User blog:Cheoola/Mayor Games

In Ranked games Mayors often reveal themselves very early on in the game and demand a whisper Role Call; lynching anybody who does not comply. Whilst in some games this a good play and can easily lead to the Town's survival, it can also lead to immediate mistrust and unease amongst players, as well as making the game far more difficult for the evil roles. It seems that the majority of Town of Salem players dislike a Mayor Game, with comments being being posted such as S31A's post on Reddit saying 'There's no strategy here, it's just an easily done use of existing mechanics to make winning trivial.' However, there are a few that oppose the previous statement, such as Cuddles who posted on Steam, 'People who hate whisper games are the ones that can't bluff their way out of a tight spot.'

I suppose the main question here is, 'Should the Mayor Reveal be nerfed?'. The first point we have to address is that by revealing themselves as the Mayor, the player is unable to be healed by Doctors throughout the remainder of the game. Whilst this itself should act as a deterant for early revealing, many Mayors will instead rely on players such as Jailors and BodyGuards to keep them safe, meaning that it is not that much of a problem to them at all. This however, does pose a problem for the Townies as a whole. If the Jailor is constantly having to keep the Mayor safe then they are unable to adequately roleblock and interview suspected 'evil' players. If the BodyGuard is constantly watching the Mayor they will be unable to protect other valuable players such as Investigators, Lookouts or Doctors. As an example, I had a game where the Mayor revealed on night one and then demanded jailing which used up my role as Jailor throughout the rest of the game. This meant that I couldn't help with collecting information or executing targets. I am pretty sure that if I had ignored the requests for jailing I would have been lynched for 'game throwing' or some other form of non-compliance once I had to reveal my role.

The counter to the lack of healing is that once revealed, the Mayor's lynch votes count for 3. Again, this bonus has pros and cons. On the plus side, a confirmed Mayor can consult their list of claimed roles and start the accusations against people who have claimed to have the same role. So, if there are three people claiming Escort, the Mayor can then ask for wills and begin calling up those who don't comply, with 3 votes already against them the suspect is almost certain to die. This can also work against Townies; there are games where the Mayor will lynch without any logic or reason, leading to the deaths of important players. This can also become a problem for Survivors, in one of my games the Mayor chose to disbelieve the Survivor for no apparent reason, stating this when they were called up for lynching, 'We don't need Surv anyway so may as well lynch you to be on the safe side.' This is not good gamemanship. In another game I played recently, the Mayor made the town lynch a Transporter on day 2, this was purely because the transporter was roleblocked on night 1 and since there were no transport claims, they seemed a guilty party.

Some would argue that the Mayor reveal is not so much of an OP move as many other roles are able to 'reveal' themselves. A Spy can perform a 'spy test', an escort can roleblock an appointed pointed person the next night and a lookout can watch an appointed person and announce who visited to clear their name.

The main argument against Mayor Games seems not to be that the Mayor is OP on their own, but that Town becomes OP as a whole due to the nature of the role and the further Investigative/Support roles that work along-side them. LevynXJAILOR on Reddit made the following suggestion, 'Yes, it is incredibly difficult to lie when there's a mayor.

I think simply changing one town protect to random town or even random mafia is good enough.' Maybe the answer is to remove the ability to have a Sheriff in games where there is a Mayor? In my opinion, this is the only way we can allow for a fair game for both good and evil.