DkKoba's Mini Normal Review, March 2022

[implosion]

1x Even night jailkeeper
1x Tracker
1x odd night cop Neighbor
1x Neighbor
1x Miller
5x VT

1x Mafia Mailman
1x Mafia Neighbor
1x Mafia Goon

[implosion]

Primary: mastina
Secondary: Ircher

[DkKoba]

ego

[DkKoba]

im worried about double guilty n1

not sure what to change it to exactly tho i dont wanna make the setup too "speccable"

[mastina]

Setup is definitely townsided as-is, but I think an instant immediate fix to a lot of the issues:

Swap the nights for the cop and the jailkeeper.

The cop becomes much, MUCH less powerful as even-night. This not only delays the time to their first result (which is huge as it gives the scum more time to find/eliminate the cop or even the town to eliminate the cop for having no result until D3), but also makes the cop get fewer results. (There's more odd nights in a mini game than there are even nights.)

It does give the jailkeeper more uptime, but statistically speaking, a jailkeeper having more uptime is far less problematic than a cop having more uptime.

Granted: probably still a bit townsided. 3-man neighborhoods are usually assumed to have a scum in them--which in this game, is correct. This increases the odds of the cop investigating within the neighborhood which increases the odds the scum within is eliminated D3. (That said: this is dependent on who the players in the neighborhood are; it's fully possible for the cop to claim to neighbors N1 for instance, or for the cop to fully trust both neighbors as town.)

Tracker + Jailkeeper (even with JK gated) is insanely strong, on top of the cop being present.

But I think that if you swap the nights for the JK/Cop, it's a good start.

From there, it might be good if you gate the Tracker to 3x, maaaaaaaaaaybe 2x.

[DkKoba]

hi sorry i forgot about this !

was busy

[DkKoba]

yeah i am just afraid of adding modifiers to all the PRs feels like it can be setup gamed - but i def will start with swapping the nights on cop and JK

[DkKoba]

the hood thing was more to make it so that whoever was the better hood player would be able to gain the bigger advantage, it is the central mechanic here to enhance the dayplay.

honestly... what if... 4 player hood ......................

is a joke but only 50% LOL

[DkKoba]

1x Even Night Jailkeepr
1x Motion Detector
1x Even Night Cop Neighbor
1x Neighbor
1x Miller Neighbor
5x VT

1x Mafia Mailman
1x Mafia Neighbor
1x Mafia Goon

[DkKoba]

1x Even Night Jailkeeper
1x Motion Detector
1x 2-Shot Gunsmith Neighbor
2x Neighbor
5x VT

1x Mafia Mailman
1x Mafia Neighbor
1x Mafia Goon

yolo i adjusted it a bit bc i wanna refocus on dayplay lol

[mastina]

1x Even Night Jailkeeper
1x Motion Detector
1x 2-Shot Gunsmith Neighbor
2x Neighbor
5x VT

1x Mafia Mailman
1x Mafia Neighbor
1x Mafia Goon

yolo i adjusted it a bit bc i wanna refocus on dayplay lol

I'd actually say this swings the other way into being scumsided. The town's investigative here is actually

too

weak. Gunsmiths don't get hard guilties, so the only way to get a guilty on scum is for the scum to claim they don't own a gun. And it's two-shot. The motion detector can't really get guilties the same way a tracker can, and the jailkeeper in this instance is too weak.

[DkKoba]

How does that make it scumsided? People will still lean scum being guilty
By limlo they realize "oh that claim is bs" for a gun role

Why does town need hard guilties? Im not understanding it - because i see that this will encourage skill and thoughtful play over mechplay.

The gunsmith can catch 2 scum, thats huge. With some dayplay they can clear their neighbors too if the neighbor scum goes down day 1.


If the gunsmith goes down day 1 or night 1 I can see the issue.

Thats a scenario id perhaps just want a backup gunsmith.

Perhaps a univeral backup so they inhererit shots so it doesn't just extend the life of the GS

[DkKoba]

Kinda wanna also cheekily make the goon informed that no role named "Backup Gunsmith" exists. Just so they flip informed and it doesnt 100% clear the UB if they enter neighborhood

[DkKoba]

Like if players evaluate a player to be town solely on claim that is 100% player error and shouldnt be balanced around...

[implosion]

My own heuristics are that town needs roughly 3 quite good roles, or 4ish reasonable roles, to fight against an all-goon scumteam.

This scumteam is essentially all goons, and the neighborhood can easily swing either way in terms of balance, so looking at the real roles here there's 2-shot gunsmith, even-night jailkeeper, motion detector. Yes, 2-shot gunsmith is a pretty good role, but it's certainly not in the upper echelons of power with being gated to 2-shot and not being able to fully trust its innos or guilties. Yes the gunsmith "can" catch 2 scum but their a priori odds of doing that are like... roughly 3/12 * 2/11 = 1/22. Not something to count on when looking at balance. Swing sure but yeah, any investigative role at all is fundamentally swingy.

