Originally Posted by
Auckmid
If I am understanding the thread correctly, this is more or less a conversation on preference of vanilla setups vs. thematic/special setups. The simple answer from me is that I enjoy all sorts of games regardless of whether they are very basic or very thematic, provided that the host puts in good thought towards the balance and focus of the setup. As such, while setup innovation is often a nice thing to see, it isn't something I see as necessary to have a fun game.
Now that I have given my opinion on that, my thoughts on what I see as "unfun" roles...
As I mentioned above, innovation isn't usually a massive concern for me when it comes to enjoying a setup. However, something that is important for me to really enjoy a setup is an emphasis on scumhunting as opposed to relying on night actions, which is obtainable in both vanilla and thematic setups. As such, some of the roles I think are worst for the game are the ones which punish good scumhunting...
Cult Leader (Faction Conversion): There are two major issues I see with conversion. Firstly, no matter how pro-town a player acts, they have the potential of getting converted during the following night. As such, you can't actually rely at all on a players post history since they could have previously been town but have recently been converted. This is terrible for scumhunting since it can easily punish you for having faith in your town reads, which is just bad. Secondly, switching alignments is typically not fun. Any work that you did as your previous alignment doesn't matter anymore, and you might even have to undo your leads that were on the right track due to your faction switch, which just sucks.
Jester: Some people might argue that this role is actually good for emphasizing scumhunting since you have the extra dimension of considering if that super scummy person is actually trying to get lynched. However, I would heavily disagree with this argument. While noob jesters might act like idiots and hope they get lynched as a result, good jesters will be much more subtle and simply attempt to mimic more minor scumtells and hope that the town picks up on it and tries to lynch them. As such, good jester play ends up punishing good scumhunting and just ends up being bad for the game. Expecting players to be able to determine that those subtle scumtells were actually intentional is just unrealistic.
Executioner: I just think this is a bad role except maybe in a super vanilla setup with little to no investigative roles to be claimed. If someone claims sheriff and says that player X is scum, it's unrealistic to expect the town to not believe the claim and lynch player X unless player X has a strong role claim. If player X has a strong role claim, it's incredibly unfun to play a role that is trying to get them lynched.
Suriviour/Amnesiac (Fuzzy win conditions): These roles can be fun to play. However, giving players conflicting win conditions of "win with the town" vs "win with the mafia" makes them too hard to balance to be fun to play with, since the result of the entire game can often be determined simply by which faction they choose to side with.
And now you know why I will generally exclude non-killing neutrals from my setups. Also, this is by no means meant to "shame" people who enjoy these types of neutrals in their games, just to explain why I don't enjoy playing against these roles.