The Roles
So this is probably the section of Postgame people care the most about, right? Well, like it was said in the intro, these roles were meant to be non-standard twists on a lot of the classic roles. And some worked better than others, obviously.
Now, some things you may (or may not) notice about the role PMs.
1) All role PMs follow a fairly standard format of three sentences of flavor. The first two are pure flavor. In the third sentence, however, there is always a number (three or four). That was pretty massively important but, unfortunately, no one really picked up on it until it was too late to matter much.
2) All of the PMs (should have) had four bold words in them. I think there was one case (Schizophrenia) where we failed to have four bold words. These played no role in the game outside of the Tourette’s Syndrome role’s ability. But they were a fantastic way to get people thinking.
3) Patients (excepting Huntington’s) have Initial and Post-Split sections for their faction/win conditions. It’s pretty obvious why. Here’s where another of the host screw-ups came into play. The role PMs were stored without a space between the Faction/Win Condition initially. In about half of the PMs sent to Patients, a space was added. In the other half, a space wasn’t added. This was something we recognized, but didn’t bother fixing, which was dumb, since it would’ve taken five minutes to remedy and saved us a lot of grief. It wouldn’t have been a concern, except that we split up the sending of Patient role PMs based on their post-split factions, and when someone seemed to be catching on, it caused a bit of panic.
The Patients
So obviously calling anyone the “Patients” is only partially right. Initially, everyone started off as a Patient, Staff, or Neutral, but then the Split turns the one faction of Patients into two. However, of the 17 “Patients” in the game, there was technically one real Patient, since he was never going to be split.
Also, as a general note. Not all of these would actually require that they be hospitalized. Jumpluff and askaninjask, who both apparently have synesthesia, got a bit offended when they found out that role was in the game. But yeah, saying that the flavor has to make 100% sense in a mafia game is just silly.
Huntington’s Disease
Dear Quagsires,
You have Huntington’s Disease.
Huntington’s Disease is a neurodegenerative genetic disorder that leads to a loss of muscle control, dementia, and, eventually, death. In your case, you’ve miraculously managed to retain enough muscle control, and even general lucidity on a daily basis. Sadly, the doctors said you were going to die three years ago, and you know your time is very, very near.
Mustering all of your will, you managed to grab a syringe of something that looked dangerous when you and the other Patients started this riot. At Night, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Injecting <user> with something deadly.” You can’t control your finer movements, so you won’t be able to stick them with the syringe precisely. As a result, they won’t die right away, instead dying the Day after. Unfortunately, you only got one syringe before the others were smashed, so you can only do this once.
You are allied with the Patients.
INITIAL WC: You win if all Staff members are eliminated.
POST-SPLIT WC: You win if any of the Patients win.
POST-DEATH ABILITY:
You’re dead. You knew it was coming, though, because you’d been living on borrowed time for all of these years. But that just means you had the foresight to make sure your influence would persist after your death. During the Day, you may PM the hosts “Day X - Asserting my influence over <user>.” You will receive a list of all of <user>’s actions. Then, that Night, you may choose the target for <user> by PMing the hosts <user>’s actions. You can only use this twice, once per person, and not on consecutive Days.
So the first thing about this role is that the Post-Split WC never ended up coming into play. It didn’t really matter too much, since the Psychopath (Wolf) had been eliminated pre-Split, and that was the only real difference between the Initial and Post-Split WCs for any Patients.
This role was originally meant to be the catalyst for the Split. He was going to suddenly die on Day 3, causing the Patients to devolve into chaos, and end up splitting into two separate factions, divided by floor. However, the Staff decided that Quagsires was, for whatever reason, enormously dangerous, and killed him Night 1. Well, that meant the flavor for Day 3 was altered, but it wasn’t a big deal. However, the question of whether or not this role was a true lynchpin had come up quite a few times in the design phase. It ended up not being a lynchpin, which is a good thing. A one-shot BPV would have also solved the problem, but overall, this wasn’t that big of an issue.
His ability was just a one-shot Poisoner, which worked out fine.
Here’s where the shitstorm starts. His post-death ability.
Now, this ability was a derivative of something meant for a completely unrelated game concept. However, it was a way to make a character that suicides into something more than just a plot device. And, personally, I think have post-death abilities is something that can be worked with much more. It forces dead players to stay engaged in the game. In this case, it meant that Quagsires had to gain sufficient information pre-death to be able to do anything useful with his ability after dying. And since he didn’t know about his post-death ability until he actually died, it made it a bit of a crapshoot.
The Possession, as we’ve called it, was maybe a tad overpowered. However, because of deadtalking rules (Quagsires was not allowed to talk to anyone after dying), it could have worked out less-than-stellar for the Patient factions if the Possession had targeted one of them. However, it ended up hitting two Staff members, and, coincidentally, those were the Staff members who were in control of the kill on those Nights, which is something that any non-Staff member couldn’t have really known. So it certainly came off as a bit stronger than it could have been.
Overall, with this role, I think it was a fun way to experiment with the seriously under-utilized world of post-death in Mafia games. The drawback of this role, of course, was that there was nothing else to really balance it, besides the lack of information. When the Possession target was decided, there was nothing that could really stop it from happening. However, something like this, done on a more global scale role-wise, would certainly make for a fun game.
