Mini Normal 2181 | College Basketball Players | Game Over

[fferyllt]

I'm curious who peta RBed night 1.

I assumed Cabd JKed elements N1 and DGB N2.

[NoPowerOverMe]

I was not aware vanilla cop is a "scummy role". rolecops are known to be possible scum roles though.

[Cabd]

Nope, blocked bork N2 aggressively.

[NoPowerOverMe]

Night 1
petapan -roleblcok: benhalkum
benhalkum - friendly neighbor Petapan
Cabd = jailkeep notscience
Prism - Protect Cabd
DGB - investigate Vaxkiller ("vanilla")

Night 2
DGB: Investigate Bork(wrong night)
ben: Target Prism(Message)
Cabd: Jailkeep Bork
Prism: Protect DGB
fferylit: Kill Cabd

Night 3:
DGB investigates notscience("vanilla")
ben FN pooky
prism protects DGB
ferrylit kills skitter30

Night 4:
benhalkum targets fferyllt
fferyllt kills Prism
Prism protects notscience

[skitter30]

Wait so there was no rb on elements n1 at all lol
And ig it should have been obvious that we were missing a n1 fn message too

[fferyllt]

Ben claimed he'd messaged peta, and peta died, so it wasn't obviously missing.

[Cabd]

That's mod error.

I submitted a second PM before deadline changing my roleblock to elements.

[Cabd]

Re: Mini normal 2181 contuation

Sent: Mon Dec 07, 2020 8:54 pm
From: Cabd
To: NoPowerOverMe

NoPowerOverMe wrote:
Mini normal 2181 is continuing


On second thought, let's change that to elements. For the jailkeep.

[fferyllt]

I did all the early NKs because I expected to be elimed by midgame and we were trying to keep bork's hands clean.

[NoPowerOverMe]

Not a mod error, it's in the mod PT, I just didn't post it here.

Cabd changed his jailkeep to elements. Not going to effect anything.

[skitter30]

Ah makes sense

[Prism]

I'm still tilted over my second choice dying all 3 nights lmfao

[NoPowerOverMe]

I'm expecting my next game to be Terminator Mafia, a mini themed game.

[fferyllt]

I'm still tilted over my second choice dying all 3 nights lmfao

If I'd had any idea I was kill-dodging a doctor, too, I would have had a breakdown!

[Prism]

I'm still pretty annoyed I had to out as not BP. Would you have ever shot me in a world where I didn't?

The downside is you were my roleswap backup if I had a save, as you were the person I felt could take a hint, so that was destined to go nowhere.

[Prism]

I got so much mileage out of that accidental watcher soft shitpost

[fferyllt]

I'm still pretty annoyed I had to out as not BP. Would you have ever shot me in a world where I didn't?

The downside is you were my roleswap backup if I had a save, as you were the person I felt could take a hint, so that was destined to go nowhere.

Yeah I was considering to shoot you before you claimed BP, and I was planning to shoot you after the BP claim so that you could be elimed before mxlo if I needed to.

As I said in the mafia pt at some point, night 3 was our only night where we got a kill unencumbered by PR claims and we had to use it well.

Before bork was the day 3 elim we'd been discussing you vs skitter for N3.

Also, I should mention that I really didn't want to carry notsci to elo. I figured after our history that was going to be a really tough final day. The PR claims forced it on me, unfortunately.

I feel bad about putting us both through that elo!

[borkjerfkin]

Regarding modpizza, evidently the site meta is to allow people to replace alts in the middle of games, which is something I disagree with, but in the future games I will allow it. So my apologies to modpizza. Apparently I asked the wrong mod regarding what I should do (not implosion) so my mistake with that as well.

You handled this fine. You made a ruling, said to drop it in the thread.

Did not drop it in the thread

Those were the consequences.

[DrippingGoofball]

I was not aware vanilla cop is a "scummy role". rolecops are known to be possible scum roles though.

I guess it's a weak version of rolecop? And further weakened by the half-nigths?

Anyway I learned my lesson and will lie next time!

[fferyllt]

I was not aware vanilla cop is a "scummy role". rolecops are known to be possible scum roles though.

I guess it's a weak version of rolecop? And further weakened by the half-nigths?

Anyway I learned my lesson and will lie next time!

fwiw I had no idea vanilla cop was a scummy role either. I didn't think you were elimable while Cabd was alive. He basically cut off that avenue very early day 1 after he saw your vax crumb.

[fferyllt]

not day 1, day 2.

[mastina]

Hi I reviewed this game.

Bork and I were quite salty about the game design, and that was before we knew there was also a doctor on top of the RB, JK, Vanilla Cop and Friendly Neighbor.

For the record:

For the record.

I will be livid if the setup is 3 contradictory PRs, a red herring investigative, and all goons.

An important part of setup design is making it a puzzle for town to solve and to reward them for correctly getting info/flips. One red herring is fine, but a normal setup that is exclusively red herrings so that the setup designers can laugh at the town is not. I will 100% blame the design and feel 0 remorse about it, this hypothetical setup should not have passed.

You are mistaken; Normals are NOT MEANT TO BE PUZZLES for towns to solve. Normals being that is

explicitly bad design

that the NRG is actively trying to fix.

This setup was designed to be

solved by dayplay

, not designed to be solved by power roles; the town's power roles here are designed to exclusively force the emphasis to be on dayplay. One conftown, three killstoppers, one fairly useless but nominally-useful investigative (can catch scum fakeclaiming/can verify town claims, but explicitly cannot catch scum claiming vt). The town's roles, aside from the friendly neighbor, have nothing to confirm them as town and do little to confirm others as town and are overlapped by design.

