What Makes a Good Third Party?

[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.

[Nancy Drew 39]

SK is nice because you can still legitimately hunt scum.

+1

Ideally, SK would be both bp and occur in a closed setup.

[Nancy Drew 39]

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.