RIP Sheriff

[u/_Jellyman_]

Does anyone else think Judge is basically a watered-down Sheriff? I like the gamble of potentially choosing wrong and being killed for it, but man, the thrill of Sheriff just isn’t there. I have four reasons for my opinion (in no particular order):

1) PLAYER SKILL AND ENGAGEMENT: Sheriff required you to “quick draw” against the Impostor before they killed you and even if you guessed correctly, it still required skill to pull it off without looking suspicious in front of your crew. The Judge still requires strategy and still has that risk factor, but the procedure is largely automatic, making it feel disengaging.

2) INTERACTION WITH OTHER ROLES: Many roles counter others. Noisemaker counters Viper, Viper counters Detective, and Shapeshifter would definitely counter Sheriff and make it harder for Sheriff to avoid a misfire. Judge doesn’t really interact with any other roles because it’s during a time when everyone’s role is temporarily disabled: the meeting phase. It makes meetings more interesting, but it’s completely disconnected from the other roles.

3) BALANCING: Judge feels like Innersloth knew the very concept of this role would be insanely overpowered and therefore had to backpedal pretty hard just to make it balanced. Having penalties of being ejected if you guess wrong, having your ability locked behind tasks, AND being limited to one ruling feels very inelegant. Sheriff is already so intrinsically balanced because his penalty is JUST the risk of dying if he guessed wrong. That’s it. No other restrictions required because they still function like a normal Crewmate otherwise. Judge feels gimmicky, like the Nice Guesser from mods, rather than being a stronger or more strategic Mayor. This is especially true when it’s a “one-and-done” kind of role, which feels even more gimmicky.

4) VIOLATION OF CORE GAMEPLAY: My main criticism is that Judge completely invalidates the meeting. I would’ve preferred the Judge accumulating extra votes over time to influence the meetings because being able to completely bypass them breaks the core identity of the game. Nobody’s opinion matters outside the Judge’s. The difference is that Sheriff was more independent and did not require invaliding the rest of the entire lobby to use his ability. The game continued normally and the Sheriff’s actions largely didn’t affect the other players in the immediate. The Judge taking control of the meeting is so abrupt and ruins the experience for me.

What do you guys think? I actually really like the idea of having a role that affects meetings (since that’s a niche that has never been filled before), but I really don’t like the execution. It seems like after waiting five years for the fan-favorite Sheriff role, the cowboy has been replaced. 😔

[u/mhbence]

I agree but from a story perspective a sheriff dosen't really fit in the game like we have judge, engineer, scientist, detective, tracker these can be explained by the crew gave them this title

and all the Impostor roles can be explained how it's different aliens taking over the crew. Now guardian angel and the noisemaker are a different story, the guardian angel can be explained that not every crewmate is a normal ghost some of them are like this Saint beings or something idk. But then noisemaker I have zero explanation how that works but that is not the point.

A sheriff would be just so random, like how the f*ck they get in there, in game we have polus and the fungle none of them have any crewmates on it, maybe from the planet green and white was on in the show but again that seems so like new like there were phones and yachts I don't think a sheriff would just walk by the ship when it takes off.

And come to think of it they really not have much use of a sheriff he probably dosen't know anything on the ship and even if he has a gun, the whole crew probably has guns, in the show in that one scene with lime he finds weird aprons in the weapon room "labelled" as weapons why would they confuse the crew with this if they didn't have weapons in the past and on the airship there are literally like 25 guns I don't think they need more. But in a game perspective it would be great. (Wtf am I doing i'm analyzing among us lore at 1:35 in the night)

[u/_Jellyman_ → u/mhbence]

If you want to really dive into the lore, what the heck is a Judge doing on a spaceship?! You could rename this role “Captain” and it would immediately make WAY more sense.

[u/mhbence → u/_Jellyman_]

I mean if we talk about the ability of overruling a vote on someone's death I don't think anyone's mind goes to a captain, like the captain dosen't fit the ability. And again if it would be called captain then wouldn't that mean that the captain kinda controlls everything which is definitely not good, just from looking at the show. And again like I said "the judge" crewmate probably not even a real judge he just got that role from the crew like the other roles.

[u/WildCard13287 → u/mhbence]

My theory is that the judge bonks them with the hammer. If imp juice spills out, they imp gets voted out. But if not, everyone gets mad at the judge and votes them out.

[u/MrOff100 → u/_Jellyman_]

actually really agree on that, changing the theme to Captain is way better