Regarding Third Parties

[Andrius]

I won't do a poll this time but I want some honest opinions about third parties.

1. What do you like about third parties?
2. What makes playing third party exciting/fun?

3. What do you NOT like about them?
4. What makes playing third party NOT fun or exciting?

What makes you want to punch the mod in the throat?

5. Does the lack of a kill make/break the experience? (Aka non-killing related third parties.)

When answering, please disregard Survivors/Jesters. And please note that any third parties would fit in a setup from flavor perspective. I'm trying to gauge interest for them in general; I love seeing them well-done but I remember the time when Serial Killers ran rampant and they got rather old.

Answers to any/all are appreciated, from player/mod perspectives.

[Vi]

Third parties are high-risk, same-reward-as-everything-else. In fact, they have the highest risk of any role - if a Townie that enables two power roles and is also a Lover to someone dies, there's still a chance that they can win in the end. Third parties, as a general rule, don't get that luxury and can lose both immediately and arbitrarily. So by nature, they're awful.

With that in mind, when you use a third party, the primary goal is to make the role

fun to play

. There are three general areas I can think of where you can manipulate this.
*How difficult the Win Condition is
*What tools are available to help attain the Win Condition (and, with regard to things being "fun", this is where you can have most success)
*What tools are available to mitigate the risk of the Win Condition

To fill in those slots with a simple example,
*You win when you are the last player alive, or nothing can prevent the same. (This is normally impossible for people who are not in the Mafia.)
*You have a factional kill.
*You will survive the first kill aimed at you.

The risk mitigation aspects are easy to give short shrift because they're contingencies. If a Serial Killer wins without using their 1xBulletproof, it's easy to say "well they didn't need it there, so it's clearly

possible

to win without it and we shouldn't baby our SKs". Don't think that way, but also don't go overboard - an SK that is immune to all kills and a lynch is even worse than one with no protection at all. Strike a balance between keeping the role tough but not so tough that the player feels cheated.

I'm out of time for the morning, so I can't do the detailed post I want, but here's a quick look at the other ways this has been played with.
*Mutually competing Jesters (Mind Screw III) - By having three players with the Jester Win Condition but only allowing one to win, you have increased the risk of the normally-trivial Win Condition and made the role intense (for the people who drew the role, anyway - the rest of the game has to be balanced around this).
*Memetic SK (Mind Screw II and on) - A Serial Killer who gains extra factional kills based on social engineering (in the original case, if the SK could PM the mod the name of one of the abilities in their target's Role PM, they could get an extra kill off on them). This increases the ability of the player to meet their SK Win Condition, and against saps who don't expect it, it's quite an entertaining diversion to trick people into falling into their hands.
*Adaptive SK (Mafia of the Chosen Ones, for instance) - A Serial Killer who gains powers based on other roles used. This and all other "building" roles fall prey to having very slow starts and being very strong at the end, which is usually how you don't want games to go as Mafia has enough of a positive feedback problem already. You either want EVERY role to build like this (Tech Tree Mafia, for instance) or you want to go the other way and make every role limited-shot.

Hell yes I just name-dropped three Tarhalindur games. Despite how his reputation suffered from terrific overreach in the end, he knew what he was doing for a while.

Other ideas offhand--
*Instead of a one-shot Bulletproof, why not a one-shot kill redirection from self onto a Vanilla Townie? Normally Mafiosi figure it out pretty quickly when their kill fails and no one claims Doctor, so etc.
*Alternative and additional Win Conditions are always good to keep in mind. If being the last person alive becomes infeasible, should there be another goal they should try aiming for...?
*Should they even be playing the same game? Bookie is an example of a role where the player takes a bet on how the game will unfold and then has some shot at trying to make it happen. The title character from A Convict's Revenge (highly thematic, but still) had a long list of Win Conditions that were mostly a long list of side objectives that would cause chaos while everyone else was trying to sort out the main game.

[Otolia]

1. The add
2. I've never played SK on MS but I like being the sole person responsible for my actions.
3. Being alone, Mafia is a social game and SK are more often than not better off lurking than participating.
4. Almost always poorly balanced or poorly included in setups.

I'm trying to experiment around having Mafia-aligned 3rd Parties in the sense that they can win with scum but can also win alone or even with town if specific conditions are met. So far, everything I've thought about can be broken by a reveal from said 3rd Party (he won't win but destroy the game nonetheless). I'm not sure it's even possible to find something workable like this.

[kuribo]

I don't know how to answer this. In almost 8 years on this site, I have never once been third party.


Unless you count a game in 2008 where I was an unaligned traitor who had to get killed by either Scumteam A, Scumteam B, or Town, in order to win with whoever shot me. I auto-lost if I didn't get shot. I wound up getting shot by scum in LYLO to join that scumteam and win. But I don't count that since I won with scum and spent the entire game trying to get shot.

[ActionDan]

I enjoyed playing one of GiF's touhou games as an SK that was granted 2-shot BP on being on the mislynch wagon of town and total investigative immunity if shooting scum in the night. the other tidbits were getting a 1-shot strongman if 2 specific people which I didn't know about were alive on D3 and a 1-shot anonymous daykill if the above 3 conditions were satisfied.