3rd Floor Patients
So this is one of the twists on a pretty standard role. In the original version of the game, this role was supposed to be “Blind” and could hear when people were lying to him (basically Daredevil, yes). After a while, Synesthesia became the replacement.
Now, the original version of this role was that the player could ask any other player a question anonymously, and then the response from that player would be colored red in any places that a lie was told. However, the problem that was realized was that if a player asked a question that the hosts didn’t know the answer to, we wouldn’t be able to properly note whether or not a lie was told. So this ended up becoming limited to asking questions about role PMs, which wasn’t really bad necessarily.
Overall, this is a fun role on paper, but pretty annoying when put into practice. GK initially planned to make it as broken as possible, but ended up only using it as a full role PM inspection, which wasn’t really what it was intended to be. And then the other players all ended up knowing the details of the role almost immediately, thanks to DLE’s antics, so there really wasn’t much fun to be had with the role. And GK’s “questions” were never really anything that could be cleverly circumvented, which kinda killed the fun of this role.
That said, I think this role really just suffered from something that a few other roles suffered from, which was that it wasn’t fully realized as an idea. With some more fine-tuning to aspects of the role, mainly some more specific restrictions on the type of questions that can be asked, it could probably be a cool replacement to Question Asker in future games.
This role, maybe more than any other, was such a disappointment to lose before it could be fully utilized. An amnesiaic inspector?
When inspecting a role, he would obtain their full role PM. However, and this is the part he didn’t know, after “getting” the PM, he would put it away and forget where it was placed. So even though he had done the inspecting, it didn’t matter, since he wouldn’t be able to share the info. However, when he died, all of the inspected PMs would be found along with his own information. As such, we called this role the Funeral Cop in development. As it worked out, dan’s first inspection was blocked by SG, and he died upon using the second inspection, so only the one role PM was made public. However, if he had managed to stay alive for a while longer, this role could have had some much more significant effects on the game.
What a disappointment this one was. Again, it was largely because of the way the information of the game was made so public so early. But this role allowed iiMK to copy any and all abilities that were used on him the Night before. However, he was not told what he had been targeted with, or if he had been targeted at all.
Interestingly enough, the time this role was most-utilized was when DLE was in control. He had a few players all target iiMK Night 1. Sadly, one of them was a SG, so it ended up cancelling out everything except that. After that, iiMK was generally left untargeted, which meant a lot of forced-idles, and thus this role was also crushed by the fact that everyone knew what every role did.
This role (and its counterpart) were thrown in as ways to include the standard/necessary roles, but without making it available right away. In the case of Kleptomania, he picked up abilities from dead bodies. Clearly there were no items in the game, so this was a bit of a funny role to include, but it worked out.
The BG ability was picked up from either Exhibitionism or Intermittent Explosive Disorder, the two suicide-guard roles. Hook was picked up from Echopraxia or OCD, the two “repeat” roles. And the SG was obtained on the death of Alzheimer’s or MPD, the two unreliable SG roles. The problem with this, however, was that these roles just didn’t die very early on, and the role was, quite regrettably, rendered useless until Night 5. That’s really the only complaint, and it can’t be helped, since the human element of Mafia is what screws up everything.
So this role was something that came out of excessive paranoia. Roles like von Karma that lynch the second-highest-voted person in a lynch exist. But what if a role just went and killed everyone who voted for it? Obviously that would be ridiculously overpowered and stupid. That said, what about a role that silences anyone who voted for it? In practice, it would basically be the same as a role that lets you kill off someone when you’re killed in the lynch. Except it relies on your surviving teammates (who hopefully didn’t vote for you) to work.
Regrettably, this role was Nightkilled, because everyone knew that it couldn’t be lynched without having nasty effects on the following lynch. But again, there was really nothing wrong with the role itself. It wouldn’t be a bad role to throw on a Mafia team in the future, maybe.
The secondary part of this role was the “friend” thing. It wasn’t really a Twin role. Instead, it was a pseudo-mayor. The two “global” roles were part of this little alliance, as it gave them something to do after their one-shot abilities were used up. Unfortunately, this got slightly messed up when the other two roles said they were “looking for a friend” in the public channel, and Williams Syndrome (J-Man, at that time) wasn’t around to respond. So the 3 -> 5 vote value thing only came into play once, and it didn’t really play any part in the game.
The two global roles, however, were purposely put on different Patient factions. It was meant to add to the chaos of the post-split environment, since it would seem pretty strange for a “twin” to end up on an enemy faction after the Split.
Exhibitionism
Dear askaninjask,
You have Exhibitionism.
Exhibitionism is desire to bear your chest and/or buttocks to others in situations where it isn’t considered normal. While it isn’t a disorder in every case, for you it has become a compulsion. On a normal day, you’ll flash at least three different people.
While you usually take care of your urge to expose yourself during the day, you’re no stranger to doing it at night too. At Night, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Flashing <user>.” You’ll run up to <user> and flash him, startling him, but having no lasting effect. If <user> was going to try and kill you that Night, however, he’ll be so startled that he’ll mess up his kill, and kill himself instead. You’ll be wounded, even appearing dead, but you’ll be back for more. If, however, <user> was going to kill someone other than you, you won’t be so lucky about surviving, and it will be a complete murder-suicide of you and <user>.
