Umlaut's Mini Normal Review, March 2022

[implosion]

Here is the setup for my recent /in to mod a mini normal.

Roles

1x

Mafia Roleblocker

1x

Mafia Traitor-Enabler Bodyguard

1x

Mafia Informed Traitor

(knows there are three town PRs, one of which is a Detective)

1x

Town Detective

1x

Town Jack-of-All-Trades

(1-Shot Follower, 1-Shot Hider, 1-Shot Vigilante)
1x

Town Combined Doctor Checker

7x

Townie

Mechanics

• Days are 7 IRL days; nights are 2 IRL days.
  
• Majority-only elimination mechanics.
  
• All private topics have daytalk.
  
• All roles are multitasking.

Spoiler: Role PMs

Mafia Roleblocker

Welcome to Mini Normal {NUMBER}! You are a

Mafia Roleblocker

.

You and your teammate(s) share a private topic in which you can talk during all phases of the game, as long as you are alive.

Each night you and your teammate(s) may together choose one living player to shoot and kill. You must specify which of you carries out the shot.

Each night you may choose one living player to

roleblock

, preventing that player from taking any action during the night.

You win when the Mafia is the sole surviving faction, or when nothing can prevent this.

Mafia Traitor-Enabler Bodyguard

Welcome to Mini Normal {NUMBER}! You are a

Mafia Traitor-Enabler Bodyguard

.

You and your teammate(s) share a private topic in which you can talk during all phases of the game, as long as you are alive.

Each night you and your teammate(s) may together choose one living player to shoot and kill. You must specify which of you carries out the shot.

Traitors will lose their Traitor-specific abilities once you have died.

(This means they will become ordinary members of the Mafia.)

Each night you may choose one living player to

guard

, preventing that player from one kill attempt during the night. If you stop a kill in this manner, you will die instead.

You win when the Mafia is the sole surviving faction, or when nothing can prevent this.

Mafia Informed Traitor

Welcome to Mini Normal {NUMBER}! You are a

Mafia Informed Traitor

.

You know the Mafia are [REDACTED]; however, you have no access to their private topic or factional kill, and you will be endgamed and lose the game when all other Mafia are dead.

You have the following additional information:

There are three non-vanilla Town players in the setup, one of which is a Detective.

You win when the Mafia is the sole surviving faction, or when nothing can prevent this.

Town Detective

Welcome to Mini Normal {NUMBER}! You are a

Town Detective

.

Each night you may

investigate

one player, to learn whether that player has carried out a killing action on this or any previous night.

You win when the Town is the sole surviving faction.

Town Jack-of-All-Trades

Welcome to Mini Normal {NUMBER}! You are a

Town Jack-of-All-Trades

, with the following abilities.

• 1-Shot Follower:
  On one night of your choice you may
  follow
  another player to learn what if any type(s) of action that player takes during the night.
  
• 1-Shot Hider:
  On one night of your choice you may
  hide
  behind another player. You will be immune to kills directed at you that night, but will die if your target is killed that night.
  
• 1-Shot Vigilante:
  On one night of your choice you may
  shoot
  and kill another player.

You win when the Town is the sole surviving faction.

Town Combined Doctor Checker

Welcome to Mini Normal {NUMBER}! You are a

Town Combined Doctor Checker

.

Each night, you may choose another player to take

both

of the following actions:

• heal
  that player, protecting them from one kill attempt during the night; and
  
• check
  that player, and be informed whether the check was successful.
  (The check has no other effect.)

You win when the Town is the sole surviving faction.

Townie

Welcome to Mini Normal {NUMBER}! You are a

Townie

.

You win when the Town is the sole surviving faction.

Spoiler: Result PMs

Detective Positive

Your investigation was

positive

: {PLAYER} has killed or attempted to kill.

Detective Negative

Your investigation was

negative

: {PLAYER} has neither killed nor attempted to kill.

Detective No Result

You failed to investigate {PLAYER}.

Follower Positive

You learned that {PLAYER} took a {TYPE} action during the night.

Follower Positive (Multitasking)

You learned that {PLAYER} took a {TYPE} action and a killing action during the night.

Follower Negative

You learned that {PLAYER} took no action during the night.

Follower No Result

You failed to follow {PLAYER}.

Checker Result

You checked {PLAYER}.

Checker No Result

You failed to check {PLAYER}.

My rules post will be substantially similar to this one from my last mini normal, but I can write it out explicitly for you if needed.

[implosion]

Primary: Datisi
Secondary: mastina

[Datisi]

ego

will think about this in a little bit

[mastina]

Oh no not the traitor enabler again...

[Datisi]

good thing i'm the primary

at first glance, i think i would call this setup scumsided. the traitor-enabler bodyguard is a really neat idea (imho) but with there being only one vig shot and no other town killing abilities, i think it's decently likely to not come in play.

the doctor checker knows if they've been roleblocked, which is a cool feature but i don't think it greatly adds to town power.

there's also no the usual drawback of "traitor gets endgamed if the other two scum are dead" either. i guess town does get the knowledge of there being a traitor and is able to start hunting for traitor signals specifically, though.

what was the intention behind having the traitor be informed of the detective?

[Umlaut]

I realized between submitting this setup and now that yeah, it really is scumsided. Happy to add more town power, there are a lot of VTs so I could just add an additional town PR or two if you think that will do it. I considered whether to just make the Detective a straight-up Cop but it seems a lot of people hate ungated Town Cop as a role now.

The intention behind the Informed Traitor is that the Mafia will get that information if/when the Traitor is disabled, providing a bit of anti-swing in case Traitor-Enabler dies early (before the setup is more-or-less known anyway).

