Re: Roles of Madness. Mafia Thread
Thanks for hosting Rlyeh! I had a lot of fun claiming cop before the first night was over.
I agree with most of RE's assessments. For dreams to work as the 6th mafioso, mafia needed to have a better understanding of what they did. Between their abilities and dream effects, mafia had a number of tools to create havoc but they first needed to know what dreams did before they could be used as a tool. The unknown effects turned into a random WIFOMY orgy.
Roles
I like the Missionary role idea but the win con needs some work. Visiting ALL players left alive is a tall order. Gwaihir wasn't even halfway there. How about survivor plus handing out enough wards to form a lynch majority? Sort of like a hidden cult but no one else changes alignment. Gwaihir wouldn't have achieved even that this game, but could have.
Necromage was $$$. Beautiful role. The powers of the necromage are dependent on who was killed and when. N1 with bus driver and vigi deaths are about as powerful as it got. It could have easily instead been missionary and silver seraph (two completely useless roles to the necromage). One shot uses from a dead cop, doc, tracker/watcher, etc are not automatically over the top powerful but the numbers of them can add up.
"The Hammer" - Yes!
Role Thief - One of the most powerful informational roles ever devised. It's fun, quirky, and possibly random, but never underestimate the power of forcing someone to role claim simply from targeting them at night or to cast "detect lie" on someone who has already claimed. SEVERELY limits mafia's ability to lie and get away with it.
I also like the Silver Seraph. Yeah it can create some degenerate situations like Seraph protecting the cop while a doc protects the Seraph. I'm not a big fan of docs anyway, so I love roles like bodyguard and this Seraph to use INSTEAD of a doc.
Martyr (lightning rod), Blessed Child (nexus) - I liked them, but then I like bus driver and bodyguard. There may have been too many of these randomizer roles though. Very WIFOA.
Dreams
Lunar Eclipse was NOT a mistake. It's a power given to pro-town roles. It's a power given to anti-town roles. It's even one of the easiest dreams to guess. It certainly has situational use, but most dreams are that way (or should be).
Good thing Crimson and Azure wasn't spoiled. That would have been bad. That THAT doc!
Were dreams one shot? I may be off in my napkin math, but I don't think mafia can win without running out of one-shot dreams.
Dreams I would have liked to see: global loved status (takes one more vote to lynch), global hated status (takes one less vote to lynch), and global bus driver!
I think Dreaming God may work better as neutral. Certainly to keep with the theme of random effects that could help or hurt any faction.
Balance
I thought mafia were underpowered. Even if given hints about the dreams, I think they were still a bit light. The town loses a bomb and party host through D1 lynch (rendering them useless for hurting scum at night) then loses bus driver and vigi N1 yet the rest of the game seemed to be all town. Mafia never really had a great course of action for dealing with the informational roles.
So much of role madness depends on the first night's actions. Somehow, the bus driver affecting a cop investigation, giving an innocent result on mafia HELPED the town more than hurt. The mafia actions effectively did nothing: I didn't have a night action (and claimed as much), I had already claimed my role, and Autti wasn't investigated. Meanwhile, the rolethief successfully stole the uber day cop but also kept it hidden long enough to put it to good use. Also, the missionary successfully gave a ward to the one person considered so townie as to not lie about receiving the ward.
Day cop being effectively immune to much of mafia's subversive attempts was too powerful. Blocking a day cop at night should have blocked day cop the next day. Global roleblock should have also blocked day cop the next day. I'm not sure if the redirections and tailor/framer would have worked on the day cop but they should have. Don't ignore day time abilities, just account for them.
Then there were 4 townie informational roles with 3 townie protective roles to keep them safe. And a necromage to make use of any roles mafia managed to kill off. The town had very synergistic roles while mafia didn't.