Headscratchers / Town of Salem

• I am confused by the first quote on the quotes page here. Isn't the ENTIRE POINT of the jester to get lynched? So..what's the big deal about it being a "bad" Jester?
  • Claiming an evil role (especially early on) is considered a bad Jester play as most townies would assume someone making such a claim is a Jester as the other evil roles would want to stay hidden. Best case scenario, they will be ignored and have to hope that the real evils take pity and let them win near the end. Worst case scenario, a Jailor or Vigilante will kill them at night to avoid risking the consequences of lynching the Jester. Of course there is also the potential that someone claiming SK/Mafia really is SK/Mafia trying to pass as a Jester but that strategy is very risky since it paints a massive target on the player's back for the Jailor, Vigilante or rival factions who are trying to be the last player/players standing.
• What is the point of asking for a role call (which happens very very frequently)? Obviously everyone would give a nonthreatening role, and the only one who can actually confirm their roles is the mayor, for whom it is a risk to reveal themselves because they can't be healed and their votes are worth 3 so mafia and serial killer players would want them gone.
  • Forcing people to claim early on makes it harder for that claim to be sustained. If mafia isn't forced to claim until day 5, they have time to rewrite a will, change claims, and adapt their claim to new information. But if mafia is locked into a claim d2, they're forced to sustain that claim, including getting investigated, interrogated, producing results every day, etc. Also, if you're in Ranked, there's a set rolelist - so rolecalling makes sense, since a Transporter with no TS counterclaims isn't very suspicious, but a Sheriff with 4 TI counterclaims is extremely suspicious, and a RT Doc claim in an SK game is suspicious, and so on and so forth. This troper agrees that in games like All/Any it's pretty useless, but in Ranked it's not so much about the role that's claimed so much as how that role fits into the larger flow of the game and whether or not it's plausible for that person to have acted the way that they did if they really are that role.
• Why is it so common to keep pretending that you're one of the good roles in your last words right after you can't be saved but still before you die? At the point where you're voted Guilty, you're dead, no ifs and buts about it, and your role is revealed anyways. Why not gracefully accept your loss?
  • Some players are simply Defiant to the End.
• How the hell does the town not know who their own mayor is until they reveal themselves?