What happened to Vanilla Cop?

[Kagami]

Thankfully, the list above consists of role-flavor pairs that are not especially restrictive, which is probably why they're tolerated. The worst offender, the cop, has become jargon on ms rather than a reference to a civil servant who enforces the law. Miller is likewise jargon, though as you point out, it was that way from the start .

Though it might offend some linguistic sensibilities, jargon is very elegant. It is because of this elegance that so many people use "X-cop," and it's why most people would say "Tracker Miller" over Gravedigger.

In any case, if I couldn't use Roleblockers anymore because they became Prostitutes out of some homage to the English language, I'd be very sad.

[Zachrulez]

When I think of Neapolitan I think of this:

[Kagami]

Is that not exactly what the role name refers to?

[Ether]

It's a person from a city in Italy, and an ice cream flavor with separate sections for vanilla and other flavors.

I don't understand what "not especially restrictive" means to you. Could you elaborate?

[Zachrulez]

If you're a player with a weird role that no one's ever seen before, do whatever you need to make your point clear!

But when we're talking about naming roles officially--roles which are whitelisted by the NRG and likely to come up a lot--we don't have to make every single one of them sound exactly the same just because they're investigative roles and cops are investigative roles. This is just a saddening lack of love for the English language.

You damn philistines.

It's kinda weird though that I would have to run a game in the theme queue to make this paticular normal role

sound

more normal though no?

You would think all the really interesting sounding names would exist in a theme game, and not done there to get back to more of the other way around.

[Kagami]

If you look at flavor-role pairings of theme games, there's typically an intent to match the flavor of the Normal Role, primarily to reduce player confusion.

If I want to put a protective role in my Theme's design, then, I need a doctor flavor or something like that, which usually isn't a problem since it already is going to match whatever flavor I thought would be appropriate as a protector. Likewise, vigilante is nice and broad and can be any good guy that kills people. Tracker is pretty much already a basic descriptor of the role's function, and I doubt anyone generates a mental picture of some forest ranger guy when thinking about it.

But how about Prostitute? Should I really need to find a flavor in my theme that's something like a prostitute? Or what if we used Stalker instead of Role Cop?

Presently I can make lots of flavors that are suitable for roleblockers and rolecops, but it would start to get very specific in most Themes to be restricted to prostitute or stalker. Thankfully, the NRG seems to agree with me here, and we have the much nicer and pleasantly descriptive Roleblocker and Role Cop.

[Ether]

This is all a just so story. Do all of your masons really belong to secret elite fraternities? Are all of your innocent children actual children? Do all of your jailkeepers literally own a prison in which they lock people up?

Roleblockers and rolecops are ubiquitous and they aren't going anywhere. You don't have to worry about that. It's just new roles (or orphaned roles that need new names because the old one meant two different things) that are getting names that aren't necessarily references to old ones.

It's kinda weird though that I would have to run a game in the theme queue to make this paticular normal role sound more normal though no?

You would think all the really interesting sounding names would exist in a theme game, and not done there to get back to more of the other way around.

Not really, unless you also want to rename gunsmiths to be "gun cops" and encryptors to be "daytalk enablers."

Er...actually,

do

you two want that?

[Brian Skies]

Not really, unless you also want to rename gunsmiths to be "gun cops" and encryptors to be "daytalk enablers."

I think encryptor is fitting for its role, but gunsmith bugs me. By definition, a gunsmith is closer to an inventor that gives a player a gun. But here, it's closer to a security guard with a metal detector.

[Ether]

Yeah...I named gunsmiths as one of the few untainted role-based investigative roles, but historically they've been all over the place. Although that's more about what "having a gun" means than the investigative aspect.

But yeah, I can see that. (Even if I don't really like those alternative names either.)

[Brian Skies]

Gunsmiths have enough precedent at this point that it shouldn't be an issue for anyone on this site. But I still think it's a horrible fit for its role since it doesn't actually do anything its name suggests it should (as in making, selling, or repairing guns).

[zoraster]

I want ice cream.

[Brian Skies]

kagami's role PM

You are a

Spastic Hummingbird Wizard

. Each night you may visit a player and learn if that player has a role that would cause alignment investigations to give misleading results.

Oh, my turn to claim? I'm a GF/Miller Cop.

I'm now really disappointed no one's made this a thing yet.

[Kagami]

It would be a really terrible role in a closed setup.

