Datisi's Micro Normal Review, May 2021

[implosion]

Primary: callforjudgement
Secondary: Isis

[Datisi]

hello hello hello

setup

1x town mason mailman
1x town informed mason (knows that there is an informed mafia member who is aware of the existence of a 2-person masonry in the game)
2x town neighbour
3x vt

mafia informed (knows that there is a 2-person masonry in the game)
mafia goon

so i wanted to run a masons/goons 9p but with a little Extra. give scum a heads up that they're supposed to be mason hunting, but give town the counterplay of having the masons know they're gonna be hunted, give them a mailman message to send out, and a t/t hood as a sorta false positive for the mason hunt, i imagine they should be leaving associates with each other.

an issue i have is whether it's possible for town to figure out that the hood is t/t from the information that the masons have - "if the masons know scum is informed, then surely town has counterplay, and a t/s hood would be +scum" - but on the other hand, i just had a setup that i thought was breakable turn out to be not breakable at all, so maybe i'm overthinking.

i spent some time yesterday thinking if there was another (non-EV-changing) role that i could add into the mix. i thought of removing one vt and instead making them a town novice neighbour, because i find the idea of automatic new recruits into the neighbourhood (not via a neighbourizer) entertaining. i'm not sure how this addition would affect the balance, if it would.

i was also thinking if there is anything i could give to the goon, but this is moreso my inner dislike for having mafia goons in my setups, rather than an actual balance thought. not sure if anything would fit here. a potential thought i had was to make the novice neighbour mafia-aligned instead of town aligned (or to just add a second one). while i imagine this would take away the hood being a surprise "false positive" for mason-hunting, it would probably add some guessing whether a mason is present in the hood, so i'd be fine with that. but i'm worried if the entire hood would be spewed town if the mafia novice neighbour were to flip. i know multiple scum in a hood is possible in a normal (and hell i've even designed games like that), but i dunno.

[callforjudgement]

I think one issue with this setup is that if there were a T/S neighbourhood, and there were also a Mafia who was informed of a masonry, then it'd narrow down the possible Masons for the scum to look for. So people may well expect the neighbourhood to be T/T on that basis. There's also something of an issue with balance perception: towns tend to see setups with lots of town power roles as being townsided, even if they don't do anything. (I think that T/T neighbourhoods generally do do something, though, and tend to make the game more townsided; sometimes they do nothing, but often the neighbours correctly read each other as town almost immediately.) Neighbours in particular are problematic because some players see them as very overpowered and other players see them as worthless, so you can never keep everyone happy with respect to how they view the setup.

I'm wondering if this would actually be more balanced with a T/S rather than T/T neighbourhood. The problem with that is that it rather runs the risk of players complaining that scum are overpowered, and gets rid of the original idea behind the setup.

In terms of Novice: bear in mind that Micros don't have many days, so Novice is actually a real drawback, and any design based around "players hunting for other players" will often be a shadow of what you expect (because there's not much hunting going on and players may well end up claiming and/or getting eliminated early). One issue with having a Novice Neighbour is that it's going to be very townsided if the neighbourhood is T/T/T, and if you run it as T/T/S, you run the risk of the scum in the neighbourhood getting eliminated early and effectively confirming the other two as town. Probably if you're going to go down the "new players get added to the neighbourhood" route, a Neighbourizer would make more sense; but I don't think you can fit it into this setup because players tend to just assume that Neighbourizers are town (and end up losing as a consequence when there's a scum Neighbourizer in a setup; a T/S/S neighbourhood would be similar, with town not expecting it and just losing as a consequence).

So I guess your thoughts on this and mine are pretty similar, overall; the thoughts I had about the setup are very similar to the thoughts you put in your commentary.

I guess on balance, this is probably too townsided at the moment. If you need something you can run immediately, I'd recommend changing the neighbourhood to T/S (replacing the goon), but I'm not really happy with that and would be interested in whether you have (or Isis has) other ideas.

[Datisi]

yeah, that's another thought i had. in my experience playing scum in normals with t/t hoods present, it felt more like playing against a masonry because they *are* quick to trust each other. risking a t/t hood giving too much edge to town vs risking town neighbours getting conftowned when a scum neighbour flips.

having read your reply, i'm wondering if i should go back to my original idea for this, which didn't include the neighbours. either come up with different nothingburger roles or just run a simpler game with 5 vts.

a part of me wants to go full meme and make a 4p hood that would be the two masons and the two scum. though that idea reminds me of the time i've been told that neighbourhoods aren't there for player enjoyment, they're there for the mod enjoyment, and i'm wondering if i should tone it down a bit.

actually:
a 4p hood that's the two masons and the two scum
3x vts
and then 2x town novice neighbour

i'm sure this wouldn't get me flamed post-game at all.

[Datisi]

reasons why i shouldn't include the neighbourhood: i cannot think of a way to elegantly include it, which will make it seem shoehorned and will probably mess with the balance.

reasons why i will try anyway: i've already prepared the flavour to put in the neighbourhood op.

[Datisi]

1x town mailman mason neighbour
1x town informed mason neighbour (knows that there is an informed mafia member who is aware of the existence of a 2-person masonry in the game)
1x town novice neighbour
4x vt

1x mafia informed neighbour (knows that there is a 2-person masonry in the game)
1x mafia neighbour

this is evil, right?

[Datisi]

at this point, might as well remove the mailman ability.

