Why VFR is good for town but bad for the game in general

Reformatted from wall of text quickly. Probably broke in wrong places but I couldn't read above and I think they have a point though.

First off (and I know this'll be contentious), but I'm starting with the position that voting for roles works. Yes, if a lot of players don't want to VFR it doesn't work and that usually culminates in townies being lynched for being anti-VFR.

But let's just assume you're in a game where everyone agrees to VFR and they do it properly. Because VFR destroys the claimspace of evil roles, as long as nothing dramatic happens like a WW killing a half dozen people in one night the town is pretty much guaranteed to win.

You might think this is great, but think about it for a moment. If town is almost guaranteed to win, then what's the point of the game? If you winning or losing depends primarily on what role you got and not how you play it, then there's really no point in playing the game at all.

If you get a town role you get to win regardless of what you do, if you get an evil role you lose regardless of what you do. You turn the game into Candyland, where everything is predetermined from the outset with no real choice or agency.

This is why VFR is bad, not because it hurts town but because it buffs it to such a degree that it destroys the foundation of the game. At it's heart ToS is about an uninformed majority vs an informed minority. This is why Investigators see three possible results while a Consigliere sees only one. And why all the mafia and vampires know who all is in their respective groups and can chat with their teams at night. Their only hope to win is getting lucky or coordinating to overcome the sheer numbers advantage that town has.

VFR now makes it an informed minority vs an informed majority. So it comes down to who can kill the other side faster, and since town has more people they almost always win. It completely upends everything interesting about ToS, it removes intrigue and replaces it with mob rule.

I truly don't understand people that would want to play a game where what they do doesn't really matter. It would be like allowing a pro-NFL player on a youth football team. Everyone playing against the team would resent the fact that the other team has such a powerful player that could almost singlehandedly win the game for them, the players on that team would resent the pro-player for taking all the fun and challenge out of the game, and the pro-football player wouldn't get any joy out of it because there's no joy or honor in winning against a bunch of 10 year olds (if they are enjoying it, that's called being a psychopath).

So literally no one gains anything at all, which is why such a situation would never be allowed.

TL;DR Voting for roles turns that game into a lottery and makes it completely pointless, people who insist on doing it are either ignorant of the effect they are having on everyone else or they're a psychopath who doesn't care.

/r/TownofSalemgame Thread