What Makes a Good Third Party?

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What Makes a Good Third Party?

Post Post #0 (ISO) » Sat Dec 25, 2021 2:15 pm

Post by MegAzumarill »

Third Party's are some of the rarest roles to get in mafia. And yet, they have a certain aura about them that always captivates me. Something about how they clash with the duality of town and mafia's opposing play. Due to the popularity of Collaborative Deck Rolelists (Ala Grand Idea) in this forum the creation of nonstandard third party roles is open to anyone but I haven't seen anywhere talk of what distinguishes good third party roles from bad. That is what this thread is for (as well as discussion on the merits of current third party roles)

The most basic concept of third parties is found on three fronts.

1. The third party opposes all other players (
Serial Killer
)
2. The third party does not oppose any living players (
Survivor
)
3. The third party hinders other players but is not completely opposed to them. (Non Game Ending
Jester
)

Most if not all third party roles fall into these categories. Those that don't are often just faction aligned players with additional restrictions (namely also needing to survive)

The criterion I try to use when I look at third party roles in general being good/bad is:

1. Is the role make someone change their playstyle from a vanilla townie?
2. Is the role interesting/fair to play against? This includes its ability to decide the game in a kingmaker vote.
3. If the third party were to claim that said third party, would town be able to let it win for no cost? (Assuming Town is able)
4. Is it enjoyable to play?



Spoiler: My Analysis of The above Roles
-------------------------------------

This is a quick personal analysis of the three above mentioned roles.



Serial Killer is probably the best of the mentioned third parties. It requires being more survivalistic than town. It can be the victim of a kingmaker decision but usually does not end up causing one. It can be hard to search for but not impossible. Obviously it can't claim Serial Killer except in very specific scenarios which usually lead to a serial killer loss anyway. It certainly can be enjoyable, although some may not find it so (but that is true of all alignments)

Survivor is the worst role because it fails the fourth rule. It isn't enjoyable to play. There is no incentive to scumhunt, townhunt, or do anything other than try to stay alive. It's goal is often to survive to Elo just to let Mafia win a day earlier.

Jester in general is a bad role because it punishes town for correctly voting a non town player. It fails check two or check three depending on the consequences of eliminating a Jester. It is possible to balance but difficult.

------------------------------------------



Anyone else's thoughts on third party roles in general or how they should be incorporated would be nice. What are your favorite third party roles to play/ or just in concept?
Imprefection is the spice of life.
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Post Post #1 (ISO) » Sat Dec 25, 2021 3:30 pm

Post by Ythan »

I love playing third party no matter how stacked against me.
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Post Post #2 (ISO) » Sat Dec 25, 2021 6:13 pm

Post by fferyllt »

In post 0, MegAzumarill wrote:Survivor is the worst role because it fails the fourth rule. It isn't enjoyable to play. There is no incentive to scumhunt, townhunt, or do anything other than try to stay alive. It's goal is often to survive to Elo just to let Mafia win a day earlier.
I think this overlooks the survivor's interest in the game ending as soon as possible. Survivors usually townside even harder than most town do for that reason. It doesn't matter to town how long it takes to get to a town win. For a survivor the quickest win possible is a perfect town win.

Offsite I've played a few times as an SK with a survivor wincon rather than last player standing. I cannot stress enough how intent I was on a town win in those games. I was the best vig town ever had.

I would only switch to scum-siding when town had blown their chance and it had become a toss-up or worse from the town pov. And sometimes I wouldn't switch even then because once I commit to a side I'm pretty quixotic about sticking to it.
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Post Post #3 (ISO) » Sat Dec 25, 2021 6:36 pm

Post by MegAzumarill »

In post 2, fferyllt wrote:
In post 0, MegAzumarill wrote:Survivor is the worst role because it fails the fourth rule. It isn't enjoyable to play. There is no incentive to scumhunt, townhunt, or do anything other than try to stay alive. It's goal is often to survive to Elo just to let Mafia win a day earlier.
I think this overlooks the survivor's interest in the game ending as soon as possible. Survivors usually townside even harder than most town do for that reason. It doesn't matter to town how long it takes to get to a town win. For a survivor the quickest win possible is a perfect town win.

Offsite I've played a few times as an SK with a survivor wincon rather than last player standing. I cannot stress enough how intent I was on a town win in those games. I was the best vig town ever had.

I would only switch to scum-siding when town had blown their chance and it had become a toss-up or worse from the town pov. And sometimes I wouldn't switch even then because once I commit to a side I'm pretty quixotic about sticking to it.
This reminds me of my monk partner in DOAR:XU viewtopic.php?f=3&t=87762. (Though not exactly the same it was a solo player with a factional kill that won by surviving and could and did joint win with town) It feels distinct from a regular survivor however.

