It began as some silly joke, without meaning. It was a random conversation that may or may not have involved butter at some point. Someone made a meme with butter.
Then, another butter meme was made, and people didn’t get it - because there was nothing to get, beyond the obscure reference.
And then, people tried to figure out what it meant.
Naturally, more people started replacing various pictures and memes with butter. All self-referential fun. Then it spilled more and more into debate groups.
More and more people got confused and tried to understand what it meant.
That fueled people making more butter memes.
Thus began the Great Butterpocalypse. Buttery memes as far as the eye could see. Every comment, every post. The response, of course, was anger at the butter spam, frustration over failure to comprehend this new reality.
Among the memes came the jokes about butter being amazing. And, as is proper and customary in a debate group, dissenters rose to the challenge and started promoting margarine instead. These debates spiraled out, changing millions of lives, for better or worse.
There arose so-called heroes to condemn the spread of butter, to condemn the fat-brained buttery mayhem. There arose theorists, decrying this vast conspiracy to drown out free speech, the very font of liberty, in waves of thick, creamy butter.
The war has come to your peaceful town. Peaceful no more, for you have been forsaken by butter. And now you are left no choice. You must destroy the butter before it can destroy you.
You did nothing wrong. Your only crime was existing, but now society has pushed you to the knife’s edge.
You win if at least one member of your faction survives and the Butter-Forsaken Town has been eliminated, or when nothing can stop this from happening.
Butter Blade
You are a Butter Blade! You fight for buttery justice, and you’re on a roll!
- Butter Brain: Once per night, you may stun one target player. That player will be unable to use any of their abilities that night. (Passive abilities like Potato Master will still take effect, but active abilities like Potato Explosion will not. The target player will not be directly informed if their action is prevented, but they might realize it if they fail to receive expected information or if other observable consequences are affected.)
The butter is in your mind, soaking the folds, filling your brain with delicious fatty poison. Your only choice is to kill the butter before it kills you. It is a tragic fate, that there can be no peace with the butter, but there is no avoiding it now.
You win if at least one member of your faction survives and the Butter Mafia is eliminated, no matter how sad it makes you, and even though they’ll live on in spirit forever anyway.
Margarine Blade
You are a Margarine Blade! You have the same killing ability as the Butter Blade, but you are not butter, and therefore you are not welcome in the Butter Mafia. You must use your killing ability every night, to prove how capable you are.
- Soak: Once per night, you must kill one target player. The public will not be explicitly informed whether this killing was done by butter or margarine. You will prove that you’re every bit as effective as butter! You soak a player in your phony buttery goodness, and they succumb to your overwhelming cholesterol.
Jelly Blade
You are a Jelly Blade! You lack any ability to kill, but you can rub jelly all over things and people.
- Spread: Once per night, you may spread jelly on a target player. Whenever the last Jelly Blade dies, the public will be told for each faction the number of surviving players in that faction who have had jelly spread on them, and each player will be privately told whether or not they have had jelly spread on them. We leave a mark on everyone we encounter. It is delusion to believe otherwise.
Some Dry Bread
You are some Dry Bread! You may be old and crusty, but you’re good at soaking up stuff and information.
- Dryness: The first time you would be killed by a Soak ability this game, instead you are not.
Hot-Potato Plotter
You are a Hot-Potato Plotter, a starch supporter of justice!
- Potato Owner: At the start of the game, you are holding the potato. If the player holding the potato dies, the potato returns to you. If the player holding the potato dies while you are dead, the potato is destroyed.
- Potato Defense: While a player holds the potato, that player is invulnerable to night kills.
- Potato Master: Each night, you must choose a number between 2 and 4, and each player must choose one player other than themselves. Whoever is holding the potato passes it to the player they chose. Any player who passes the potato will be told they have passed it. Any player who receives the potato will be told that they have received it. That night, the potato is passed a number of times equal to the number you chose. (If there is more than one Hot-Potato Plotter in the game, then the same player choices are used for each potato, and only the number of passes can vary between potatoes. The GM must not give the players any information which could differentiate the two potatoes or the Hot-Potato Plotters.)
- Potato Explosion: Once per game, during the night, you may choose to detonate the potato. If the potato is detonated, then after the potato has been passed that night, the potato is destroyed, and whichever player was holding the potato is killed. The public will be informed that this death was caused by an exploding potato.
- Potato Post-Mortem: Your Potato Defense and Potato Master abilities continue to take effect even if you are dead. (As long as your potato is not yet detonated, each night you must choose a number of potato passes. However, if you die before detonating your potato, it will be too late for you to detonate your potato.)
The GM should secretly shuffle the list of players, then assign each player the role corresponding to their position in the shuffled list. Players should not be allowed to see the shuffled list until after the game, of course.