Akarin's Mini Normal Review, March 2019

[implosion]

Hi, it says to PM you when you /in to mod, so here I am. And here's all this junk, I think that's everything?
# Players: 13
List of Roles:

1 Mafia Loud Traffic Analyst
2 Mafia Goons

3 Masons
2 Town Neighbors
1 Town Loud Indecisive Doctor
4 VTs

OP:

Mini Normal 20XX:

Cat Art!

Exhibit Curated by Akarin

Developed with support from:

Dr. REVIEWER, Bubastis Ministry of Fine Art
Dr. REVIEWER, Ulthar National Gallery
with financing provided by
Baron(ess) REVIEWER, Cat Bureau of Tokyo

Admission: $35 in wildcat notes, or free admission with donation of 2 cans of tuna for “charity”

---

Guest Book:

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10. 
    
11. 
    
12. 
    

Still in the Gallery:

Everyone!

Left the Building:

Nobody yet

Events:

RULES:

Rules

General Rules

• Since you’re on this site, follow site rules, obviously.
  
• Personal attacks, threatening to report people for game throwing when they don’t agree with you, etc. may get you force-replaced.
  
• Pretending to break the rules is the same as breaking the rules.
  
• You may not quote private communication (real or otherwise) of any kind—this includes role PM, mod communication, posts from private threads, etc. Paraphrasing and drafts are acceptable.
  
• There is to be NO communication about this game outside of the game thread unless your role PM specifically allows it.
  If someone contacts you outside the game, report it to me IMMEDIATELY
  
  
• No ciphers, encryption, extremely small text, or similar tactics.
  
• No provable randomness.
  
• Attempting to use trust tells may get you modkilled.
  
• Once you tell me you’re replacing out, you are out. No backsies.
  
  
• Bold all requests to the Mod.
  
  
• This is my color. You cannot has.
  
  
• This is my first time modding. If you think I’ve made a mistake please PM me about it, if you’re not happy with my reply, let’s drop it and talk about it after the game.
  
• Rules are subject to mod discretion and will be handled as I see fit. I can add stuff to this ruleset whenever I want and you can’t stop me. I’ll make a new post about changes to the rules in bold if that happens though.

Activity

• Post once every 48 hours or get prodded.
  
• If prodded, you have 48 hours to respond with a
  substantive post in game
  .
  
• A player who has been prodded 3 times may be replaced with no further notice.
  
• If you plan on being inactive for more than 48 hours,
  PM me and post in thread that you're going to be V/LA
  .
  
• If you plan to have regularly scheduled V/LA period (e.g. the weekend) please PM me about it.

Deadlines

• Days will last 12 days.
  
• Nights will last 49 hours.
  
• Extensions may be given out for replacements if it’s late in the day, or when I feel like it makes sense.
  
• If you have a role with a Night action, your action is due by 1 hour before night ends.
  Players with a Night action may submit a "No Action" PM to indicate you do not wish to perform your action, I'd really appreciate that. I'll still accept one later if you change your mind.

Voting

• When a simple majority of all living players have voted for one person, that person is lynched and the day ends. If no one has a majority at deadline, no one is lynched.
  
• When a player is lynched the game enters twilight and everyone can keep talking until I post the final vote count.
  
• You may VOTE: No Lynch — half of the living players voting No Lynch is enough to end the day with a No Lynch.
  
• Votes should use VOTE: Tags or
  Bold
  or they will not be counted.
  
• Votes in quotes, spoiler tags or otherwise hidden will not be counted.
  
• Votes that use nicknames or have minor spelling errors will be counted as long as I understand who you’re voting for.
  
• If you are killed you may no longer post anywhere except for
  one
  brief, contentless “Bah!” post that must contain a picture of a cute cat.

Setup

• Daytalk
  
• Factional abilities can be used the same night as role abilities.
  
• This is a normal game, so everything is normal.

Spoiler: Sample Role PM

A least one player has received this:

Vanilla Townie

Welcome, playername! You are a

Vanilla Townie

.

