Alright, mod-talky time.
Roles
Town
6 Receivers
1 Vengeance Emitter
1 Rolestop Emitter
1 Neighborhood Emitter
1 Alignment Sensor
1 Tracking Sensor
1 Role Sensor
1 Grand Machinist
Scum
3 Receivers
1 Watching Sensor
As rolled, this was probably one of the best versions of the setup for scum, but I'll talk about balance later.
Setup philosophy
The trick to success in this setup is for town to somehow get their receivers to target the right people, without alerting the scumteam to the identity their powerful roles (including the most powerful one, the Grand Machinist). Essentially, it was a game of town coordinating well without scum being able to sabotage it. Unfortunately, things didn't play out very well for town in that regard. None of the powerful sensor roles were discovered until after the machinist was outed, with the result that the scum could have prevented town from getting a single cop investigation, and succeeding in holding town to only getting one cop investigation and one track.
Originally I had considered a fourth archetype, an Applicator, who simply targeted a player with some effect and that player got it. I decided against it, since I wanted the possibilities of the setup to be somewhat limited. As soon as an applicator exists, pretty much anything is possible, and the design immediately loses its uniqueness and elegance.
I've been debating whether I want to make another machina-like setup (probably a Mini), but despite the relative normalcy of the effects included in the game, the setup might be too mechanically heavy. Too many players were confused about how things worked for too long for it to work out in a smaller setting.
Notes on Roles:
The Grand Machinist
: This was pretty much necessary to prevent the game from simply being a scum wash if they find and kill the good sensors early on, which is highly probably since most of the time they're going to have 2-3 rolecops in addition to the nightkill. He originally didn't have a vig, but rather turned non-receivers into receivers. FG felt there weren't enough kills, and I agreed, so he became a vig for non-receivers. With an infinite backup-izer, though, it became possible that the scum would be in the position of having to hunt down the Alignment Sensor over and over, while town is getting investigations from them all the while. I gave scum the Roleblock on their kill so that they would never be locked down in this way.
Rolestop Emitter
: In practice, this was a slightly-worse Protection Emitter. Obviously, getting "blocked" on an investigation is just as good as a guilty once he's outed. The Rolestop emitter had two major roles in the setup. Firstly, I expected him to claim early. Since he's also the most "complicated" role in the setup, I had hoped that discussion surrounding the claim would help everyone properly understand how things worked. That sort of happened on Day 2, but Peregrine still hadn't sorted things out, leading to his tragic demise. The other purpose of this role was as a fairly weak deterrent to a receiver-elimination scum strategy. This, unfortunately, was probably the most boring role to have.
Vengeance Emitter
: I was a little sad that this was never used. This was also a late addition, and imo, a very fun one. I had intended this to work as a receiver-vig and as another catalyst for town organization. The vengeance emitter could compel scummy receivers to visit him, and then lynch them the next day while forcing another scummy player to make the hammer. If town failed to organize well, then scum could theoretically use this for an extra kill.
Neighborhood Emitter
: This was a fun role. Town could use it instead of trying to organize in the main thread, but at the price of losing receiver shots for a Night. If infiltrated by scum, they immediately learn the roles of several other players, helping them narrow down who they should kill, while also being able to much with organization. Originally, the neighborhood emitter wasn't part of the hood, but I changed it just before setup generation because I decided it would be un-fun if left that way.
Alignment Sensor
: The primary investigator. Pretty straightforward role. Since it's compulsive, it doesn't really matter too much which alignment gets it, unless scum can find and eliminate the GM before their Alignment Sensor is outed.
Watching Sensor
: Watchers are generally very strong, but that's not really so in this setup. Almost any reasonable NK target is going to have multiple visitors including the Watching Sensor himself. In general, town would learn there's scum among a set of 3-ish players on a watcher guilty. If scum can't ensure that one of the visitors is "supposed" to have visited the target, they messed up anyway.
Tracking Sensor
: Also pretty weak here, since a false positive is a reasonably likely results unless scum are sending people to kill who should be visiting their victims already.
Role Sensor
: The only not-so-fun role other than rolestop emitter, imo. Generally worse than a receiver. This was included in part because I didn't want town to have too many receivers, and to give the GM another early vig target.
