Changes to Normal Games (update September 2022)

[mastina]

I think standardised rulesets should be mandatory for new mods - if someone has successfully modded before and their ruleset has not been a problem, then let them keep it.

This would be something I'd endorse as well.

[davesaz]

Question: I'm thinking about diving into modding my first normal, and the idea of making a custom setup is appealing.
But so is the possibility of tweaking a premade one, or at least choosing from among several so that I'm at least somewhat involved in the setup.
Is that doable? What's the wait time if requesting a ready-made one? Is there a "catalog" of closed setups?

Or should I just take the plunge and let a reviewer go at it?

[mastina]

If you select a premade setup, the only input you get to choose is among the available premade game's sizes, or something to that effect.
E.g. if there's a premade 9p, 10p, 11p, 12p, 13p, and 13p game sizes, you get to choose which of those sizes.
You may or may not, if selecting the 13p, get to select which specific 13p; I'm not sure about that.

[implosion]

Question: I'm thinking about diving into modding my first normal, and the idea of making a custom setup is appealing.
But so is the possibility of tweaking a premade one, or at least choosing from among several so that I'm at least somewhat involved in the setup.
Is that doable? What's the wait time if requesting a ready-made one? Is there a "catalog" of closed setups?

Or should I just take the plunge and let a reviewer go at it?

Choosing from one among several might be possible in the future, but it has problems; if you see a bunch of setups, then suddenly you know all of them and can't play in any games that use any of them. In other words, we'd have to audit signups to pre-made setup games to ensure that no one tries to sign up for a setup they've seen before. Tweaking a pre-made setup is also potentially possible, but then we'd presumably need a formal review process like exists for mod-designed games already. While these might be possible in the future, I intend to keep the concept simple for now.

As mastina said, you can choose the size of setup you want from among those available. There should never be any wait time; there should always be some amount of backlog of designed setups available to take. There's no real catalog of closed setups, but you can peruse the completed normal game archive for inspiration if you like (though I don't recommend copying anything there wholesale).

That said, there haven't been a lot of normal game reviews in the past ~month, and so there shouldn't be much delay in getting reviewers if you'd like to design your own setup, and if you have some ideas that you'd prefer to build on, normal reviewers in general will be happy to provide suggestions. You should have a complete setup in mind when you enter the review, but it's fine if it's basically a complete first draft.

Any other questions, feel free to ask here or PM me.

[callforjudgement]

The

previous

"the Normal rules have changed" thread is still stickied. We probably don't need two threads about Normals changing, one of which is out of date, and I occasionally click on the wrong one by mistake.

[Umlaut]

Is [Ability]-Immune (e.g. Track-Immune) a normal modifier? If not, should it be?

[callforjudgement]

It isn't.

I see it more as an Open modifier than anything; it's so specific you can't really make good use of it without knowing the rest of the setup (nor can other players really interact with it meaningfully).

That said, I would have allowed it as greylist under the old rules, which implies it probably should be whitelisted under the new rules, just in case anyone happens to need it. I can see one potential naming problem, in that "Investigation-Immune" means something else (specifically, it's a Godfather equivalent, not an Ascetic for investigations). That might be fixable though.

[mastina]

Ability-Immune has some precedence, in the form of splitting the Ninja role in half: a semi-common role (especially in Antihero-modded games as he seems to be rather fond of the role) is a Watcher-Immune Goon, or rarely, a Tracker-Immune Goon. So that sort of role-specific immunity may have a place in Normals, as long as it is immunity to

a specific role

, rather than a role type altogether. (Kill-immune holds a different connotation from vig-immune, for instance; investigation-immune holds a different connotation from cop-immune; etc.)

[Umlaut]

This thread and the wiki are out of sync regarding Detectives in Normal games.

According to this thread:

Detective: target a player to investigate them and determine if they have attempted to kill someone, successful or not. Resolves after kills.

According to the wiki: "A negative result is returned from players that have never actively killed another player (including players who cannot kill, players who can kill but chose not to, and players who attempted to kill but have had all their attempts blocked or protected against)."

[Umlaut]

Having now put a game through the new normal review process:

It's

so much better.

My last two normal reviews before this felt like they were never going to end and I considered at points just withdrawing because I was tired of waiting. Didn't feel like that at all with this game. None of the too-many-cooks feeling of the three-reviewer process, none of the delays of two reviewers agreeing and the third disappearing for a week, and I felt like the game that came out the other end of it was essentially

my

game, as opposed to say my first review where I kind of ended up running a game designed by the review team.

So, whatever my thoughts on the changes to the meaning of Normal itself, I 100% approve of the changes to the review process.

[davesaz]

The text is out of sync but I think the meaning is the same.

[Umlaut]

According to the thread, a player who tried to kill but was blocked would give a positive result to the Detective ("they have attempted to kill someone, successful or not"); according to the wiki it would return a negative ("A negative result is returned from ... players who attempted to kill but have had all their attempts blocked or protected against").

[mastina]

Umlaut's correct; they aren't synonymous, as different words convey different meanings.

[Umlaut]

Actually, should there be a standard place to suggest roles and modifiers for whitelist?

In addition to the [Role]-Immune modifier I suggested before, I can easily think of several other roles and modifiers that I don't believe would be out of place in a Normal game in that they have been used before, don't require any non-normal mechanics, and can be reasonably accounted for in balancing a setup. I'm sure others can think of even more. Instead of keeping this thread going forever and mixing those suggestions in with general critiques of the new normal, it would be nice to have a place to post them and guarantee they'd at least be considered.

