undetected--and that's not horribly unbelievable to happen either, especially not in current DGames where inactivity and shallow content tends to go relatively unpunished in favor of feuding egos having to be "settled". It's a ticking time bomb where Mafia has to find the Masons before D3 or else they face a highly unwinnable scenario. This isn't to mention that they are effectively unlynchable when they're confirmed to exist--it's suicide for scum to counterclaim. Rolecop is not reliable enough to answer this issue, making them arguably overpowered to the point of game breaking and how your game went is an outlier of how it would normally turn out.

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

In general, the lower number of players in a given game, the more powerful Masons are. I dunno that they are MORE powerful in closed setups as calling them lairs and getting then mislynched can be gotten away with.

If you want to put Masons in a game, you had better know exactly what you're doing. They BREAK set-ups.

 

[Maven89]

Bump because I'd love for Nzoners to add to this discussion

 

[Deleted member]

Bump because I'd love for Nzoners to add to this discussion

Any role in particular? I'd love to do a more general rundown later though

 

[Natz~]

never do a mafia redirector

other than that were still pretty much in experimental phases

 

[vaanrose]

Mafia redirector is great.

Ban Cops.

 

[Deleted member]

Mafia Redirector can work if oneshot tbh, otherwise it's just a better roleblock.

 

[Natz~]

a large part of why it worked in the first place was cause mafia had teh info of the bomb...

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

Mafia redirector is pretty wild and really powerful.

Normal cop is pretty bad though I agree

 

[vaanrose]

I see it's already been discussed here, but I'll add my two cents to it anyway.

I dislike any information roles that give the players wrong information. Cop is generally overpowered, imo, but I hate even more that the way most people balance it is by putting in roles that don't give it the correct info. It's not so much fixing a problem as it is introducing a new one.

 

[Deleted member]

I think our cops are a product of our first game.
Swamp made a sort of introduction game, role madness as usual though everyone only had one power role each. It was supposed to be a demonstration of a lot of roles and mechanics so it ended up having an activated miller and an usual godfather.
No problem with that, the issue is that we all based our games on that so everyone ended up having at least one miller and a godfather. It got silly when we started hunting for clean results because we assumed only the Godfather was left.

I do think they're a bit boring after relying on them so much for so many games. Swamp's Villain Mafia was a nice change of pace without any Cops and so was the DG game, so I hope they at least become an on/off thing from now on.

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

Yeah millers and godfathers can just pretty much invalidate a cop's results making the role next to useless.

The best cops are one that have accurate results but something big holding it back. There was a game where the cop could only use his action if he didn't vote the previous day which I thought was a good trade off.

In general I don't like having roles aside from the cop put in to counter the cop because it makes the setup more swingy than if the cop has a restriction. Like if you add a mafia rber to counter the cop and then the rber is llynched D1 then there's nothing holding the cop back.

Or just use a tracker lol

 

[Maven89]

Just curious, how long have you guys been playing mafia?