PookyTheMagicalBear's Mini Normal Review, April 2022

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One Neighborhood of [4] Players

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Primary: mastina
Secondary: Ircher

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

sup friends

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

I was thinking about this setup and perhaps the TA is too powerful and I was thinking about nerfing it into a Odd Night Simple Disloyal Combined Follower Jailkeeper

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

I was thinking about this setup and perhaps the TA is too powerful and I was thinking about nerfing it into a Odd Night Simple Disloyal Combined Follower Jailkeeper Neighbor

added neighbor because I forgot first time

[mastina]

So the Simple roles have only four valid targets in the setup since Neighbors don't count as Vanilla. (I disagree with that interaction just as a sidenote but it's in the rules so even if I disagree with it, I need to enforce it.)

I do think the game is rather notably townsided in spite of that though.

There's two vigilantes--while one requires the vig to vig town and the chance of there being 2/3 kills in a night is lower than normal, that's still theoretically the potential for two conftown.
Friendly Neighbor adds a third potential conftown.
IC adds a fourth conftown potential.

Then you get the Traffic Analyst who knows to target outside the neighborhood, and while the TA can only get one guilty, the innocents are the issue. Swapping it to a Disloyal investigative gets rid of the problematic innocents, but makes it still able to get a guilty on all three scum.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

it is also simple so it can't get any guilties

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

You have a good point with the potential conftowns being too many

Perhaps the following changes would be sufficient to reduce their power?

Change Night Five Ascetic Miller IC to Night Six Ascetic Miller IC

Change Nonconsecutive Complex Friendly Friendly Neighbor to Night Three Disloyal Complex Friendly Neighbor.

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hello I just noticed this review fizzled out - there's another one that's passed review that I can put into signups, but this will be up next as soon as it's passed.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

ok!

[Ircher]

You have a good point with the potential conftowns being too many

Perhaps the following changes would be sufficient to reduce their power?

1) Change Night Five Ascetic Miller IC to Night Six Ascetic Miller IC

2) Change Nonconsecutive Complex Friendly Friendly Neighbor to Night Three Disloyal Complex Friendly Neighbor.

1) Most mini normals do not reach Day 5, so I don't think this makes much of a difference. I would just drop the IC aspect altogether as the role adds unneeded complexity to an already complex setup.
2) This is probably slightly more scumsided but the bulk of that comes from going to Night 3 from non-consecutive which typically means one less use.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

Perhaps I can change the Night Five Ascetic Miller IC to Ascetic Miller Even Day Town Crier?

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

I am happy to change it to Novice Nonconsecutive Complex Friendly Neighbor.

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Town Crier isn't normal.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

Ascetic Miller Even Day Mailman?

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Day roles also aren't a normal modifier.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

Ascetic Miller Even Night Mailman

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This is a valid normal role.

(That said, and this is true of the original role too - I'm not sure why it's a miller, given that Ascetic Miller Even Night Mailman and Ascetic Even Night Mailman are equivalent roles in essentially 100% of circumstances as far as I can tell, except for the role name the player is given or something like an informed role that's told there's a miller)

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

should i make the traitor jailkeeper bulletproof?

[mastina]

So what's the currently proposed setup, again?

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

[mastina]

Not gonna lie, with this many moving parts in the setup, locking down if it's balanced or not is a little difficult for me.

The town has the theoretical chance to have three conftown come D3, but lacking that, they basically have glorified Named Townies. The nature of Simple/Complex acts as a form of making every claimed action effectively a Vanilla Cop claim (succeed as simple = vanilla, succeed as complex = non-vanilla), and that gives the town some extra information in that they effectively have four vanilla cops, but the information from those isn't guaranteed to be useful.

The mafia roles here also make the town's job much harder. They also have effectively two vanilla cops, and while the doctor/voyeur is fairly useless since all it can do is stop town from killing town, the bp traitor jailkeeper can absorb the complex vig shot and cause simple/complex roles to get the opposite of their intended result.

I'd say that if the town roles get the triple-clear, then their information in tandem with the vanilla cops would make the game fairly townsided...
...But if the town gets 0 clears by D3, then the game would be

notably

scumsided.

The latter is more likely to happen than the former, but either happening would make the side disadvantaged by it feel terrible.

However, if neither extreme happens and it's closer to the middle, I would say the game is more in the 50-50 range, with a lot of focus on dayplay, and scum having some counterplay to the town roles but not being able to counter everything they want to do.

I think that if the town gets no clears, it's near 60% scum-town, but if the town gets 3 clears it's near 57.5% town-scum, and that if it's somewhere in the middle, it's probably closer to 50% for both.

I'd prefer a gutcheck from Ircher on this though.

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

exactly there is lots of room for dayplay and nightplay and it is unlikely that anything swings the setup into unplayability

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

I realized I forgot to nerf the TA;

[PookyTheMagicalBear]

I realize after running some numbers that the Simple Vigilante Neighbor Might be too good at catching Complex roles and I think it might reduce swing to make it Odd Night instead to reduce the number of potential vig shots that can fall on the town;