Role Development

[S~V~S]

I have been playing around with baddie roles and different and original ways to write baddie roles and teams.

What was your favorite baddie role, and what type of team dynamics do you like?

[Tangrowth]

The answer to your question depends on whether it's a baddie I've played or a baddie role I've created.

I always try and do something unique in each of my games I've hosted and continue to do so with games I will host, especially with baddie team dynamics and baddie roles. I can't use examples from my current or subsequent games just yet, but I am very proud of many of those roles for sure. My favorite baddie role I've ever created prior to Avant 1 and not including Bioshock or Fight Club would definitely have to be Biosphere from The Ambient Trinity in Electronic Music Mafia (the role with the secret ability to target a player every night and make that person's votes worth negative the amount of players still alive in the trinity until Biosphere dies) or any one of The Residents from Avant-Garde Mafia 1 (it helps when it all the roles are on a secret team which no one knew existed).

As to team dynamics, I love multiple (at least 2, if not 3+) baddie teams and roles which create chaos, as anyone who has played any of my games will be able to attest to. That being said, those are the only variables in building baddie teams that stay relatively consistent from game to game for me. I also prefer to keep, if there are two 'conventional' baddie teams, one baddie team focused more towards day/vote manipulation abilities and another towards more night related actions. What also helps to keep players analyzing and wondering is when there are events that could be explained by corresponding civvie and baddie roles, rather than one or the other. I must say, I love to keep players constantly questioning and analyzing, but when there are secrets in my baddie roles, I do prefer a way to reveal them over time in the game so as to give them an increasing idea as to what has been going on behind the scenes. I try to mix that up game to game as well.

My favorite baddie role to play... surprisingly, probably one of the Sisters of the Dark in rabbit8's Sword of Truth game. It also wins the award for my least favorite baddie role to play and that is because the entire trio of us (myself, Sparrow, and Jason Maher) were pretty much slaves to the Jagang (aapje) role unless we got that role lynched. We had a NK, but the target was chosen by Jagang, so I think what I liked most about it was just how much of a challenge it gave me. Anyone who played that game or has some knowledge regarding it knows that I came up with the infamous parchment that game in an elaborate lie to get aapje lynched, which I somehow was able to accomplish... and then became an outed baddie and was lynched the subsequent period. But what I suppose I liked (but also hated) so much about it was the intense challenge it created for us to win the game. It was certainly some very awkward BTSC with aapje given we couldn't win with him and once I decided I had to start going after him in thread.

I think an equally good question would be, what has been your (directed towards anyone) favorite civvie role created as well as played?

[timmer]

My favourite baddie role to have is technically not a baddie at all... it's an indy role that I can play as a baddie if I choose. My all-time favourite role was an indy in Rabbit's Sword of Truth game. I had ways to manipulate the game, and could have used those powers to help the civs, but ultimately was able to jerk around the game a bit, like by lynch-saving the chief bad guy, because I could.

The best baddie role I ever created was in my Liars' Club game at RM where a secret baddie role was "bullet time"; whoever the role targeted would have their night action slowed down so that it actually ended up happening the night after instead. It created the possibility that someone who think their nigt action had failed, only to get two results the next night.

[bea]

I have to echo timmer here in that the roles that always interest me most are indys. And knowing how well you know svs that I was schooled at the foot of lorab as far as indy's go - to me they just always seem to have the most potential.

Look at our Twice-ler. And the other role - the one we gave wabbit - the popularity role - it was originally an indy role wasn't it?

I love the idea of taking what works and making it form to civ/baddie constructs. - but really the real creative for me is in the indy roles. I was very sad to cut my indy's. But it was just best for balance.

