Mafia Traitor is a liability

[callforjudgement]

That role isn't really Traitor. It's a highly bastard third party role which should have a different name. (It can theoretically be balanced by making it a Town Survivor, i.e. has to survive

and

town has to win, who has to win without giving away their identity and thus being NKed, but even if it's balanced like that it's still highly bastard.)

[kuribo]

Anytime you have to place mod-ordained limits on what a player can and can't say, you've already got a bad role on your hands.

Like, if you have to say "You're not allowed to claim," or something similar, you should re-evaluate the mechanics of the role.

[Elbirn]

This thread confuses me because the one time I've played with a traitor, nk'ing them meant they were recruited to the mafia private thread instead of them dying.

Not having a nk isn't good, but it's loads better than a dead team mate. And having an additional team mate in the first place is wtf awesome

[Alchemist21]

There are several versions of Traitor. Sometimes they can be killed, sometimes not.

[Zachrulez]

That role isn't really Traitor. It's a highly bastard third party role which should have a different name. (It can theoretically be balanced by making it a Town Survivor, i.e. has to survive

and

town has to win, who has to win without giving away their identity and thus being NKed, but even if it's balanced like that it's still highly bastard.)

I'm just going to leave this here to let people know this actually happened.

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=15655

(Still bastard.)

[callforjudgement]

That role isn't really Traitor. It's a highly bastard third party role which should have a different name. (It can theoretically be balanced by making it a Town Survivor, i.e. has to survive

and

town has to win, who has to win without giving away their identity and thus being NKed, but even if it's balanced like that it's still highly bastard.)

I'm just going to leave this here to let people know this actually happened.

http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=15655

(Still bastard.)

Oh right, I misread the posts earlier.
I was thinking of a town role who knows the scum, but the scum think they're town. That's bastard.
Reading back, I see that we're discussing a town role who knows the scum, and the scum think they're scum. That's even more bastard.
Both are theoretically balanceable via the scum being able to kill them if they deduce the existence of the role. But just because a bastard role is balanceable doesn't mean it's anywhere near a good idea.

(Also, just because the role is theoretically balanceable doesn't mean it was balanced in that setup. In retrospect, the clues were there, but seeing the second version took me by surprise as I was expecting the first, and missed the clues until I looked back for them. Also, there's no way anyone would sanely no-lynch in the stated version of that setup; given that it was apparently balanced expecting no-lynches, I'm not surprised town won.)

[TehBrawlGuy]

I think Traitor is fine as a concept, it's just often very poorly executed.

My personal favorite variant I've seen was in an Open and had these rules:
-Knows the scumteam, is not known by the Scumteam
-May be killed by the scumteam
-Returns town on investigation
-Does not count for parity (i.e. Town wins if it's the last Scum alive, and the game does not end automatically in a 2-1-1 endgame)
-Investigates and is returned a result of Cop/Not Cop.


It has a lot of neat effects on how the game progresses, IMO.
-It turns the whole Cop-clear dynamic away from being the typical brain dead fare, because Cops get an inno on it.
-It prevents Town from auto-lynching any Cop hit, because the hit then claims cop and says the Cop is the Traitor.
-It also prevents roles that could self-clear by claiming from doing so, as it can then CC them to hopefully force a ML.

[Accountant]

Best variant of Mafia Traitor.

- Knows the scumteam, participates in the scum PT, helps select NKs and so on
- Is known by the scumteam, appears to be a regular scum member
- Scumteam knows there's a traitor
- Immune to night kills
- Counts for parity
- Investigates as a regular scum member
- Wins by helping the scum win

If the traitor is still alive when the scumteam fulfill their win conditions, it automatically kills every surviving mafia member and wins alone, SK style. It makes bussing and associations so much more fun and engaging. The traitor has a lot of advantages, but he has to hide his true self from not one but two groups.

[callforjudgement]

Hmm, that's like a scum version of Antisocial Survivor (basically a Survivor for which if they win, everyone else loses, and their presence is announced at the start of the game).

That said, can they win via dying and having the rest of the scumteam eliminate the town? If so, then they're basically a Mafia member who sometimes randomly swindles the rest of the scum out of a win, but can avoid this happening via volunteering to be bussed.

[Accountant]

Oh, yeah, they have to survive to win.

I have a friend who played a modified version of this, with a wolf theme. The mafia were the wolves and the traitor was called the Werewolf.

[Ether]

This isn't a good role. The mafia knows whether they still have a mole or not, so what happens if you're non-mole scum in LyLo and the tide is turning against a townie? Sitting back and letting it happen is an autoloss; if there are three or more left, then even claiming scum would be better than doing nothing. One way or another, this role just guarantees that the mafia selfdestructs somewhere down the line.

[Alchemist21]

That role sounds more like a super-Usurper than a Traitor, and as scum I'd be pretty pissed if I lost because of such a role, even in a bastard game.

[PokerFace]

Maifa Traitor is better than having nothing. Goon is better than Mafia Traitor

Mafia Traitor is annoying in that mafia has to think about who not to kill, find who is friendly. Finding who is friendly is the town's job! So traitors are annoying in that they require more work pre-endgame. At end game they require far less work since scum can win the game 1 day sooner than it would take if they had no extra member.

Mafia Usurper, scum's that know who is scum and must bus the GF or all of their buddies so they are last scum, are more annoying since they lower your numbers intentionally. They are incredibly bastard if their victory causes the other members of the scum team to lose and or if the rest of the scum team does not know a Usurper exists

Both these roles are bad and I hate playing with them outside bastard games

[Postie]

There's no instance in which a scumteam has to worry about killing their traitor unless they're bad.