[Datisi]

alternatively:

1x town mason mailman
1x town mason
1x town mailman neighbour
1x town neighbour
3x vt

1x mafia informed (knows that there is a 2-person masonry in the game)
1x mafia mailman

this looks like hell for me to mod but whatever. how many mailmen can i get the nrg to pass in a micro? :thonk:

i don't know why i'm finding something like this amusing but here we are. maybe i should even make the mafia informed a mafia informed mailman. maybe i should stop designing games.

[Isis]

I would pass it if there were two more mailman

[Isis]

Oh I'm not the primary thank god

[Datisi]

Oh I'm not the primary thank god

[callforjudgement]

I would consider the setups in posts #5 and #7 to be too role-heavy to be Normal; it looks more like a Theme game. That said, it might well make for a good Theme game! Sometimes it isn't worth trying to shoehorn a setup into the constraints of a Normal. (From the Normal Game rules: "Games which are otherwise Normal may still be more suited to a different Queue. For example, a game with a large number of Doctors may be better run as an Open Game (after review in the Open Discussion Thread) or as a "Hospital" Themed Game." This is bordering on similar territory, but with communicatives rather than protectives.)

One problem with that sort of hard-to-believe setup is that the balance of the setup swings hugely depending on whether players believe the setup or not – they'll either modWIFOM themselves into a hole and be lost all setup, or else figure it out immediately and cruise to a town victory, and there's no way to balance the setup so that it works in both scenarios. That's another reason it works better as a Theme, because you can use the flavour and/or game advertisement to imply shenanigans and cause the players to be a bit more open-minded than usual.

[Isis]

maybe you can do the same concept but just with no mailman and a huge neighborhood that touches the scumteam and masonry in some configuration

[Datisi]

i assume taking the setup in 7 and making the mailman neighbour into a regular neighbour doesn't bring it down into the realm of normalcy?

1x town mason mailman
1x town informed mason (knows that there is an informed mafia member who is aware of the existence of a 2-person masonry in the game)
5x vt

1x mafia informed (knows that there is a 2-person masonry in the game)
1x mafia goon

this was my original idea for the setup. i'm thinking if i should ditch the neighbours again and try to figure it out around here.

[callforjudgement]

The modification you suggest to #7 still has way too many communicative roles (including duplicates of roles that aren't normally duplicated) for me to be comfortable running it as a Normal.

My only real concern about the setup in #13 is that the informed Mafia may claim their actual role (not realising that it looks like a scum role), which wouldn't work out well for them at all. If that doesn't happen, then the setup would be balanced, and it's probably within Normal bounds (although the information is somewhat esoteric so it's hard to predict how people will respond to it). I think if we were going down that path, I'd fix the Informed Mafioso to "you know that there is an Informed Mason who knows there is an Informed Mafioso" (and symmetrically, "you know there is an Informed Mafioso who knows there is an Informed Mason"); that setup should at least be runnable, because now both sides have the information they need to be able to avoid slipping.

[Datisi]

My only real concern about the setup in #13 is that the informed Mafia may claim their actual role (not realising that it looks like a scum role), which wouldn't work out well for them at all.

maybe i'm harsh, but i don't see that as a problem. if neither scum by massclaim figure out that they really shouldn't claim the information that is obviously pro-scum in nature, then i feel like they should learn the lesson the hard way rather than having the setup hold their hand.

*having said that*, you've given me an idea for A Mess that i at least wanna hear opinions on.

1x town mason mailman
1x town informed mason (knows that there is an informed mafia member who is aware of the existence of an informed mason)
1x town informed neigbour (knows there is a 2-person masonry in the game. [if needed, also give the information about one of the masons being aware that scum is informed of them, if needed so that the neighbour doesn't get yeeted on the spot after claiming his info, and that he at least knows he should maybe not claim it])
4x vt

1x mafia informed (knows that there is an informed mason who is aware of the existence of a mafia informed)
1x mafia neighbour

this is sorta, masons having a "decoy mason" while the decoy not obviously being town just by virtue of claim (since nothing is stopping scum from claiming that etc). i feel putting the decoy into a t/t hood is gonna somehow end up with both of them townreading each other and i don't want that.

granted i've woken up about 10 minutes ago and i did not think this fully through, but i wanted to throw it out there to see if it's viable because i thought of it and don't hate it at first glance so

if this is Too Evil / Too Mechanical, i can settle for the setup in 13 with the proposed changes in 14.

[callforjudgement]

I think #15 has too many communicatives (and risks the setup falling apart very quickly if the Mafia Neighbour gets eliminated early). So I think it'd be best to either make it a Theme, or (if we're keeping it Normal) go with the setup in #14.

[Datisi]

is that allowed? changing the game from a normal into a theme in the middle of a normal review?

[callforjudgement]

Well, if you decide to run the game as a Theme you'd have to /in to the Theme queue instead (and it might help to make a separate review PT so that the flavour can be reviewed). There's no rule that says that Themes can't have started their life as a Normal, though.

[Datisi]

well, i was going to run this in the micro queue anyway... would i just hijack you and isis into becoming theme game reviewers? do i find new ones? is implo gonna be mad at me?

[callforjudgement]

I don't mind if you hijack me. (Not sure about Isis.)

[Isis]

callforjudgment stole all my agendas so i refuse to help him review your micro theme

[Datisi]

i bet isis rolled her eyes when implo told her she was gonna be reviewing my setup

and the moment the laws of the nrg no longer bound her here, she is Out

[Isis]

callforjudgment beat me at hacker poker and i'm butthurt

ur just collateral damage

[callforjudgement]

Just for the record: this setup is now being run as a Theme, so this review thread is now over (and the setup isn't going to be run as a Normal).