Some hosts seem to insist on putting recruiters in their games. Whenever I'm in a mafia game in which a member of my team was recruited, at the end of that game I feel like I've been cheesed. Actually every time it feels pretty shitty to have a member of your team recruited away from you and I can name several reasons for why I feel that way.
1) All of the info you had/have/will have, as well as your night action targets, now belongs to another faction.
"Smogon Mafia" is a game of information management. Having all of your info belong to another team makes you at a fundamental disadvantage. Some games try to get around this by saying "if you're recruited you can't say anything about your original faction." Such a rule can't ever really be enforced and can't be played around because it's not a clearly defined rule. Everything you do/say is influenced by what you know. You can't pretend you don't know something you do.
2) The recruitments almost always belong to a faction that "Doesn't Exist Lol"
If there's a recruitment in the game, for some reason the hosts enjoy not even telling people the name of the faction that is doing the recruitment. Does it really add to the game to have the recruiter be a part of a secret faction that no one knows about? What does that accomplish other than frustrating the other 20+ players of the game who will learn too late that their best roles have been taken away from then under their noses. I say "under their noses" because
3) These recruitments almost always happen silently.
I often only find out that a member of my team has been recruited in postgame. Yeah, that's fair. Especially because
4) Getting a member recruited is actually worse than having a member killed.
When a member of my team dies, it sucks. I have one fewer night action to work with and my team becomes fundamentally more vulnerable and less powerful. Getting a member recruited is twice as bad. I lose everything I would lose if that teammate died, and I also give up information + a night action to opponents who want to make me lose.
----------------
So with that being said, if you must include a recruitment role in your game, here is what I would suggest. To get around the "information leak" problem, there are two adequate solutions.
1) Restrict recruits to "freelancer" type players who don't have any teammates to blab about.
2) Sub out players who get recruited and replace them with another player. Or just kill them and give their role/alias to the recruiting player.
To get around the other problems, I'd suggest telling the players at the very beginning of the game that there is a recruiter. He is on <X> faction. He has recruits once every <Y> nights.
A recruiter is a game defining role. You can't just put one in and expect people to be happy when they realize the game they thought they were playing has been destroyed by one recruiting neutral who's on a faction they never even heard of until postgame.
Also, instead of having silent recruits, why not try one of these options:
1) When a person is recruited, say publicly that their alignment has changed.
2) Give each person a once-per-game/once-per-night "recruitment check" that they can use on other players to see if their factional alignment has changed this game.
3) Give daily updates on the size of the recruiter's faction.
I hope future hosts take this feedback seriously. I'm really not interested in playing more games with the recruiters we currently have.
1) All of the info you had/have/will have, as well as your night action targets, now belongs to another faction.
"Smogon Mafia" is a game of information management. Having all of your info belong to another team makes you at a fundamental disadvantage. Some games try to get around this by saying "if you're recruited you can't say anything about your original faction." Such a rule can't ever really be enforced and can't be played around because it's not a clearly defined rule. Everything you do/say is influenced by what you know. You can't pretend you don't know something you do.
2) The recruitments almost always belong to a faction that "Doesn't Exist Lol"
If there's a recruitment in the game, for some reason the hosts enjoy not even telling people the name of the faction that is doing the recruitment. Does it really add to the game to have the recruiter be a part of a secret faction that no one knows about? What does that accomplish other than frustrating the other 20+ players of the game who will learn too late that their best roles have been taken away from then under their noses. I say "under their noses" because
3) These recruitments almost always happen silently.
I often only find out that a member of my team has been recruited in postgame. Yeah, that's fair. Especially because
4) Getting a member recruited is actually worse than having a member killed.
When a member of my team dies, it sucks. I have one fewer night action to work with and my team becomes fundamentally more vulnerable and less powerful. Getting a member recruited is twice as bad. I lose everything I would lose if that teammate died, and I also give up information + a night action to opponents who want to make me lose.
----------------
So with that being said, if you must include a recruitment role in your game, here is what I would suggest. To get around the "information leak" problem, there are two adequate solutions.
1) Restrict recruits to "freelancer" type players who don't have any teammates to blab about.
2) Sub out players who get recruited and replace them with another player. Or just kill them and give their role/alias to the recruiting player.
To get around the other problems, I'd suggest telling the players at the very beginning of the game that there is a recruiter. He is on <X> faction. He has recruits once every <Y> nights.
A recruiter is a game defining role. You can't just put one in and expect people to be happy when they realize the game they thought they were playing has been destroyed by one recruiting neutral who's on a faction they never even heard of until postgame.
Also, instead of having silent recruits, why not try one of these options:
1) When a person is recruited, say publicly that their alignment has changed.
2) Give each person a once-per-game/once-per-night "recruitment check" that they can use on other players to see if their factional alignment has changed this game.
3) Give daily updates on the size of the recruiter's faction.
I hope future hosts take this feedback seriously. I'm really not interested in playing more games with the recruiters we currently have.