The main problem with giving survivors power roles is that it can make the game swingy although the role is more interesting. Survivors often side scum (in my experience offsite) because limming scum makes you a likely nightkill target. The more oppurtunities to die balances with the likelihood. It's also the safest bet in Elo. Not knowing which way they will side make it hard to balance around it. Survivors also are notorious kingmakers and as such propose another balance problem.

Effectively power role survivors are hard to use for moderators, and vanilla are both bland.

In theory you could play survivor mostly town, but at that point it just is a VT that loses if it dies which is a huge downside.
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Post Post #4 (ISO) » Sat Dec 25, 2021 6:53 pm

Post by StrangeMatter »

Honestly the Third Party I really don't like is Jester, and that's mostly bias but playing and trying to avoid them is a massive pain as either scum or town (off-site).
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Post Post #5 (ISO) » Sat Dec 25, 2021 10:20 pm

Post by TemporalLich »

my uninformed ranking of standard third-parties would be like this:

Condemner
- Probably the most interesting to play imo.
Unjester
- It's rather like Town except you can afford to blatantly townspew.
Savior
- Hopefully your target townspews.
Jester
- Seems to punish town for being town, a chaotic role.
Serial Killer
- Like being scum but you have no partners. Hard to win as, especially if you're Vanilla.
Survivor
-
THIS ALIGNMENT SUCKS
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Post Post #6 (ISO) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 6:44 am

Post by Nancy Drew 39 »

SK can be a great role but it has to be designed right like a bp Sk for example can unlike scum play townie at day play yet do whatever they like at night and they’re day play isn’t all that different from jester. From town’s pov, it can be difficult to tell SK apart from scum but while you don’t have buddies, it’s actually easier to play town because you’re uniformed with of course, the exception of kills.

I think probably the worst 3p role is where your wincon depends on you limming/finding a specific player. I once had some role like that and had pretty much 0 motivation to do much of anything.
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Post Post #7 (ISO) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 7:00 am

Post by Ythan »

SK is nice because you can still legitimately hunt scum.
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Post Post #8 (ISO) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 7:12 am

Post by MegAzumarill »

Agreed that roles like condemner can be boring.
The only way to enjoy those roles is to actively play suboptimal.
Otherwise the goal can be reached by just claiming a guilty on the target D2.
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Post Post #9 (ISO) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 7:22 am

Post by Nancy Drew 39 »

In post 7, Ythan wrote:SK is nice because you can still legitimately hunt scum.
+1

Ideally, SK would be both bp and occur in a closed setup.
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Post Post #10 (ISO) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 7:45 am

Post by StrangeMatter »

So I know people really don't like Survivor, but how would we balance it and make it actually fun instead of just existing? I'm wondering if there's a condition to add there that makes it not just rush the entire game to win.
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Post Post #11 (ISO) » Wed Dec 29, 2021 9:57 pm

Post by imaginality »

Maybe 'survive until these three players specifically have been eliminated'?

Like, something like this? 9 player set-up, 2 scum, 2 survivors, Survivor A's targets are Survivor B plus two town targets, Survivor B's targets are Survivor A plus one scum and one town. (Survivors aren't told whether they're A or B.) If a Survivor is limmed/NKed, their targets are revealed.
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Post Post #12 (ISO) » Thu Dec 30, 2021 12:38 am

Post by Gypyx »

In post 8, MegAzumarill wrote:Agreed that roles like condemner can be boring.
The only way to enjoy those roles is to actively play suboptimal.
Otherwise the goal can be reached by just claiming a guilty on the target D2.
my fix on that is to give the condemner 2 pairs of 2 targets, with only one member of each pair needed to be killed

that way, you can't get away with yolo guiltying
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Post Post #13 (ISO) » Thu Dec 30, 2021 6:53 pm

Post by RH9 »

In post 12, Gypyx wrote:
In post 8, MegAzumarill wrote:Agreed that roles like condemner can be boring.
The only way to enjoy those roles is to actively play suboptimal.
Otherwise the goal can be reached by just claiming a guilty on the target D2.
my fix on that is to give the condemner 2 pairs of 2 targets, with only one member of each pair needed to be killed

that way, you can't get away with yolo guiltying
You can fix it by making it so that the Condemner gets another chance with a new Comdemnee target, if their previous one for some reason does not eliminated.
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Post Post #14 (ISO) » Mon Jan 03, 2022 1:07 am

Post by mastina »

In post 10, StrangeMatter wrote:So I know people really don't like Survivor, but how would we balance it and make it actually fun instead of just existing? I'm wondering if there's a condition to add there that makes it not just rush the entire game to win.
Oh that's simple.
In post 1662, mastina wrote:
In Game Two, I am
(technically)
a
Bulletproof Survivor
.
It's not quite a normal Survivor wincon; it's
almost
a Town Survivor.
My wincon is to survive to the end of the game with no more than two players who're not members of the Paperwork faction alive. (Is slightly paraphrased here, but obviously, can't do an exact quote without getting modkilled and you'll forgive me for being a bit cautious given that literally the last time I got 3p I did in fact eat a modkill.) I asked the mod and, yes, I count as one of those two.