It's a setup feature--not a setup flaw.
/rant

(I feel obligated to mention: standard game balance in NRG is 3-4 moderately strong PRs against all goons, approximately. This game had 5 PRs, but most of them are notably weak: odd-night vanilla cop is almost useless, basically being just an extra PR for the sake of having an extra PR. Friendly Neighbor can conftown themselves, but only themselves. Roleblocker requires god-tiered luck to block a kill unless two scum die, and in this setup there's no way to distinguish between an rb blocking the killer, doctor protecting the kill, jk blocking the killer, and jk blocking the kill. The only two strong roles in the game are the doctor and the jailkeeper, but due to the ambiguity of what causes a kill to fail, some of their innate power is removed. Which I again would like to emphasize: this is a setup feature, not a setup flaw.)

I stand by these assessments.

This game was designed to be solved by dayplay in scumhunting for the town and the scum manipulating the town, not by nightplay (via the town solving with its power roles, and scum preventing this with their own). I stand by it being balanced--maybe slightly frustrating for the scum to deal with the heavy kill-denial, but balanced, and explicitly a game where if scum's nightkills didn't fail multiple times, scum could not be caught randomly via a surprise PR outing them as confscum and it'd be difficult to POE the game down. (Unless they fakeclaimed and DGB checked them, obv.)

[mastina]

None of the confusion that could have helped scum in this setup happened,

Sure, but is that something that's inherent in the setup, or is that something that's just what happened in this game which wouldn't happen in most iterations of it? The scum had no power roles, but the town had only one slot that was conftown and multiple power roles that do the same thing, killstopping--which could lead to them counterclaiming each other convinced there wouldn't be that many, and/or prevent them from telling what the source of a failed kill would be.

And it'd take two failed kills for the town to actually gain an elimination, so one failed nightkill wouldn't actually help the town.

The town had five power roles, but aside from the fairly-well-protected friendly neighbor, the town had no conftowns. Any of the town's roles could've been scum roles, and DGB's elimination was proof enough of that.

The game was designed to be played the way it was ultimately played--with minimal focus on setup speculation, puzzle solving from the power role claims, no generation of hard-guilties and literally only one conftown, and heavy focus on solving via dayplay and scumhunting.

This setup was far from townsided. The town's roles had incredible anti-synergy, and aside from the friendly neighbor, none of them were town by virtue of their claim alone. Any of them were, from claim, a viable elimination. By play, different matter altogether, and at the end for the friendly neighbor to die the doctor did need to eat the nightkill, but having powertown players rand PRs is not something you can take into account in the setup design.

The possibility of the scum having a rough time if two died too early was something we were aware of, but I felt that there was sufficient counterbalance to that in the form of the lack of hard confirmation of the source of a failed kill.

[mastina]

I'm looking forward to reading the original design and basis for the changes!

Here is my setup for my new 13p mini normal:
Town:
8x VT
1x odd night vanilla cop
1x 2 shot roleblocker

Mafia:
2x goon
1x rolecop

This needs way more town power

Town:
6x VT
1x odd night vanilla cop
1x roleblocker
1x roaming annoucning visitor
1x2 shot hider

Mafia:
2x goon
1x rolecop

Still way way way scumsided--hider as a Normal role is not an investigative; it is a much much weaker version of a commuter. The game with a 2x hider and a roleblocker barely has kill denial at all, has an incredibly weak investigative role (a full vanilla cop for the town would still be a C-tier investigation role, at best; I'd rate vanilla cop in this setup as even worse, a D-tier town investigative that does almost nothing), and the visitor doesn't give the town any value.

Basically the town PRs don't actually give them any advantage; it'd still be scumsided even against an all-goon scumteam.

If you want the game to focus on kill prevention you'll want to have more powerful variants like a doctor rather than a hider, maybe a jailkeeper, and lots of it.

If you want to have a large number of VTs, at least a couple of your roles will need to be heavy hitting investigatives.

Town:
6x VT
1x odd night vanilla cop
1x roleblocker
1x roaming annoucning visitor
1xdoctor
1xjailkeeper

Mafia:
2x goon
1x rolecop

I think if the visitor was more explicitly an FN and the rolecop was dropped the setup would be ok, but I wouldn't be surprised if mastina wants to add more than that.

And then on the final setup:

I'd say it's in the balanced realm. The town has incredibly strong kill-denial potential (the scum won't have the best of times until 2/3 of those prs are dead with less scum deaths), but they've got only one conftown player and their investigative does nothing to catch scum, aside from verifying or disproving claims. It's a good way to force the game to revolve around dayplay--the scum's only night power is somewhat limited due to the town PRs, but they won't be caught by the town PRs, so I quite like it. It feels like a fairly low swing setup overall, all things considered.

[fferyllt]

Mastina,

I don't expect to change your mind in the least. But I have to say this on behalf of future normal game scum players.

This game gave scum no control at all over the night game. We were at the mercy of whatever the town PRs individually decided to do.

That's your prerogative.

My prerogative is to stay the hell away from this queue until I see that there's a philosophical change in what "normal" means.

But I feel obligated, on behalf of future scum teams in this queue to point out how totally screwed we were from a game design perspective.

Both the town and the mafia in this game thought the design was an issue.

Please take that under consideration going forward.