here's the basics of role balancing:
1. when making a list, inexperienced hosts are tempted to just solidly stick to the 50 - 30 - 10 - 10 balance - 50% of the list town, 30% wolves, and so on. what you should really be concerned about is the 50 - 30 part: the important part is that wolves should be roughly 60% the size of town.
2. in smaller lists (12 players or less), start with that 60% number, but then add an extra player to town. you want the D1 numbers to be right, not the N1 numbers.
3. the more solo teams, the more fun the game - but be careful! solos can have the most volatile interactions, because they have to keep town and wolves in balance already - adding another solo team complicates things.
4. keep in mind the small interactions! on its own, assistant is boring, but when there's lots of wolf power roles and roles that assistant can fake, it becomes much more interesting. the better your role knowledge, the more easily you'll identify and keep track of all interactions.
5. claimspace is vital. many different roles can be claimspace, even town killing and investigative roles to an extent, but when you have multiple of the same claimspace role (3 cits, 3 journos, say), it's much much better claimspace than something more like 2 cits, 1 journo, 1 assistant, 1 huntress, 1 ranger.
6. limit your limited roles. limited roles should never be more than 20% of a list, preferably not more than 10%.
7. don't just throw random unaligned roles in there. think about which ones have the best interactions and fit the vibes of your other roles best. also, keep in mind that unaligned often benefit one team more than others - angel and despot can hinder town, rh is more likely to hinder wolves but can become wolf-sided in many situations.
8. and the most important tip - try to give your list a "theme"! a low-invest game, a game centred around lynch, a game with lots of vote manip... it makes everything more cohesive!
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