The fundamental job of a
Normal Reviewer is to make sure that the game fits the requirements of a
Normal Game in roles, mechanics, results, and rules,
And that the game is, within an acceptable margin, balanced.
That's it. Literally everything else is going above and beyond the call of duty.
And, obviously, while the above defines what the job is, it doesn't demonstrate how it is done.
So let's go on to what I consider some of the most important things.
While this is not written anywhere in the
official
rules, a reviewer should be precisely that:
reviewing
what was already designed. The reviewer should not, barring the game being so out of the scope of a Normal Game, be telling a game moderator to scrap their entire idea and start over.
A Normal Reviewer should be working
with
the designer of the setup, not bullying the designer of the setup. This comes in the form of explaining what is an issue in the proposed game. However, ideally, this is done in a way where only minor shifts/adjustments are done. The NRG did receive a creed backstage (not sure if it was ever made public) that we are meant to make the minimal amount of changes possible, in order to speed up the review as much as possible.
So a reviewer
should
be
refining
what is already there, barring extreme circumstances. A reviewer SHOULD be looking to what they feel the game designer was aiming for with their setup, and to preserve as much as that core idea as is possible while still adhering to the standards laid out above, of being both Normal and, loosely, Balanced.
If a reviewer is tearing down the proposed idea rather than suggesting minor tweaks to the idea, then chances are they are overstepping their boundaries. (I'll admit that sometimes, a reviewer can see issues with a setup and not instantly know what would be the small tweaks needed to make it work. However, in those cases, it is important to be honest, and still respect the core idea, and try to troubleshoot to find the next step in refining.)
But there's another aspect to this. Related to that NRG creed,
Setups are still primarily designed by the setup designer.
While the NRG has the final say in
approving
the setup, it is the
game designer
(usually the game moderator, barring premade setups) who has the final say on
what the setup is
.
Their core idea should still be present.
They should still be happy at the time of the game's launch with the finalized setup. Yes, it's okay if in hindsight they're not perfectly happy with changes they in hindsight wish they had made prior to the game's start, but they should still be having a game that, at the point it got the pass, they were at the very least mostly okay with being run.
In reviews, I usually try to make it clear to the designer that it is okay for things to not be perfect and I explicitly ask them if they are okay with the setup that is final. (At least, I try to. Obviously, as I'm human, I sometimes forget, and I tend to be more lax around more experienced scummers so I might forget to ask someone who's modded 10 games this, just out of the assumption that they already know. But in theory, this is something that I feel should be done every review.)
A game reviewer should not feel they were bullied into having a finalized setup that they have immense dissatisfaction in being run.
As a game designer, you are
meant
to hold the majority of the power. The reviewers need to sign off on the final product, but the final product should still be
your
vision, or something reasonably close to what you are envisioning. Just as reviewers hold the power to say 'No' to a setup they feel fails to meet the requirements of being Normal and Balanced, the game designer holds the power to say "I am not satisfied with this setup", and to say that as many times as it takes until the final product, they
are
.
However, this is not something newer game designers are going to know.
A newer game designer is less likely to stick up for themselves, and more likely to accept that they need to just blindly accept the proposed changes of the reviewers.
While reviewers should be raising awareness of how the majority of the power lies in the hands of the setup designer, it is also important for reviewers to keep in mind that not every setup designer is going to
know
that they hold the majority of the power.
So it is my belief that a NRG member
should
be letting the game designers know of this at every stage. That a NRG member should aim to preserve the designer's core idea, let the designer know that they hold the power to run the idea they want to run, etc. We're far from perfect at doing this (even I, the one with this belief, have my failures in upholding this belief), but for the best experience all-around, we should still be striving to uphold this principle.
However, there is also a consequence to this;
A reviewer should still be willing to pass a setup that they are not perfectly satisfied with.
Perfection is the enemy of good.
To not have reviews take forever, the creed behind the scenes of the NRG is to get things "good enough", so the reviewer may pass a setup that they, personally, would never actually design themselves. Now, when doing so, they should still let the game designer know of this fact. "I personally would never design a game like this, but while I have concerns x y z, I feel it's passable enough, if you're okay with x y z".
If the game reviewer says they are in fact fine with the x y z that the reviewer brings up, then the reviewer should in fact pass the setup in spite of the flaws present.
To summarize, in the postgame, ideally:
The game designer should
not
say "I didn't like this setup", "I am not happy with this setup", "this wasn't what I envisioned", "I felt bullied", etc.;
The game reviewers should
not
say "I knew it wasn't great, but I didn't say anything about it";
Both the game designer and the game reviewer should be, in postgame, sharing basically their thoughts shown in the review. If a game designer wasn't happy during the review yet said nothing until postgame, that's an issue; if a game reviewer wasn't happy during the review yet said nothing until postgame, that's an issue.
It's okay for the final setup to have them not be perfectly happy and this to be expressed in the review as "not perfectly happy but it's good enough", and it's okay for the final setup to have issues brought up which the designer/reviewer bring up in hindsight (albeit not ideal, since obviously, ideally there's nothing seen only in hindsight). It's not okay for the final setup to have issues that one of the parties involved with the final setup felt, yet never expressed.
The Game Designer should design the game they want to see;
The Reviewer should accept Accountability for what they did, and didn't, do, during the review.
The review process is, effectively, a partnership between the reviewer and the designer, where both parties involved need the cooperation of the other. So both should be able to speak honestly about the game, both in the review process and after the game has ended, offering honest feedback at every stage. But the main power in the dynamic should lie with the game designer, because a core tenet of mafiascum games is that people should be running games that they
want
to run, which means that the final setup should be something the designer wants to run, not the reviewer.