Abilities:

You have no special abilities other than your voice and your vote. Use them well!

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

ROLE PMs:

Spoiler: Role PMs

Vanilla Townie

Welcome, playername! You are a

Vanilla Townie

.

Abilities:

You have no special abilities other than your voice and your vote. Use them well!

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

Town Loud Indecisive Doctor

Welcome, playername! You are a

Town Loud Indecisive Doctor

.

Abilities:

Each night you may target a player to protect. If your action succeeds they will be protected from one kill and informed that you visited them, but not what you did.

You may not target the same player two nights in a row.

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

Town Neighbor

Welcome, playername! You are a

Town Neighbor

.

Abilities:

You share a neighborhood with

PLAYER

.
You may talk with them here any time.

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment.

Game thread is here.

Mason

Welcome, playername! You are a

Mason

.

Abilities:

You share a masonry with

PLAYER

and

PLAYER

.
You know they are both

town

.
You may talk with them here any time.

Win condition:

You win when all threats to the

town

have been eliminated and at least one

town

player is still alive.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment, by PM or in your private thread.

Game thread is here.

Mafia Goon

Welcome, playername! You are a

Mafia Goon

.

Abilities:

Your team has a factional nightkill: at night one of you may kill another player.
You share an evil lair with your team

PLAYER

and

PLAYER

.
You may talk with them here any time.
You have no other special abilities besides your voice and your vote. Use them well!

Win condition:

You win when the entire

town

is dead and at least one

mafia

player is still alive, or when nothing can prevent this from happening.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment, by PM or in your private thread.

Game thread is here.

Mafia Loud Traffic Analyst

Welcome, playername! You are a

Mafia Loud Traffic Analyst

.

Abilities:

Each night you may target a player to investigate. If your action succeeds, you will learn whether or not they can communicate privately with another living player.
This investigation resolves after kills.
Your target will be informed that you visited them, but not what you did.

Your team has a factional nightkill: at night one of you may kill another player.
If you attempt the kill and are not blocked, your target will be informed that you visited them, but not what you did.
You share an evil lair with your team

PLAYER

and

PLAYER

.
You may talk with them here any time.

Win condition:

You win when the entire

town

is dead and at least one

mafia

player is still alive, or when nothing can prevent this from happening.

Please confirm by replying with your role name and alignment, by PM or in your private thread.

Game thread is here.

Spoiler: Results

Can Communicate:

Your target has someone to talk to outside the game thread. Lucky bastard.

Can’t Communicate:

Your poor target has no one to talk to, except in the game thread.

Visited:

You heard

PLAYER

scratching on your door last night!

QUESTIONS:
Is there a better way to word my no quoting rule? I want people to be allowed to make first drafts of posts in their scum/mason topics, but not like quote stuff from 2 days ago saying “hey, here were my reads from 2 days ago.”

What percentage of images coming from this same artist who puts their fat yellow cat into famous paintings constitutes too much of an unoriginal theme? Can they all be the same cat photoshopped into art or do I need to mix it up and have half of the art be other cats?

Is Fuchsia a terrible color in some color theme or other?

I stole a good chunk of the rules from PenguinPower but I mixed in things from a bunch of other people and rewrote some stuff myself, do I need to credit him? Not sure how much is too much change or not enough change. Not sure if anyone even cares anyway.

[implosion]

Primary reviewer: mastina
Secondary: callforjudgement

[callforjudgement]

There's more flavour in the results PMs than I'd normally expect in a Normal. Flavour in vote counts is probably fine as long as it's "here's a picture with a cat in" rather than being related to the game in any way. Note that you'll have to change your intro post flavour because a Mini Normal only has two reviewers (except when one of them is a trainee NRG member observing, which isn't the case here).

48+48 prods are fairly slow, given that the day deadline is 12 days. I'd either make the prods faster or the deadline longer.