INITIAL:
You are allied with the Patients.
You win if all Staff members are eliminated.
POST-SPLIT:
You are allied with the 3rd Floor Patients.
You win if you eliminate all threats.
Another twist on a classic, this was something that was called the “Offensive Rogue,” or sometimes the “Hero” since the former is a lot to type. Either way, it was a way to make the Rogue into something a bit more exciting for the player. Instead of just mindlessly targeting people in case you were the killer’s target, this actually rewarded the player if he picked the right target, even though it meant death.
So this role, along with its 4th Floor counterpart IED, faced the problem of players being (somewhat) selfish during the game. One can argue (and trust me, one did argue) that players want to stay alive as long as possible in a game, so roles that potentially suicide are terrible ideas. However, the other side of that coin (which was also brought up by a player) is that going 1-for-1 on kills for the Night is a pretty good deal. Or, when the game turns into multi-faction and every faction has its own kill, this role has the chance of essentially giving its faction two kills for the Night, while protecting another important role. And if by some chance someone was targeting the Hero, and he targeted them back, then it has the bonus of a Rogue.
Of course, this never ended up happening. But that’s not really too unexpected, since Rogue is usually a pretty difficult role to pull off. That said, it’s still a cool way to make Rogue into something more exciting for they player stuck with it. Halfway between a Rogue and a Suicidal Vigilante, or something.
Here is another of the roles that sort of go against the idea of hosts being truthful to players. In this case, it was that the player didn’t know his own ability. Guesses for what the role was were things like SG, prio-boost, and probably some other non-major roles. In the end, it was just a simple SG. However, it was a pretty influential role throughout the game, despite its actual function being unknown.
One of the most amusing things was that the ability’s real effect was discovered Day 2 by Da Letter El, after having the other abilities that targeted iiMK failed. However, DLE was promptly lynched, and he took the secret to his grave. This meant that no one really knew what the ability was for sure until Night 5, when the Drug Dealer’s Steroids made him “remember” his ability’s effect.
Anyway, giving players roles and not telling them what they do is certainly toeing the line of bastard modding, but the fact that this role can essentially be verified through double-targeting meant it wasn’t too awful. Particularly if the player ends up going along with the village leader, who will be able to see that a SG role popped up somewhere.
Tourette’s Syndrome
Dear Yeti,
You have Tourette’s Syndrome.
Tourette’s Syndrome is characterized by having multiple tics, both physical and verbal. These tics can come in a variety of forms, and, in the case of physical tics, may not always be visible to observers. In addition to a verbal tic, you have three different physical tics.
While your physical tics are annoying, the most embarrassing is your verbal tic, and you’re sick of being laughed at. At Night, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Making everyone know how it feels.” The next Day, everyone will develop their own verbal tics, being forced to post words from their role PMs for the world to see. But you can’t stand everyone staring at you that much, so you’re not about to do this more than once.
Your verbal tic is calling someone “wigga” or “bruh” and/or saying someone has downs. You can’t ignore the urge to include this tic in every post you make.
You’ve got a friend among the Patients.
INITIAL:
You are allied with the Patients.
You win if all Staff members are eliminated.
POST-SPLIT:
You are allied with the 3rd Floor Patients.
You win if you eliminate all threats.
More than anything else, this role was good for laughs. The personal post-restriction was added after roles were assigned, and thus customized for the player, and Yeti certainly did a great job with it. Clearly, after the first post made everyone more or less figured out that it was Tourette’s (including Walrein, a man notorious for pointing out the obvious and killing the joke in the process).
Now, the ability of the role would have been pretty important, had it ever been used. Essentially, it would have outed anyone who wrote a fake PM, unless they had made a point of including all of their original bold words in their fakes. Since none of the Staff did that, it would have been a pretty big blow to them. However, the role was never used on a global scale (it hit Pidge individually, due to Sterioids), so it didn’t really matter. That said, there was nothing wrong with the role, really. The only real issue is that a lot of people with one-shot roles feel the need to conserve their role for a while, in case a good opportunity shows up to use it. (Krakatoa in Chaos Mafia, for instance, was activated immediately, and it probably wasn’t the best way to use the role.)
4th Floor Patients
So here’s a way to take roles that are otherwise somewhat weak, Tracker and Watcher, and mash them together and then give another little power bump, but then pull it back. That sounds a bit ridiculous, but it’s essentially how this role came into being.
Whenever the initial target for this role was chosen, that target became permanently Tracked/Watched, until either the target or Insomnia died. Which meant it required some thought, because if you end up choosing someone with no Night action (or someone on your team) it pretty much renders this role useless. On the other hand, targeting an enemy is great.
Now, this role’s “power bump” at is was, came in the form of the fact that it was essentially immune to all other roles. The priority for “locking on” to someone was pretty much unsurpassed, unblockable by SG and Hook, and then the results/information also weren’t blocked by Hooking or other things. So it was pretty powerful in that sense, but, overall, was pretty limited because Tracker/Watcher just aren’t that powerful. If this role were used again, then removing the perma-target effect and making it susceptible to Hook/SG would probably be fine, which I’m pretty sure has been done before.
Ok, the first thing to notice here is that two bold words are missing. Host error there. After writing the initial incarnation of this (voices in his head) it got changed to what it is now. However, after the change, the bold words weren’t re-inserted, and the hosts never noticed until Crux pasted his role PM publicly, at which point it was too late to really do anything about it.