[Spacedaisy]

I don't think I have a particular role that I like more than others, but dynamic I can answer easily about, because it is one of my favorite things to incorporate when I am crafting a game. I love when an outline has a lot of interconnectivity between the roles. For instance in my Firefly themed mafia the Hands of Blue were searching for Shinny to NK her while Jubalwas searching for her to get her lynched. So when she came out swinging for a Baddie she had found with her role disco, no one knew what to make of it, she could have been telling the truth or she could have been Jubal trying to get River lynched. Or if Simon has been lynched River could have chosen turned herself in to protect the Doctor role, but thereby getting herself NKed. Then in Dead Like Me the Baddie kill was actually carried about by Civs. They were out in between a rock and a hard place, they had to play strategically as a result. One of my favorite though was in Hitchhiker's Guide, Random won with the Baddies unless Trillian was dead, once Trillian died she won with the civs. And she knew who Trillian was. Did she sacrifice an important civ so that she herself could become civ, or did she play full on for the baddies and hope Trillian lived so she did not have to change alignment? I like making players make tough decisions about how they are going to play their role and I like seeing what they end up deciding to do.

I also like to balance out some basic roles, especially role blocks. If I have a civ role block, then I will also have a Baddie role block. That way it keeps things less clear cut when a Baddie kill gets blocked. I also like roles that confuse disco roles. A Baddie who looks civ and a civ who appears bad. It makes the disco role have to take the info and their own suspicions and thread evidence into consideration too. I will do whatever I can to keep things from being too clear, but not get so chaotic players feel like they give up because there is no possible way to figure it all out, lol.

[S~V~S]

I am having some issues with my baddie teams, I will look up some of these roles and see if they inspire me.

It's funny, two of you mention SOT, and my favorite role was from that game as well, but it was a civvie role. I highly prefer being a baddie, so I find it interesting that Kahlan was my favorite role. Maybe it was the awesome BTS~ my two follow ups were rabbits LOST as Ethan Rom, and Survivor, being the mole on that huge civ BTS group was awesome. But in SOT having Typh as my recruited from the Jagang Gang recruit gave me a very different perspective on aapjes role~ for me one of the most fun parts of the game was trying to get Bea, who we did not have BTS with yet but whose role i knew, to try and save Jagang in order to keep the Keeper from growing too powerful. So I was a major civvie working hard to keep a major baddie from being lynched. At one point, i changed the song link in my sig to "Everybodys got something to hide but me and my Monkey" with a link named "I love my Monkey" or something like that, but he wound up being lynched anyhow. Good times (not so much for aapje, though). That was an awesome game

[Tangrowth]

I am having some issues with my baddie teams, I will look up some of these roles and see if they inspire me.

It's funny, two of you mention SOT, and my favorite role was from that game as well, but it was a civvie role. I highly prefer being a baddie, so I find it interesting that Kahlan was my favorite role. Maybe it was the awesome BTS~ my two follow ups were rabbits LOST as Ethan Rom, and Survivor, being the mole on that huge civ BTS group was awesome. But in SOT having Typh as my recruited from the Jagang Gang recruit gave me a very different perspective on aapjes role~ for me one of the most fun parts of the game was trying to get Bea, who we did not have BTS with yet but whose role i knew, to try and save Jagang in order to keep the Keeper from growing too powerful. So I was a major civvie working hard to keep a major baddie from being lynched. At one point, i changed the song link in my sig to "Everybodys got something to hide but me and my Monkey" with a link named "I love my Monkey" or something like that, but he wound up being lynched anyhow. Good times (not so much for aapje, though). That was an awesome game

Haha, looks like we were on opposite sides of the bizarre spectrum in that game then.

[S~V~S]

I had some really cool ideas, but i did not want to overpower the civs and ruin the balance. I have to keep tweaking it, i think. I think I am going to write my baddie roles, and then take out about 50% of what i gave them, and that would create balance. I would need a 45 person game to blance out what i would like my baddies to be able to do lol

[blindfaeth]

My favorite role by far was my civ role In rabbits knights of the round table Camelot game I forget the name exactly lol. I started with BTSC, died night 1, rezzed day 4 bc of the mirror realm but my teammates were dead. Managed to get BTSC with Juliet's and des, get the holy grail and Excalibur and NKed two baddies and ultimately won. Kate played an awesome baddie game