In post 1451, DrippingGoofball wrote:In 100% of games lately the setups have roles that deliberately mislead the town, such that ROLES ARE USELESS.
Worse than useless.
This is a point I find worthy of comment. There are two things I want to say about it: one specific to this game, and the other more general.
The more specific point is that Egix' Strongman-Finder ability served a definite purpose in the setup, in that it motivated him to target players he suspected of being Mafia. This made his 'real' ability of catching the Encryptor one that would reward good reads on his part. (Ultimately this is not why he targeted VFP but had the game gone differently it could have been.)
The more general point is that the purpose of power roles in a Mafia game, particularly in a closed game, is to give their faction whatever benefit those roles have. It is emphatically
not
to present an "outguess the mod" puzzle wherein the town tries to discern the setup by meta-reasoning. I can honestly say I did not add that role with the hope of
tricking
anyone, not only because that particular formulation was an NRG suggestion but because I never would have imagined anyone to be so confident in the first place that the presence of a Strongman-Finder implied there must be a Strongman to find. Given that you openly admit you knew no such guarantee existed, I don't think you can also seriously claim you were tricked.
In other words: the primary way the town could have caught Titus as Mafia in this setup was by
scumhunting.
To the extent that the town lost by disregarding scumhunting in favor of reliance on a promise that no one had ever made, I consider that loss well earned.
“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who say, ‘There are two kinds of people in this world: those who say there are two kinds of people in this world,
and the other kind,
’ and those who
don’t
say. Well, then there’s me.” — J.R. “Bob” Dobbs