Dealing with Scum Bus Drives

[Magua]

What should a Moderator do when he designs a Bus Drive role for a Scum Group and then they start changing the actions every night.
Should he inform the townspeople about possible changes if they targets are changed or not?
I'm really confused about this, just want to know what is the best thing for a Moderator to do.

For roles that normally do not get any response to their actions (eg, doctor), then they should not be informed.

For roles that do normally get a response (eg, cop), you have two choices:
1) You can tell them their new target (cop investigates X, you give them the report "Y is innocent")
2) You can not tell them their new target (cop investigates X, you give them the report "Innocent")

Frankly, I consider 2) to be bastard modding. You can make the argument that it's equivalent to a godfather coming up innocent on a cop report or a framer framing the cop target, but if there's a bus driver and investigative roles don't know if they were redirected or not, the investigations (from the point of view of the player) effectively become random. Were I the mod, I would go with 1)

You should also consider how trackers and watchers, etc, deal with the bus driver itself.
- A tracker who tracks the bus driver should see them visit both targets.
- A watcher who watches a bus driver target should see the bus driver visit. By the nature of watching a target that is being bus driven, the watcher should also end up watching the other person driven, which if you're going with 1) above, means that the watcher will know they're driven and will know that the bus driver is one of those appearing on his report.

Finally, you should determine if the bus driver can drive themselves with someone else. I advise against this, but that's just personal opinion.

All of these decisions should be made before the game starts, obviously.

[Magua]

And I would still prefer:

Redirector-scum knows he's going to be investigated that night.
He redirects the known cop to

an innocent person

the cop himself that night.
Cop gets the result

"Innocent"

"Cop is innocent".
Cop

doesn't push for Redirector-scum's lynch the next day.

has no useful information.

[Magua]

What do you mean you'd "prefer" that. Like... it'd be automatic? That's useless. It takes away the entire choice and strategy of the role. And if not automatic, then... what? What if the redirector doesn't choose to redirect to the cop?

Then...er...the cop gets a report on whoever the redirector does choose to redirect to? Your example postulated a "known cop" and a scum-redirector who knew they were going to get investigated.

What's so hard to understand about "Cop inspects a target" and "Cop gets a result '

Your target

is innocent/guilty'"?

But in this case, you're actively lying to the cop, because you're *not* giving them a report on their target, you're giving them a report on some *other* target.

It's a

role

, just like PGO/Weak Doc/Roleblocker/etc. Trying to dilute it or change what it fundamentally

is

, only cheapens it.

Er....what? No. It's a matter of semantics. Like, does the cop report say "Mafia" or "Not Mafia", or does it say "Town" or "Not Town"? With SKs, etc, those are two distinct sets. Same thing: the cop reports that say "Mafia" vs "Bob is Mafia".

You can argue that your form is correct. That's fine. It's your opinion. I simply disagree vehemently.

Like, take Metropolis: Revisited. M: R had framers, and it had godfathers, and it had a cop. That's fine. Great, thumbs up. Cop knows up-front that a guilty result might not really be a guilty. Cop knows up-front that an innocent result might not really be an innocent. This is all good. (It'd be less good if the setup didn't at least contain the *idea* that it might have godfathers and framers, but it did. So it's fine.)

But if you were going to have the Mixmaster work like that? No. Now the cop has a report that is literally 100% useless. May as well not even have bothered. It's the equivalent of putting a cop into a setup where all of the mafia are godfathers. Cop and godfather are both standard roles, but it begs the question: why bother having the cop to begin with? It's just not good design unless your design is "screw with the players", in which case, y'know, bastard mod.

It's like people who like the idea of "even night sane cop, odd night insane cop". Yes, it's a role, yes, it's deterministic, but it's still just...dumb. If you don't want useful investigative roles, don't have useful investigative roles. Don't give a player an investigative role and pretend that it's useful when it's not.

Telling someone who their report on doesn't "neuter" bus driver; bus driver still fucks with investigative roles because it prevents them from getting reports on who they *want*. It's an immensely powerful role that can make vigs work for the scum, can bypass all forms of protection, can (depending on action resolution) bypass roleblockers, and can neuter investigative roles.

So, yeah. Not seeing your argument.