(Serenes Forest Mafia) General Discussion

[euklyd]

Inception: Godfather/Usurper

I really did not expect this role to be used to obtain a pair of clears, that was pretty clever. I like Usurpers/Assassins but they can be problematic. This game went poorly although that was more due to bad play than anything wrong with the setup imo.

Not really sure why this is being counted as a "neutral," but w/e.

(except survivors fuck them)

Also Refa's role was totally a survivor.

I like neutrals, they add an element of uncertainty to games, which is something I like, even if it makes things harder for me as town, but it's probably more fun overall.

[/unqualified opinions]

[Sunwoo]

And DRAFTERS ITP WAS SO LAME OMG BUT IM BIAS 100%

It's not my fault you didn't know the meaning of subtlety!

[Prims]

sailor waddle dee the hated serial killer imo

[Baldrick]

I quite liked the Shin role from Drafters mafia (the player who rolls it has to kill a specific player, but they only know their target's role name and the target knows that they are being hunted). A lot of people didn't seem to like it as much as I did, though.

It screwed up my chance to use my vengeful shot :(

But, in theory it's not too bad as long as the setup is balanced around the hunter, and the target isn't retarded and goes "HEY GUYS MY ROLE PM SAYS THERE'S A LYNCHER AND I KNOW HIS FLAVOUR NAME FOR NO REASON HYUCK HYUCK HYUCK"

[Refa]

It's not my fault you didn't know the meaning of subtlety!

If you ever reused the role, you could add a bit to the end where it says "you know it's not safe to claim your name" or something. I think it's lame for flavor to actually be important considering the definition of flavor. Or was that how it was, I never saw the Role PMs.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Refa

[Paperblade]

I think the Shin role was fine, iirc whoever was Horace was just dumb and did that thing Baldrick mentioned

I count Usurper/Godfather as neutral since they had additional stuff on top of town winning. Also fundamentally different from Survivor in that you give a shit about who wins

[Sunwoo]

If you ever reused the role, you could add a bit to the end where it says "you know it's not safe to claim your name" or something. I think it's lame for flavor to actually be important considering the definition of flavor. Or was that how it was, I never saw the Role PMs.

The player who rolled Horace was specifically told in his role PM that Shin was in the game and wanted him dead. He was also told that eclipse was not in the game, which means that eclipse is your safe claim.

He never actually claimed Horace. But he certainly said something that made it VERY obvious he was Horace. After Shinori claimed Shin.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Sangyul

[Grace]

sounds gay

im gay

[Paperblade]

Assassin-type roles (which is what Shin was, as well as Usurpers to some extent) are cool but can be tricky to balance

[BBM]

needs more Independent Compulsive Janitor Safeguard Wolf Assassin -> League Permanently Kidnapped Non-Consecutive Night Vigilante Neighbour imo

[Refa]

The player who rolled Horace was specifically told in his role PM that Shin was in the game and wanted him dead. He was also told that eclipse was not in the game, which means that eclipse is your safe claim.

He never actually claimed Horace. But he certainly said something that made it VERY obvious he was Horace. After Shinori claimed Shin.

My bad Boron. Then I don't really have any issues with it.

[Sunwoo]

For reference, here were their role PMs:

Dear USER,

Nicely done, Horace! Let's see how close I can get... even I'm not deluded enough to think that I can win!

You are Shin, Independent Horace slayer

Everyone knows about your rivalry with Horace. Half of the drafts you join are to try and defeat him. This rarely works out because ... he's Horace. Why didn't you pick a rival you could beat? You also work on hacks, like Shin Patch and Pokeshin. There are also a bunch of others that don't even have threads yet and you rarely work on because you're lazy. Also, you're british! Woohoo!

You know that your rival Horace is in this game. You have one shot and one chance. At any point you are alive, you may reply to your role PM with Curse you, <USER>! If <USER> is Horace, you will instantly win and be removed from the game. If <USER> is not Horace, you will automatically lose and be removed from the game. You also know that ZM is not in this game.

