Disclaimer: if you ask me "which case was best" or "do you like Format A or Format B better", then I may end up saying some negative things about what I don't pick to explain my reasoning. This is not intended as bashing

Also you're welcome to ask about anything else that comes up like the shipping game (s) on my muselist

What are the most fun things about having a role (mole, saboteur, host, etc)?

Oh, this is a tough one. I would say that I really enjoy being able to just do very different storylines from what a normal character would be doing, and likewise I like to think that I'm providing very different interactions that the other players enjoy

Especially due to the fact of those interactions being negative. Ironically, the majority of murdergames actually force characters to work together and suppress their disagreements

I'm actually much less interested in positive secret roles like "the person is working with an NPC to find a way to release everyone" because I feel that this instead simply takes away the opportunity for other characters to make that positive contribution

Though it's interesting when the person with the positive secret role is legitimately engaging in morally gray actions, that makes it more interesting

The two games in my history that I'd considered most fitting the definition of "a role" in this sense (as opposed to just being a Mafia member in a Mafia game, or the very similar Designated Killer system in murder Manor... Technically CC graveyard special guest is more like a host but I was just vibing)

1. Krone as Executioner in 15S R4
2. Hiyori as Co-Host in 15S R6

With Krone it was interesting, because it initially seemed to fit the definition of a morally gray positive secret role. She was told by an NPC (Shinigami) to approach the antagonist NPCs (Giriko and Mosquito of Arachnophobia) and ask to serve as their Executioner. This was supposed to secretly purge their souls or some bullshit

Now honestly Arachnophobia is basically a murder terrorist cult thing. You know, they run a murdergame. They are obviously bad. But my girl Krone is looking out for #1 due to her very severe past restrictions in her life.

And so she basically just begins to act as if she really had just approached Giriko on her own in the first place and wanted to be on this winning side.

This is compounded by the various negative experiences her new boyfriend Eric Lecarde goes through in the game and they basically convince themselves that Shinigami is just as bad if not worse because he coerced Krone and sent "child soldiers" to get killed by Arachnophobia (who still killed them. Badly)

Then it turns out that the Shinigami who proposed the idea to krone IS A FAKE. IT'S JUST AN AVATAR OF EXTERNAL EVIL IMPERSONATING SHINIGAMI (but the real Shinigami did still oversee the "child soldiers". That did happen)

So in reality this was not a secret positive role and was actually just spreading destruction and chaos

This led to a very epic ending where, understandably, characters had intense reactions to what Eric and Krone had done as well as their own experiences leading up to this point. So they come to the consensus to just

Kill Giriko and Mosquito and then leave so that Shinigami doesn't actually gain power either (this whole thing happened in the past, the "child soldiers" were sent from the future. Such a Zero Escape take on Soul Eater, bless)

Getting breakfast cookie before host role storytime

Hostyori story time! So for background, 15 Strangers has thus far consisted of MW1, R1, R2, R3, MW2, R4, R5, MW3, R6 (all stars round), and then R7 (obviously hadn't happened yet during R6)
R = round, MW = mock week

Hiyori was a character in Mock Week 2, where he was controversial because he thought people die when they are killed (biased description of events from his perspective) (Jisu has probably heard this before sorry I just love Hostyori)

To describe it more neutrally, there were three R3 CRAU characters on the plane who were like "oh everyone will be revived afterwards" and Hiyori was like "shut the fuck up??? People are dead and if you ever did have any fantasy bullshit powers, you clearly don't now???" which was obviously very rude but he had his reasons

Anyway, after this a mysterious force offered to teleport them off the plane and only some individuals accepted, one of which was Hiyori, partly because again he had doubts about the player characters claiming to have powers

turns out that some of the folks who accepted this offer get kidnapped, tortured, enslaved, and severely brainwashed
Hooray

So this happened to Hiyori Tono and also Link from Breath of the Wild and the two of them are forced to be Co-Hosts

R6 contains them as hosts as well as two out of three R3/MW2 characters, Jonathan and Vita, who immediately recognize them and it's openly discussed in the group. However the state of the hosts is not immediately clarified. They could be evil clones, they could have agreed to be evil for some reason, they could be brainwashed

Obviously they're brainwashed.

But yeah Des said it best when she was like
"I think there is quite the allure to these hosts. Because they are friend and foe at the same time"

I'll just end the storytime there

But yeah it was really fun to play Hiyori deliberately antagonizing people and pushing them away in the hopes they'd fall into despair, all the while subconsciously screaming for help

As in he had cognitive dissonance. NOT as in "he was brainwashed so hard that didn't have any agency at all"

also I'm just gonna say it. I really wanna play this little shit in a child characters murdergame with progressive memory regains. That's the dream

I don't really do the murdergame considerations meme because I usually only have one or maybe two at a time instead of a queue of like five

But here he is. Hayato Kawajiri. I am manifesting the opportunity

Oh my god hayato would be so good

I know exactly what I want to do with him! I'm so excited! I'm really not in a rush to do more games, so I'm happily waiting for the perfect game for him. But if there's a kids game and it doesn't happen to have progressive memory regains, I'll probably still app him that soon since, you know, he's a kid

And it should be possible to do the main thing I want even without progressive memory regains. But. It would be so funny.

Speaking of kids games though. Castle W R2 was a mass execution round that had a rule where the culprit had to make a reasonable effort to cover up their crime and not say what they did, even if they ultimately intended to sacrifice themselves (stuff as having committed a murder because otherwise the entire group would starve to death)

Can anyone explain why... other mass execution games... do not have this rule??? Like, do they have it hidden somewhere in NPC discussion I just never found out about? But sometimes I was in those games...

honestly I do wish it was included more tbh, I do feel like the Dangan Ronpa origin might explain it a bit though

Yeah, it's usually at least strongly implied but not always flat out stated in the IC rules.

Because I've definitely seen a lot of cases where the character wanted to confess right away but feared retribution from the host or mastermind if they didn't at least drag it out until others found out.

Okay that makes a lot more sense because I'm just like... "The dialogues seem different this time" but an implicit threat is fine as long as it makes sense

Danganronpa is pretty fun because I do think it has to be recalled that even the characters with less Malice or cowardice genuinely have some reason to not confess, like a fairly eccentric code of honor

Since it's got the character study element

Yeah

Like I have considered “I want to make sure you can catch me so you have a chance of outsmarting the mastermind” as a possible reason for not immediately confessing

Shout-out to eskiwen for possibly my favorite implementation of that with Moriarty's case recently

That was a great example because it was the second case and the first case had been extremely chaotic so it really was like We Need An Intervention

Yeah basically, he was worried, therefor,

It was so wild reading the kill log and seeing Kaito literally agreed with him about this. Now I'm like "OH that's why there were two swords at the crime scene"