Roles are a common thing in mafia games all-around; if you've played a game of mafia (especially online), there's a pretty good chance you've been given a role with its own powers at some point.
At the start of Wynn Mafia, I gave each of the 30 players their own role (the lot of which I had spent the past several months working on), each themed around characters, etc. from Wynncraft, and each with its own powers that could be used at will.
Roles had upgrades that could be unlocked at the cost of 70 emeralds. Most of these upgrades never came into play, and some of those that didn't (maybe some that did, too) weren't balanced too thoroughly.
The roles made for Wynn Mafia were definitely not balanced (that's my fault), but that's at least something to learn from, I guess?
In Wynn Mafia, the roles were separated into five factions or parties:
- Detective - Pretty much the same as innocents, except there were fewer of them and they had pseudo-investigative abilities. They did not know who anyone else was.
- Innocent - The main town party. Their goal was to eliminate all members of the mafia. They knew nobody's identity.
- Mason - A town-aligned party that knew each other's identities.
- Mafia - The main anti-town party. Their goal was to eliminate all innocents. They were given their own private means of communication with each other, and could kill one player each night.
- Independent - The unaligned party. Like innocents, they knew the identities of nobody else. However, independents were not bound by the town's goal and instead had their own objectives to pursue.