The other roles on the other hand are pretty weak; even-night JK is likely to get maybe 2 uses off, can't stop any useful scum roles, can stop useful town roles (particularly the gunsmith's second shot) and lacks half the utility of a regular JK that can reliably shut scum off when there's one left. Motion detector is in the very bottom echelon of useful roles; it simply has very little power at a baseline.

[DkKoba]

1x Even Night Jailkeeper
1x Universal Backup
1x Novice Detective
1x 2-Shot Gunsmith Neighbor
2x Neighbor
5x VT

1x Mafia Neighbor
2x Mafia Goon

[DkKoba]

(mainly trying to just make the central mechanic a 4 person hood)

[mastina]

Why does town need hard guilties?

Towns don't need hard guilties, but they need power roles that actually give them enough of an edge to make the default 10:3 not be scumsided.

And the power roles in 9 don't give the town enough to accomplish that.

The general balance realm for a 10:3 is that the town needs 3-4 moderately-strong power roles (emphasis on 'moderate' when 4, and on 'strong' when 3) vs. an all goon or 1 weak scum PR scumteam.

An even night jailkeeper is not moderately strong; it is moderate, just moderate. (Not weak, but not strong.)
A motion detector is one of the weakest "investigative" power roles in the game.
Neighbors are glorified VTs and thus do not count as a power role for all intents and purposes.
The only moderately-strong power role is the gunsmith, and it would be precisely that: moderately strong, not strong.

That's not enough power in the town, especially given the scum's roles are actually incredibly useful for manipulating the town and appearing town.

The gunsmith can catch 2 scum, thats huge.

That's the extreme level of the role--with it being used at its absolute best, yes, it can catch two scum and with the scum not playing it well the town could eliminate those two scum. But that's using the role at its absolute best.

Reviewers don't review off of the extreme best-case scenario.

Reviewers review off of the average scenario, the scenarios most likely to happen.

A 2x gunsmith in a neighborhood has a high chance of being eliminated (you said so yourself: clearing a player off of their claim is a mistake, so the town can in fact ELIMINATE their STRONGEST POWER ROLE), shot by the scum, or investigating town, or even thinking a mafia doctor would be present, or investigating scum that claims they have a gun.

And to counter your point of "town will know that claim to be bullshit"--you of all people should know otherwise considering you literally won a scum game with your fakeclaim that come lylo, the town did not in fact call bullshit.

1x Even Night Jailkeeper
1x Universal Backup
1x Novice Detective
1x 2-Shot Gunsmith Neighbor
2x Neighbor
5x VT

1x Mafia Neighbor
2x Mafia Goon

By my count that's 14 players but assuming you meant 4x VT, this again imo would swing too far into townsided. Novice Detective can't investigate N1, sure, but is an incredibly powerful role otherwise. It does give the gunsmith a potential false guilty, but my concern here is that with the universal backup combined with the jailkeeper, the town actually has too much safety built in, because if any role is eliminated by any method the UB allows that role to still get its full usage.

The setup in 9 had only 2 good power roles; this setup has 4 moderately-strong power roles, but the emphasis is far closer to 'strong'.

However, I think an easy fix would be to give the scum knowledge of one of the town power roles: the Universal Backup (can be done with an Informed or, heck, even a UB-Finder), Gunsmith (can be done with an informed, gunsmith-finder, maybe more), or Detective (you get the idea).

Not 2 or all 3 of them--but the scum knowing about 1 would take the setup from townsided to balanced imo as it gives the scum some idea of what to look out for. And I do mean the scum would be fine with any of those 3 being known to them. Knowing about the UB means that they know that they have to kill a TPR twice; knowing about the gunsmith gives them more counterplay; knowing about the detective gives them ways to try and avoid being caught by it.

I'd rate the knowledge most to least useful as gunsmith > UB

>

Detective, for what it's worth.

[DkKoba]

1x Even Night Jailkeeper
1x Universal Backup
1x Novice Detective
1x 2-Shot Gunsmith Neighbor
2x Neighbor
4x VT

1x Mafia Neighbor
1x Mafia Universal Backup Finder
1x Mafia Goon

[mastina]

implosion:

can you ping Ircher? He hasn't posted here yet.

I think the setup in 18 is good, but would like the secondary reviewer to give input just in case I'm missing something.

In the mean time, can you type up roles and result PMs?

[DkKoba]

And to be clear: if a regular neighbor dies, that inherits the role too, I am assuming.

[DkKoba]

that is what I am assuming here but I just want to be sure so I dont botch any mechs

[mastina]

And to be clear: if a regular neighbor dies, that inherits the role too, I am assuming.

I'm fairly certain Neighbor does not count as a role for UB.

[Ircher]

And to be clear: if a regular neighbor dies, that inherits the role too, I am assuming.

I'm fairly certain Neighbor does not count as a role for UB.

I am actually pretty sure that the opposite is true which may be a problem since universal backup --> neighbor effectively makes the slot confirmed town. I will see if I can find a reference for that tonight.

If I'n wrong about that, everything else looks fine.

[Ircher]

Going by the wiki, the normal guidelines section for universal backup says it inherits any non-vanilla role of the same alignment. A neighbor would return a non-vanilla result to a vanilla cop, so it should be able to be inherited.