On to the actual role. This was your standard Insane Cop role, but he didn’t know he was insane, obviously. It seemed almost required to have an Insane Cop thrown into a game of crazy people. And the fact that “Paranoid Schizophrenia” is something that comes to mind for a lot of people certainly helps make this role pretty questionable as far as reliability for its results.
That said, Crux was sort of obstinately against the thought that his results were anything but accurate. While “No Paranoids” was indeed confirmed to him (it shouldn’t have been, but it can’t be helped now), there was still the chance that he was Insane. And when he tried to lead the charge against DLE (who was leading the Patients at the time) a few people did bring up the possibility of him being Insane.
It was always assumed this role would lead to at least one mislynch. It just happened to lynch properly, since what would have been a mislynch in any other case ended up being the Psychopath... This was another case of the worst possible target being picked at the worst possible time, obviously. But otherwise, Insane Cops are fun. Much better than Naive/Paranoid, which are both just useless roles that are only worth using in Cop 5 games.
This role was a fun one because the inspiration for it came from Pokemon. Prior to assigning role names, it was just referred to as Encore, the move it was based on.
The real usefulness of this role would be once a killer/inspector was identified, since it could just force that person to waste a Night. Either by targeting someone dead, or by targeting someone that they would get nothing useful from. It also out-sped SGs, but was susceptible to Hooks.
In the end, this role never really played a big part in the game because Dubs never got that into the game. But it would maybe be decent as part of a mafia faction, instead of village, as a semi-weakened hooker.
So here’s the 4th Floor counterpart to Kleptomania. This role stockpiled a few necessity roles, BG, SG, Hooker, and then could use one each Night. Of course, unlocking the roles required certain events to take place. The BG ability was gained automatically when the Patients split. Hook was gained if the player was Hooked by Steroids. And the SG was obtained whenever the first Staff member was killed.
Now, in hindsight, the Hook requirement was pretty poor. Steroids would have auto-unlocked one of the other abilities, but the other two weren’t really all that difficult to obtain. And, in fact, both were obtained by Day 3 when the split occurred, while the Hook was never gotten. But since the BG ability was the only one ever actually used, it probably wasn’t the biggest loss.
Again, this role wasn’t really a problem, but it suffered a tiny bit because of the unlock conditions. That, and the fact that the usefulness of BG generally seems to outweigh SG pretty massively, based on what actions were submitted.
Bi-polar Disorder
Dear Objection,
You have Bi-Polar Disorder.
Bi-Polar Disorder is having uncontrollable mood swings between highs and lows. During the high, manic periods you’re overly happy, while the low, depressed periods you tend to be withdrawn and crabby. To date, your worst depression ended up with you locked in your bedroom for four days straight.
Your mood changing has a pretty big effect on what you can do. On even-numbered Days you’ll be in a good state, and your vote in the lynch will be worth 2 votes. But on odd-numbered Days your mood will take a turn for the worse, and your vote will be worth -1 instead.
The biggest thing to make your mood take a nosedive, however, is getting voted for in the lynch. If you are the person lynched on any day, you’ll take your revenge and kill the last person who cast a vote for you in the lynch.
INITIAL:
You are allied with the Patients.
You win if all Staff members are eliminated.
POST-SPLIT:
You are allied with the 4th Floor Patients.
You win if you eliminate all threats.
Here’s another shitstorm waiting to happen. This role is, arguably, the biggest host mistake. For whatever reason, when it was written, neither of us picked up on the fact that bipolar disorder lacks a hyphen. And so, when it came time for everyone to claim, this role stuck out like a sore thumb. And yes, both hosts felt terrible about it. And yes, everyone who went on and on about how it’s such a massive, unforgivable host error can go to hell.
That said, the Split more or less allowed the error to be remedied.
Also, the fact that the Staff used Bipolar Disorder as one of their fake roles added to the confusion, but only until Kingofkongs was killed.
Anyway, about the role itself. Giving it the oscillating Mayor/Negative Mayor was pretty cool. The problem, of course, was that the votes were never really close, so the whole Mayor effect was kind of moot. However, a Mayor that oscillates between regular/negative on a daily basis in a more normal multi-faction game would be pretty cool, as a way to throw people off about what faction you are or aren’t.
The Revenge thing isn’t really something new. But it certainly has the chance to screw over people during the lynch. Sadly, like so many other roles, this effect was completely circumvented via a Nightkill.
Intermittent Explosive Disorder
Dear ginganinja,
You have Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
Intermittent Explosive Disorder, or IED, is characterized by explosive outbursts of anger. These are usually very disproportionate to the situation at hand, and can reach levels of uncontrollable rage. You’ve been in a state so bad that it took four of your friends to hold you back.
You’re protective of your friends, but people are a bit afraid of you. At Night, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Standing guard by <user>.” If anyone tries to attack <user> that night, you will stop the attack, but you will end up in a blind rage that ends with both you and the attacker dead, but you will have saved whoever you were trying to protect. You can’t bear to just stand around all night, so you can’t target yourself.
INITIAL:
You are allied with the Patients.
You win if all Staff members are eliminated.
POST-SPLIT:
You are allied with the 4th Floor Patients.
