Ok so there is a lot of talk over what the King’s job is. And so far based on the community it has been pretty clear that there are 2 things that we DON’T want him to be:
So. With those 2 out of the picture, what should the King’s purpose be?
Don’t worry about the specific ability’s and don’t worry about late game.
In my view he’s supposed to be someone the town can rally behind early on, when they don’t have much information, like which NK/Scum team it is.
But what does that even mean? You don’t move in this game so you don’t go to him as a meeting spot beyond lore. And whisper mule is one of the things people hate. So that leaves us with the King’s natural charisma and deductive ability which is no different from any other class
make him a protective
he can’t guerd the same person twice in a row
this fixes guarding himself over and over as well
It is also the truth.
King’s purpose is, first and foremost, to make ToL different from games like ToS.
It exists to be a new mechanic.
King is unconvertible, so you’d probably want to always have a good king in play.
I’m thinking about this rn
Like, consider ToL with my Regicide lore setup - the King has been killed, and now 16 players need to find those responsible.
The game barely changes, but now is much closer to being “ToS with conversions”.
The King is quite literally just there to differentiate gameplay from the competition. It has no meaningful gameplay purpose, or at least it hasn’t to this point.
I don’t particularly care about the base reason of why we have a King in the first place. Just that since we have one he might as well do something so what is that something
In that case, I’d argue King works best when treated like the theme of a FM or irl Mafia game
Something to kickstart early-game discussion
Hence why Gladiator!King is such a great thing
Replacement Kings function not as discussion kickstarters, but rather an additional way for the majority to place their trust in a player. It works well for the social deduction dynamics it creates, and so replacement kings could do as little as gain only a doublevote and that would be enough
