Townie

Townie Aliases: Citizen Townsperson Vanilla Alignment: Pro-town Role type: not defined Choice: none

A Townie (also known as Citizen, Townsperson, etc.) is a player with a pro-Town Win Condition. Due to ambiguity, "Townie" has been known to refer to any pro-Town player who has no extraordinary abilities or simply any pro-Town player. Players who have no extraordinary abilities are called Vanilla Townies or Vanilla for specificity. The rest of this article is about these Vanilla Townies.

Vanilla Townies can post as much as they like during the Day, and they can vote at will. At Night, they can do nothing but wait for Day to begin.

Adding anything to this definition changes the Vanilla Townie something other than Vanilla, and therefore a different role altogether. See Variations below.

Despite the simplicity of the role, it is one of the most dynamic and important to the game of mafia. Almost all other roles will do their best to try to play like they feel a Vanilla Townie should or does play. Of course, the strategy for how to play a VT will vary greatly according to each player. Some feel that a townie's chief duty is to actively scum-hunt, while others think that they should play in such a way as to attract night-kills (and thereby save power roles). There are also some who feel that receiving a Vanilla Townie gives them the freedom to try out various gambits that would otherwise attract too much unwanted attention if they were a power role or mafia.

See also: Antrax's Guide to Being a Good Townie

Variations

A Vanilla Townie is by definition ordinary and powerless. Any alteration causes the role to become classed as a different role entirely.

• If a Townie is given a unique name, then they become a Named Townie.
• If a Townie's ability to post clearly is altered, then they become a Post Restricted Townie.
• If a Townie's ability to vote is handicapped or enhanced, then they become something akin to Voteless or a Doublevoter.
• If a Townie has any active or passive abilities at all, then they become a Power Role. A glaring exception to this comes if a Vanilla Townie is given a temporary ability by a role like Inventor, at which point they are a Vanilla Townie who happens to have been given an extra ability.
• If a Townie's win condition is different from the rest of the majority, then they should be considered a Third Party or even Mafia.

Use and Power

Vanilla Townies in setups serve two purposes:

First, since Vanilla Townies do not have any special powers at night, they have to depend on traditional scumhunting methods -- analysis of actions, intent, voting, previous posts, etc -- to win. In general, the more Vanilla Townies the setup has, the more the emphasis will be placed on the day game instead of the night game.

Secondly, it is very easy for the Mafia to fakeclaim Vanilla Townie, because, by their nature, they do not have to fabricate any Night action choices.

A setup that is classed as Normal on mafiascum will usually have about 1/3 to 1/2 of the players be Vanilla Townies, with the remainder split between power roles and scum. While this is usually considered a good ratio for balance, themed games do not tend to consider this at all.

A setup where the Town consists solely of Vanilla Townies is called mountainous. The name stems from the belief that these setups are considered difficult for Town to win.

Note to Moderators

When all Townies have the same wording in their PM, they can use the information to clear each other in a fashion similar to Best Friends. To prevent this problem it is common to either give all the Vanilla Townies unique role PMs or give an example of what the Townie PM looks like in one of the opening posts of the game. At the very least, make sure the Mafia knows what the Town Win Condition is.