How much have things shifted?

[GreyICE]

Also effort is super alignment indicative. If Red Coyote is making any, lynch him.

[McMenno]

>isos self
>ctrl+f "aren't we all"
>shit

[Gamma Emerald]

I meant mystery about whether the person is VT or goon. Setup mystery is a different case.

[Vi]

Also effort is super alignment indicative. If Red Coyote is making any, lynch him.

*attempts to quietly snort*
*fails at excessive volume*

(no hate, just memories and respect)

[Katsuki]

Vanilla cop is better than Neapolitan because it adds a sense of mystery. Neapolitan is just a bargain bin Normal Cop.

Mystery is exactly what we don't want too much of in normal games. The idea always has been normal games are more or less "the setup adds spice to dayplay, but doesn't become the focus of it" and theme games are where "setup mystery" can sometimes take over.

Not arguing for or against either, but how does Vanilla Cop add "mystery" exactly?

[Gamma Emerald]

They don't confirm alignment, but they can disprove power role claims.

[SpyreX]

Which better be proving alignment i swear the problem is worse than i thought

[Gamma Emerald]

Actually, that can catch fake claiming scum. Good work, you've made Vanilla Cop very viable.

[GreyICE]

Not arguing for or against either, but how does Vanilla Cop add "mystery" exactly?

Well, why is the Vanilla Cop in the game? Like Tracker, I know some things about the setup - the mafia has at least one targeting role, there's at least one other targeting role in the town. Just the way things are. I bet you could find at most a handful of normal games with trackers that don't follow that. Too obvious a use case. Or masonry. I know there's at most one more weak investigative role, I know that if the scum have some sort of detection it's likely a role cop over a tracker/watcher. But these only slightly inform your use of the role. It's more or less the same.

Vanilla cop, lets jump in the hole. So I know there's a vanilla cop. How are the scum/town power role balances arrayed? If one goon flips this becomes VERY pertinent. Is it 2/1 or 1/2? If the mafia have two PRs you're clearing people, if they don't then you're not. If you're sitting there looking at two "vanilla" results this might just be the most important question possible. You have most of the information, you just need to sift it.

And something I've learned having run two normal games... most people suck at setup spec. Seriously. The game can and will devolve into a debate between people who think that its just fine for the town to have a mason recruiter and a town cop and people who think that a 4-man scumteam is reasonable in a 13 player normal game. These are things that happen.

So you're giving them exactly enough information to cause serious fucking damage, and for what? It's not actually good information. If they guess that the mod gave the scum team 2 PRs and the mod gave them two goons but the Vanilla Cop happened to investigate a handful of townies, does it matter? Does it do anything other than piss the scumteam off when they lose?

It's just like... it's not a good role. It's information that's close enough to hard that it can do serious damage without actually being hard, and as such its impossible to balance. It's like if I made a "

Binary Sensor

" role that could only tell if the lynch wagon from yesterday had scum on it or not.

Obviously

it will always say "scum on wagon", but then there will be that 5% where the town just literally wins on the spot. Vanilla cop is not that bad, but it's pretty bad. It's a role that usually tells you nothing useful but then sometimes gives you a ton of information, and the hows and whys are a little murky. It's not only a role without an obvious use case, but a role where the power of the use case varies so much that it's nearly pointless.

Plus there's no way that it doesn't encourage ridiculous setup debate if you have 1-2 dead scum and some Vanilla Cop results. For all this, what does it bring to the table that, say, a Town Role Cop doesn't? And town role cop has a really clear use case - you're checking people's claims to see if they're really the role they said. Vanilla Cop is just frustratingly vague.

[SpyreX]

It feels like there was a game long ago that had a role cop who investigated a scum goon but the mod didn't want the scum to lose so they said vanilla and then here we are.

Nai

[Zachrulez]

I think the fact that a role as unhelpful as vanilla cop actually won that name as standard demonstrates how scumsided people are in seeing the game. People assumed that version of the role was more practical than what became the Neapolitan role, even though a full cop doesn't even balance town. (Cops can rule people out AND confirm scum. Neapolitans can only rule people out.)

