What if Neutral roles had to do tasks?

[Anusien]

One of the concerns with neutral roles is that they’re not playing the same game. They can’t do tasks, and most of their roles don’t give them something to do during the day. (The Arsonist’s in-game ability barely counts; it’s mostly standing around waiting). Crew are somewhat happy to die if it’s in the service of winning; a crewmate is okay dying if the impostor is immediately caught because it means they win. But neutral roles are solo wins only, meaning their central mandate is “don’t get killed by an impostor”. This can consequently encourage play patterns where you literally hide. Boring.

What if we just gave neutral roles some tasks to do. Not Shifter; that’s gonna become a crew role. And maybe not Glitch. But what if all the other neutral roles had a shorter task list to do, and they can’t win until they do them. So a Jester that gets voted out before they do all their tasks doesn’t win.

[Anusien]

The Jester would probably still want to build suspicion on themselves day 1 even before they get all their tasks done. But it would eliminate the “vote someone out on 9 and randomly lose because they were the Jester” problem. It would force the game to go on longer before the Jester wins, giving crew more time to get a read on them.

Yes, in theory, crew can do this now by simply skipping on 9 and waiting to vote them out later.

[VirusTLNR]

i think that voting a jester out on 9 is a learning curve for crewmates.. you do it once, you learn, and then you question "jester?" every time someone is eager to be thrown out, etc.

but i do agree.. people hide as jester, and it is boring, but also it does lead to some fun games (for example, as a lawyer on the other roles, i caught the jester hiding, and got my client to skip, there in winning the game, all because i found the jester hiding behind the bookshelf in admin... so its not always boring, but you are right, a jester hiding for 90% of the game, is dull.

what if however... we do something other than tasks?

what if the jester... dies after x amount of time of not being sus... (ie, not being seen) so they get a warning.. with a countdown, if they find someone else (impostor/crew/neutral doesnt matter which), the status reverts to as normal... until that period of time passes again... and then they get the same warning.

there in, for the majority of the game, they must appear.. and late game, it allows them to hide.. but not for too long.

as for other roles, like arsonist, executioner etc..

arsonist already has to show their face, so i dont think tasks is required.. tbh on TOU i turn up the arsonists douse cooldown to 5 seconds above the impostor kill cooldown just so arsonist only has a slim chance to douse if killers are fast. (there in incentivising fast kills + fast dousing).. otherwise my group gets arsonist win after arsonist win.. so perhaps instead.. change the arsonist.. to.. "the arsonist only has time to douse 5 people... everyone else must be dead".. so the arsonist cant kill people.. but they must keep dousing people.. and the oldest douse gets undoused, so they must re-douse.... meaning the arsonist must douse at least 1 impostor.. or the glitch.. and must survive to top 6 and have everyone doused before they can ignite.

as for the executioner.. the fact it turns into a jester.. is bad... because it means a game may have 2 jesters. so i prefer to turn them into a crewmate and make them work hard and fast for their solo win.. meaning no hiding.

what if some additions to this.. are..

1:- the executioner dies like a lover dies, if their target dies.. they die too..so for an executioner.. its all or nothing, that person gets voted out.. or they die/lose
2:- executioner gets two new abilities... 1... like mimic, but they can ONLY mimic their target.. and 2.. when someone dies.. if no one reports the body for 20 seconds, the executioner can report the body any time they wish from anywhere. (so they can make it into a 50/50 with their target using arguements, that sort of thing)

this will mean an executioner will want to act fast.. but if they play the "i found the body in the wrong place it was my target" card, an assassin can kill them because they may know its wrong info.

this will also mean that an executioner can more effectivly frame their target in multiple ways.

[Anusien]

If we are going to make them do something in the game, making them do tasks seems way better than anything else because it’s one of the main gameplay loops already.