Gypyx's Mini Normal Review, October 2020

[implosion]

Gypyx Mini Normal, round 2 :

13 players
Daytalk on, scum isn't multitasking by default

Setup :

Town Multitasking Bodyguard Disloyal Babysitter
Town Backup Babysitter
Town Roaming Complusive Detective
Town Lazy 2-shot Roleblocker 2-shot Tracker
Town Disloyal Hider
Vt*5

Mafia 1-shot Personal Rolestopper
Mafia Night 1,2 JOAT (Neighborizer, Rolecop, Alien, Watcher, Activated Informed)
Mafia Goon

Information is : Town has the following modifiers and only those :

-Backup
-Compulsive
-Disloyal x2
-Lazy
-Multitasking
-Roaming

[implosion]

Primary: Flavor Leaf
Secondary: Isis

[Gypyx]

Egopost, i'll wait for your thoughts on the setup

[Flavor Leaf]

13 players
Daytalk on, scum isn't multitasking by default

Setup :

Town Multitasking Bodyguard Disloyal Babysitter
Town Backup Babysitter
Town Roaming Complusive Detective
Town Lazy 2-shot Roleblocker 2-shot Tracker
Town Disloyal Hider
Vt*5

Mafia 1-shot Personal Rolestopper
Mafia Night 1,2 JOAT (Neighborizer, Rolecop, Alien, Watcher, Activated Informed)
Mafia Goon

Information is : Town has the following modifiers and only those :

-Backup
-Compulsive
-Disloyal x2
-Lazy
-Multitasking
-Roaming

One big question is I feel like a mass claim Day 1 given the knowledge of the town modifiers drastically can lead to a town victory, so I don't really like that. If you're glued to that idea, maybe we can work it a bit.

The detective's interesting with the Roaming aspect, considering Detective's only find out if people have made kills. Scum is the only thing that can get targeted with it. Compulsive just seems unnecessary, I don't see why they wouldn't ever use the action.

Town Backup Babysitter would only inherit the babysitter aspect, not the disloyal, correct?

Disloyal Hider and Disloyal Babysitter's not gonna be fun to play against. There's some insane swing here too, that in a worst case scenario, could destroy scum.

Also, Personal on scum is redundant, isn't it? That cuts out factional, but town doesn't have any factional abilities, so it just seems like it's there to be there.

I do think this is probably still lean scum, but with insane swing potential to destroy them at the same time.

[Gypyx]

Hmmmm, could you develop on the problems that massclaim D1 might bring? I don't think that this is likely to happen but for future balance it would be good to know

I'm fine with dropping the compulsive, just that i wanted to avoid the player not acting in case he wanted to avoid being unable to investigate someone in the future

This is correct yes

I think it's the contrary here, like, if there is someone obviously scum enough to be both targeted by the babysitter and hider, the hider will die too, kind of an asshole interaction now that i think of it... i'm fine with tweaking the multi bg babysitter

Personal rolestopper can act as an anti-protectetive strongman too as it doesn't block the scumkill

I'm fine with the game slithgly leaning scum

[Isis]

Flavor Leaf, the information he listed under "Information is:" is supposed to be the information that the mafia receives if they choose for the JOAT to spend a night performing Activated Informed, I believe, not setup information given to the entire town. So it shouldn't create massclaim issues.

cfj told me in a recent thread that Backups do not inherit modifiers, only Universal Backups do.

Personal Rolestopper is not redundant, it can be used to sort of grant Strongman to a teammate in a way a general rolestopper cannot. You can rolestop a town player, and have another mafiosi target that player with the factional nightkill, babysitter actions fail, but allowing the nightkill to go through, because it is factional. An unmodified rolestopper would block the factional nightkill itself also.

I think Disloyal Hider and Roaming Detective are both interesting workable roles that make your setup plenty interesting already, and there should be two replacements for the Babysitter slots that bring the setup closer to true neutral on balance.

[Gypyx]

there should be two replacements for the Babysitter slots that bring the setup closer to true neutral on balance.

I don't get that sentance, could you explain?

[Isis]

I meant, there are probably other roles you could come up with to change the Babysitter and Backup Babysitter that could put the setup at balanced. You already expressed openness to messing with the babysitter (and if the Babysitter is changed as much as mutating to a completely different role, the backup babysitter would likely also have to change, since backups without the primary role present are weak for town)

[Gypyx]

Yeah, i'm not putting any backup without the primary role in the game, mod WIFOM isn't a good thing

[Gypyx]

By the way, i made a "power chart" to see if the setup is close to being balanced, and i might not evaluate correctly some PR's, but here's what i thought

Broken PR (bulletproof mason) : 15
Strong PR (cop) : 10
Decent PR (vig) : 8
Medium PR (tracker) : 6
Weak PR (Vanilla cop) : 3


Default : -15

Multi BG : 4
Backup baby : 5
Roaming det : 7
Tracker rber : 5
Disloayl hider : 2

Rolestopper : -4
JOAT : -5

Result : 23 vs 24

[Flavor Leaf]

Maybe I’m not completely up to date on what Personal is. I thought it was like a Personal PT Cop wouldn’t get a positive result on Scum who’s only PT is the scum factional thread.

