What makes a closed setup fun? (design, not generally)

[Ramcius]

To me it's the unknown. I mean, in closed setup you have no idea what roles are in play, sometimes you don't know how many members informed minority team have, or if there is some 3p. Also, I feel like closed games are more creative setup wise, mods want to do something new, they want to surprise and catch of guard their players with unusual mechanics and role choices

[Ramcius]

Also, I feel like closed games are more creative setup wise, mods want to do something new, they want to surprise and catch of guard their players with unusual mechanics and role choices

this is good when the players are caught off guard and think 'ah that makes sense! didn't think of that!' but not good when players had no way of possibly anticipating or any reason to consider it a possibility - and i guess it doesn't have to be apparent up front but after the fact it should be at least

red herrings are mentioned in the balance thread as solely an unwanted thing but i think red herrings can be very good! or very not good! depending on how they are used - if a player is led to a false conclusion about the setup based on their role, then there should be a different conclusion that they could have reached about the setup which isn't as apparent, not simply as a gotcha! mechanic

Design flaws are mods/reviewers responsibility, so if something is out of place, that's not because setup is closed, just bad design

Red herrings are bad. Closed setups are already complex and cause a lot of guessing, adding more to it with useless roles to keep your setup hidden is effectively hurting players. When players are aware of possibility of red herrings, they're less interested in trying to figure setup and that's big part of in game discussion