[callforjudgement]

They can also confirm scum who fakeclaim VT, which is a very common fakeclaim. (Vanilla cops can do this too, but only if the scum actually has a power role.)

It's worth noting that a couple of years ago, there were a ton of threads talking about how Cop is a bastard, overpowered role that shouldn't be allowed in setups. True or not, it was a popular opinion at the time, and contributed to the popularity of weak investigatives (as well as quite possibly being responsible for the scumsided tendencies of the games we've had). That opinion has died down somewhat since, I'm not sure if it's because people no longer hold it or because it became boring to talk about.

A side effect is that Doctor has become somewhat weaker as well, because it rarely has a strong power role to protect. (Actually, I'm beginning to suspect that Bodyguard is actually a

stronger

role than Doctor nowadays, because successfully using it doesn't gain town any fewer mislynches in most setups than a successful Doctor shot would, and has the advantage of taking the Bodyguard out of the lynch pool.)

[implosion]

effort is NAI

sometimes it's AI

but usually NAI

Well, at the point where the NAI becomes AI and the AI becomes NULL and the NULL becomes VOID can we really trust anyone

[GreyICE]

It feels like there was a game long ago that had a role cop who investigated a scum goon but the mod didn't want the scum to lose so they said vanilla and then here we are.

Nai

Man your join date ain't too far back from mine and I never heard of Goons showing up "goon" to town role cops. I mean at that point isn't the role cop an even more powerful cop that catches godfathers and confirms millers?

[Accountant]

why the hate against nai

[callforjudgement]

Well, when I first saw it, it took me a while to figure out what it meant and then I thought "why not just use 'null' or 'nulltell' like normal people". But by then, I fear it had already caught on. (Admittedly it's shorter, but it's also a lot less obvious in meaning than "nulltell" is.)

[Accountant]

So basically you're just old timers who can't keep up with the new generation's slang

[Kublai Khan]

nai is a silly term that should be beaten to death should it ever appear in any games

nai is a silly concept that doesn't belong in mafia games.

[Vi]

I'm gonna disagree with the "not alignment-indicative" hate.
Unfortunately if you just mow through people who do bad things and "deserve" to be lynched, the Town loses more often than they already do.
At some point you have to understand that many people don't play the game the way you'd like it to be played ("well") and you have to get people to do what you want within the confines of how they want to play the game.

Mafia is a team game.

Man your join date ain't too far back from mine and I never heard of Goons showing up "goon" to town role cops.

also this
I like the idea of Vanilla Cop in theory but Role Cop is so much more fun.

[kuribo]

Just trolling around is it just me or have games somehow gotten slower and more filled with lurkers too?

Like i didn't humanly think that was possible and you'd think the only actual plus for this god forsaken infestation of hydras would be that they'd use their mouthwords.

Is this a byproduct of the new feel good mafia without enough bloodlust to grease the wheels or what

if anything i feel like games are more filled with shitposting and misplaced arrogance, but then again I only play one or two games a year

[kuribo]

it's why I demand vig in every game I'm in

I really need to get back to designing a Bad Idea setup so I can run it. Then you can /in for it and murder whoever you please

[Papa Zito]

/in

[kuribo]

Actually, that can catch fake claiming scum. Good work, you've made Vanilla Cop very viable.

catch them with their words and actions instead of expecting PRs to hold your hand boom problem solved

[SpyreX]

I meant waayyy before my time. Not like ive seen it. I bet ether started this just to unleash the neo cop.

Vi i get what you're saying and i agree but there is a line. Saying i don't understand spyrex because he plays a little fast and loose with the English language is null sure because thats an idiosyncratic behavior. Saying spyrex doesnt post or lies about being a power role isnt null even if i do it every game isnt null its just bad.

Of course i probably agree with the infinite grey area examples

[Vi]

neo cop

omg

I take back everything. Neapolitan Cop needs to be wiped out.

The name, at least.

because why have cops when you can have NEOCOPS

(but please use role cops instead)

Ooo, ooo

Can we get a variant that looks at multiple people at once somehow? Because then we get NEOCOPTERS