You win if you eliminate all threats.
This was a suicidal BG, obviously. It was more or less stolen shamelessly from the Mafiascum list of roles, where it is called “Elite Bodyguard,” and thus was usually referred to as EBG during development. However, Suicidal Bodyguard is a pretty cool name, even if it’s a bit of a confusing acronym for Smogon mafia.
The only reason this role couldn’t self-target (normal BGs could) was because it would essentially lead to a guaranteed Nightkill for the role, barring it getting lynched. So the goal of this role was to pick a high-profile target and save them, while killing the killer at the same time.
So this role, along with its 3rd Floor counterpart Exhibitionism, faced the problem of players being (somewhat) selfish during the game. One can argue (and trust me, one did argue) that players want to stay alive as long as possible in a game, so roles that potentially suicide are terrible ideas. However, the other side of that coin (which was also brought up by a player) is that going 1-for-1 on kills for the Night is a pretty good deal. Or, when the game turns into multi-faction and every faction has its own kill, this role has the chance of essentially giving its faction two kills for the Night, while protecting another important role. And unlike Exhibitionism, which required correctly picking who the killer was, this allowed you to just protect someone who was a likely target that Night, and then take out a major threat at the cost of your life.
Of course, this never ended up happening, since the killers always managed to target differently than this role did. But that’s always the concern of a BG. And, in the end, this role ended up just getting lynched due to some in-game political moves. But it did make a good combo by working with the regular BG. It was just a lot of unlucky targeting.
This role didn’t have any glaring host errors, but there was one thing that should have been changed about it. In truth, there was nothing random about the ability used each Night. The Hook was used even Nights, and the SG used odd Nights. So, if the role hadn’t been quite as misleading maybe it could have been better utilized. Most notably was Night 1, when this targeted bearsfan (who was the Staff killer, though no one actually knew that), and was a SG, not a Hook, which could have changed to course of the game pretty significantly.
So while the idea of an ability that changes Nightly isn’t something that should necessarily be avoided in the future, the way in which this ability’s mechanics are described is the key. Letting someone think it’s random when it isn’t is pretty cruel.
Apparently the idea of a role that just ends the Night phase isn’t really news to anyone. But it was definitely a fun global effect. Essentially, it just hit all other roles with a Hook. However, this Hook was a lower priority than all other Hook and Hook-like abilities, as well as being out-sped by SGs. And that last one is the key, since any SG’d role would be able to act normally (and with four potential SGs in the game, it meant quite a lot could happen even if this role activated).
The friend thing was the same tie-in to Williams Syndrome that Tourette’s had, but, in this case, it was on a different faction post-split. So it hindered the ability for Williams Syndrome to have a super-Mayor vote somewhat.
This role was generally left alone throughout the game, but when it finally was used, it did lead to one of the more exciting plays of the game.
The Staff
Like it was said earlier, making the Staff the “mafia” in a game was kind of a fun play on the “good and evil” sides in a game, since you would think that the lines were drawn a bit more clearly. Overall, some of the Staff roles were pretty powerful, with a very potent Redirector and a Dickens. But, for whatever reason, the thing that worked in the Staff’s favor more than anything else was the fact that most people in the game were utterly convinced that there were only five Staff, not six. That’s pretty inexplicable, honestly, but it certainly helped them out.
Regarding the kill, it passed along in a set order between the Staff (Nurse -> Doctor -> Orderly -> Pharmacist -> Psychiatrist -> Receptionist). Whenever one was killed for whatever reason, the syringes (kill flavor for the Staff) were just passed on automatically. The fact that the Staff members ever even considered the fact that they (the mafia) would ever be left without a kill is just offensive.
The numbers within the role PMs were maintained for the Staff, but only to prevent them from accidentally trying to write fakes without numbers. In reality, of course, the numbers didn’t really have any effect on the Staff roles, of course.
The Doctor
Dear Flamestrike,
You are the Doctor.
Until this riot broke out, you were enjoying the many perks of your highly lucrative career as a surgeon. You got called in prior to the riot to help with an injured patient, and then all Hell broke loose. But, in the end, you’re glad you’re there, because your girlfriend of three years happens to be a nurse at this mental hospital.
As a Doctor, you’ve got to think quickly when something goes wrong. So, when the Patients choose to turn on someone, you can act fast and save them. During the Day, you may PM the hosts “Day X - Saving the lynch target.” After the Patients try to kill someone, you’ll do some quick work and save his life for that Day. But you can only do this once, because the Patients will make sure that all subsequent lynch targets are very, very dead.
When the riot broke out you managed to grab a stack of files of patients previously released. As a result, you know that none of the Patients have the following illnesses:
Rumination Syndrome
Hypersomnia
Somnambulism
Conversion Disorder
Histrionic Personality Disorder
You are allied with the Staff members.
You win if all Patients are eliminated.
Day 3 Result: After seeing your significant other get killed in such a brutal fashion, you can barely contain your rage. You managed to get the syringes before the Patients did, so now you’ll be doing the killing.
At Night, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Injecting <user> with a syringe.” Whatever is in the syringe is a lethal dose, and <user> will be dead when the Day starts.