That makes a lot more sense in regards to the info thing. I’ll take a closer look tonight after soaking all this in.

I think it’s closer to balanced than I initially thought for sure, however.

[Gypyx]

Maybe I’m not completely up to date on what Personal is. I thought it was like a Personal PT Cop wouldn’t get a positive result on Scum who’s only PT is the scum factional thread.

Yeah personal can also do that

[Isis]

The third thing Personal can do is make "visit based investigatives" like tracker or watcher stop seeing the factional kill, and then I think that's the only three things it can do.

[Gypyx]

Personal gunsmith could be a thing too i guess? Like, we're getting into the realm of weird roles, but a gunsmith who doesn't see mafia members as having a gun

Just a wild thought, i doubt that would fit into the spirit of normal games, even for me

[Isis]

Personal Psychologist and personal detective too, I guess. Good point.

[Flavor Leaf]

So a Personal Gunsmith targeting a Mafia Goon would get No Gun, so if the Mafia Goon claimed a role with a gun, they’d be caught out? I think I actually like that as a role a lot, and since these modifiers are newer, I think it’s fair to expect these.

[Gypyx]

Well, anyways i don't think these roles fit into the current setup, but i'm keeping those as ideas, also i don't agree on the point that newer modifiers / roles are more expected than others

[Gypyx]

Also, i'd kinda like this question answered : does this setup looks fun / original to you guys?

[Isis]

I think it's a lot more interesting than it is fun. I don't consider myself a great judge of that, but I'll give my opinion since asked. It has lots of lottery ticket roles and it's so many of them the setup is balanced or getting there and it has a complexity to it that the town can probably get some clearing off of setup spec even if they whiff all their lottery tickets but I think I'd enjoy a setup with a smaller number of more reliable roles, most of the time. I've played like a tenth as many normals as FL though and have more confidence speaking to balance/breaks than being reflective of Normal community tastes

[Gypyx]

hmmm, that's interesting, but the lot of "lottery tickets" or as someone said "small little fun toys" is intentional, like, my last normal (2169) was townsided af, but the players still enjoyed a lot that kind of setup, so i'm trying to do it again and see if it was just a single occurance or if that's actually what normal players like

[Isis]

I'll reiterate a lack of confidence in my answer

[Gypyx]

Yep got it, just wanted to say that i'm experimenting basically

[Isis]

One minor misaligned incentives interaction in this setup is that if scum use activated informed and discover there are two disloyal players, they might prioritize night killing players who have good reads, and that will backfire if the disloyal hider is selected.
This goes away anyway if the disloyal babysitter isn't kept but is maybe worth thinking about that slot is kept disloyal.

Oh, it actually backfires on a disloyal babysitter too. Whack. I think most people are going to see disloyal and think about disloyal roleblockers or disloyal NX vigs or disloyal investigatives (which are basically cops and they shouldn't expect that if they metagamed design but I don't think the normal philosophy should ask for that level of analysis, they should be able to operate from "disloyal is a modifier that means your power works better against scum" and work from that without a paradoxical effect)

If it goes down to one disloyal in the setup, I think it's fine.

[Gypyx]

Hmmm how about this : Multitasking Babysitter Compulsive Loud Bodyguard

And remove the compulsive from the detective


Also i had a small quality of life change in mind for maf :
Inform the JOAT that his activated informed ability tell him the list of all modifiers owned by town
To compensate, make the rolestopper Novice

[Gypyx]

Hmmm hold on, we might be getting into weirdness territory if my idea of a replacement for multi bg decides to target both him abilities at the same person

How about this :
Town Combined Friendly Neighbour Roleblocker
Town Backup Roleblocker
Town Roaming Detective
Town Lazy 2-shot Tracker 2-shot Motion Detector
Town Disloyal Hider

Mafia Novice 1-shot Personal Rolestopper
Mafia Informed Night 1,2 JOAT (Neighborizer, Rolecop, Alien, Watcher, Activated Informed), knows that thier activated information tells them all the modifiers that town has
Mafia Goon

Yeah, that's a lot of poking around the setup, but i kinda struggle to find good modifications to make