Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[implosion]

Detective makes sense as role investigation to me because it's not getting a result based on the action that the targeted player is performing that night. It's getting a result based on their role, specifically whether that role is a killing role, with the added clause that they've used their role at some point. It also makes sense to put it in the same category as psychologist, its complementary role, and psychologist pretty clearly isn't an action investigation - its positive result doesn't require the target to have ever taken any actions.

[RH9]

Wait, implo.
Why is Role Investigation seperate from Action Investigation for Normal games?

[MegAzumarill]

Detective makes sense as role investigation to me because it's not getting a result based on the action that the targeted player is performing that night. It's getting a result based on their role, specifically whether that role is a killing role, with the added clause that they've used their role at some point. It also makes sense to put it in the same category as psychologist, its complementary role, and psychologist pretty clearly isn't an action investigation - its positive result doesn't require the target to have ever taken any actions.

I mean it does check what they performed that night as well though? It's like getting a reporter result that only checks certain types of actions but also checks past nights as well. So it and psychologist are the only role investigative roles that check for actions before they resolve.

And the action sure *could be defined as such to make it about whether the target is A. A killing Role and B. has made a direct killing action. But it also could be defined as JUST B. Frankly I think the definition you provided feels arbitrary since it jumps through hoops to tie in role which just is not necessary. It is much more simple and intuitive to define it otherwise.

At the very

minimum

it would fit into both categories. I think in action resolution and in purpose the role fits much more in line with action investigation

[implosion]

Wait, implo.
Why is Role Investigation seperate from Action Investigation for Normal games?

I don't know. It dates back to at least 2015 when N created the normal game NAR wiki page. Presumably from a design perspective it gives followers and voyeurs more fine-grained results, but I doubt that's the actual reason - probably the actual reason is just that someone made a choice at some point and it stuck.

I don't really think the details of which role goes where are all that important, so long as (1) things that could be affected by other things happen after them in resolution order (e.g. detective resolves after vigilante) and (2) it's consistent and players know where to find the classifications.

Both detective and psychologist are both role investigative abilities and action investigative abilities. Neither of them makes perfect sense in either of those categories, but those are the categories that happen to exist right now. If there's like, wide consensus that something should be moved, then it can be moved, but I don't think there's a particular impetus to do so.

[RH9]

I see.

[TemporalLich]

Detective and Psychologist are an unusual case of action investigative - whether an action has ever been attempted matters for their results

Psychologist is also a role investigative, since a Psychologist looks for unused kill abilities.

I think having them as role investigatives is better as they don't need to resolve after other role investigatives but do need to resolve after killing abilities, and they're role investigatives in spirit (having a kill ability is necessary but not sufficient for them to get a positive result)

so yeah, there's no action resolution issue to having Detective and Psychologist be role investigatives, and they're role investigatives in spirit even if they are action investigatives in letter.

I will point out that Action Investigation does need to exist as a separate position on the NAR ladder for action resolution reasons - they need to resolve last because their action is affected by any action without the Ninja modifier.



I'm not sure the reasoning for Rolestopper being considered to be a blocking instead of a protective ability on the NAR ladder - A rolestopper protects a player from all abilities. There might be action resolution reasons for it but Rolestopper is a protective role to me.

Alien likewise feels like a Jailkeeper-type role, being a combination of a protective and a blocking ability that is treated as a single ability.

[MegAzumarill]

That does bring the question to whether a ninja ability would effect detective/psychologist

[TemporalLich]

That does bring the question to whether a ninja ability would effect detective/psychologist

I would assume a kill ability being from a Ninja (role) or Ninja Vigilante doesn't matter from the perspective of a Detective or Psychologist

However, the concept of Ninja potentially affecting Detective and Psychologist is brain melting.

[Frogsterking]

Hello everyone! For the first time in years, I'm updating the rules and guidelines for normal games. Feel free to discuss any of it in this thread.