In addition, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Unleashing my rage on <user>.” After killing the first target, you channel all your anger and will kill a second time that Night. But with so much rage behind your attack, it’s guaranteed that everyone will know it was you who dealt the killing blow. And you definitely won’t be able to pull this off more than once.
This role led to a fair chunk of frustration on the part of the Staff members. Because it was the role that got the safeclaims to use for writing fake role PMs. But, of course, there were only five safeclaims given, to be distributed between six people. Which was very much done on purpose, forcing the group to work with the five sure things, and then take a chance on the sixth. However, this ended up being thrown out, as only four of the safeclaims ended up being used. Somnambulism was discarded, replaced by Megalomania (a lucky pick on the part of the Staffers). The sixth was Bipolar Disorder, which pretty much led to Kingofkongs getting killed, or certainly would have.
In a closed-theme game, not giving the mafia faction enough safeclaims is certainly some degree of bastard modding. However, the fact that the went and deviated so much from the safeclaims provided was pretty crazy and unexpected. And choosing Bipolar as a claim was just a crazy move, since it’s a mental illness commonly thought of.
The lynch stop ability was a pretty standard thing to throw onto a mafia faction, really. The problem with it was more how it was implemented by the Staff, but oh well.
The real fun of this role didn’t come until the Nurse was killed. In the event that the Nurse was killed before the Doctor, the Doctor gained a secondary kill, but using it came at the cost of revealing himself. When this ended up being used lategame it very nearly got the Staff a win, amazingly enough.
This role was pretty decent, if a bit too standard. The idea was to Hook earlygame (assuming the Patients, as the village, lacked a kill worth BGing against), and the later, the BG effect would be a bit more useful. And, shockingly, that’s pretty much what happened. Good to know at least one role got to do what it was supposed to. This was also the last Staff member to get the syringes, but he never had the chance to use them, due to the Possession ability of Huntington’s Disease.
This was, by far, the most straightforward role in the game. It was a standard mafia killer role. However, the flavor of the role making allusions to becoming unable to use the role properly caused a good deal of concern within the Staff.
As it turned out, the drawback of this role never came into play. In the event that the Doctor was killed before the Nurse, the Nurse kills would change from Nightly kills to Nightly poisons. Not really a massive drawback in the sense that the number of kills would only decrease by one, but it did mean that a player would know they were dying for the Day leading up to their actual death, as well as be able to act the following Night, even though they wouldn’t be able to get results.
The Psychiatrist
Dear makiri,
You are the Psychiatrist.
This riot at the hospital had really screwed up your already over-full schedule. You were supposed to just be passing through, making your weekly rounds, but now you’re trapped inside the building with all of these crazy people. Other than this facility, you had four other hospitals that you needed to make rounds at this week.
Even though you’re not familiar with any of these Patients, you’re very good at manipulating their fragile psyches. At Night, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Asking <user> how he feels.” Without a second thought, <user> will spill his guts, telling you the complete contents of his role PM.
Alternatively, at Night, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Advising <user1> to vote for <user2>.” You’ll plant the idea in <user1>’s head that he has to vote for <user2> in the lynch the following Day.
You are allied with the Staff members.
You win if all Patients are eliminated.
Again, this was a bit of a standardish role thrown onto the Staff, as well as the only reliable inspect in the entire game. The idea here was the inspect early on as necessary, and then start persuading toward the end once the villages had cross-fired sufficiently.
As it turned out, this role only actually persuaded once (what led to AG’s godkill death). All other Nights were either and inspection or idle due to inactivity. And the fact that Night 7, when this role was killed, Walrein (who submitted for makiri that Night) chose to
inspect someone... that’s just abysmal play right there.
No, Walrein was not the Pharmacist, as chuckle-inducing as that would have been. For those wondering: yes, idea did cross our minds.
This was one of the cases where the Staff got a twist on a more standard role. Roles that swap the Night targets of two roles have been done, though they’re generally considered pretty powerful in the realm of redirects. This role, however takes the opposite approach, and instead swaps the abilities of the two roles, but they still target normally. It’s a bit confusing unless you see it.
Ability Swap:
5 characters:
Swapper
BG
Inspect
Townie
Mafia
The BG sends in his action: “Protect Townie.”
The Inspect sends in: “Inspect Mafia.”
Swapper sends in: “Swap BG and Inspect.”
End result: Inspect ends up protecting Mafia, BG inspects Townie (and gets the results).
That’s the easiest way to look at it. And this role certainly ended up being pretty powerful, particularly when the Staff had a complete list of roles in the game.
The Receptionist
Dear kingofkongs,
You are the Receptionist.
As someone who got placed at this mental hospital by a temp agency, you certainly did not sign on for a massive riot of Patients. But regardless of the situation, you’re a very adaptable person. That’s a good thing, because you’ve recently gone through four different jobs in as many months.
When the riots broke out you were thinking on your feet, and you managed to grab a radio connected to the PA system. At Night, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Broadcasting for everyone to hear.” Below that, you may put, in [quote] tags, any message you would like, as long as it is relatively brief. Everyone will hear the message broadcast over the PA system, but won’t be able to tell it came from you.
You’ve also got some slightly questionable morals, and are pretty decent at forging information. So, at Night you may PM with hosts “Night X - Falsifying records for <user>.” Below that, you may put, in [quote] tags, whatever fake information you would like. Anyone trying to investigate aspects of <user>’s role PM will grab whatever fake information you’ve cooked up, so you’ll have to prepare a new copy every night.