"Factional abilities can be used the same night as role abilities." is something that we mostly try to avoid as a global rule nowadays; you can use the Multitasking modifier (which is Normal) with the same effect. (That said, it's unlikely to matter much in this setup.)

"Rules are subject to mod discretion" is abNormal when used without limits. It's OK to, e.g., say "If you find a loophole in these rules, I will change them", but your current wording implies that you might try to interfere with the game directly.

The setup is somewhat hard to assess. I think the Masons may be able to guess that a Traffic Analyst is likely to be scum in this setup (five players who are a false positive or who can claim out of it in a 13p game?), which is a potential factor that might break the game for town (being Loud, the Traffic Analyst can hardly claim VT, and a good fakeclaim may be hard to find). If we consider that to not be a problem, though, the balance is probably close to correct (a 3-mason setup needs a liittle extra power to be balanced for town, and this setup has that). The scum's additional ability to find town's power roles might be a bit much, but it might be balanced against the setup speculation parts of it. (That said, it's often surprising just how some towns can be at setup speculation.)

[callforjudgement]

For your "don't quote old communication" rule, your current wording's actually pretty good; if you make it objective people will find loopholes in it, leaving it vague will make people err on the safe side.

[implosion]

With regards to crediting PenguinPower: might as well credit or ask him. I think there's an old tradition on MS (not sure how much it's kept up with the times) of people copying rulesets and saying "Rules stolen from X, who took them from Y, who borrowed them from Z..." for hilarity factor.

Pictures of cats from a particularly odd artist sounds like a fine theme for a normal game :p

Like cfj mentioned, the factional abilities on the same night as other abilities thing is a relic now. By default in normal games that is off unless scum is multitasking.

[Akarin]

RULES 2.0:

Rules

General Rules

• Since you’re on this site, follow site rules, obviously.
  
• Personal attacks, threatening to report people for game throwing when they don’t agree with you, etc. may get you force-replaced.
  
• Pretending to break the rules is the same as breaking the rules.
  
• You may not quote private communication (real or otherwise) of any kind—this includes role PM, mod communication, posts from private threads, etc. Paraphrasing and drafts are acceptable.
  
• There is to be NO communication about this game outside of the game thread unless your role PM specifically allows it.
  If someone contacts you outside the game, report it to me IMMEDIATELY
  
  
• No ciphers, encryption, extremely small text, or similar tactics.
  
• No provable randomness.
  
• Attempting to use trust tells may get you modkilled.
  
• Once you tell me you’re replacing out, you are out. No backsies.
  
  
• Bold all requests to the Mod.
  
  
• This is my color. You cannot has.
  
  
• This is my first time modding. If you think I’ve made a mistake please PM me about it, if you’re not happy with my reply, let’s drop it and talk about it after the game.
  
• Do not attempt to find or abuse loopholes in the rules. I’ll try to assume good-faith but loophole abuse will be punished and rules will be updated if there are problems. I’ll make a new post about changes to the rules in bold if that happens.

Activity

• Post once every 48 hours or get prodded.
  
• If prodded, you have 24 hours to respond with a
  substantive post in game
  .
  
• A player who has been prodded 3 times may be replaced with no further notice.
  
• If you plan on being inactive for more than 48 hours,
  PM me and post in thread that you're going to be V/LA
  .
  
• If you plan to have regularly scheduled V/LA period (e.g. the weekend) please PM me about it.

Deadlines

• Days will last 12 days.
  
• Nights will last 49 hours.
  
• Extensions may be given out for replacements if it’s late in the day, or when I feel like it makes sense.
  
• If you have a role with a Night action, your action is due by 1 hour before night ends.
  Players with a Night action may submit a "No Action" PM to indicate you do not wish to perform your action, I'd really appreciate that. I'll still accept one later if you change your mind.

Voting

• When a simple majority of all living players have voted for one person, that person is lynched and the day ends. If no one has a majority at deadline, no one is lynched.
  
• When a player is lynched the game enters twilight and everyone can keep talking until I post the final vote count.
  
