more russian roulette would be good. I'm guessing there are game styles with power roles and etcetera too?

Ew ew ew, no. Way too much power to Mafia, since they'll know when to hold and when to shoot. Far too easy for them to dominate all of the kills. It doesn't matter whether town know who mafia are if mafia know exactly when they need to pull the trigger.

Test.

I always do!

OMG, I didn't study!

I'm totally going to fail. :(

Just sit next to someone who did study. My students do that all the time!

Move me down the hosting list please. Until the end of the year will not be a good time for me. Once my grandson is born next month i will be very distracted and would not make a good host and on top of that is Thanksgiving and Christmas. Once the new year rolls around I should be able to host without a problem.

The game I plan on hosting is an Old West theme. There will be no cult aspect to the game.

I'm hoping the entire town are polyamorous lovers so the entire town dies at the first mislynch or nightkill.

To balance it, I guess you'd better have the mafia as guilty children.

Will be a closed setup

With trent hopping down the ladder, I guess I will be next. So I would like some input. The game will be semi-open with a selection of possible roles which are randomly added to the game. The roles are mostly chosen because they fit the flavour. So I would like your input, whether any of those would create balancing issues and would have to be balanced by a role for the opposing party. The flavour of the setup will be "The Witches of Salem" with you all being the women of Salem who are suspect of witchcraft. Instead of all these tedious trials, the nice people of Salem have decided to lock you all in together and let you work out who the witches are. The actual witches, locked in with you, will have to sacrifice people to their witch god until they gain enough power to overthrow the ruling caste of Salem (i.e. until they control the votes, as usual).

The Day will have two phases. The first phase plays normally and ends prematurely when an absolute majority is reached. Then the decision bell rings and announces the second phase. Anyone not voting now is assumed to have something to hide - and is therefore counted as self-vote. Absolute majority still ends the Day with a lynch. But also at some random time after the decision bell (something like 24+D24 hours) The Counting occurs. I.e. the Day ends, the votes are tallied and the person with the RELATIVE majority will be lynched. If two people tie, both are lynched. If three or more share the most votes slot, one of them is randomly selected.

Now to the possible roles.
-Vengeful townie (can kill one other person when she is lynched)
-Parity cop (can sense whether two persons 'share a bond')
-Scum vanilla cop (can sense whether a person 'is something special')
-Neutral lyncher (you just want to see that one person hanged)
-Neutral survivor (you don't care about Salem and Witches and stuff. You just want to survive)

So, what do you think about balancing. Can these roles be left as random? Or does, for example, a cop have to be balanced by the cop of the other alignment?

Or should I skip the 'semi' from semi-open and just include all roles? Perhaps with exception of the neutral roles, who can be used as needed depending on player number.

Or do you have a suggestion for another flavour-fitting, not too strong role to include in the random list?

Parity cop is the greatest of all cops, so I always support it being incorporated into any/all games. IMO, though, it always needs an N0 action since it is, in many ways, weaker (and thus generally less swingy) than a standard cop. Keep in mind the role is weaker still if you have more than just town + 1maf factions in the setup.

I'm not a huge fan of the lyncher role, both for its own sake, and for how it ripples through the game dynamics.

Vengeful I haven't seen in action enough to have a firm opinion.

Survivor (keeping in mind any neutral impacts a parity cop role very significantly) and vanilla cop are both fine imo. Though flavour-wise I'm a bit confused - if mafia are all the actual witches, what sort of "something special" would a scum vanilla cop determine - biggest herd of cows? ;)

I'm not sure I understand how the 2-phase part works? Does it mean the absolute-majority gets lynched and a second player (relative majority) from phase 2 gets killed too? Can people unvote in 2nd stage? If so, what's the point of setting votes to themselves for those who haven't voted? They'd just unvote immediately...

No, the Vanilla cop would detect if someone is Vanilla or has special gifts or interest. I.e. parity cop, neutral roles and vengeful townie would show up as 'not vanilla'

Vengeful is, in it's nature, quite swingy. It is basically a one-shot vigilante that needs to be lynched to get that shot.

So, which parity cop version would you use? A N0 read and then each night investigate one person an get a 'same' or 'different' result to the N0 read? Or read two persons each night and get a 'same' or 'different' read on those two?

I believe the standard result compares to the previous investigation. So a N2 investigation would compare to a N1, while N1 compares to N0. If you have a Roleblocker, then you need to decide what to do if the Parity Cop gets blocked; if their next (unblocked) investigation compares to the null on the block, then the parity cop can be rendered effectively useless very easily (just block them every other nigh or so).

I do agree with Bler that a parity cop needs a N0. Otherwise they won't have any results at all until at least D3, and that's assuming everything else goes well. A lot of games around here tend to end by around D5.

Jumping roles slightly: You'll also need to carefully consider how the Lyncher is supposed to achieve their win. If all they need to do is have their target dead before game over, then it is (probably) pretty easy (assuming the target isn't something like Innocent Child). If they need to hammer, that is significantly harder, and may end up being nearly functionally impossible. Also, if the lyncher achieves their win condition, is the game over? Does the lyncher stay in the game (possibly getting a new objective), or does the lyncher leave the game (possibly ending it unexpectedly)?