In other words, per Jingle, if there are three scum alive and they trigger their win condition, I will lose;
If there are two scum alive and they trigger their win condition, I will lose.

I could
technically
win with the scum with only one scum alive, buuuuuuut: at that point, why bother? I'm just going to townside since I need two scum dead anyway, why not make it all three?

Given that I need AT LEAST two scum dead in order to win, and pragmatically speaking probably can get the fastest win just by having all three scum be eliminated, I've been playing as if I was town the entire time. (Because I would anyway because fuck playing 3ps as scum, they are town.)

(And yes, to be clear for the reading impaired: I
need
scum dead in game #2, and
cannot
win with 2/3 scum alive. Meaning that for all intents and purposes, I'm basically town.)
Have this be a
real
role, rather than a fakeclaim (which was based off of a misread role PM).

A Survivor needs kill immunity or else they have no fun.
A survivor needs a way to not be automatically eliminated by the town and an incentive to not immediately scumsided.
So if the role I claimed there were real, then it'd accomplish the intended goal. That role could townside or scumside...when the game got down to one scum alive. But before then, townsiding would be mandatory, making scumhunting be required, making them be inherently benevolent.
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Post Post #15 (ISO) » Mon Jan 03, 2022 1:11 am

Post by MegAzumarill »

At that point it's town in all but name that loses if it dies (Although the bulletproof part helps with that)
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Post Post #16 (ISO) » Mon Jan 03, 2022 1:12 am

Post by mastina »

(For the record, I hate any third party which cannot townside and I hate any third party which encourages mafiascum's murderboner for 3p claims. So in general, I prefer third parties that are benevolent and encouraged or even required to work with the town, where the town is actively punished for eliminating the 3p instead of eliminating scum. Games where eliminating the 3p is optimal and free of consequence? Badly designed imo.)
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Post Post #17 (ISO) » Mon Jan 03, 2022 4:37 pm

Post by T3 »

In post 13, RH9 wrote:
In post 12, Gypyx wrote:
In post 8, MegAzumarill wrote:Agreed that roles like condemner can be boring.
The only way to enjoy those roles is to actively play suboptimal.
Otherwise the goal can be reached by just claiming a guilty on the target D2.
my fix on that is to give the condemner 2 pairs of 2 targets, with only one member of each pair needed to be killed

that way, you can't get away with yolo guiltying
You can fix it by making it so that the Condemner gets another chance with a new Comdemnee target, if their previous one for some reason does not eliminated.
This works well, I like the Condemner role a lot.
At least in closed setups, the best thing to do is make the possible existence of the condemner public and make it not game ending.
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Post Post #18 (ISO) » Tue Jan 04, 2022 6:44 am

Post by Something_Smart »

In post 0, MegAzumarill wrote:1. Is the role make someone change their playstyle from a vanilla townie?
2. Is the role interesting/fair to play against? This includes its ability to decide the game in a kingmaker vote.
3. If the third party were to claim that said third party, would town be able to let it win for no cost? (Assuming Town is able)
4. Is it enjoyable to play?
These are pretty good criteria. #2 is far and away the most important, and nearly every common third party role fails it pretty hard. Including SK-- they don't often end up directly kingmaking but every time the SK makes a kill they are swinging the game toward one side or the other.

My opinion is that if you want your 3p to be fun to play against, you should reduce the chance of kingmaking as much as possible, to zero if you can. Adding a secondary wincon if the game reaches lylo is a good way to do this; my favorite 3p role that I've ever designed is the Dreamer: you win if you die at night, or if you and a town-aligned player are the last two players alive. There's no kingmaking here; they have to keep the game going as long as possible, and then if it does come down to F3 they basically convert to being town.
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Post Post #19 (ISO) » Tue Jan 04, 2022 2:29 pm

Post by Nancy Drew 39 »

In post 18, Something_Smart wrote:
In post 0, MegAzumarill wrote:1. Is the role make someone change their playstyle from a vanilla townie?
2. Is the role interesting/fair to play against? This includes its ability to decide the game in a kingmaker vote.
3. If the third party were to claim that said third party, would town be able to let it win for no cost? (Assuming Town is able)
4. Is it enjoyable to play?
These are pretty good criteria. #2 is far and away the most important, and nearly every common third party role fails it pretty hard. Including SK-- they don't often end up directly kingmaking but every time the SK makes a kill they are swinging the game toward one side or the other.

