Foxbird's Mini Normal Review, February 2021

[implosion]

Hello!

I signed up to mod a Mini Normal. I created my own setup, which has been edited by my backup moderator, Gypyx. If I understand the rules correctly, I'm supposed to send this in for review.

The setup is designed for 13 players.

1x Mafia Mailman
2x Mafia Goon

1x Town Doctor
1x Town Macho Traffic Analyst
1x Town Odd-Night Neighborizer
1x Town Mailman Enabler
6x Vanilla Townie

I hope you have a nice weekend!

Foxbird

I hope I got everything correct now, I panicked when I hit send instead of saving drafts, haha.

Welcome to [game]!
You are a

Mafia Mailman

.

Your teammates are [player] and [player]. You may talk to them HERE during night phases and confirmations only.

You have the following active abilities, but may use only one per Night:

Each Night, if no other member of your faction is performing this action, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.
Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, the moderator will anonymously send that player a message of your choice (specified when you submit this action).

You win if at least one mafia member is alive and all other players are dead (or if nothing can prevent the same).

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Welcome to [game]!
You are a

Mafia Goon

.

Your teammates are [player] and [player]. You may talk to them HERE during night phases and confirmations only.

You have the following active ability:

Each Night, if no other member of your faction is performing this action, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.

You win if at least one mafia member is alive and all other players are dead (or if nothing can prevent the same).

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Welcome to [game]!
You are a

Town Doctor

.

You have the following active ability:

Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will be protected from one kill that night.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Welcome to [game]!
You are a

Town Macho Traffic Analyst

.

You cannot be protected from kills in any way.

You have the following active ability:

Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn whether or not that player is able to privately communicate with another living player (you cannot distinguish between a player who is alone in a private topic, and a player who does not have private topic access at all).

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Welcome to [game]!
You are a

Town Mailman Enabler

.

When you die, the role "Mailman" will cease to function for all players.

You have no active abilities.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Welcome to [game]!
You are a

Vanilla Townie

.

You have no active abilities.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

No potatoes while I'm modding, please.

Welcome to [game]!

I am your host, Foxbird.
Your backup moderator is Gypyx.

The setup was designed by me, edited by Gypyx, and reviewed by [reviewer] and [reviewer].

The theme is silly stock photos, because they make me laugh.

Player List

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.

* = Prod

Dead

Spoiler:

Events

- - - - NEXT POST - - - -

Rules

Graciously

stolen

adapted from Plotinus.

The Important Stuff

Day 1: up to 10 days, Day 2+ up to 7 days, Night: 48 hours.
Majority lynches (50% of alive players + 1, rounded down)
36 hours before prod, 24 hours before replacement, 24 hour weekends
No bah posts.
There are some rules about animated GIFs and tiny text, please read them.
Don’t be a dick.

• 1.
  Follow all site rules.
  
  2.
  Mod colour
  – My mod colour is
  magenta
  . Don't use it.
  3.
  Behaviour
  - Don’t be a dick. This is a heated game, but toxicity or bigotry will not be tolerated. Attack the play, not the player. If your fellow players tell you to stop, you must stop. If you do not stop, I will tell you to stop. If you still do not stop, you will be force-replaced. Asking people to stop voting you or to stop scumhunting you entirely doesn't count for this rule and you may find yourself lynched if you try it.
  3.
  Don't talk about ongoing games
  - You may not talk to each other about this game outside of threads I have created for this purpose. You may not talk about other ongoing games in this thread.
  4.
  Animated GIFs
  - Permitted behind spoilers if clearly labelled as such.
  5.
  Tiny text
  - Keep it 70+ please.
  6.
  Provable randomness
  - Against the rules. Saying that you rolled a dice is fine, using dice tags or random.org is not.
  7.
  Claiming scum
  - By yourself is fine. Claiming scum with another player is against the rules.
  8.
  Cryptography
  - Forbidden. Breadcrumbing is okay.
  9.
  Confirmation
  - You have about 72 hours to confirm your role and your alignment by PM. Game will start sooner if everyone confirms. Posting in a private topic counts as confirmation.
  10.
  Days
  - Day 1 lasts 10 days and other days last 7 days. Extensions may be granted if there are replacements, or if the majority of players make it clear to me that an extension is desired.
  11.
  Activity
  - You must post at least once every 36 hours or I will Prod you. You then have 24 hours to post in the game thread or I will replace you. If you come back before I find a replacement, you can stay. The activity timers run at half-speed on weekends. Players can request me to prod somebody early. This will only count as an official prod if you don't post before you would have been due for a prod. If you haven't posted in the 24 hours before the thread is locked for night, you must reply to the night start PM or you will be replaced during the night.
  12.
  Vacation/Limited Access
  - If you need to be absent for longer than this, you should declare V/LA in bold in the thread like this:
  @Mod: I will be v/la until Thursday
  . While you are V/LA, you will be nudged once every 54 hours. Two nudges equals one prod. If you have not posted game advancing content in 5 days, regardless of V/LA status, you will be replaced.
  13.
  Prodging
  - A naked "prod dodge" does not reset the prod timer. To avoid being prodded/replaced for inactivity, include some game advancing content in your prodges, such as "got prodded; xxxx is still scum."
  14.
  Quoting
  - You may not quote (or copy paste) any private information into the thread, including your role PM and any mod communication.
  15.
  Voting
  - Votes must be in bold in the format
  VOTE: Foxbird
  or VOTE: Vote: Foxbird. Strong preference for using vote tags instead of bold tags. Unvotes are nice but not required. If I think it’s a vote, it’s a vote, no tricks.
  16.
  Eliminations
  - Days end early when a simple majority of players (50% of living players + 1 rounded down) vote to eliminate somebody. If a majority is not reached at deadline or if a majority of the players vote for no elimination, the day will end without an elimination. At evens, 50% is sufficient for no elimination.
  17.
  Twilight
  - Begins when a majority is reached and lasts until I lock the thread. You're still alive until I flip you so you can talk in any game threads you have access to until then, but no votes or unvotes will be counted.
  18.
  Night
  - Night lasts at least 48 hours. The night phase can be shortened if every living player - even those with no night actions -- agrees to it and if I'm not busy.
  19.
  Action submissions
  - You may submit actions via PM (if town) or PT (if scum). If the actions are not submitted by the deadline then you do nothing. You can change your mind as many times as you like before the deadline.
  20.
  Reminders
  - If I don't hear from you about your night actions, I'll PM you 24 hours before the deadline. This doesn't count as a prod. If I still don't hear from you, you will take no action.
  21.
  Play to win
  - this particular game, not some future one, and keep it fun!

