Mini Normal 2153: Post-game

[Replacement for Sujimichi]

This alt will solely be used to replace Sujimichi. If you're modding a game and ever need a replacement for Sujimichi, do not hesitate to contact this account.

[Not_Mafia]

I'm going to pay Sujimichi to join several dozen games and replace out of all of them simultaneously

[Bellaphant]

My ability to strong tr not mafia from shit posts abd random votes continues!

[Porkens]

Wow good game.
I'm very sad that I hammered Galron. bad bad bad.

sorry.

[Galron]

I'm going to pay Sujimichi to join several dozen games and replace out of all of them simultaneously

I will contribute to that.

[Hoopla]

a hearty congratulations to the town for an amusing game. and a knowing nod of approval to my cheeky teammates who carried this game.

it seemed at times the walls were closing in, and our scumteam would become just another statistic; cruelly savaged by the unforgiving hand of PoE. but una and suji pulled a rabbit out of the hat after i was caught early.

as much as you can say it's best to treat my slot as a guilty-child and solve from there while i'm alive, it's easier said than done when you don't have the confirmed flip. i imagine not everyone can compartmentalise the game like isis can. the town would have fared better if i was exiled D1, but thems the breaks.

i have similar philosophical gripes to isis about closed normal setups these days. were they ever better in the past? maybe. it seems these days people are much more sensitive to maintaining an observable balance of winrates between town and scum, though in order to achieve this, it requires an arsenal of town power that will inevitably lead to a non-trivial percentage of games being won by PoE if the stars align for town's power. it's exhausting enough committing to a scumgame for weeks at a time even without the shrinking pathways to victory that inevitably manifest in the mid-to-late game.

i don't know what is to be done about it. the problem (if it is one) seems fundamental to the structure; a slew of innocents can crop up from setup-spec late in the game and box scum into a no-win possibility. we narrowly avoided such a fate in this game, but i (again) agree with isis - it is unfortunately too useful to not try to wifom the setup, especially if you are familiar with the design philosphy of the NRG.

phasing out investigates doesn't solve the problem. town will still need 3-5 PR's to win enough games to be close to 50/50, and so, whatever roles get favoured to take the place of roles to be perceived to be overpowered, will simply become confirmed via setup spec as a new metagame emerges. that is something often overlooked; most of a PR's value is that is can stop you being executed once claimed and confirm you from setup spec. anything else you manage to do with your power is a bonus.

cops seem to have been deemed non-kosher by current iterations of the NRG, but the problems of its PoE-inducing unfairness hasn't gone away. it just manifests in a different way.

then, to counter towns wifom'ing the setup, once in a blue moon the NRG will throw a curveball setup to subvert expectations, but it generally just leads to a town loss after towns follow the logic of "there's no way a setup would have two millers, or four investigatives" etc. this occasional subversion of expectations doesn't seem to prevent towns not following setup spec in most games, so all this really does is punish the occasional town who are just playing the odds.

these are gripes far too ingrained to really do anything about in my eyes. so, my solution wouldn't be to try to "fix" normals, but rather to shift one's own expectations and acknowledge that every now and again, you'll play as scum game that through no fault of your own will be a forced loss. try to have fun, and play well despite the possibility of an inescapable shafting.

or just play an open game

[Hoopla]

also, a big thank you to frederick for the attentive modding. you ran things very smoothly and handled the replacements well!

[Fredrick A Campbell]

Was a pleasure to mod.

[UnaBombaH]

Are we gonna get access to the Dead thread.

[UnaBombaH]

That was a question?

[Fredrick A Campbell]

geraintm has been executed. He was a

Vanilla Townie

.

Not_Mafia was a

Vanilla Townie

.

Isis was a

Town Tracker

.

Congratulations to the scumteam of UnaBombaH, Replacement for Sujimichi and Hoopla for winning Mini Normal 2153.

UnaBombaH was a

Mafia Commuter

.

Replacement for Sujimichi was a

Mafia Goon

.

Setup Review Thread
Game Thread
Moderator Private Thread
Mafia Private Thread
Dead Private Thread

The members of the Mafia Private Thread and Dead Private Thread are permitted to request for censorship of any of their posts by sending me a Private Message or posting in the Private Topics to request for it in (expired on 2020-08-18 10:45:00).

Note: All of the first posts in the threads which involve this game will be edited to add in the links.

[UnaBombaH]

So they'll open up in about 1 day and 4 hours from now..? Yikes.
My attention-span and memory will both have failed me by then.

[Isis]

Agree with hoopla post

[Dunnstral]

I also buy into that, it's especially apparent when mafia don't have a choice in who they kill (cop outs with an inno on day 2, they have to kill the cop, then the inno, then probably another role that cleared themself)

[Fredrick A Campbell]

So they'll open up in about 1 day and 4 hours from now..? Yikes.
My attention-span and memory will both have failed me by then.

I could send you a special PM on their release.

[northsidegal]

Hi, as you can see in the review thread I basically designed this setup. Looking back on the review thread and not even the game itself I think that I underestimated the strength of a psychologist (I hope you'll excuse me for that, it's quite an uncommon role), but apart from that I don't think I made any major errors.

If you disagree though or just want to talk normal balance, I'm all ears.

[Isis]

Tracker+psych seems like it could have some serious feelbad possibilities independent of balance

[UnaBombaH]

I feel like the sheer amount of power roles potentially makes the setup very swingy, and a real struggle for scum anyway. Had we not landed the lynches and NKs that we did, just one more hard guilty would've ended us. Don't understand balance well enough to argue it further, and we won anyway so..? Eh.

[Fredrick A Campbell]

The Dead Private Thread and Mafia Private Thread have been released with no redactions.

[geraintm]

checked the mafia/dead threads. I suspect I need to get myself killed quicker when VT to not let myself get into end games when my presence is useful.

[Klick]

You seemed to be conscious of the fact that your reads weren't based on much that would be alignment-indicative, yet you very strongly held to them anyway.

Best advice I could give you would be to try working together with the town more, particularly late-game. In those last two days the town all needed to work together to get a scum flossed, but you were artificially limiting your reads too much for that to be possible.
Youre particularly good at getting townread, but your reads need work and that's okay. Until then, you'll probably have the most success sheeping people that you particularly think are town and/or strong (and having a healthy dose of paranoia if they keep leading you astray).

[geraintm]

I have had too many games where I get bumped from my reads to other people's reads as deadline approaches or to break open stalled games and helping mislynches. I was very clear this game that the people I was reading as most likely scum were the ones also voting for the person I might switch to made it harder for me.
it also was tricky that a game I was following contained Bob, and he just won it as scum and I had them as my most town read in this game. I admit I got paralysed.

[Porkens]

Nice game scum good job obvious why you won looking at the dead thread wow

[UnaBombaH]

Reading that Dead Thread makes me think we did the exact right kills..
Because everyone in there says it was very obvious that I was scum and should've been roped for days!

[UnaBombaH]

I liked our team very much.
Lots of talk in there, and we were mainly on the same page with basically everything.
It's not as much of a chore to be scum when you are playing with teammates who are willing to put in the effort and share their opinions and tactics.