[Brian Skies]

Only because it's an incredibly ambiguous role that doesn't actually do anything as far as catching scum is concerned unless you're checking for fakeclaims, which we already have plenty of (flavor cop, name cop, vanilla cop, role cop in most instances, etc).

[Kagami]

No, it has clear pro-town utility. A miller will likely claim early, so it can confirm that player as innocent, and anyone else it would get a positive on is likely a godfather.

The problem with it is that it's inherently deceptive. The existence of the hummingbird wizard implies that these is a GF in the setup. If there isn't, then he, and the rest of town after he flips, will be looking for a GF that doesn't exist.

If there is a GF, then it's the GF who is unfairly deceived. He believes he is supposed to draw an investigation, when he is in fact highly vulnerable to it.

[BBmolla]

VT Cop is terribly inelegant. Townie cop is much more elegant.

If you can find an occupation that has to do with identifying normal people I'm all ears. We shouldn't aim to create weird names like miller. The only reason I don't suggest we change miller to delinquent is because miller is so engrained and more elegant.

[BBmolla]

I really do think we should change friendly neighbor, it's horribly confusing.

[Kagami]

VT Cop is terribly inelegant. Townie cop is much more elegant.

I guess this is true since it's fairly clear that a "Townie Cop" isn't simply a normal Cop.

[mastin2]

I really do think we should change friendly neighbor, it's horribly confusing.

I never really got why people get confused by it. But maybe that's me showing my age, since I was around before Neighbors replaced unconfirmed masons, so I see neighbors as the usurper to the name and not friendly neighbor as the one needing to change.

[Faraday]

I really do think we should change friendly neighbor, it's horribly confusing.

Ya. No..

[BBmolla]

I really do think we should change friendly neighbor, it's horribly confusing.

I never really got why people get confused by it. But maybe that's me showing my age, since I was around before Neighbors replaced unconfirmed masons, so I see neighbors as the usurper to the name and not friendly neighbor as the one needing to change.

In that case, change neighbors. I feel like on site atm, neighbors are more common than friendly neighbors.

[mastin2]

In that case, change neighbors. I feel like on site atm, neighbors are more common than friendly neighbors.

Problem is, these two are a bit contradictory.

It's harder to change a vastly-overused role's name than it is to change a sadly-underutilized role's name, even though the sadly-underutilized role was around long before the creation of the vastly-overused role.

[Kagami]

Let's change Friendly Neighbor to Reverse Cop.

[Brian Skies]

Or change neighbors to roommates.

[Brian Skies]

I actually misread the description for the Spastic Hummingbird Wizard and thought it applied to all investigative results, but I find your rebuttal interesting and I still don't think it's completely terrible.

No, it has clear pro-town utility.

As do most investigative roles, especially the cop. Hiders and IC's are also inherently pro-town.

A miller will likely claim early, so it can confirm that player as innocent, and anyone else it would get a positive on is likely a godfather.

The problem with it is that it's inherently deceptive. The existence of the hummingbird wizard implies that these is a GF in the setup. If there isn't, then he, and the rest of town after he flips, will be looking for a GF that doesn't exist.

If there is a GF, then it's the GF who is unfairly deceived. He believes he is supposed to draw an investigation, when he is in fact highly vulnerable to it.

While a lot of players will claim miller early, I think you're disregarding that some players actually won't claim it and hope to make it through the game without having to worry about it. I also know that at least one or two players have openly admitted to preferring this route as you may get to skip the whole "Is he actually a miller or gambiting scum?" discussion.

While it will imply the existence of a miller or a godfather (and I guess any other role that may affect alignment related investigative results whatever those may be), I don't think it implies that one or the other has to exist as long as you have at least one of them. Granted, a lack of a miller claim will imply the existence of a godfather, but if the Spastic Hummingbird Wizard decides to claim or softclaim early, the godfather can take this as a cue to claim miller instead.

As far as a GF being deceived, what are they being deceived about? Until the town becomes aware that a godfather or a miller should exist, the godfather should still be playing like a godfather. Also, as long as you're compensating the scumteam in return and trying to keep the game balanced elsehwere, it shouldn't become that big of an issue since you're just changing the way the role interacts with the other roles in the setup, not how the players should be playing them. A cop that can only find the godfather should also have a lower chance of finding scum than a regular cop since there's only one scum member it can identify.

I'm also not fond of players trying to draw investigative results as a godfather and don't particularly care if they get lynched for it. It's rewarding if they can avoid the lynch, but it's something that doesn't bother me that much if it ends up backfiring for them because town would have had enough reason to just lynch them outright.