- - - - NEXT POST - - - -

There is no default daytalk.

Spoiler: Sample Role PM

Welcome to [game]!
You are a

Vanilla Townie

.

You have no active abilities.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

[implosion]

Primary: Isis
Secondary: callforjudgement

[callforjudgement]

(I'm the secondary reviewer so nothing that I say "officially" matters, but I'm giving thoughts on the setup anyway in the hope that they're useful to the primary reviewer in making a decision.)

I don't think there's enough town power here. I don't think there's anything wrong with the setup aside from that, though.

The basic problem is that – barring the extremely unlikely possibility that the Doctor single-handedly stops two kills – town's only real ability to gain power role information that helps them deal with the scum is an unreliable investigative. It's a well-designed unreliable investigative – there's counterplay for scum and the possible false positives and false negatives are clued very well – it's just that it isn't enough by itself to balance out scum's inherent advantage at the 10:3 numbers.

I think you probably want a fifth town role, but am not immediately sure what. A Rolecop would fit the rest of the setup, but I'm uncertain whether it would be enough. It wouldn't have been in 2018, but towns have been getting better since and they don't need as much power as they used to; it's hard to draw the balance boundary when the skill levels of players change over time.

[Foxbird]

Would a limited shot strong investigative be an option? Something like a 2-shot Watcher/Cop?

Also I just realised the Mailman Enabler PM probably should read "If you die", not "When you die". Whoops!

[callforjudgement]

I'm worried about the town potentially getting too many clears early, but apart from that, something like a 1-shot cop would fit fairly well. (Cop shots are worth a

lot

, especially on N1 when the Cop is likely to still be alive, so it doesn't take many to balance a setup.) I'm not sure whether it's too much, and/or whether the scum would be upset because they perceived it as too much even if the game were balanced in practice.

I guess you could add the 1-shot Cop, and then gate the Doctor to some extent; the situation I'm most worried about is that town get two clears early and then scum end up bouncing off a Doctor protection because everyone knew they'd likely aim for one of the clears.

Another possibility is to gate the Cop to some specific night later than N1, so that town's power isn't happening all at once at the start at the game (and giving scum more counterplay in that they have time to try to find them).

[Foxbird]

I do like the idea of introducing a N2 or N3 cop. We'll see what Iris says I guess!

[Foxbird]

Isis. WHY CAN'T I TYPE PEOPLE'S NAMES CORRECTLY I-

[Isis]

No neighborizer role PM

[Foxbird]

Must have forgotten to send it. I'm off work in less than an hour so I'll have access to my documents then. Sorry.

[Isis]

There's some reasons to start shifting towards more scumsided setups, but the setup in the OP would be a bridge too far.

It might be an idiosyncracy but I dislike something about the setup besides just the balance, which is excessive incentives/consequences for the holster/fire behavior of the odd night neighborizer. I tend to feel like the punishments for using nothingburger power roles like Fruit Vender should be capped at Mafia Tracker or Mafia Watcher and this exceeds that.

