Ability Idea - what do you think?

[Yamahako]

I thought of an interesting variation of the "confirmed townie"

What if in each townie's role PM they got a phrase like

Today someone will likely use the word perponderance. This person is likely a confirmed pro-town player

One townie's PM would say:

Today you should try to use the word perponderance in a post. If you do something good will happen

The scum would not know the "code word" and thus be left in the dark about this character. And perhaps the character wouldn't even know they were confirmed either.

What do you think of that idea?

[TBuG]

That's a good idea.

[Thok]

What's to keep the various townies from all using the word perponderance? That could essentially clear many more people than you intend to.

[Save The Dragons]

One

townie's PM would say:

Today you should try to use the word perponderance in a post. If you do something good will happen

Bolding mine.

This is an interesting idea, but you need to consider if you just give your players a confirmed innocent like that, you should have some words that do something bad or somehow alter the odds for the scum so they have a chance. Maybe even give a random player the first PM, saying something like, "who ever uses the word antidisestablishmentarianism in a post is a townie."

[Fuldu]

I don't know. I don't see any obvious reason that this wouldn't work, as long as there weren't too many confirmable players, but I have to say that I find it dull. It's basically just handing out a whole bunch of fixed-target one-shot cop investigations. It isn't clear to me what this adds to the game other than a way to make things easier for the town.

On the flip side, trying to balance it by, as STD suggests, putting out certain words that do something bad, is just mean. As a mod, I don't consider it very sporting to give someone a goal and then, when they achieve that goal (regardless of how trivial), do something bad to/for them. Allowing scum to sometimes be the recipient of the information about the word user amounts to telling the player to do something and then punishing them for doing it.

[GreenLiquid]

I've considered such a role before but never got around to doing it. In this case, though, it was some sort of anti-town variant.

[Seol]

What's to keep the various townies from all using the word perponderance? That could essentially clear many more people than you intend to.

If I had that, my first post of the day would be something along the lines of:

Just the one death... interesting. I wonder who our "perp" is?

Not that I'd expect them to come forward just like that, of course. Just wondering...

Thus indicating that a) I'm not the perponderance player and b) I know about the keyword, which proves I'm not scum because if the scum knew about it, they could use it and (according to my role pm) "prove" themselves innocent. Now, perponderance may be a bad keyword choice, but I bet I could find some way of unambiguously breadcrumbing most words like that.

Basically, it's bad for exactly the same reasons mod PM quoting analysis is bad, except it gives everyone a nice easy hook to work around and get the benefits without actually breaking any rules.

What it

could

be used for, however, is a seeking masonry. That's effectively what this is - it makes all players who know about perponderance a non-nighttalking masonry, and a non-nighttalking masonry which includes the ENTIRE pro-town cast is just slightly broken.

[Norinel]

What it

could

be used for, however, is a seeking masonry. That's effectively what this is - it makes all players who know about perponderance a non-nighttalking masonry,

Like the masons in Improbable Role Mafia?

[Seol]

What it

could

be used for, however, is a seeking masonry. That's effectively what this is - it makes all players who know about perponderance a non-nighttalking masonry,

Like the masons in Improbable Role Mafia?

Link please?

[Norinel]

The game itself, and the post-game role descriptions

[Seol]

The game itself, and the post-game role descriptions

Yep, exactly like that.

[BabyJesus]

I thought of an interesting variation of the "confirmed townie"

What if in each townie's role PM they got a phrase like

Today someone will likely use the word perponderance. This person is likely a confirmed pro-town player

One townie's PM would say:

Today you should try to use the word perponderance in a post. If you do something good will happen

The scum would not know the "code word" and thus be left in the dark about this character. And perhaps the character wouldn't even know they were confirmed either.

What do you think of that idea?

only if there's no cop in the game.

[Mr. Flay]

Uh uh. Way too powerful, for the reasons mentioned above.

[Osloboditelj]

I find myself agreeing with Seol here. If the entire cast of townies have knowledge of the codeword, it's incredibly easy to identify every single player who has that information - which breaks the game by identifying huge numbers of townies. Even disallowing said townies from saying the word wouldn't help much, since it would be rather artificial as well as extremely easy to get around (as Seol has already shown). Thus, this mechanic on a large amount of players just isn't reasonable. As a way of enabling day-masons, though, it seems good - make a couple people aware of the word, and make the word fairly obscure, and you have yourself a nice day-seeking mason group.

[Karo]

That's funny, we just stumbled over this word in another game. Not here though... must be a coincidence.