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Colour in role PMs

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 3:50 pm
by callforjudgement
(This problem originally came out of some role PM standardisation work I was doing for Normals. However, this is very much a Theme problem, so it's not really within the NRG's purview.)

Many (most?) moderators use colour in their role PMs and flips in order to make it clearer at a glance what faction a player belongs to. However, I'm interested in what the most common colour scheme for this is, and if particular factions tend to always be associated with particular colours. (Also, if anyone uses colour for features other than faction/win condition, I'd be interested in that too!)

Town
and
Mafia
are by far the most used factions, and tend to be consistently associated with green and red.
Werewolves
(and second Mafia) also seem to have a standardised color, being given a different shade of red from the Mafia (although the difference between "red" and "darkred" isn't visible on mafBlack, so perhaps they should be
orange
or something nowadays).

The only other colour that I'm fairly confident in is that
Survivors
are grey. This normally results from a wincon change following a modkill – people tend to get mad at mods for putting a Survivor in their setup – but that's common enough for me to have observed a pattern in how mods did it.

But what about all the other possible factions/wincons? Do they have colours of their own? If not, what colour should be used for, e.g., the setup summaries on the wiki? I feel like Serial Killer is definitely used often enough to be standardised/standardisable, and Jester might be.

A full list of the factions that need colours: Town, Mafia, Serial Killer, Werewolf, Survivor, Unjester, Jester, Mime, Lyncher, Unlyncher, Cult, Inquisitor, Mentor, Arsonist. My current provisional assignment is shown on the wiki as Template:FactionColor, but you might well have better ideas on how to colour things than I do. Ideally, the colours would be at least visible on every skin, and would not mislead players about how their win condition worked.

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 4:09 pm
by Ircher
I think Serial Killers are generally colored purple or gray.
---
Town = Green

Mafia = Red

2nd Mafia/Werewolves = Orange

Serial Killers = Purple

Neutral Survivors = Gray

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 5:14 pm
by zMuffinMan
Cults have always been black IME (though I haven't seen them often and my most vivid memory of them is in Brightest Day where they were literally "Black Lantern Corps" so that may be a part of why I associate them with black).

I don't think most of the other factions have a standard colour (nor do I really think they need one) and I think it's generally up to individual mods (though the same could be said for the regular factions as well).

Jesters
should
have rainbow text though. Always. No exceptions.

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 5:19 pm
by callforjudgement
It's probably impossible to get the wiki to produce rainbow text (unless we can do it with some sort of CSS filter).

I agree that most of the obscure factions probably don't have a standard color, but I'm working on an automated role PM generator and it'll have to use
something
.

Perhaps some simple rule like "town-compatible third parties are grey, town-incompatible third parties are purple"? Or do we want to make each third party a different color in case two of them are used in the same setup?

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 5:26 pm
by zMuffinMan
Re: that last line, put them into slots maybe. Highest priority slot (e.g. Serial Killer) gets standard purple, go down a list until you get to the last one (even if it's ultimately just different distinct shades of purple)?

EDIT: In case this wasn't clear, if you're not worried about revealing the fact that there's a certain amount of third parties in the game, if there are multiples, just give the serial killer dark purple, the jester light purple, some other anti-town third party a shade of pink, etc. But if it's a jester with no serial killer, give it dark purple because it's the highest priority.

Or just standardise it like that and have purple(ish) colours represent anti-town singular third parties and give them the same distinct shades every game.

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 6:49 pm
by mastina
I generally use:
Green as Town

Blue as second Mafia, Town, or Special Town (in rare circumstances)

Red as Mafia

Crimson as second Mafia or Werewolves

Brown as an alternative color for Werewolves

Orange for benevolent 3p

Yellow for neutral 3p (e.g. Jester, Lyncher)

Gold for town ally that's not part of town

Black for some form of anti-town faction be it second mafia or malevolent 3p

Purple for cults and serial killers but not both in the same game at the same time

Gray for survivors

Silver for survivoresque but not survivor

White as an alternative to silver

And Cyan as an alternative to Blue
.

This may be an incomplete list though. I compiled an ALMOST (I missed a few here and there) complete list of all the named-colors which are coded to work on the site a while ago. (If I recall correctly, something like 40ish total.)

Posted: Thu May 31, 2018 7:27 pm
by callforjudgement
There's a lot more than 40. Anything on this list should work if you remove the spaces, e.g.
palevioletred
.

