What is truly Bastard - and what is not?

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What if people know for sure that a cult will definitely be part of the game?

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I would counter that if I

knew

that there was a cult in the game, then I would not play

that

pro-town unless I was reasonably sure that I will be killed before being recruited. I mean, there is this whole class of secret role games where part of the challenge is figuring out which team you are or are going to be on. I agree that we should have an extra class of games where you know beforehand that your alignment can change.

Actually, why not just use the existing category "not Normal"? VOTE: Allow Cult-like factions in

team

THEME games as long as it is announced before the game starts that it exists.

Now, the real question would be something like "50% chance of there being a Cult; 50% chance of there being a faction of four members that neither recruits nor kills". I would certainly never play in that game -- I want to know 100% the existence of a cult if there is one, and 100% the nonexistence of a cult if no cults exist.

---

Alisae, what is that trying to accomplish? Apparently the problem there is account weirdness, not cults.

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Aah, I meant to write "theme" games, not "team" games.

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What I mean is, it seems like Cults should not have to be in the same category as things like "every flip and investigative role returns the opposite of what it claims, and the Doctor and Vigilante appear to be the other role" where you expect something and find it not to be true. With known cults, you get the "you are town" PM but you

know

that with every step you could end up being recruited and find your work for nought.

Or just play to always lynch either yourself, town, or the Cult Leader (thus, you can never be recruited).

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Another question about alignment changes.
What about if you have "no alignment" until you are given an alignment later? Examples:
1. In a multiball game, you are told that you will be drafted to a random scum team, starting night 2.
2. Your role is "uncertain": if the Mafia attack you in the first three nights, you become a Mafia. If that does not happen then you become locked-in town.
3. Divide the players into 4 groups: Red, Green, Blue, and Neutral. The first three colors each have a factional attack kills members of a specific faction (Red can kill Green, Green can kill Blue, Blue can kill Red), and irreversibly recruits a Neutral. (If a Neutral dies by lynch, then that player simply loses.)

In any of these cases, you would

know

that it is happening, and until you get drafted you receive no alignment.

(3 is specific because I might actually want to run that some time.)

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are alignment changes totally in control of the player being changed bastard? for example,

"You are a town doctor. At night, instead of performing your action you may choose to become a neutral survivor instead"

chosen alignment change instead of forced.

discuss?

there is one bastard part of it that still remains:

for every other player, their content before the alignment change was a from a town mindset and their content from after the alignment change is from a survivor mindset. Now their wincondition and agenda is changed so using their previous posts to understand what they were doing and what are they is technically useless. But the other players won't know that's possible if the game is not announced at Bastard. Technically for mechanics like this, I suggest completely open or semi-open setup or mechanics or just announcing bastardness just to be safe.

Uhhh... this role is useless. If you activate it and die, then you lose. If you do not activate it and still die, then you may still win if town wins.

But the argument is invalid. For example, what about replacements? The replacement will play differently from the other.

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OK, but:
(1) No one responded to my post about delayed roles.
(2) For deciding to change your role willingly, you will probably play as though both are possible. Like the doc that can become a survivor, how could someone tell that apart from a scum who was just really good at faking town. Although I guess if you had no idea that it was in the game...
(This reminds me of a miccro I just completed where I was a serial killer and thought

for sure

that there would be mafia, especially considering I was 1-shot BP, but there was none.
(3) "Its about if players have fair chance in figuring the game out." But then what if you just have a closed game with lots of Normal roles but it is near impossible to figure out and scum might think it is MyLo with a Doctor-proof kill and play accordingly only to get jailed.

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Also the cults = midgame alignment changes

you can't for certain say what you were doing day 1 is actually beneficial for your final win condition = game integrity breach = bastardness

It's not about what someone like or dislike and it has nothing to do with certain game balances. It's about the nature of "lie" in it and how deeply it can intefer with the mindsets and the natural process of the game

One more thing. When you play mafia, most of your play is uncertain. When you lynch someone, you do not know if it is towards your win condition or not until after the lynch. A doc who protected a known cop may seem to be useful until it messes up the parity in a forced-lynch game. A jailer tries to save a probable lynch target in night 3v2, but unfortunately that target was an important PR and town loses the LyLo.
Having there be a chance of an alignment change is just another layer of uncertainty just like with any complication.

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Here is my post about delayed alignments, for reference:

Another question about alignment changes.
What about if you have "no alignment" until you are given an alignment later? Examples:
1. In a multiball game, you are told that you will be drafted to a random scum team, starting night 2.
2. Your role is "uncertain": if the Mafia attack you in the first three nights, you become a Mafia. If that does not happen then you become locked-in town.
3. Divide the players into 4 groups: Red, Green, Blue, and Neutral. The first three colors each have a factional attack kills members of a specific faction (Red can kill Green, Green can kill Blue, Blue can kill Red), and irreversibly recruits a Neutral. (If a Neutral dies by lynch, then that player simply loses.)

In any of these cases, you would

know

that it is happening, and until you get drafted you receive no alignment.

(3 is specific because I might actually want to run that some time.)

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And

no one

even begins to try to answer my question about delayed alignments.

Games with known alignment changes are about finding

changes

in behavior. Someone who is always relaxed suddenly becomes very tense => lynch them. Someone who played moderately scummy all game but consistently => probably town or else started out in the cult. Lynch if scummy enough, else leave intact. Someone who has played pro-town all game and suddenly claims real-life events have messed up their play => be suspicious (they could be lying about the real-life events) especially if the new play looks very scummy.

We already have replacements. What if (in a non-cult game) someone who was a really good scum player no one ever would suspect needs replacement, and the replacement is horrible at playing scum and gets lynched that very day?

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OK, clearly my examples of delayed alignments were awful.

About the one where you got recruited if attacked in the first three days, that role was only going to be given to 1-2 players, with the rest being locked-in town or locked-in scum. Although I guess then the game has other problems with it depending heavily on the randomness of hitting one of those targets. But even then, that is simply a

badly-designed

game, which is not what we are talking about.

Also, in all "delayed alignment" games that I was considering, you have a temporary goal of surviving. So, if you get lynched before you receive an alignment, you just plain lose. People may read your lack of effort as scummy and lynch you, and if you claim, they might be suspicious of you if you do get drafted as scum.

Something that might be more balanced is this: you join the same team as the day-1 lynch victim, and you get a vanilla role. (That does not mean the day-1 lynch is useless -- hitting scum can give information and hitting town might destroy a useful PR.)
EDIT: But let's not get into the specifics of one kind of delayed-alignment setup.

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So they are a survivor at start and they get their alignment after on. thats pretty much just a normal alignment change and nothing else

No, because you know

for sure

that your "survivor" role is temporary. With a cult, you may get recruited on day 1, day 5, right before LyLo, or never.
And trying to survive for the entire game is much different than trying to survive for the first three rounds or so. This is not a normal alignment change

at all

.