You are allied with the Staff members.
You win if all Patients are eliminated.
With all of the info roles floating around on the Patients, it only seemed fair to give the Staff something to fight back with. And the fact that it fit pretty well with the flavor didn’t hurt either.
The use of a Dickens (or any Mole role, really) is usually pretty dangerous as far as crossing the line into bastard modding. However, it ended up not being an issue in this game because kingofkongs was killed so early on. That said, a Dickens really isn’t a problem so long as there’s enough to balance it out. And since there were four info roles, three of which dealt with PMs and one that was immune to Dickens, it was adequately handled.
The real fun of the Dickens would have been to put fake PMs onto actual villagers, trying to get them lynched. At some point the Staff did realize this, but the role was killed before it would really have any chance to do this.
The Announcer ability was largely there for flavor. However, the Staff chose to use it as a way to prove village-ness. Which both worked and didn’t, since they chose to split it up. Really, though, the Announcer role is pretty much useless since it’s so expected. It’s just a way for someone to prove their role in a way that’s almost irrefutable. Unless they’re a mafia announcer, of course.
The Neutrals
The fact that people constantly went back to the possibility that there were more than two neutrals was something that both amused and puzzled the hosts. That said, there were two neutrals thrown in. One was the standard Wolf, while the other was a not-quite-harmless, though non-killing, neutral.
The Psychopath
Dear Da Letter El,
You are the Psychopath.
Psychopathy means that you have a lack of empathy, as well as relatively anti-social tendencies, despite how psychopaths are commonly portrayed in the media. You, however, are exactly the kind of psychopath that the media has made into what everyone fears a psychopath to be. In fact, you’ve already killed countless people over the past four years, and feel absolutely no remorse for having done so.
First, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Killing <user>.” You’ll go after your target in a vicious manner, and murder him in a brutal fashion.
Next, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Distracting <user> with a random train of thought.” You’ll
ramble on about something, causing your target to not
perform his night actions as he planned. However, you’ll find out exactly what your target planned to do that night. You can’t distract the same player two nights in a row.
You’re a
smart psychopath, and you realize that you need some kind of
mental illness to keep suspicions from falling on you. So as a quick fix you decided that you’re in for ADD treatment. Upon inspection, you will show up as a Patient with ADD. But it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to keep up this deception forever.
Finally, you may use
this Quicktopic during the day to discuss with an anonymous player. At night, if you both send the action “Night X - Co-inspecting <user>.” then you will both get that player’s role PM.
You are allied with no one.
You win if all Patients and Staff have been eliminated.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Fat ADD
Dear <user>,
You have Attention Deficit Disorder.
Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD, means you have trouble paying attention to anything. Although you’re pretty smart, you found yourself in a mental hospital because your inattention led to terrible grades. Admit it, you only read this PM for, what, four seconds?
Since you’re so easily distracted, you can catch other people off guard too. At Night you may PM the hosts “Night X - Distracting <user> with a random train of thought.” You’ll ramble on about something, causing your target to not perform his night actions as he planned. However, you’ll find out exactly what your target planned to do that night. You can’t distract the same player two nights in a row.
You are allied with the Patients.
You win if all Staff members are eliminated.
|
The Wolf of this game was the Psychopath/Serial Killer, which is, of course, a bit of a joke in itself, since the “Serial Killer” is often a replacement for what is really only ever called a “Wolf” on Smogon. Anyway, that’s not really that amusing...
So there was a good bit to work with on this role. The most obvious thing was the kill, which was 100% standard on a Wolf. Amazingly, this kill was NEVER used in the game, since the Psychopath was Hooked Night 1 and Lynched Day 2. The flavor, which it was a shame not to use, was going to involve lots of blades and blood. Sadly, all of the killing was done with lynching, bludgeoning, and syringes.
Next up was a twist on the Hook. This Hook, however, was slower than standard Hook roles, but faster than the Global Hook of Narcolepsy. The justification for it being slower, however, was that it would also tell the Psychopath what ability would have been used, turning it into a pseudo-inspect for abilities. Flavor-wise, a Psychopath tends to be fairly good at manipulating people, so the flavor of the ability worked out for the role without it requiring the ability changing for the fake PM.
The Mole PM (Attention Deficit Disorder) was another pretty standard thing to give to a Wolf role, who would clearly have to try and mole the village to survive. Now, the original intent of using ADD as the mole was to be a bit of a joke, since ADD is nothing you would get hospitalized for (later roles like Synesthesia sorta crippled this) and the fact that it’s even a mental illness is sort of debatable (which is maybe a bit too in-depth for the scope of this game). But regardless of the intent for this to be only somewhat believable, the Mole PM was very strong.
Essentially, the PM could not be “broken” by any of the info roles that dealt with aspects of the role PM. That meant that his PM showed up as “Foe” for Schizophrenia, the Insane Cop, any questions about the PM asked by Synesthesia were directed to ADD, and other inspections would simply receive the ADD PM over anything else. The fact that DLE didn’t trust in the Mole PM to keep him from being bothered by any inspections was pretty much what led to him getting destroyed in the Day 2 lynch. Of course, the Mole PM wouldn’t last forever, and would have expired as soon as the Split happened. So it was in his best interest to get inspections out of the way early, which required making himself pretty high-profile within the village. Which was pretty much what he did.