Is it possible to elaborate any more on the tier list, like the process of making it and the rationale or statistics on some of the placements? Having played lots of strategy games, I think interest in tier lists is fairly widespread (there was a whole fad recently on Youtube where chess GMs would upload videos placing chess openings on a tier list) and I'm probably not the only person who read the update and was interested in reading more about the tier list.

[implosion]

I'm more than happy to discuss specific placements that are of interest. Some like cop should be self-explanatory. Others are a lot more nuanced. The "process" was that schadd_ suggested the idea, I liked the idea, and I made a tierlist offhand based on my personal opinions. I presented it to the NRG, schadd_ made some adjustments, and that's the list that we have. Statistics are, I think, fairly useless for something like this because the whole point of putting in a strong role is that the rest of the setup will be relatively weaker. If we were to look at statistics of what roles have what win rates, in theory we'd get something like a picture of how overrated/underrated certain roles are. For instance, if tracker had a 70% winrate, that wouldn't necessarily imply anything about its absolute strength - it would imply that people's perception of how strong tracker is is weaker than how strong it actually is.

Some like shield that was already mentioned have a lot of variance. A lot of investigatives are really dependent on what else is in the setup, like role cop or vanilla cop, and investigatives that are more universally useful are always good/always have a chance to just break open a game with a guilty, hence the near-complete lack of investigative roles in the middle tier. A *lot* of the middle tier is comprised of roles whose job is basically to confirm themselves as town and can do so either always, or with some consistency and some other utility like bodyguard and vengeful. That's kind of a good baseline for an average power role. This isn't like, something that I was super-consciously thinking about when putting roles in tiers, but it is a usefulguideline.

Those are some broad strokes, but if there's specific choices you're curious about, feel free to ask.

[mastina]

I'm not sure the reasoning for Rolestopper being considered to be a blocking instead of a protective ability on the NAR ladder - A rolestopper protects a player from all abilities. There might be action resolution reasons for it but Rolestopper is a protective role to me.

That'd go back to how rolestoppers used to be defined as roleblocking everyone who targeted their target, basically. Rolestoppers cause every action targeting the player they select to fail; roleblockers cause every action the targeted player takes to fail.

At least that was the justification at the time. (We had a whole debacle about whether players would be seen visiting a rolestopped target a couple years back, but rolestopper being a roleblock-type role predates us having made that interaction more clear. Prior to a couple years ago, rolestoppers could genuinely cause a player visiting their target to not be seen visiting by a tracker/follower. A la, roleblockers.)

[TemporalLich]

That'd go back to how rolestoppers used to be defined as roleblocking everyone who targeted their target, basically. Rolestoppers cause every action targeting the player they select to fail; roleblockers cause every action the targeted player takes to fail.

At least that was the justification at the time. (We had a whole debacle about whether players would be seen visiting a rolestopped target a couple years back, but rolestopper being a roleblock-type role predates us having made that interaction more clear. Prior to a couple years ago, rolestoppers could genuinely cause a player visiting their target to not be seen visiting by a tracker/follower. A la, roleblockers.)

There's no compelling reason a Rolestopper shouldn't be considered a protective role (and an Alien a Jailkeep type role) for the purposes of the NAR ladder then.

Protective roles are still manipulative roles in the big picture, since they affect how actions resolve.

If your manipulative role causes actions

performed

by a player to fail, it is a Blocking role. If your manipulative role causes actions

targeting

a player to fail, it is a Protective role. Jailkeep is Blocking and Protective combined into a single role.

Rolestoppers cause every (other) action targeting their target to fail, like how Doctors cause a single kill action targeting their target to fail (in case of a multi-kill, both kill actions succeed as it would be impossible to determine through any known deterministic action resolution system which kill action succeeded).

Doctor, Rolestopper, Bodyguard, and Willbooster (protects from one roleblock) are protective roles.
Roleblocker, Shield, and Bulwark (kill specific roleblocker) are blocking roles.
Jailkeeper, Alien, and Peacekeeper (kill specific jailkeeper) are jailkeep type roles.

[mastina]

If your manipulative role causes actions

performed

by a player to fail, it is a Blocking role.

Maybe I didn't word it right; I meant that a rolestopper traditionally

did

this.