You will also win if you are the hammer vote on Horace.

You are allied with yourself. You win if you kill Horace.

Dear USER,

back from a hiatus know as fuck status staves

You are Horace, Town THWOMP.

Are you even beatable? You've set many records for different games, managing to set the FE2 record on your first actual run of the game. You hold a monopoly over the FE4 records, much to your rival Shin's dismay. Despite this, he did manage to beat you in SFDDT! But you got the record back in less than a day, since you're an asscabbage like that. Why can't you update Silver Moon or Pokeshin that quickly?

Because you are such a powerful figure in the drafting community (and share your name with a THWOMP), you will survive the first attempt on your life.

However, there is one ability that will always pierce your defense and instantly kill you. Your rival Shin is in this game and he seeks to dethrone you, so take care. You also know that eclipse is not in this game.

You are allied with town. You win when all threats are removed.

The hammer thing wasn't in the original draft, and I feel we shouldn't have implemented it anyway, but oh well. ;/

[riariadne]

@Paper

I liked Emrakul in MtG mafia a lot but I'm also like the only person who enjoyed playing that game at all, also because I figured out how the role worked mid-game. Agent was covered already, that setup was kinda lol though. SFMM2 Proto/Kay annoyed me a lot at the time but I don't think it was too bad in hindsight. SSBU Kirby was cool and I wish it could've done more but I remember it being really funny when we talked about it at the time of the game.

The void werewolf seemed fine to me in the context of the game, but the other two annoyed me a bit. I've been over the problems I had with the void in void sort of extensively and I made the League of Shadows to play out similarly and fix some of the problems I felt existed with it while balancing it along with a mafia (which I think I did pretty good at). I didn't really like the Magus because of it playing a little too close to town for me to feel like it was really doing much different except have a more focused win condition, which didn't really feel third-party to me. Sort of in the same vein usurper doesn't feel that third-party to me.

SFMM3 Levity seemed like a cool role in theory that could've had a bit better execution that you sorta covered already, blitz was fine, talked about usurper a bit. I don't like usurpers but they're not like... bad per se they just don't really feel like they serve a significant purpose in a setup to me.

most of the other roles talked about here I didn't pay a lot of attention to due to not being in those games/ not being observed/ dying early in toonami/ not reading most games I'm not interested in closely/ whatever.

in a similar vein to paper's post and only covering games I remember or think are worth talking about (aka not tov/rtfr/agent was already covered)

Bizarro's Luka (Wolf)

This setup was pretty bad but I liked this role because it was pretty minimalist but managed to perform effectively anyway. I would've given it a bit more probably.

Haphazard's Jade (Warlock)

I don't really like this role looking back and it was sort of hard to win with, but Snike is too powerful so it didn't end up mattering I guess.

Theatre's Theatropolis (Mentor+Mentee)

This role felt pretty cool even if it was a bit generic. Apparently this is a sort of common role other places that hadn't really been explored on SF so we shamelessly stole it and it worked out decently.

CMV's Hunter (Wolf)

At the time I made the setup I didn't really think Hunter was a fantastic role, but now I think it sort of owned and is probably the strongest wolf-type role on SF? Light and I guess that Touhou role I didn't pay attention to compete though I think Touhou's role also had items so that's whatever. One thing I probably would've done was take the setup into consideration a bit more with him, I did this a bit by making the doctor/vig impossible to hijack (not that the vig needed help) but otherwise it was just sort of out-of-place to me.

Badass's League of Shadows (Cult)

I want to say this is probably my best designed third party, and that was a lot in part because I referenced how past games went a lot when I designed pretty much everything in Badass. Heavily based off Void's team, but with adjustments to function in a setup that actually had a mafia and make things more forgiving to the cult and create less situations that could spiral out of control for any faction too easily (though things snowballed a bunch for town towards the end, that really could not be helped). Trying really hard to balance your setup results in a good setup, who knew.

