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[Pandarsenic]

What, if anything, stops a Televan and FBI Agent from collaborating, with the Televan putting a hit on himself and the FBI Agent defending him, in a situation where 1 person who is incapable of winning remains and the Merc being 2000 short?

[Mr.Person]

The fact the Televan wants the Merc alive and hidden, the fact the Televan wants the other religion dead, and the fact that if the FBI Agent lies, the Televan dies.

[Pandarsenic]

The Televan can name someone else if he doesn't trust the agent, and if the only member of the other religion is a prophet....

[dakarian]

The religion had to give up another power role to gain access to the merc.  As such, the televan has nothing to gain for messing up the merc that way.  "Play To Win" essentially means the Televan and Merc are allied. 

When this game ends, I have some suggestions for tweaks to the roles.  Quick preview: the mess that happened this game won't happen again.

[dakarian]

Alright, with Religion 2 done I can see some tweaking that needs to be done.


1. Evans, I think, need to be able to convert without dying.  A penalty yes but death, nah.  Perhaps:

If you convert a religious power role, you are told "you cannot convert" without knowing why (thus it could be Athiest, a conversion battle, or a religious) while the one targeted is told who targetted them.  Thus there's a penalty for choosing wrong, BUT it's not instant death.

The rest of them seem to work out.  The Televan SEEMED weaker than the zealot at first but, strategicly, it is SO nice. 

Sidenote: it's pretty clear that religions NEED to pick up a zealot or televan.  Not having a killing role makes you too vulnerable.  It's not a set up penalty: just something for future Evans to remember.

As for the other roles:

1. Survive goal needs to be rare.  As it is, there's NO role that's out to kill any of the town.  Survive means the person will just go with the flow instead of actively get involved with the game.  Instead, I see a town that has a batch of goals that rarely conflict and, in many cases, are in sync with each other.  Thus at least they'll want to work together to gain their win condition. 

2. There really needs to be a 50/50 religion/nonreligion split.  Even if it means 2 teams of 2 people.

As for the specific roles:

Merc: Required debt should be $500*NumberOfReligiousPowerRoles.  Also, when not controlled by the televan, ALL players count towards their $500.  That'll make them more like a SK.

Cabal: Tempted to remove it completely.

Theo: Remove the Survive from them.  They don't win if they aren't converted or if they are made into an Athiest.  Also make them only inspect 1 person. 

FBI: If they 'catch' a person trying to kill/hack, they arrest the merc/zealot immediately. 

Mod and Admin: Although it makes sense to put them in, I'm unhappy with them.  Perhaps give the Mod back their double vote AND make the second vote secret.  Thus their 'public vote' counts and they still get their PMed vote.  Perhaps just make the mod unbanable and Athiest. 

Admin: Perhaps make them able to Unban players (but not unhack/unkill).  AKA, if you are out via vote, the Admin can, once a night, bring you back (without showing their name).  Then make them unbannable and this goal: remove all religious power roles.  If converted, goal switches to "religion wins". 

[Pandarsenic]

Atheist mods with a "remove all religious power roles" goal would be a good opposition to the religions.

[dakarian]

That's what I was thinking.  Both the Mod and Admin would be the main 'anti-religion' driver, with the Mod being able to control the vote and the admin removing the fear the town has over bannings.  The Mod can only be stopped by NK but can hide their power effectively.  The Admin=Reviver makes it trickier for the religion to weaken the unreligious with the vote. 


Something else:

IT Admin change: Let them be able to Unhack people as well, but not Unkill.  To remind:

Banning = day vote
Hacked = Zealot attack
Killed = Mercenary

Mercenary change:  Remove the money system (aww.. I liked that system) and just have them want to kill N=(NumberOfReligiousRoles) people.  By that I mean if there's 6 religious roles at the start, the merc needs to kill 6 people (ANY people, doesn't matter who). 

That'll make them into almost a full SK and drive them to want to be involved in the vote, since they can't get a free win by just hugging the televan anymore.  In fact, the televan doesn't give them any benefit, making it a one sided relationship.  Meanwhile, the televan benefit to the religion is in keeping the merc off of them.  The penalty is the lack of control since you can't communicate with the killer and the sheer HATRED the town will have for the merc.

[Leafsnail]

Well, it's nice that you're suggesting stuff that woulda helped me, Dakarian.  If both religions also had a Zealot, the FBI agent wouldn't have a chance in hell (being against 2 religions AND an SK with only the public lynch to kill them would not be fun).  I also thought that simply knowing the identity of the attacker wasn't really enough.

Basically, if Dragon had gotten ahead, my mission would've been trivially easy.

As for the Merc/ Televan thing, that sounds like a good idea.  As it is, the merc just needs to sit down for 3 nights lurking, and that's not really what an SK type role should be doing.

I thought the Televan would be stronger than the Zealot, since you can make an NK and a conversion in one night.  I'm now trying to imagine a religion which picks both and just tries to win as a traditional mafia with 2 NKs...

[dakarian]

I was the FBI agent last game.  It's a bit of a mess and I only won because I had a Survive goal.  The good side is that the religions have a hard time focusing on you since they need to aim at stopping the others. 

As for the merc, I first thought of it as just a really quirky NK enabler role.  When people started hating the merc, I realized it really would work better as a SK that didn't need to kill EVERYONE. 

The kill/convert limitation was removed, so a Zealot/Televan combo would mean 1 convert+2 NKs.  It's giving up PR for raw power.  Really, there's just a few small but important differences between the zealot and televan:

Zealot: Allows direct control over the way the killer plays, but causes direct heat towards the religion. 

Televan: Allows the religion to recieve less anger (big reason why I was able to quell the town with a roleclaim: if my side had a zealot, some would say "he could be the zealot, KILLEM!!".)  but is dependant on a direly hated role you can't communicate with (note that I was almost banned by the merc .  Also note I had to watch my ban choices in case I end up banning the merc accidentalty).

[Pandarsenic]

I think, stylistically speaking, having he Merc *Hacker* kill people in "real life" as a bit much. I think that Zealots and Mercs should screw up their computers in a non-murder-y way.

[Leafsnail]

In my flavour, I was told that the reason I was on the forums was due to the death threats received.  I kinda assumed the Zealots would also murder people.

[Pandarsenic]

Er... I dunno, that just seems a bit much for the setting, and hack-y-ness is illegal, so...

[Servant Corps]

Due to the flavor of death threats in the first Religious Mafia, I sorta assumed that those death threats are, I don't know, real. So, both the Zealots and the Mercs would have killed people in Religious Mafia #2.

[dakarian]

According to the original idea, Zealots stole a person's ID then actually killed them.  However, in RM 1, I noticed that the Zealots hacked up computers instead.  It made sense and I found it neat that it left the game as a 'nonlethal mafia'.  The merc picture really left a "OMG!" moment.  It also helped put the religions as really dangerous cults that it's not just another internet argument.

The merc doesn't have to actively KILL I think, but then I'd say they 'kidnap'.  That way the game remains 'nonlethal' but it still means the Admin can't revive them.  It'll still work like a normal NK (role flip: player removed). 

If it helps, I'm trying to make the merc more feared/hated than even the zealot.

[Mr.Person]

Gambler's Fallacy says I won't be the merc again, so do whatever with him

I think the merc should be an agnostic instead of an athiest. If he gets converted, his win condition doesn't change, but he also can only take orders from the religion he's in. I just want to avoid making one religion so powerless that it has no way of stopping the other one(s).