It caused actions performed by a player targeting the rolestopper's target to fail.

This is different from a doctor in that a doctor causes one specific type of action to not succeed--a killing player still attempts the kill, but is foiled by the doctor.
A killing player attempting the kill on a rolestopper used to work more like as if they were roleblocked.

Not sure how to convey it better.

Granted, again, was an old standard that has since been shifted, so you're not gonna see me defend the current way, but is background for how it ended up the current way.

[TemporalLich]

Maybe I didn't word it right; I meant that a rolestopper traditionally

did

this.

It caused actions performed by a player targeting the rolestopper's target to fail.

That would be substantially different in the case of Multitasking roles. In the case of a Reflexive Roleblocker or a prototypical rolestopper, that would cause a Multitasking player targeting the reflexive roleblocker or rolestopped player and someone else to have

both

actions fail because they were

blocked

, instead of an Ascetic or a Normal Rolestopper causing only the action targeting the ascetic or rolestopped player to fail because it was

protected from

.

This is different from a doctor in that a doctor causes one specific type of action to not succeed--a killing player still attempts the kill, but is foiled by the doctor.
A killing player attempting the kill on a rolestopper used to work more like as if they were roleblocked.

Not sure how to convey it better.

Granted, again, was an old standard that has since been shifted, so you're not gonna see me defend the current way, but is background for how it ended up the current way.

In case the unusual interaction between prototypical Rolestopper and a Multitasking role wasn't a thing and I misunderstood the prototypical Rolestopper, currently the only difference in Normal design space is that roleblocked actions can't be seen by action investigators as they have been prevented and thus didn't even connect, while protected from actions still happened but still failed. Blocked actions have still been attempted, so you still lose shots and affect how Detectives see you either way.

I'm pretty sure the way action investigators "see" actions is an entire layer of complexity added for the sake of flavor, otherwise needing to determine if actions are prevented or not (rather than successful or not) isn't important.

I see Rolestopper as a protective role - it protects a target from all abilities, like how a Doctor protects from a single killing ability.

[TemporalLich]

Proposal in case we ever get Strongman as a modifier:

Unstoppable should be what the Strongman

modifier

is called. Juggernaut should be the official non-gendered alias for the Strongman

role

.

[Frogsterking]

Mild: these roles can have impact, but it's expected that in many games, their impact will be incidental, they require interactions with other roles to be useful, or they provide just a small amount of insight into the game. Reviewers will sometimes suggest adding one of them to tip the balance slightly, and you can usually add them to setups without them changing much.

Motion Detector, Shield, Role cop, Hider, Commuter, Vanilla Cop, Security Guard, Finder, Role Watcher, Voyeur, Inspector

Nil: these roles are typically not expected to help the town, unless there is some specific setup aspect that is designed to make them useful. They may still be powerful if given certain modifiers (for example, "loyal neighborizer" would probably be fit to place in the highest tier).

Neighborizer, Visionary, Fruit Vendor, Checker, Mailman, Neighbor, Encryptor, Miller, Visitor

How strong could a role cop, hider, checker or visionary with no modifiers become if you built a setup around them?

[implosion]

Role cop can be almost as powerful as a cop, for instance if you give the mafia 3 mafia-exclusive (or at least shady) roles and ideally town some that they can find. Still won't be as powerful because they can't clear vanilla players.

Unmodified hider is ultimately strictly weaker than a bulletproof, which itself is a very swingy role that depends on how townread the player who gets it is. It's hard to make it have much power without modifiers, and I can't think of much you could do to build around it.

Checker has the potential to be powerful but only if the setup is built *heavily* around it and it's given some way to know how powerful it is. For instance, you could make some of the mafia ascetic and make some player informed of that.

Visionary is hard to make particularly powerful; you'd want lots of scum with active roles that are hard to claim and town with active roles that are easy to claim, or something like that, but I'm not certain. Maybe someone else has a better idea, there could be some way.

