Umlaut's Mini Normal Review, May 2020

[implosion]

Primary: northsidegal
Secondary: schadd_

(I haven't received the setup yet, so post it here!)

[schadd_]

e

[northsidegal]

:>

[Umlaut]

Hey there, I haven't actually put together a full rules post and role PM text etc. because last I checked (which was several years ago) the NRG was planning to standardize those and I'm not sure if they ever did so, but if I need those posts I can whip them up fast or just crib from my own past approved games.

Roles:

3x

Mafia Strongman

1x

Town Traffic Analyst

1x

Town Tracker

1x

Town Disloyal Fruit Vendor

1x

Town Universal Backup

[/list]

Rules:

• Daystart
  
• Majority required to lynch, no-lynching is allowed
  
• 10-day (240-hour) days, 2-day (48-hour) nights
  
• Anything else I need to specify?

[Umlaut]

Er, also there are 6x

Vanilla Townie

in the setup, but I can't edit.

[northsidegal]

yeah, you're gonna need to get your own role PMs

you should specify if you want daytalk enabled by default or not

[Umlaut]

No daytalk. I'll write up role PMs momentarily.

Spoiler: Rules post

Rules

None of these rules supercede or contradict the Forum Rules and Guidelines, all of which are in full force.

---

Tl;dr

• This game is Normal.
  
• Days are
  240 hours (10 days)
  ; nights are
  48 hours (2 days)
  .
  
• Standard 48/24 prod timers.
  
• Standard majority-only lynch mechanics.
  
• No default daytalk.

---

Conduct

1. Don't use orange, it's my color.
   
2. Play to win.
   
3. Don't discuss the game outside of the game until it's over.
   
4. Don't flame. Don't harass. Don't use insults that target minority, disadvantaged, or legally protected classes.
   
5. Keep interpersonal disputes out of the game thread.
   
6. Don't quote or misquote private communications from the moderator.
   
7. Don't use encryption, tiny/hidden/unreadable text, or anything that could be easily confused for such.
   
8. All replacement requests will be taken as serious, irrevocable, and immediate. Once you request replacement you are no longer a player and may not post.
   
9. Don't game the rules, pretend to break the rules, or intentionally test the limits. All pretended violations will be dealt with identically to actual violations.
   
10. Don't break the rules of any other ongoing game in this thread.
    
11. Don't argue moderator actions in the game thread. If you want to dispute a ruling, do so via PM.

---

Game mechanics

Day

• Days begin with a deadline of
  240 hours
  (10 days).
  
• Days will end when one of the following events occurs:
  • The deadline is reached.
    
  • A lynch (or no-lynch) is achieved.
    
  • A town-aligned player is modkilled.
• During the day, you should be unable to post in any private threads to which you have access, except as specified in role PMs. If for some reason you are able, doing so is still against the rules.
  
• Votes should be made via the vote tag: “[vote]<playername>[/vote]” or “[v]<playername>[/v]”. Full player names or initial segments thereof are preferred.
  
• When more than half of living players are voting for the same player, that player will be lynched and the day will end. Votes are irrevocable once a majority is achieved.
  
• You may vote not to lynch by voting for “No lynch”. When half or more of living players do so, the day will end without a lynch.
  
• If the day reaches deadline without a majority, there will be no lynch.
  
• I will interpret malformed votes according to my own discretion. In general, if it looks like a vote, I will probably count it as a vote. I reserve the right to edit malformed votes for easier counting.
  
• When a majority vote has been achieved but not yet recognized by the moderator, the game is in
  twilight
  . Players, including the lynchee, may continue to post during this period.
  
• Under certain circumstances I may elect to extend the deadline. I will announce this in thread if it occurs.

Night

• Nights will last
  48 hours
  , or until all living players give me their approval to end the night early.
  
• During the night, you should be unable to post in the public game thread. If for some reason you are able, doing so is still against the rules.
  
• Mafia night abilities should be submitted in the Mafia's private thread. Factional kills must specify which mafioso carries out the kill.
  
• Town night abilities should be submitted via PM.
  
• Use of active night abilities is optional unless otherwise specified in the role PM; if no action is submitted, no action will occur.

---

Activity requirements

• Players who do not confirm within
  48 hours
  of receiving their role PM will be replaced.
  
• Players who do not post for
  48 hours
  in a single game-day will incur a prod.
  
• Players who do not post for
  24 hours
  following a prod will be replaced.
  
• Players who incur three prods will be replaced.
  
• At my discretion, excessive “prod-dodging” may result in a mod warning and subsequently in disregard of future dodges.
  
• If for any reason you are temporarily unable to meet these requirements, you may declare V/LA status
  in thread
  and be excused. V/LA declarations must include a definite end date.
  
• Notwithstanding V/LA status, any player who does not post at all for
  7 days
  of consecutive day time will be replaced.
  
• These are minimal requirements, not recommendations; please keep the game active.

---

Sample role PM

At least one player will receive the role of

Vanilla Townie

and the following role PM:

Welcome to the game, [NAME]. You are a

Vanilla Townie

.

Abilities

You have no special abilities.

Win Condition

You win when the Town is the sole surviving faction, or when nothing can prevent this.

