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Townie
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A Townie (also known as Citizen, Townsperson, Villager, etc.) is a player with the Town Win Condition. The name suggests that the player has no extraordinary abilities (sometimes "Vanilla Townie", abbreviated as VT, is used to remove the ambiguity).
Normal version
The Town win condition is to eliminate all members of anti-town factions, most notably the Mafia, whilst retaining at least one living player (a Townie can win while dead as long as an ally survives to defeat the Town's enemies). The Town faction as a whole has no special abilities to work towards this; its only advantage is its numbers, typically outnumbering all other factions put together. Its members post and vote like anyone else during the Day, and cannot act at Night without the help of power roles.
"Townie" is a role designation for a pro-Town role that has no active ability. Some passive roles, when given to a member of the Town, are typically named by modifying the name "Townie"; examples include the Ascetic Townie, Bulletproof Townie, and Informed Townie.
The colloquial name for a blank townie and the term used in Normal games is "Vanilla Townie" (i.e. just a vanilla Townie). Townie, Townsperson, Citizen are also permitted. A game cannot be considered Normal unless there is at least one VT-equivalent role in the game. A sample of a Vanilla Townie role PM must be provided in one of the opening posts of a Normal Game.
Variations
Outside of Normal games, a Townie can have any kind or combination of role modifiers applied to it.
Chocolate Townie is a common type of Named Townie. A Named Townie typically is just that, a name. Chocolate Townie subverts this trope by being named similarly and acting the same as the main type of Townie, the Vanilla Townie. Named Townies are stronger than Vanilla Townies: outside of Role Madness games, there should be a great number of Vanilla Townies in the setup, and not being one, even if just by name can be considered a type of power.
Vanilla Townies are the accepted term to be used. See: Vanilla. If all Vanilla Townies are named, that new name is considered a VT in its function.
Any role can become a Vanilla Townie if targeted by a Vanillaiser. Similarly, any Vanilla Townie can use abilities granted by a role like Inventor.
The Neapolitan is a role that investigates for Vanilla Townies specifically.
The rest of the article will detail the use of the Vanilla Townie.
Use & Balance
For non-vanilla townies, balance advice can be sought on their respective wiki pages.
The Vanilla Townie (VT) is a vital role for game balance. Generally, it is a good idea to start with the highest number of VTs you'd like to account for when making a Mafia set-up. To avoid problems related by having too few VTs the finished product should shoot for at least half the number of playing having the VT role.
Role Madness is a type of game where there are no Vanilla roles at all. As a rule, there's no way to balance a Role Madness game, as there are only precautions that can be taken to avoid the game from being broken. While it is possible to assign a Vanilla Town role in a Role Madness game, it is recommended to limit any VT role to 1, as the novelty of a single Vanilla Town effectively makes it a Named Townie that is difficult or impossible for scum to effectively counterclaim.
It is common practice to provide the role-PM of a Vanilla Townie role to the entire player list to avoid optimization strategies that could be attempted by comparing role PMs between VTs, or to make each VT role PM unique.
Play Advice
Basics
The Vanilla Townie plays a crucial role for the town. As game balance necessitates its existence, its power level is entirely up to the player wielding it. Generally, a VT should try to play as transparently pro-Town as possible, and show high aggression or concern for its survival. At the same time, it is best to avoid telling yourself as a VT: leaving something to the imagination leaves you open to soaking a Night Kill for your team. When in doubt, ask yourself if there's an element of WIFOM for scum to analyze. If they may agonize over killing you, you have found a great balance in your play.
Cover
VTs are in a unique position to look out for their team's Power Roles. While a Vanilla Townie will never produce a guilty result on scum on their own, they can take a night-kill for somebody that can. Simply because there are more than one VT likely not more than one of any given power role in a game, any power role without the name "Vanilla Townie" can offer the town power just by being named.
A strategy VTs can employ in specific setups is creating Cover for their power role, commonly a cop or investigative role of some kind. Each day you can state, "if I am a cop, I have an innocent on X player". This is optimizing strategic behavior that will raise the Town's Expected Value to win by providing a cop with safe days to out an Innocent result while avoiding being night-killed, up until they claim a real Guilty. If the cop is killed, all of their results can be taken as the truth, and no result they could have shared will be lost.
Similarly, it's possible to provide cover if you correctly read a player as a certain role, though it is important to communicate the plan in some way in thread so as to avoid being counterclaimed by your teammate.
Sample Role PMs
The standardized Role PM for "Town" describes the faction as follows:
- As a win condition:
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.
Example (vanilla)
Welcome to game! You are a Vanilla Townie.
You have no active abilities.
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.
Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.
Example (power role)
Welcome to game! You are a Bulletproof Ascetic Townie.
You are protected from kills that target you.
Actions that target you, other than kills, will fail as if roleblocked.
You have no active abilities.
You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.
Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.
See also
Vanilla relates to either a role or type of setup whereby the role has no special abilities or does not behave outside its expected norm. Example: it's a Vanilla game that has no flavor.
Mountainous is a set-up where all roles in the game are Vanilla.