drealmer7: Okay, I'm looking for some general feedback from everyone. I'm working on my setup and my brain is active and I'm simply wondering if the drawback to too many roles in a setup goes beyond complexity for the moderator to manage them all/if they conflict in their existence, or if in theory (I'm not actually trying to do this, it just occurred to me as a thought), it would be ideal or at least fun/interesting to have a setup where every single player had a role given that it all worked well together and didn't cause issues and was actually a fun+success as a game overall.
I guess what made me think of it is I was wondering if people get bored of playing Town Vanilla if they draw it a lot and if so, if there is an appeal for most players to have a role vs. not have a role, or if there are people who care or don't care, or, whatever, yeah, just a general interest in what everyone thinks about all of that, because, hey, I'm new to it all and my brain is a-spinning with thoughts about mafia while I work on mine.
Oo, also, I was wondering if there is a general average percent of roles with abilities to total players? 50% or less and once it goes above that it becomes hectic, or what?
Lower power level means the game is easier to balance, and makes any faction less likely to be screwed over by the setup or a random, untimely death. In general, a well balanced game where all factions feel they had a valid chance of winning, will be perceived as a more fun game than a game with a crazy power level where everything feels random. Except for novelty.
Spreading power around, with several weaker roles rather than fewer stronger roles is a good way to prevent random fuckedovery. If you give Town a cop, and he dies N1, that's pretty bad for Town. If you give Town a tracker/watcher pair and one of them dies N1, the impact is smaller. However, you have to make sure you don't end up giving a faction more power in total. Do you consider a watcher/tracker pair stronger than a single cop? You'll have to make compensations elsewhere in your setup.
All games should have vanillas, if only so that vanilla is a valid false claim for Scum. While many players will prefer having some sort of role, if you actively dislike playing as vanilla, Mafia probably isn't the game for you.
For night actions, approaching them with a formal logic mind set is usually a good idea. Just make sure that you consider every possible dilemma, prior to the game starting, and that you treat all possible scenarios in a logically consistent way throughout.
Some roles are more likely to create tough decisions than others - roleblockers, redirectors and motivators, among others.
[Redirector] targets [Roleblocker], and redirects them to [Scum performing nightkill]. [Roleblocker]'s original target was [Redirector]. Does the nightkill go through?
[Vigilante] and [Scum] try to kill the same person, who is protected by the [Doctor]. Does the target live to see another day?
[Vigilante] and [Scum] try to kill the same person. There is a [Cop variant] in your game that only gets a positive if his target performed a kill that night. Will [Vigilante], [Scum], both or neither give a positive result?
A player is targeted by both [Framer] and [Naive cop]. What result does the cop get?
A [Framer] is redirected to frame his own [Godfather], who is also targeted by [Cop]. What result does the cop get?
Will players know when they have been roleblocked or redirected?
You have to make sure that you know the answer to any such question relevant to your setup, prior to the game starting. If you end up having to make stuff up on the fly, it's much too easy to end up trying to nudge things slightly.