Links

Game thread

[/font]

[northsidegal]

i'm gonna call this setup too townsided to pass as is, on first impression

3x mafia strongmen is probably net zero utility for scum: negative utility for them in that it builds a potential expectation of roles that the setup doesn't provide (e.g. rolecop, doctor), positive utility for them in that it may allow for some more believable fakeclaims following a scum flip

i consider the town to have too much investigative / clearing power, especially given no scum utility. there are no false positive for the traffic analyst and any chance scum has of saying they're a neighbor or mason with a scumbuddy after being guiltied ties them together completely. false negatives (basically only traitor) are uncommon but still possible so this cheapens TA innocents, but guilties are still just as powerful with no false positives. disloyal fruit vendor has a similar problem? DLFV "clears" aren't known to be clearing to the DLFV given the potential for roleblocking, but guilties are pretty much surefire guilties

i consider it pretty much meta standard for people who get fruit to claim fruit so that's not really a consideration for me

so two roles which essentially function as cops (although it isn't known to them that this is the case) plus a full tracker and a backup for any of these roles is just too much, i think.

i'm not sure what kind of suggestions to give you because i'm not sure what kind of setup you may have been going for or what theme you might have had in mind, so if you want to talk a little bit about that i'd be interested to hear it.

[northsidegal]

rules seem fine

having "when nothing can prevent this" in the town wincondition is a bit odd, i feel like that's normally a scum thing and doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for town? probably not actually important

[Umlaut]

I would expect Mafia in this setup to (correctly) conclude that there are no protective roles at all since it would be kind of lame to include a town doc who can't actually ever doc anyone; the point is scum can just kill whoever they want all the time and they know it. I'm trying to give town enough power to counter that disadvantage, but it's possible I overshot it and I'd be happy to tone that down.

[northsidegal]

one thing i hadn't considered is that DLFV is unlikely to get more than one guilty depending on how they go about their claim given that scum would just stop claiming fruit once they receive it

this isn't really a real consideration though. pretty much any role which gets a guilty and then claims it wouldn't get a chance for another investigation, because they'd be shot. in fact, a DLFV is slightly

more

powerful in this scenario than, say, a Cop, because if a DLFV gets a guilty (i.e. someone claims receiving fruit), the DLFV can just not say anything and continue investigating people at night. whereas a cop doing this would have to make sure their softs were

really

good and even then people would question why they wouldn't out a guilty if they got one, the DLFV instantly reveals their guilty targets upon their flip. this is even

extra

insurance – if you get a guilty, you can just not claim it. then, if you live through the night, you get another investigation, and if you don't, your guilty target still gets lynched the next day.

the only thing a DLFV would have to crumb in a noticeable way would be innocent investigations.

[northsidegal]

I would expect Mafia in this setup to (correctly) conclude that there are no protective roles at all since it would be kind of lame to include a town doc who can't actually ever doc anyone; the point is scum can just kill whoever they want all the time and they know it. I'm trying to give town enough power to counter that disadvantage, but it's possible I overshot it and I'd be happy to tone that down.

i personally don't consider threats of protection to be as significant of an aspect of most games than you seem to, although like most things it depends on the setup.

i think people as scum have at least a baseline amount of faith that if someone claims something like an investigative role (especially one that's ungated), they have the ability to counter it – either a roleblocker or just by being able to kill that player. i think (or at least hope) that most NRG reviewers will tend to not include random follow the cop situations, and so i think that this sort of confidence is less of a benefit to scum than you might think.

[Umlaut]

Happy to drop the Disloyal Fruit Vendor. Should I add something in its place or just another VT?

[Umlaut]

I'm actually gonna hold off on Role PM text until we have the actual roles nailed down, if that's okay.

[schadd_]

i dont think its townsided. i'd call it close to balanced but slightly worrying. only slightly though. in particular, the disloyal fruit vendor and universal backup can get useless pretty quickly - if, for instance, the disloyal fruit vendor gets lynched or killed early, the unversal backup becomes close to useless as well as the mafia will (probably) be hesitant to claim having received fruit. also, inheriting traffic analyst will often be pretty bad and inheriting tracker will often be pretty good. the disloyal fv itself also has a lot of uncertainty with it by nature - it becomes useless if it claims & it gets all of its strength from mafia deciding to claim the fruit receipt, which means it might get thrown off by something pretty random (or at least hard for the user to sort out)

traffic analyst and tracker complement each other nicely - one is useless with one scum left and one is strongest with one scum left. a traffic analyst guilty can be circumvented by claiming a neighborhood with a scum partner but that's hard to pull off and won't happen often.

all in all none of these things are a dealbreaker though if you are happy with the setup and i don't think there's too much investigative power. agree with umlaut that mafia wouldn't be likely to assume there's a doctor or somesuch.

i'll pass pending role PMs

[northsidegal]

i think dropping the fruit vendor entirely would put the setup into scumsided territory, although still within an acceptable range such that i would feel alright passing it

so it's up to you on if you want to just leave it as a VT or turn it into some other

also would like to hear schadd's thoughts before saying anything too definitive

[northsidegal]

hadn't considered the scenario of DLFV being inherited by UB which is an interesting one

[schadd_]

actually i think i would be happier with a weaker town but my vector of attack would be the UB

something like UB -> night 3 rolecop would make me happy

[schadd_]

in particular i agree getting rid of the dfv all the way makes it scumsided but you can fix the problem of weird inheritances by making the UB a weak role instead of making the dfv one

[northsidegal]

i think that that's a good direction and like the rolecop / strongman element but i feel like that's a disgusting amount of ways for scum to get guiltied

i think i would want some kind of scum counterplay if that were the direction the setup were to go

[Umlaut]

What if UB is replaced with two Neighbors? This is strictly speaking more PRs, but it makes the Traffic Analyst worse and doesn't add another way of guiltying scum.

[northsidegal]

i think that would be roughly balanced enough to pass? the "false positive" effect is negated if the neighbors claim neighbors but i'm not sure how common that really is

[schadd_]

neighbors aren't really counted as PRs, historically they don't change winrates much - think that dampens the town power too much

UB -> night 4 vigilante ?

[Umlaut]

UB -> night 4 vigilante ?

I like this most of the suggestions so far including my own, if NSG accepts this I'll go with it.

[northsidegal]

i also liked that suggestion

let's see your role PMs