The main negative utility of the Traitor is probably just the discoördination of not having all Mafia able to work together.

[Umlaut]

Oh no not the traitor enabler again...

Honestly didn't know this had been done before, here I thought I was clever

[Umlaut]

Adding a Vengeful, or giving the JoaT an additional vig shot, would give town more power

and

increase the chance the Bodyguard comes into play, what do you think?

[Datisi]

giving the JoaT an additional vig shot

i don't think this is even legal?

[Umlaut]

I feel like I've seen a JoAT with 2 shots of something before, but I'm not tied enough to that idea for the point to be worth debating if its legality is unclear.

Vengeful then? Has the additional benefit of getting the game back to odds assuming all kills go through. Can throw in like a Voyeur or 1-Shot [Whatever] or something if town still needs more power.

[implosion]

It's definitely *possible* to give a JoAT an extra shot of something, inasmuch as JoAT is an alias for a multirole. I just don't remember if there's precedent for it still being called a JoAT.

Also, have we seen traitor enabler? I though it was one of the things discussed in the changes to normal games thread but I looked there when I got the setup and I don't think it was; we discussed

backup

traitor there but not traitor enabler and idr any setups that had it.

[Datisi]

i think mastina is thinking of one of my recent reviews for georgebailey, where i proposed a traitor + double traitor enabler scumteam or something, and you agreed to that being a Normal(tm) interaction, but the setup was really fucky otherwise so we ended up scrapping it

[Datisi]

uh, my first thought on vengeful "oh god no"

i think i'm definitely in favour of getting some more vig action going, rather than vengefuls

[implosion]

aah. yeah. i found it and yep. and Gypyx pointed out that there was another review from 2017 where Nexus hard veto'd it.

My thoughts are basically the same as they were then, that it's a little imperfect for obvious reasons but that the actual cost is not super high because no one will be "unpleasantly" surprised (the traitor isn't gonna complain about being added as full scum, the scumteam already knows what's going on and the town would know what's going on as soon as it's relevant to them). And that from a design perspective it is actually useful.

[Umlaut]

If Traitor-Enabler ends up vetoed I'm going to be taking this whole setup back to the drawing board so I'm working from the assumption it's allowed until I hear otherwise.

Proposal: Replace one Townie with a Town Non-Consecutive Night Vigilante, take away Vig shot from the JoAT, give them an additional Cop shot or something instead?

If you dislike that as well I'd appreciate a specific counter-proposal.

[Datisi]

i mean, i don't have any problems with it, to the contrary i would like to see a game run with a traitor enabler

i'll sit down to figure out these new proposals in a bit

[Datisi]

1x mafia roleblocker
1x mafia traitor-enabler bodyguard
1x mafia informed traitor

1x town detective
1x town joat (follower, hider)
1x town combined doctor checker
1x town non-consecutive night vigilante
6x vt

this is what is being discussed currently, right?

my first thought is instead of adding a cop shot to the joat, to add a gunsmith shot. though i'd want to ask a second opinion first because it might be my lizard brain seeing a few false results for the gunsmith and trying to run with it.

under the assumption that you add a gunsmith shot to the joat, i would say that the above is somewhere in the scumsided-to-balanced range, but i definitely want to hear what mastina thinks first. agreed that a cop shot might be more... standard? but outright cops just don't feel great anymore.

[Umlaut]

In case of Gunsmith I'd want to know whether the death of a [Role]-Enabler disables the [Role]'s gun-having effects. Is there a past setup where e.g. a disabled Town Cop could have been gunsmithed?

[Datisi]

i went by the logic that a disabled traitor has a gun. because they get added to the main scumteam. and can kill.

i feel like i have seen a setup where the scenario in 17 could have happened and the result would've been that the role doesn't have a gun, or a traffic-analyst-equvalent... but i'm not sure where, and i might be making it up since i have not been sleeping a lot these past few days.

[implosion]

ugh... this is ambiguous. And there are a lot of possible cases here that should all have the same answer (should a disabled cop have a gun? should a disabled mafia doctor have a gun? what does a disabled cop show up to to a vaniilla cop? what about a neapolitan?)

I think the most consistent way to resolve all these is that these roles still all

are

the role in question, and being disabled doesn't change the name of the role, which is what roles like gunsmith and vanilla cop are tied to. So gunsmith should get no gun on the traitor for the whole game here, and consequently I think gunsmith is just a bad choice for this setup, perhaps.

[Datisi]

yeah, uh, even i agree gunsmith is a bad choice for this now, and that's saying something.

[Datisi]

a rolecop shot for the joat would be a kind-of-a-cop-shot-but-not-really, and neapolitan shot would be, well, a neapolitan shot. both are weaker than an actual cop, but both feel... not horrible here?

[mastina]

Oh no not the traitor enabler again...

Honestly didn't know this had been done before, here I thought I was clever

Years ago I was the og of the idea but the NRG members at the time shot it down in review; I disagreed with the call back then but over time I came to appreciate their viewpoint and adapted it as my own, but the NRG members have shifted towards accepting the role. (So basically I've been on the opposite side of the NRG for that role for every time it has been brought up.)

[mastina]

(Balance-wise I will chime in tomorrow for the assist tho)

[Umlaut]

While awaiting mastina's input I will say that out of Datisi's suggestions I would prefer the Rolecop shot (which is very nearly a cop because Roleblocker is an inherently a suspect role and the other two scum can get hard-guiltied). And if the setup could still use a nudge in the direction of more town power then I'm happy to throw in some low-utility role like Voyeur or Fruit Vendor or whatever.