I disagree that making it rare means “generally don’t do this”

my reasoning for making it rare was simply about the nature of what happens if its turned on by accident. Which is that nothing happens, because the emperor never hands out the traitor.

It would have the same effect whether or not the Emperor had actually handed out the Traitor role. The players don’t know that the Emperor hasn’t handed it out, so will still be wary that the person asking them for a generously-compensated victory favour could be the Traitor.

I suppose the Rare tag is more literally “only switch this on if you have a reason to”, but I’m not sure what that reason would be in this case. Whether the game should discourage easy kingmaking and full-shadow cabals seems one for the group as a whole, on an ongoing basis, rather than any given Emperor.

If it should be up to the group as a whole, why make it a special case rule at all?

Something like this would work a lot better if we unanimously agreed that betraying as the Traitor has no social consequence.

It still works to a degree though, because a good amount of people still believe that it’s OK to betray as the Traitor.

So, it still does its job of mitigating Pools to some degree.

wow I brainfarted there with “some degree”

I think its useful for the game to layout general expectations for what is socially acceptable in the game and the traitor helps with that.

Sure, there are still going to be play diplomacy and then get upset when someone betrays them. But there isn’t anything diplomacy can do to stop that, all it can do is lay out the expectation that betrayal is part of the game.

“If it should be up to the group as a whole, why make it a special case rule at all?”

I suppose because there are cases - like an actual Werewolf dynasty - where it would interfere with dynastic rules and it’s easier if the Emperor can just toggle it off without having to carefully supersede it. Same goes for most of the non-Rare Special Cases.

Maybe we just need some sort of “mood” setting emperors can toggle? Can have stuff like Friendly (No Traitors)/One Traitor/Scheming (everyone is a traitor)

An actual Werewolf dynasty likely needs a rule like that to prevent the game degenerating into a set of human+wolf pools which each compete to improve the tiebreaks of the member of their own pool, and ignore the Werewolf aspect of the dynasty entirely. (Normally in factional dynasties, the optimal strategy is to create pools that contain at least one member of each faction.)

I have an idea for this

I don’t think this would have been turned off by default if people actually liked it.

People do like it

[ais523] I think the quorum agreeing to turn it off by default was a mix of not liking it, not seeing the need for it, overestimating how much work it was for an Emperor when turned on, and having different ideas about what “turning off by default” amounts to.

That the Traitor rule been slightly confounding player expectations for two years and will now be doing that even more by being marked as “turn this on when needed, not every dynasty will need it” suggests it may have run its course.

honestly, even though i like it. it’s got some good points against it, & the real reason i like it is bc it poses itself as the only opportunity for a certain kind of play, which i think u can actually just do anytime?

(i am excited by josh ‘having an idea’ for it tho, so i could be convinced otherwise)