My counteroffer will try to kill two foxes with one stone:

1x Mafia Mailman
2x Mafia Goon

1x Town Doctor
1x Town Macho Traffic Analyst
1x Town Odd-Night Combined Neighborizer Rolestopper
1x Town Mailman Enabler
6x Vanilla Townie

This setup has stronger town setup spec and a better chance of hitting a double protect. It's definitely way less aggressive than adding a one-shot cop but I think there is enough.

[Isis]

I'm rating the scum mailman as negative utility here, because I didn't see multitasking specified anywhere. Some percentage of the time the Mafia Mailman is going to choose to send mail and claim mailman later, then find themselves the final scum and be unable to perform nightkills unless they claim they sent the NK victim mail.

[callforjudgement]

Well, that isn't going to happen very often because five sixths of the time, either the Mailman Enabler or the Mailman itself is going to die before the two Goons do, and even in the unlikely case, it's quite likely that there will be a claimed Enabler and a dead Doctor. So there's some built in counter to the negative utility there.

[Foxbird]

My counteroffer will try to kill two foxes with one stone:

1x Mafia Mailman
2x Mafia Goon

1x Town Doctor
1x Town Macho Traffic Analyst
1x Town Odd-Night Combined Neighborizer Rolestopper
1x Town Mailman Enabler
6x Vanilla Townie

This setup has stronger town setup spec and a better chance of hitting a double protect. It's definitely way less aggressive than adding a one-shot cop but I think there is enough.

I like this.

I'm also fine putting in multitasking, I did not consider that it might screw the mailman over if he's the last scum.

Spoiler: Odd-Night Combined Neighborizer Rolestopper Role PM

Welcome to [game]!
You are a

Town Odd-Night Combined Neighborizer Rolestopper

.

You have the following active ability:

Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will add this player to your neighborhood HERE. In addition, the player you target will be immune to all other night actions.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

[Isis]

Well, that isn't going to happen very often because five sixths of the time, either the Mailman Enabler or the Mailman itself is going to die before the two Goons do, and even in the unlikely case, it's quite likely that there will be a claimed Enabler and a dead Doctor. So there's some built in counter to the negative utility there.

I forgot about the enabler but I knew it was already silly bean counting anyway. It's just not a very big deal.

In case it wasn't clear, I don't think a negative utility role is necessarily bad design. I don't see any need to add multitasking here.

[callforjudgement]

You missed the "Odd-Night" modifier in the role PM.

As for balance, I think scum might get a little frustrated if town

do

manage to land the double-protect, but at least there are clues to help them play around it (when one NK fails, scum will know there's a protective in the setup, and play around the possibility of a second NK failure). I guess they might be annoyed if they kill one protective and then run into the

other

protective, but at that point there won't be any power roles worth saving so it would likely only happen due to a blocked kill on a VT.

How does Macho interact with Rolestopper? That's relevant here and I don't think we have any ruling on that yet.

[callforjudgement]

(To be clear, the double-protect possibility is a significant proportion of town's power in this version of the setup, so it shouldn't be seen as undesirable. It's just something that you need to keep in mind.)

[Isis]

I think CFJ has some kind of philosophical position that all setups ever are better with multitasking because the setup spec and fakeclaim space is more unbounded, but also some mods/reviewers prefer to use some singletasking and/or utilize the modifier.

I'd approve the setup with or without public scumteam multitasking, anyhow.

[Isis]

yeah the double protect feeling grating was one of my reservations about this design but i think it's just barely fine.

[Foxbird]

Whoops.

Welcome to [game]!

You are a

Town Odd-Night Combined Neighborizer Rolestopper

.

You have the following active ability:

Every odd-numbered Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will add this player to your neighborhood HERE. In addition, the player you target will be immune to all other night actions.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

I'll add the multitasking anyhow. Not like it makes a huge difference and it streamlines scum a bit.

[callforjudgement]

My position on Multitasking in that respect is specific to 9p setups; those need to have default-multitasking in the setup rules or it gives away much too much information to town (because there would be swing problems if a scum member died early and the scum power roles were relevant). In a Mini, that isn't a problem because you're OK with town winning easily if they manage to catch two scum early, so I'm happy to approve Minis with no default multitasking.

On another note: after reviewing all the documentation we have on role interactions, I'm inclined to think that our current interaction is that Rolestopping a Macho player will protect them from all actions other than kills, which go through normally.

[Isis]

I think it's unambiguous that the asceticizing component of rolestopper isn't disturbed by the macho modifier, so the Traffic Analyst should always have an open mailbox

[Isis]

jinx joke you owe me a coke

[Isis]

I haven't looked over role PMs/rules closely yet, need to go to work now.

[Foxbird]

Have a good time at work!

I just remembered: should the neighborizer role PM specify the night talk, like the mafia one does?

[callforjudgement]

It's probably a good idea. My experience with no-daytalk setups with Neighbourizers is that players get quite surprised when they're added to a PT at the start of the Day, but don't get to talk in it until the following Night.