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 2:06 am
by Alisae
In post 5, mastina wrote:I generally use:
Green as Town

Blue as second Mafia, Town, or Special Town (in rare circumstances)

Red as Mafia

Crimson as second Mafia or Werewolves

Brown as an alternative color for Werewolves

Orange for benevolent 3p

Yellow for neutral 3p (e.g. Jester, Lyncher)

Gold for town ally that's not part of town

Black for some form of anti-town faction be it second mafia or malevolent 3p

Purple for cults and serial killers but not both in the same game at the same time

Gray for survivors

Silver for survivoresque but not survivor

White as an alternative to silver

And Cyan as an alternative to Blue
.

This may be an incomplete list though. I compiled an ALMOST (I missed a few here and there) complete list of all the named-colors which are coded to work on the site a while ago. (If I recall correctly, something like 40ish total.)
Image

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 4:43 am
by yessiree
why not just steal the coloring scheme from ToS

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 5:58 am
by Plotinus
I usually use
bright green for VT
, regular
green for town PR
,
red for mafia goon
,
a darker red for mafia PR


but given the prevalence of red/green colour blindness, in a game with 13 players there's roughly a fifty-fifty chance that at least one player will be colour blind (higher, actually, since there are more men than women on this site). So it might be better to adopt a scheme like
blue town
,
deepskyblue town PR
vs
red mafia
,
coral mafia pr


or
lime VT
green town PR
orange mafia goon
orangered mafia pr
.

Or we could do like traffic lights do and have
teal town
and
orange red mafia


I'm not colourblind though so I don't know for sure how well these solutions would work.

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 9:06 am
by brassherald
lime and bright green are very hard to read on mafsepia. by the way. I try not to use those at all.

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 9:17 am
by mastina
In post 7, Alisae wrote:Image
To date, the only time I've needed that many was in Gistou, which (deliberately) subverted some of those anyway (red and yellow were both town for instance); you're not going to need more than three or four colors at most in basically any game.

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 12:48 pm
by Aronis
I've used red, blue and pink for mafia before.
I've used green, blue, purple, and black for town.

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 1:47 pm
by Aristophanes
In post 0, callforjudgement wrote:However, this is very much a Theme problem, so it's not really within the NRG's purview.
I mean, this goes into NRG amd Wiki groups and should really be more standardized. I often use a
darker red for mafia
and a
not in your face green for town
because I like respecting the eyes of my players :P

Third Party Blue
and
Third Party Orange
are usially what I use for extra factions, while
Jester Yellow
would be its own special thing if I used them. Depending on the game I'd use it for a lyncher too probably.

Ive typically considered SK and Cult for the blue/orange, with a preference for
Cult Blue
and
SK Orange
. Survivor makes sense in the light grey but I'd prefer to use a colour with a quick tag.

If colours do get set for factions I think it would be really handy to have them in their own colour bar, or even better, make a
[ /color] tag (or both) so mods can easily remain consistent :)

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 2:02 pm
by callforjudgement
Well, most of these alignments don't exist in Normal games, although "which colours should we use in Normal role PMs for scum and town" is something that the NRG might want to regulate, I guess? I thought it was standardised already, though, but maybe not.

Also, the grey I used for Survivor above is just "gray".

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 3:42 pm
by Ircher
Why not just:
Town = Green

Mafia = Red

Werewolves = Brown

2nd Mafia/Aliens = Orange

Cult = Blue

Self-Aligned 3rd Parties (i.e.: win by themselves) = Purple

Neutral-Aligned 3rd Parties (i.e.: can win with other primary factions) = Gray

Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2018 3:57 pm
by FakeGod
I use
town
and
scum
.

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 6:25 am
by Zachrulez
I actually use blue for power roles which worked fine for a really long time until someone in one of my games thought to try to use that against the scum. Now I see value in being more open about the color scheme you use as a mod.

I use green for vts, red for scum, orange for 2nd scum, and I don't think I've ever needed to go further than that. I think if I had an SK I'd use black for that.

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 7:35 am
by mutantdevle
I use
this green
for town. It's much nicer than the more common
this green
imo.

I'm yet to use any colour other than
red
for any other faction though.


Interestingly, my mod colour is blue but whenever I mention a
player's name
I revert back to black then give their alignment in either red or green.

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2018 7:47 am
by Not Known 15
I use
this color
for town,
this color for Mafia...

but then it doesn't matter much because I always flip them with Mafia /Town/ whatever before the role name, except for Vanilla Townie.

Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2018 6:07 am
by Sakura Hana
Town

Mafia

Werewolf

Serial Killer or Survivor

Jester or Alien

Cult

Sometimes I need several for those Great/Greater/Greatest Idea Mafia games.