[Bluedoom]

SKs are boring neutrals and even though they're added for balance, if they die early then balance gets screwed over

Things like Master/Apprentice or a limited cult are kinda cool

I thought the SK from Touhou mafia was the best since it had way better chances of winning(and won). Day SKs ftw!

[Refa]

Why are SKs boring? SKs are the best.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Refa

[BBM]

The thing with SKs in large games is that to balance them you have to give them a bunch of protection, so if they keep all that pat a certain point, you're basically set. Like there was a point in Touhou where Boron had like 2 BPVs and an LPV and there were like 8 people left.

[Refa]

You could just have some early game protection that wears off later on. Like how Paperblade was lynchproof Day 1 in Fakeclaim.

[Sunwoo]

The thing with SKs in large games is that to balance them you have to give them a bunch of protection, so if they keep all that pat a certain point, you're basically set. Like there was a point in Touhou where Boron had like 2 BPVs and an LPV and there were like 8 people left.

SKs play solo, so if they get screwed over by an unlucky scan or a shot they lose. They don't have the advantage of having an actual faction like scum or town. How well the SKs use protection is also dependent on how well the player who rolls that can keep suspicion off themselves and survive, and how well the town scum hunts. Also, my LPV deactivated at *YLO. I was lynchable at the end.

[riariadne]

You could just have some early game protection that wears off later on. Like how Paperblade was lynchproof Day 1 in Fakeclaim.

That was I think the Luka Wolf role except without being a wolf, which I do think is the best way of doing SK protection because it can get out of hand, or just no lynch protection at all and just make them good in other areas. I don't really like static lynch protection anyway, though stuff like on a targeted level like the one I had on Bane can be alright depending on context.

[Prims]

boron's lpv in touhou was less for survival and more to keep the flow of anti-town directed kills going if she got caught (since she'd probably lynched the next day)

[eclipse]

My turn~!

Duel Terminal (SK with chance to negate things) - chance-based roles are a bitch to balance, and that's something I should've saved for later.

Schoolboy (hidden SK) - hiddens are an even bigger bitch to balance. Do not recommend.

Duel Terminal 2 ('vivor) - boring/10

Schoolgirl Mafia (SK with one-time bomb omniguard) - I actually didn't mind this variant! It gives the SK something else to do, and can screw over either side badly.

Naruto (Amnesiac with a twist) - Given the shot-based nature of the game, I felt that this one wasn't too bad. It's a role that had to use its ability, as well as the ability that it picked up, which meant that it couldn't coast.

Schoolteacher (cult with a temporary alliance check block) - I like the alliance blocking, mostly to give the role itself a chance to recruit people. Otherwise, screw cults.

Shipping (variable) - Alas, the SK came to light. The lyncher would've been hilarious.

Overall. . .I think I've slowly improved the quality of my thirds. Having early protection gives them a little bit of breathing room, but ensures that they'll have to work to stay alive later. I have several other ideas floating around, some of which are in games that are/SHOULD BE on the queue (hint hint).

[Prims]

what about the cult from hard nocs, that was a good third party

[Haze]

I feel like the problem with the cult in Hard Nocs is that the cult leader didn't have any protection, so it led to silly things like the leader getting janned night 1, leaving Rajam all alone.

[Bluedoom]

You could just have some early game protection that wears off later on. Like how Paperblade was lynchproof Day 1 in Fakeclaim.

Yes but even then usually games that rely on SKs for balance lose any balance whatsoever when the SK goes down. Also the person playing as the SK will have a really difficult time trying to win considering its 1 v everyone. Basically it isn't really fun for anyone because everyone else just has to deal with another role that kills people and setups aren't balanced independent of the SK.

Now as I said, Mentor/Mentee or a Cult with limited recruits would be interesting and neat to play as. Angels and Lynchers might also be a good idea for some setups.

Edited March 24, 2014 by Bluedoom

[Randa]

Why do people still think there was a cult in Hard Nocs. It was a move by scum that turned into a giant joke.