Cop

Cop Aliases: Seer Angel Alignment: Pro-town Role type: Informative Choice: Night Day

The Cop is a role that has the ability to investigate other players.

The most typical use of this role involves the role PMing the moderator the investigation target during the Night Phase and receiving a result of either "innocent" or "guilty" (or "Pro-Town" and "Anti-Town") at the start of the next Day Phase. This role is almost always Pro-Town since the mafia traditionally already know who is guilty and innocent, making a Mafia Cop redundant.

In games with werewolves, a cop who can only detect werewolves is commonly called a Seer.

Sanities

Since the ability to uncover guilt or innocence regardless of analysis of play is a very powerful ability, some moderators dampen the cop's ability through the use of sanities - alterations to the accuracy of the investigation results. Cop is the only investigative role where it is established that results may not be accurate, and if a Cop is not told that it is Sane it is assumed that any of these sanities may apply. Note, however, that non-Sane Cops are not common in smaller games as there is relatively little time for the Cop to deduce its sanity. Sanity may or may not be revealed upon death, according to the mod's discretion.

• Sane Cop: Always gets correct results (i.e. "guilty" for anti-Town roles and "innocent" for pro-Town roles)
• Insane Cop: Always gets reversed results (i.e. "guilty" for pro-Town roles and "innocent" for anti-Town roles)

Once the player realizes they are insane, they can generally produce effective results by reporting the opposite of what they discover.

• Paranoid Cop: Always gets "guilty" results

Once the Cop discovers their sanity, they may stop investigating, as all results are equally useless.

• Naive Cop: Always gets "innocent" results

This may be the most common variant sanity used, as it masks Scum even if the Cop dies early.

• Random Cop: Gets a randomized result without regard to who is investigated

This is a bastard role and almost never used.

Moderators' judgment varies as to whether roles that falsify investigative results (Godfather, Framer, Miller, et al.) affect non-Sane Cops.

Variations

• Day Cop:

Investigates one player each day instead of each night

• Gunsmith:

Investigates roles to determine if they have a gun or not.

• Role Cop:

Investigates, but receives information about ability instead of alignment.

• Macho Cop:

Can't be protected by protective roles.

• Flavor Cop:

An investigation will reveal a piece of flavor from target's role. (also see Thief)

• Amnesiac Cop:

Can investigate, however the results are sent to a third party.

Setup Design

The cop can be a very powerful town-aligned role, because the results of the cop's investigations can override any amount of good play by the scum, or bad play by fellow townies. A cop who lives long enough, even if they never receive a guilty result, can still win the game for the town by providing enough innocents that the rest of the scum can be deduced via process of elimination. Because of this, it is very common for the cop to be balanced by some other facet of the setup:

• Roles that return incorrect results, such as the Miller, which is a town member who returns guilty, or the Godfather, a mafia member who returns innocent.
• Roles that can modify the results, such as the Roleblocker, who can keep the cop from investigating, or the Framer, who can make a town member return as guilty if investigated in the same night.
• Variant sanities (see above). These cause the cop to have to have a few reports before they become useful. At least on mafiascum, it is considered bastardly to have a variant-sanity cop without explicitly telling them in their role that they may not be sane.
• Limiting the number of investigations the cop can perform, by making them X-Shot, even night only, odd night only, etc.
• Limiting them in other ways, such as several of the variations (above). For instance, a Macho cop cannot be protected by a Doctor, the Gunsmith will return a guilty on a Vigilante as well as the mafia, etc.

The other item to be careful in setup design is pairing a cop with a protective role such as a Doctor. When both these roles are know to be present, the cop can safely claim and reveal his investigations. This is commonly known as the Follow the Cop problem. If there is a cop and a doctor in the setup, then the scum will require some of the limiting factors above in order to compete.

Moderator Notes

In Normal Games and Newbie Games, players targeted for investigation are not made aware of that fact.

The wording of the Cop's PM figured strongly when balancing a game. If a Cop only learns if their target is MAFIA or NOT MAFIA, then third party groups like cults, survivors, and serial killers will effectively by investigation immune. But if a cop learns if their target is TOWN or NOT TOWN, then third party groups are more vulnerable.