The co-inspection between Psychopath/Drug Dealer was a way to give the Neutrals a way to have an inspection without relying on the Patients or Staff, but still kept them from getting too overpowered. Sadly, the Quicktopic was deleted, so you can’t see what was there. But it amounted to a log between Life (the original Dealer) and ginga (Life’s name removed), and DLE’s alias there using a bit of misdirection by suggesting that they investigate him.
The Quicktopic was more or less anonymous, initially. It was meant to make the two of them work a bit to figure out who the other neutral was (they didn’t know they were both neutrals, but you could sort of make the assumption the other was neutral if you were). Since it was possible for the two neutrals to win together it could have been a decent alliance, but it ended up not working out so much.
The Drug Dealer
Dear Paperblade,
You are The Drug Dealer.
You started selling drugs a long time ago, and it’s only escalated from there. At all times you have a pretty
extensive stash on you, and you can use these drugs to get other people to do all sorts of
crazy stuff. The best thing you carry is a Steroid of your own creation, a unique combination of four common steroids.
First, you may PM the hosts “Night X - Get <user1> to turn on <user2>.” You’ll give <user1> a little gift of some good stuff, and they’ll be so
grateful that they’ll feel obligated to vote for <user2> the next day.
Additionally, during the Day, you may PM the hosts “Day X - Give Steroids to <user>.” During the Day you slip these Steroids to someone, and that night they’ll get a
super-charged version of their normal ability. The next Night, however, they will be unable to act. This ability has no effect on the Staff, but they will still accept the Steroids so they can resell them later.
Finally, you may use
this Quicktopic during the day to discuss with an anonymous player. At night, if you both send the action “Night X - Co-inspecting <user>.” then you will both get that player’s role PM.
You are allied with no one.
You win if all other living players have received your Steroids at least once.
So this was the non-killing, not-entirely-nonthreatening Neutral in the game. The goal of this role was to work alongside the killing Neutral, the Psychopath, in order to help bring the game down to a relatively close finish. The abilities given to the Dealer essentially allowed him to semi-align with any of the factions (Steroids for Patients, Persuade for Staff), while the win condition was pretty clearly geared to favor the Psychopath, as anything but a close finish would make it very difficult for the Dealer to meet his win condition.
The persuade was 100% standard, as far as how it was implemented. It gave the Dealer a bit of an in with the Staff, as it bought them another vote in the lynch (giving the Staff enough power to go head to head with either of the village factions in a lynch, if it came to that). If the Dealer chose to work with the Staff, then the Steroids became a relative non-factor in the game, just a part of the win condition. The Steroids also had no effect on the Psychopath. But that was an easy enough thing to use in the case that the Psychopath looked like he was going to pull off a Wolf win.
The Steroids, however, were where the Dealer really shined. He could supercharge (almost) any Patient’s ability, giving them some kind of buff for that Night. Every Patient had a different effect customized for his role:
Huntington's Disease - This was the only Patient unaffected by the Steroids. It didn’t matter, since he auto-died anyway.
Synesthesia - Able to ask two different people questions at once. While it wasn’t much better than two regular Nights of questions, it did guarantee bypassing of Dickens.
Amnesia - Instead of losing the role PM, you actually get to see it. That PM will still be revealed on death, however.
Echopraxia - You know what abilities targeted you the previous Night.
Kleptomania - Auto-unlock of one of the three abilities. No effect if all are unlocked.
Williams Syndrome - Finds out identities of the “friends.” The “hook” is a vote of zero the next Day.
Exhibitionism - If you target a killer, you will Rogue, regardless of who the killer was trying to kill.
Alzheimer's - Remembers his ability is a Safeguard.
Tourette's - Gains a single-target version of the Global PR, which does not count against the one-shot Global version.
Insomnia - Able to tag an additional player.
Schizophrenia - Your inspection is sane and it is made very clear that it is (essentially reveals insanity, as well).
OCD - Find out what abilities you repeated the previous Night, and who was targeted by your target.
Munchausen's - Auto-unlock of one of the three abilities. No effect if all are unlocked.
Bi-Polar Disorder - Vote becomes 3 or -2 on next Day. The “hook” is a vote of zero the Day after that.
IED - When defending against a killer, the killer will die, but you will not.
MPD - Choose your ability (hook or SG) for that Night, and the cycle returns to normal afterward.
Narcolepsy - Gains a single-target version of the Global Hook, which does not count against the one-shot Global version.
The co-inspection between Psychopath/Drug Dealer was a way to give the Neutrals a way to have an inspection without relying on the Patients or Staff, but still kept them from getting too overpowered. Sadly, the Quicktopic was deleted, so you can’t see what was there. But it amounted to a log between Life (the original Dealer) and ginga (Life’s name removed), and DLE’s alias there using a bit of misdirection by suggesting that they investigate him.
The Quicktopic was more or less anonymous, initially. It was meant to make the two of them work a bit to figure out who the other neutral was (they didn’t know they were both neutrals, but you could sort of make the assumption the other was neutral if you were). Since it was possible for the two neutrals to win together it could have been a decent alliance, but it ended up not working out so much.
And that’s the roles.