• You may VOTE: No Lynch — half of the living players voting No Lynch is enough to end the day with a No Lynch.
  
• Votes should use VOTE: Tags or
  Bold
  or they will not be counted.
  
• Votes in quotes, spoiler tags or otherwise hidden will not be counted.
  
• Votes that use nicknames or have minor spelling errors will be counted as long as I understand who you’re voting for.
  
• If you are killed you may no longer post anywhere except for
  one
  brief, contentless “Bah!” post that must contain a picture of a cute cat.

Setup

• Daytalk
  
• Factional abilities can
  not
  be used the same night as role abilities.
  
• This is a normal game, so everything is normal.

New results:

Can Communicate:

Your target has someone to talk to outside the game thread.

Visited:

PLAYER

paid you a visit last night.

Can I leave the "poor target" in the can't communicate one? I really like that one.

You two could pick which titles you like best if you want and I can cut the others.

[Akarin]

I'm inclined to not give the Traffic Analyst Multitasking, don't think it really needs that, could just claim 2-shot or whatever if needed. Was just thinking it was my preference in general as a rule, not anything that really matters.

[Akarin]

"Rules stolen PenguinPower and various other moderators, all of whom stole from various other moderators."

That good?

[Akarin]

errr, "stolen from"

[implosion]

Yeah they certainly don't need multitasking in this setup. If they're down to being the last scum, either they're screwed or it's late enough in the game that they don't need more investigations.

And yeah that's fine~

[mastina]

I know I'm technically the primary reviewer, but cfj/implosion said everything I could think of saying.

Setup's fairly balanced in my opinion, so the only things to tweak are the other stuff. Only thing I can think of:

Nights will last 49 hours.

Is that an intentional number?

Can I leave the "poor target" in the can't communicate one?

It still communicates the result clearly and unambiguously with no room for confusion, so I'd allow it, pending cfj(/maybe implosion) feedback.

[implosion]

The only real issue I have with the flavor in result PMs is that it can potentially be speculated on; that is, if someone gets that result PM, they might mention in the thread that the mod was being cheeky in their result PM, and then people suddenly have to speculate about whether the mod would include something like that, and it puts the mod in an awkward situation.

I'd generally prefer that result PMs be something that's more-or-less standardized for that reason.

[implosion]

That said I don't actually care *that* much and won't veto it if you still want to

[Akarin]

I guess I'm happy you all think my setup is balanced, obviously that's what I was trying for, but I'm kind of weirdly disappointed I don't get all kinds of criticism about it. Is that weird?

The 49 hours thing was intentional because of my 1 hour before deadline night action deadline, didn't want that to be shorter than the prod deadline, but I could just make it 48 if that makes people happier. Honestly there are plenty of times where I'll need to stretch days or nights by a couple hours so I'm around for the deadline anyway, I just wanted to try to start the days exactly when the day says it will start, rather than an hour later after I figure stuff out like I see happen a lot, so I wanted that buffer of time for the night actions.

[callforjudgement]

My experience is that it's very hard to time day start exactly. Players have an annoying habit of lynching at inconvenient times, and sometimes you end up asleep at the point when the night deadline would end.

If you can think you can make it work, though (e.g. by timing the flip so that you know you'll be online 49 hours later), go for it.

[implosion]

I guess I'm happy you all think my setup is balanced, obviously that's what I was trying for, but I'm kind of weirdly disappointed I don't get all kinds of criticism about it. Is that weird?

fwiw I also think it's a nice design. Loud indecisive doctor pairs nicely with masons.

[mastina]

I guess I'm happy you all think my setup is balanced, obviously that's what I was trying for, but I'm kind of weirdly disappointed I don't get all kinds of criticism about it. Is that weird?

Well when a mod comes in with an idea that is already pretty on the mark, reviewers don't have much to do other than nitpick. It's a hallmark of being a good setup designer; it means you're really good at hitting the mark where it needs to be. <3

[Akarin]

So, um, did I need to do anything else?

[implosion]

You should be good!

(And you're in signups now)