Quote Originally Posted by Skooma Addict View Post
I would like to hear some opinions/advice on how recruitment can be implemented into games without it becoming an overwhelming and disheartening opposition. Cults and mafia recruiting is something I would like to use without worry of imbalance and unfairness to the town players. I've played games where the cult would be lynched during the day, and the deceased is immediately replaced the following night which essentially is a free day kill for the cult. I like the idea of using a base percentage, or restricting recruitment to specific nights.
Recruitment of any kind is going to pose balance issues, but I think the greatest problems are when recruitment is unlimited. I think the best recruitment systems are those that only let the recruiter recruit a limited number of times and from a limited pool of candidates. Combine such limits with night actions to find the recruit candidates, and the system then balances the advantages of recruiting by making the recruiter give up multiple night actions to find, and recruit, their new people. These kinds of limited recruitment systems have been used successfully in many games without unbalancing them in favor of the recruiter.

Cults are a bit of a different problem. I don't really like them because I don't think they're much fun. A true cult (as opposed to a mafia faction with recruitment abilities) is basically an alternate town trying to supplant the original town. I don't really see much entertainment value in that. No one really wants to be part of town B instead of town A. If there's a desirable role change, it's to the mafia, not just some other group you vote with.