callforjudgement's 13 Player Predesigned Setup

[implosion]

Final setup:

Town Loyal JOAT (Neighbouriser, Babysitter)
Town Even-Night Gunsmith
Town Novice Roleblocker
Town 2-Shot Doctor
Vanilla Townie ×6
Mafia Goon ×3

[callforjudgement]

Here's the setup:

Town 1-Shot Loyal Neighbouriser
Town 1-Shot Novice Gunsmith
Town Roleblocker
Town Doctor
Vanilla Townie ×6
Mafia Goon ×3

[implosion]

Seems pretty good to me at a glance.

[callforjudgement]

Thinking about it again now that I've submitted it, this might need a little more town power than it has at the moment because the town roles have a little more ability to get tangled up with each other than I'd expected. (For example, a roleblock on the Neighbouriser night 1 would be kind-of bad.) Perhaps I'll need to add some extra town power to compensate.

[implosion]

Everything plays nicely with everything else except for the roleblocker. The gunsmith could potentially be afraid that the doctor is a mafia doctor, but is unlikely to think so after massclaim unless they suspect a traitor. A no-kill might be interpreted as success by both the doctor and roleblocker, leaving one with either a false innocent or a false guilty. So there are a number of potential tricky interactions.

[callforjudgement]

Right. I'm not too worried about the interactions from a swing point of view (they might cause excessive claiming D1 but there's an unopposed Doctor in the setup who can help mitigate that). It's just that their existence puts the town power a bit lower than it should be, so they'll need a buff to help that out. I'm currently leaning towards making the Neighbouriser into a JOAT but am not sure what the second shot should be (it can't be an investigative, obviously). Babysitter would be interesting but perhaps too swingy (the fact that it'd be Loyal too means that it couldn't be used to kill scum, so it'd basically be a high-risk Doctor, and cross-protecting isn't a huge issue because it can only happen once).

Scum should fakeclaim a power role at massclaim in order to stop town knowing what the setup is (especially in a 3-Goon game), but I'm far from convinced they actually will in practice.

[implosion]

Scum claiming strategy based on their roles in setups presumed to be balanced is something I vaguely meant to write an MD article on at some point but never got around to.

[callforjudgement]

I've been meaning to write an MD article on that too!

I think I'll go with the Babysitter shot, so new setup under discussion:

Town Loyal JOAT (Neighbouriser, Babysitter)
Town 1-Shot Novice Gunsmith
Town Roleblocker
Town Doctor
Vanilla Townie ×6
Mafia Goon ×3

That first role is one of the most flavourful Normal modifier/role combinations I've seen, incidentally, almost telling a story in its own right. Wasn't intended as that but now I've seen it I want to keep it.

[implosion]

Ha.

[implosion]

Yeah that role is actually great. It's completely normal and literally the entire thing somehow makes thematic sense, AND it makes complete mechanical sense.

I think I'm happy to pass that as balanced.

[callforjudgement]

I just came up with this alternative:

Town Loyal JOAT (Neighbouriser, Babysitter)
Town Even-Night Gunsmith
Town Novice Roleblocker
Town 2-Shot Doctor
Vanilla Townie ×6
Mafia Goon ×3

(This is balanced assuming that the Gunsmith's N4 shot is unlikely to actually go off; I limited the Doctor's shots to help ensure that town can't get too much of an advantage from stalling the game.) The JOAT is probably going to Neighbourise N1 (when the Roleblocker can't act), helping out town by removing the nastiest interaction; and the weakening of the Doctor is compensated for by the extra power elsewhere. So this might be a less swingy version of that.

Which do you prefer?

[implosion]

Buffing the roleblocker by making it novice is clever.

This seems better.

[callforjudgement]

OK, I think we're done here then.

[implosion]

I've noticed there's no role PMs written; if you can it'd be good if you can do that cfj since it's your design. If you want to you can write them instead, Dunnstral; if neither of you wants to then I can.

[Dunnstral]

I don't mind writing them

[implosion]

Have at it then, and I and/or cfj can take a look.

[callforjudgement]

Sorry. I should be writing them, really, but I'm too tired right now to have much of a chance of getting them right.

(I've been working on a role PM standardisation project that should just be able to generate the role PMs for me, but I'm busy enough in real life that I've had to temporarily put them on hold. I was hoping it would be ready by now, but apparently not.)

[Dunnstral]

Is the neighborhood day talk or night only?

[implosion]

Either way should be fine in principle; if there is daytalk, then the scumteam should also get daytalk and it should be noted in the rules. If cfj had a specific direction in mind when balancing the setup he can say so.

[Dunnstral]

Town Loyal JOAT (Neighbouriser, Babysitter)
Town Even-Night Gunsmith
Town Novice Roleblocker
Town 2-Shot Doctor
Vanilla Townie ×6
Mafia Goon ×3

Welcome to Mini Normal 2022

You are a

Vanilla Townie

, sided with the

Town

Your powers are your voice and your vote

You win when all threats to the town have been defeated

Game thread is (here)

Welcome to Mini Normal 2022

You are a

Loyal JOAT

, sided with the

Town

You have a number of abilities, you may only use one active ability per night

Loyal (Passive): Your abilities only work on players of the same alignment as you, using your abilities on players who do not share your alignment means you act as if you were roleblocked
1-shot Neighborizer: Target a player at night and add them to your neighborhood. You may talk in this neighborhood during ___, your neighborhood is (here)
1-shot Babysitter: Target a player at night to protect them against 1 night kill attempt. If you are instead killed, you and your target will both die

You win when all threats to the town have been defeated

Game thread is (here)

Welcome to Mini Normal 2022

You are a

Novice Roleblocker

, sided with the

Town

Novice (Passive): You are not able to use any abilities during night 1
Roleblocker: Target one player at night to block them from performing their night action

You win when all threats to the town have been defeated

Game thread is (here)

Welcome to Mini Normal 2022

You are a

2-Shot Doctor

, sided with the

Town

Target a player at night to protect them against 1 night kill attempt.

You win when all threats to the town have been defeated

Game thread is (here)

Welcome to Mini Normal 2022

You are a

Mafia Goon

, sided with the

Mafia

Your partners are ____ a

Mafia Goon

, and ____ a

Mafia Goon

At night your faction may decide to kill someone, you must determine who will carry out the kill

The mafia thread is (here), where you may talk during the ___

Game thread is (here)

[implosion]

Looks good to me, modulo replacing the ___'s with "night" or "day and night".

[callforjudgement]

I don't have a good handle on the balance impact of daytalk yet (although it should be the same for both town and scum). Attempts to gather statistics on it in the Newbie queue produced pretty weird data.

The 2-shot Doctor's role PM needs to say that it's limited to 2 uses in the body of the role PM, not just the role name.
Apart from that I'm fine with the role PMs.