[Frogsterking]

Role cop can be almost as powerful as a cop, for instance if you give the mafia 3 mafia-exclusive (or at least shady) roles and ideally town some that they can find. Still won't be as powerful because they can't clear vanilla players.

Unmodified hider is ultimately strictly weaker than a bulletproof, which itself is a very swingy role that depends on how townread the player who gets it is. It's hard to make it have much power without modifiers, and I can't think of much you could do to build around it.

Checker has the potential to be powerful but only if the setup is built *heavily* around it and it's given some way to know how powerful it is. For instance, you could make some of the mafia ascetic and make some player informed of that.

Visionary is hard to make particularly powerful; you'd want lots of scum with active roles that are hard to claim and town with active roles that are easy to claim, or something like that, but I'm not certain. Maybe someone else has a better idea, there could be some way.

Thank you! I was afraid I wasn't that clear.

I have a follow up question:

Mild: these roles can have impact, but it's expected that in many games, their impact will be incidental, they require interactions with other roles to be useful, or they provide just a small amount of insight into the game. Reviewers will sometimes suggest adding one of them to tip the balance slightly, and you can usually add them to setups without them changing much.

Motion Detector, Shield, Role cop, Hider, Commuter, Vanilla Cop, Security Guard, Finder, Role Watcher, Voyeur, Inspector

Nil: these roles are typically not expected to help the town, unless there is some specific setup aspect that is designed to make them useful. They may still be powerful if given certain modifiers (for example, "loyal neighborizer" would probably be fit to place in the highest tier).

Neighborizer, Visionary, Fruit Vendor, Checker, Mailman, Neighbor, Encryptor, Miller, Visitor

Based also on your earlier comments about the potential power of shield, I take it that the shield, motion detector and rolecop are placed toward the top of mild because that tier shift between mild and moderate indicates a turning point where roles start to have a more significant impact. Likewise, an unmodified Hider and below are roles that aren't really expected to be able to achieve a similar magnitude of impact that the moderate and sometimes the top of mild tier can achieve. Am I interpreting it correctly?

Also, what factors were taken into account which caused the visionary to be placed at the top of nill tier and above the checker?

[implosion]

Shield and motion detector both have the ability to impact the game significantly (by catching a scum); it's just that both of them require very precise circumstances for that to happen. Role cop is near the top because it's pretty typical for it to have

something

useful that it can find, be it a scummy-looking mafia role or some townie with a role that can't belong to mafia. And yeah, the things below role cop on the mild list are increasingly less and less likely to have that kind of material impact on the game, or require more and more of the setup to be designed around them in order for them to be useful.

I don't think there's a particularly cogent reason that visionary was put above checker in the nil list; probably just that visionary *can* "generate its own information" and checker is useful only in the context of setup that's built around it (or some modifier like loyal).

[Frogsterking]

Shield and motion detector both have the ability to impact the game significantly (by catching a scum); it's just that both of them require very precise circumstances for that to happen. Role cop is near the top because it's pretty typical for it to have something useful that it can find, be it a scummy-looking mafia role or some townie with a role that can't belong to mafia. And yeah, the things below role cop on the mild list are increasingly less and less likely to have that kind of material impact on the game, or require more and more of the setup to be designed around them in order for them to be useful.

That placement with this explanation really clicks with me.

don't think there's a particularly cogent reason that visionary was put above checker in the nil list;

probably just that visionary *can* "generate its own information"

and checker is useful only in the context of setup that's built around it (or some modifier like loyal).

LOL @ the bolded.

I was thinking a setup where PRs have the loud modifier might be good with a visionary.

__

Thank you for answering all my questions! The tier list is a cool idea and it's helped me a lot already with understanding night play. I don't have any more questions about it now but I'm sure one will pop into my head soonish.

[TemporalLich]

a normal proposal for an alias:

Investigator

to replace

Cop

(

Role Investigator

,

Vanilla Investigator

, and

PT Investigator

would exist as well)

idk a good Mafia-flavor term for the role that checks for town/not town in Normal games, but Investigator might be worth adding. It is the prototypal investigative role, and a core Mafia role that is allowed in Simple games.