My opinion is that if you want your 3p to be fun to play against, you should reduce the chance of kingmaking as much as possible, to zero if you can. Adding a secondary wincon if the game reaches lylo is a good way to do this; my favorite 3p role that I've ever designed is the Dreamer: you win if you die at night, or if you and a town-aligned player are the last two players alive. There's no kingmaking here; they have to keep the game going as long as possible, and then if it does come down to F3 they basically convert to being town.
+1

I agree with this mostly but generally because SK roles aren’t designed well. When I was SK, I only had a shitty 2 shot commuter and you can’t kill and commute, so SK needs some kind of bp protection because then they can townside at day and kill at night or scumside, depending on the player alignment balance. Like Sakura could have easily won as SK in AuP as well. Also it needs to be in a closed (or at worst semi open) setup.

It’s a lot easier for SK to look town than scum and they very often do in my experience.

I’m totally with you on hating kingmakers, unless of course it’s me. :P
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Post Post #20 (ISO) » Fri Feb 11, 2022 5:25 pm

Post by Gamma Emerald »

In post 16, mastina wrote:(For the record, I hate any third party which cannot townside and I hate any third party which encourages mafiascum's murderboner for 3p claims. So in general, I prefer third parties that are benevolent and encouraged or even required to work with the town, where the town is actively punished for eliminating the 3p instead of eliminating scum. Games where eliminating the 3p is optimal and free of consequence? Badly designed imo.)
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Post Post #21 (ISO) » Fri Feb 11, 2022 11:44 pm

Post by Morning Tweet »

eliminating a third party who can't town-side early is bad since they can kill scum at night throughout the game, if town of salem taught me anything

Third parties that side with town are interesting although in a way it's the same as if they were just town so I probably would just make a role town if i wanted to "require" it to work with town
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Post Post #22 (ISO) » Sun Feb 13, 2022 5:21 am

Post by Kerset »

In post 0, MegAzumarill wrote:1. Is the role make someone change their playstyle from a vanilla townie?
2. Is the role interesting/fair to play against? This includes its ability to decide the game in a kingmaker vote.
3. If the third party were to claim that said third party, would town be able to let it win for no cost? (Assuming Town is able)
4. Is it enjoyable to play?
I would add
5. How does third party interact with other roles in this setup?

Third party should be used as a filler. Sometimes setup relies highly on TPR credibly, so tp with deception win condition is added. Sometimes town got tough power roles, so second kill is being added. Mafia would be OP with double killing, so you give it to tp. Sometimes games have custom win conditions and you need tp to simply balance things like in viewtopic.php?f=52&t=82391.
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Post Post #23 (ISO) » Sat Dec 31, 2022 2:49 am

Post by Yume »

Well, I was a part of a good third party faction once. Too bad I got killed way too early.
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Post Post #24 (ISO) » Thu Mar 09, 2023 5:08 am

Post by GreyICE »

Everyone is going about this the wrong way. None of these are good criteria. The number one criteria for a good Third Party role is that it gives the player a reason to interact and play the day game with the other players in thread.

Serial Killer is a fine role because even though it's hard to win with, you have to walk a tightrope during the day - scummy enough to avoid getting shot at night, townie enough to avoid elimination during the day.

Survivor is a bad role because the best way to play it is to announce you're a survivor and peace out of the thread. There's literally no reason not to peace out of the thread. No one cares about you.

Because of this I generally hold Jesters in generally higher regard than many, because for all its sins, Jesters at least have to play mafia. Something like a pollster that has to "name the alignment of three players at the end of day 3" might be 'more balanced', but it drains the energy out of the game, because like the survivor there's just not a strong reason to post. Various variants of this include handing out marks to players and having a certain number of marked players alive (why interact), trying to find a specific power role (outside of claim WIFOM, why interact), etc.

Designing a good third party role means making one that plays within the framework of mafia, and that means making them have to play the day game. A lot of times proposed third party roles focus on the night game, with the result that the player who gets them just does not have a motive to play mafia, which drains the energy out of the room. Don't think about role interactions, think about player interactions if you want to make one.

If you just need a good third party role that works "I'm a player who needs X to be eliminated by the town" is a good one. It's about the impact of a non-game ending jester, but much more fun for everyone involved. Mafia Traitors/Usurpers work similarly in that regard, except they hinder the scum team.
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