To the mafia, how did the Double Lynch shake things up for you end of day?
The double execute fucked me and Max in particular, but more because instead of convincing a majority of the Town to not kill us, it requires convincing 66% of the Players to not execute us instead. Overall, it wasn't particularly a fun Ability to deal with for three reasons:
- First, one of Max or I were probably going to die by the end of Day 1, and based entirely on my role, I figured I was the optimal target for it. I hoped that I'd leave enough confusion behind when I died to make Toony, Euchre, and EP look suspicious, but, well, Chats are a strong ability, and should probably be removed as a sphere. It's not a particularly fun Ability as Mafia, and it's extremely strong as Town. I'd hate being Mafia with Chat, I'd hate being in a Chat with Mafia as Town, and it's super confirmable.
- Second, using it on Day 1 was always the right move, specifically because it confirms you (Mafia never use that Ability like that and also never HAVE an Ability like that.) The chances that you execute a non-Town were about 70%, and even if you somehow missed, the double execute the following Day is not any amount of downside. I couldn't see any downside to the Ability in the slightest, especially because it's all within the Town's power to use it and not based on your intentions.
- Third, if non-Town had somehow survived the double execute, it actually hits our team harder than other Mafia teams. We all had Slow Abilities, and we'd basically always be shortening our teams likelihood of getting our powers online. We got punished for all being picked as scum with Slow. And I realize that this is sort of luck of the draw that we were all on a team with that powerset, but we didn't have to have powers manifest in that way, and honestly, I don't think they should have if we were facing a double execute. If that were the case, instead of time being the deciding factor on our powerset, it'd have been better to have the number of living Players be it instead.
I didn't play that well, but I also didn't want Max to die over me at the end of the Day because, like, what was I gonna do? I needed Items to trade for Emeralds, and the only Items I was gonna gain were more Emeralds, which... I wanted to keep??? I was a glorified Mafiakiller.
Overall, my role had a lot of potential, but the environment that my role existed in made it feel very useless. I was given a set of tools that didn't particularly compliment my team's tools (and the other Emeralds were unknown to me, so I can't use knowledge I don't have to justify my role's importance), lacked the resources required to procure a set of better tools, and faced challenges that would have made getting those tools feel very unsatisfactory for either team. If I had someone gotten all seven Emeralds (this would likely have been on Day 4-5 at the earliest), we would likely have had around 3-5 players alive, meaning that by surviving the Day, I'd win... but I probably would've already won at that point, and if I hadn't, Town would've felt screwed out of a victory.
Heck, it's entirely possible that one of the Emeralds was super busted, but without knowing what they were, I'm pretty disincentivized to experiment, since I could very easily lose more than I'd gain. So, end of Day 1, if I didn't see a way out, I figured I'd just eat a bullet and let whatever amount of suspicion try to carry my team.
I've thought about a bunch of changes to make my role actually feel fun and exciting, and I think it's just that my role needed more tools. I just had so many questions: Why did I have Shot reloading? Who was I going to confirm my Action on? Which member of my team needed it? How was I gonna get Emeralds off dead Players? How was I going to get all seven Emeralds by the end of the game? If I wasn't supposed to get all seven Emeralds, then why did I only have one Action? If I was supposed to, then why could I win the game at that point? What do my other Emeralds actually do? Why does Toony learn where my Emeralds are? Why can't I trade for more Emeralds? On and on and on. Basically, I had no idea what the point of my role was other than "Get all the Emeralds or get fucked."
Say what you will, but my role FELT useless, and even though it was definitely not the worst role by power, if I had won with my OP ability, would anyone have found that fun? Fuck no.
