Cop

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

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

The most typical use of this role involves the role PMing the moderator their 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, most moderators dampen the cop's ability through the use of sanities. Sanity refers to the trustworthy-ness of the investigation results. The only time a cop may know his sanity ahead of time is when the mod tells them that they are a Sane Cop. Sanity may or may not be revealed upon death, according to the mod's discretion.

These are the most common four sanities.

• Sane Cop: always gets correct results (i.e. "guilty" for anti-Town roles and "innocent" for pro-Town roles)
• Insane Cop: always gets incorrect 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 (rare in games with a Godfather, for obvious reasons)

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

• Naïve Cop: always gets "innocent" results

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

There is also the Random Cop, which is almost never used, because it's a bastard role and the randomness of the results prevents any valuable information from being gathered, including ones' own sanity. Games rarely last long enough to determine that results are truly random.

Other Variations

• Day Cop:

Investigates one player each day instead of each night

• 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.

Mod's Notes

The cop is a powerful role, but it becomes much more powerful when a Sane Cop is paired with a Pro-Town 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.

Cult Members generally should return a result of Anti-Town. A Serial Killer should as well, except if there is an FBI Agent or Psychiatrist.