Unjester

Unjester Alias: none Alignment: Unjester Role type: Third-party Choice: none

An Unjester is a role that wins if it dies during the Night (or via a daykill), and loses if eliminated via the Day vote or if alive at endgame.

Standard version

An Unjester is a neutral player (not belonging to any of the main factions) who wins or loses on their own. Whether they win or not depends on their cause of death; if they die to a kill, they win; if they die for any other reason, or are still alive when the game ends, they lose.

The Unjester does not count as a threat to any other faction's win condition, and an Unjester win does not by default cause other players to lose; just as with a Jester, the game will continue without the Unjester after the Unjester wins (or loses). If the Unjester wins, they will therefore end up sharing a joint win with whichever faction ends up winning at endgame.

Variations

The opposite of an Unjester is a Jester (and the third possible win condition along similar lines – winning if alive at endgame, but not if eliminated or nightkilled – is the Survivor).

It is possible to imagine an Unjester variant that is capable of winning at endgame, losing only if voted out.

Use & Balance

As opposed to the Jester, an Unjester is considerably less bastard; a Jester trying to get eliminated throws off the normal balance of the game (in which everyone is at least pretending to be Town), whereas an Unjester can most easily achieve their win condition via being a threat to the scum (attempting to draw their factional nightkill), meaning that they need to look Town and scumhunt well. Given that this is effectively the same set of skills as is needed to win as Town, an Unjester balances quite similarly to a Vanilla Townie.

The role is, however, not quite the same; the Town are rewarded for working together as a team, whereas as a self-aligned role, the Unjester is rewarded more for a strong individual performance (as they don't care whether or not town loses after they're killed, and thus benefit more from identifying scum than they do from actually pushing their eliminations). The presence of an Unjester can therefore be seen as hurting town slightly (and the role itself is harder to win with than a Vanilla Townie role would be, although player skill has a larger effect than it typically would).

Play Advice

Just be as town as you can (even though, technically, you aren't town!); the easiest way to win as an Unjester is likely to be such a force for helping out the Town that the scum end up with no option other than to nightkill you. Note that actually finding scum is not how you win as an Unjester; what's more important is that you are seen to be finding scum (or else that the scum think you will catch them given time). Being active helps, too.

One slightly oddball strategy may be to fakeclaim Vigilante if there appear to be multiple kills in the game. This is almost certain to get you killed by somebody, whether it's the Mafia looking to get rid of a threat, or a real Vigilante counterclaiming with a bullet. Fakeclaiming other roles (other than Vanilla Townie) is not recommended, due to the risk of a counterclaim that will cause you to get eliminated and thus fail your win condition.

Sample Role PMs

The standardized Role PM for "Unjester" describes the faction as follows:

• As a win condition: You win if you are nightkilled or daykilled, and lose if eliminated by the Day vote or alive at endgame.

Example (vanilla)

Welcome to game! You are an Unjester.

You have no active abilities.

You win if you are nightkilled or daykilled, and lose if eliminated by the Day vote or alive at endgame.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Example (power role)

Welcome to game! You are an Ascetic Unjester Rolecop.

Actions that target you, other than kills, will fail as if roleblocked.

You have the following active ability:

• Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn that player's role (but not their alignment).

You win if you are nightkilled or daykilled, and lose if eliminated by the Day vote or alive at endgame.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.