Mason

Mason Aliases: Neighbors Best Friends Mafia Mason Alignment: Pro-town Role type: Linked Choice: Automatic

Masons are a group, usually all on the Pro-Town side, that know each other to be innocent. They can communicate with each other at Night, if they choose, but otherwise usually have no special abilities. In one variation of the Mason role, the Masons cannot reveal that they are Masons to the town through roleclaiming. Instead, they must find other ways to defend each other.

Night Action Problems

Mason roles can present a bit of a logistical problem for moderators. Can Masons be blocked? Tracked? Watched?

The answer is most invariably no. Since masons don't target their mason partners to initiate their night talk, they are considered passive roles. This mirrors the rule for what happens when a non-killing Mafia Goon is roleblocked/tracked/watched.

Mafia Masons

Sometimes, one member of the masonry group is a scum mason, a person in the masonry who is secretly part of the mafia or some other scum group. This occasionally happens in games where the moderater does not specifically tell all masons that they are all town. (See: unconfirmed masons, sometimes called "Neighbors")

Mafia masons are not a very common role, but just the possibility that one might exist often leads to paranoia and distrust within the mason group.

Variations

Mason members can have additional roles (Cop, Doctor) in addition to being a mason. However, sometimes the moderator may want to "de-power" the mason role by removing either the confirmed innocence of the mason partner(s) or the ability to night-talk.

Best Friends

Best Friends are a group of roles who know each other's confirmed innocence, but cannot communicate privately. Usage tends to be rare though, as the confirmation is the powerful factor of the Mason roles, and the difference in power for determination of balance in the "private communication" aspect is debatably negligible.

Neighbors

A Neighbor is a person who may night talk with one or more other people, but no one in the group is certain of the others' alignments. This can lead to the effect of having a "game-within-a-game" for mason members to try to discover if a Mafia Mason (or a Serial Killer-mason) is amongst them.

PokerFace popularized this term as an alternative for Unconfirmed Masons.

See also Cults.