[kuribo]

I enjoyed playing one of GiF's touhou games as an SK that was granted 2-shot BP on being on the mislynch wagon of town and total investigative immunity if shooting scum in the night. the other tidbits were getting a 1-shot strongman if 2 specific people which I didn't know about were alive on D3 and a 1-shot anonymous daykill if the above 3 conditions were satisfied.

Yeah, I was Serening that game. You were like, my only scum read and you killed us. lol

[ActionDan]

gotta do what I must

[ZZZX]

the thing about third parties is that you feel you are the strongest solo player in the game. (which you prob are if its anywhere near balanced)
its also easier to bend in town esp that you are truthfully scum hunting/.

[Kagami]

the thing about third parties is that you feel you are the strongest solo player in the game. (which you prob are if its anywhere near balanced)
its also easier to bend in town esp that you are truthfully scum hunting/.

Imo, these are both reasons why SKs are bad design.

[Iecerint]

Hell yes I just name-dropped three Tarhalindur games. Despite how his reputation suffered from terrific overreach in the end, he knew what he was doing for a while.

Tarhalindur is other than a legend?

[ZZZX]

the thing about third parties is that you feel you are the strongest solo player in the game. (which you prob are if its anywhere near balanced)
its also easier to bend in town esp that you are truthfully scum hunting/.

Imo, these are both reasons why SKs are bad design.

AND they are the reasons its fun

[Kublai Khan]

1. What do you like about third parties?
2. What makes playing third party exciting/fun?
3. What do you NOT like about them?
4. What makes playing third party NOT fun or exciting?

What makes you want to punch the mod in the throat?

5. Does the lack of a kill make/break the experience? (Aka non-killing related third parties.)

1. Third parties wins give you the most thrill because they are the toughest challenge.
2. Typically SKs are given an ability to kill, and killing roles are always awesome.
3. Hunting a 3rd party is rather tedious since there's no interactions to read from. It's basically either a shot in the dark or playing out-guess-the-mod and determining how well they balanced the game.
4/5. Survivor roles are super dull because risk comes from either playing too townies (and getting mafia killed) or playing too scummy (risking lynch), so lurking is the only viable option.

[Otolia]

the thing about third parties is that you feel you are the strongest solo player in the game. (which you prob are if its anywhere near balanced)
its also easier to bend in town esp that you are truthfully scum hunting/.

Imo, these are both reasons why SKs are bad design.

AND they are the reasons its fun

A game should be fun for all parties not just the one with all the shiny toys.

[xRECKONERx]

Hell yes I just name-dropped three Tarhalindur games. Despite how his reputation suffered from terrific overreach in the end, he knew what he was doing for a while.

Tarhalindur is other than a legend?

Tar went off the fuckin' rails man

[Kublai Khan]

the thing about third parties is that you feel you are the strongest solo player in the game. (which you prob are if its anywhere near balanced)

I don't think SKs should be over-powered. People underestimate how powerful it is to be both an anti-town and unaffiliated with other anti-town roles. By nature, SKs are swingy and luck-based roles. If you try to negate potentially unlucky scenarios, then they are massively overpowered.

[Andrius]

Vi is pretty much saying what I was looking for. Khan brought up some great points.

Carry on. My curiosity has been stoked.

[Katsuki]

The lack of cult recruiters is disappointing.

[LlamaFluff]

Make sure the role is actually something that has a fighting chance and that is actually fun to play.

A third party role that suicides if a particular player is lynched or NKed and has a win condition of that same player needing to be alive at endgame does not work
A third party group of neighbors that have a collective kill carried out by one random member each night and only win if town achieves their win condition and while one or more member is alive does not work

Keep it simple. When you complicate it often it ends up being almost impossible or not fun for whoever has it.

yes those are both roles I have got

[Kublai Khan]

Carry on. My curiosity has been stoked.

BTW, I just recently re-read this ditty of a 3rd party win game. Good game.

3rd Party Lyncher-Neighborizer is a weird role.

[Andrius]

Hahahaha. Those were the days of bad modding decisions.

Gollum, for example, was a great 3rd party role.

That

, on the other hand, was not. He was seriously so souped-up it was ridiculous. I admit that was a bad decision, in a game of bad decisions.

Hence why this thread exists, to get feedback, to gauge interest, and to be reminded of things not to do (and to do)!

Personally, I loved the 3rd Party Clerics from a Snow_Bunny game where they won by keeping town alive via protections/heals/revives. They almost pulled off a joint win. I liked the thought of the town-ally third party whose job it is to help, but I can never find reason to justify it since a town-aligned player helping town is pretty much always better. (Third Party Doctor who wins by helping town or a Town Doctor?)

[Bicephalous Bob]

Third parties that can't win with another faction are inherently unbalanced in the same way three-way chess is

The faction that dies first almost always influences which of the two other factions win

It's weird that most people who dislike self-aware kingmaker situations are fine with the most incompetent faction accidentally deciding on the game

[N]

I had a third party in a game once. It wasn't very well thought through and I regret it.

[pirate mollie]

I love being indie!

[quadz08]

I had a third party in a game once. It wasn't very well thought through and I regret it.

*cough* green shirt cult *cough*

[Andrius]

Third parties that can't win with another faction are inherently unbalanced in the same way three-way chess is

That's another issue entirely - third parties that do/do not end the game when they win.

I think there's a place for both, with 'classic' serial killers and cults being endgame triggers, while some others like the healers I mentioned above or CSL's modified Jester from CYS leaving the game upon victory. And Gurthang.