I can create a thread for this purpose but I'd prefer to see something with an official stamp of officialness. Also if I want to get a role whitelisted it may be because I want to use it in a game and don't necessarily want to tip my hand to that, so designating someone to accept whitelist suggestions via PM would be nice as well. (And I would be willing to volunteer for that job, as long as it's limited to pre-screening out obviously-not-normal suggestions and posting the rest somewhere for further review.)

[Umlaut]

Additional suggestion: have an explicit greylist for experimental purposes, where suggested roles that "could be normal" but that we're unsure how to balance or are otherwise undecided on whitelisting can be included with a restriction of one greylisted role per game,

a la

the old rules. After sufficient playtesting (say, after occurring in

n

completed games), greylisted roles can be reviewed and either promoted to the whitelist or removed. Encourage the NRG to include greylisted roles in NRG-designed setups so that they can be tested.

I think this might actually speed up the adoption of new roles, compared to the pre-change situation of lone mods coming up with their own roles and ideas spreading through word-of-mouth, since anyone who wants to try "something different" but doesn't have an idea can just pick some little-used greylist role. It will add some novelty to normal games since there will be an ever-changing list of new stuff that may appear. And it shouldn't complicate reviews since any given role is still either on the list or it isn't.

Since it's rude to suggest other people take on a bunch of extra work on one's behalf, I also volunteer to do the custodial work of curating such a greylist: reviewing suggestions for

prima facie

viability, adding them, writing standardized role descriptions, tracking their use to determine when they're up for review, and keeping the list up to date.

[Umlaut]

I think standardised rulesets should be mandatory for new mods - if someone has successfully modded before and their ruleset has not been a problem, then let them keep it.

This would in practice be a grandfather clause, since no new mods would ever have the opportunity to use their own ruleset and have it not be a problem. Unless you want to include theme game rulesets that have "not been a problem," but those would still have to be reviewed for normality. I don't really like the idea of creating a permanent old-guard class that gets to do things new people don't.

A longer-term way to allow variety without undue extra burden on the reviewer would be to allow itemized changes to a standard template ruleset, so that reviewers can see the changes at a glance instead of digging through the whole text (most of which is boilerplate "how Mafia works" stuff) and can give clear instructions like "1 is good, 2 should be struck, 3 should be worded in this different way."

[callforjudgement]

You could use a ruleset that had been nonproblematic in, e.g., a Micro or Theme.

[schadd_]

vengeful should investigate positive to gunsmith, yes? if so that should be on the gunsmith wiki page. question is raised as well for detective, alien (ray gun pew pew), traffic analyst (idk?), babysitter (i..... dont suppose they are shooting the baby but they can kill), informed (what if the word "gun" is in the information? :0 :O :0 )

also raises the question as to whether vengeful and babysitter give positive results to psychologist.

[mastina]

vengeful should investigate positive to gunsmith, yes? if so that should be on the gunsmith wiki page. question is raised as well for detective, alien (ray gun pew pew), traffic analyst (idk?), babysitter (i..... dont suppose they are shooting the baby but they can kill), informed (what if the word "gun" is in the information? :0 :O :0 )

also raises the question as to whether vengeful and babysitter give positive results to psychologist.

Vengeful and detective both should have guns definitely; babysitter, if I understand the role, should as well; alien would only have one if jailkeepers did but we decided a long time ago that jailkeepers don't, so aliens don't; informed definitely doesn't; no clue on traffic analyst.

[RadiantCowbells]

sometimes words have two meanings

[schadd_]

vengeful should investigate positive to gunsmith, yes? if so that should be on the gunsmith wiki page. question is raised as well for detective, alien (ray gun pew pew), traffic analyst (idk?), babysitter (i..... dont suppose they are shooting the baby but they can kill), informed (what if the word "gun" is in the information? :0 :O :0 )

also raises the question as to whether vengeful and babysitter give positive results to psychologist.

Vengeful and detective both should have guns definitely; babysitter, if I understand the role, should as well; alien would only have one if jailkeepers did but we decided a long time ago that jailkeepers don't, so aliens don't; informed definitely doesn't; no clue on traffic analyst.

i think alien is independent from jailkeeper, considering vanilla cop has a gun but neapolitan doesnt

[schadd_]

is the nrg gonna crank out some answers or should i make another poll

[Umlaut]

Question: I'm thinking about diving into modding my first normal, and the idea of making a custom setup is appealing.
But so is the possibility of tweaking a premade one, or at least choosing from among several so that I'm at least somewhat involved in the setup.

Have you considered looking in the archive of completed normal games for a setup that seems appealing, and tweaking or riffing on that? Many of them would no longer be normal under the new whitelist-only rules and so would need some tweaking to pass review anyway.

[mastina]

i think alien is independent from jailkeeper, considering vanilla cop has a gun but neapolitan doesnt

Uh, but Neapolitans should have guns?

If they don't, that feels like an oversight, because they are still meant to be the same type of role classification as a Vanilla Cop and a Rolecop (both of which have guns).

[mastina]

is the nrg gonna crank out some answers

We're conferring right now on the issue btw, so expect an official answer fairly soonish. (Don't know how much time implosion wants to give for feedback/opinions/discussion/etc.)