chilledtea's Mini Normal Review

[callforjudgement]

Just to clarify, the current state of the setup is this, right?:

Town: Ascetic, Tracker, 2-shot Bodyguard, 2-shot Vig, 3-shot Gunsmith, 5 VT = 10
Mafia: Goon, Vanilla Cop, Doctor = 3

I'll need some time to think about this before I can approve it (it's a fairly complex setup and not one that I can snap-approve).

Are there up-to-date versions of the rules and role PMs? I'll need to look at those too.

[callforjudgement]

I need more thought on the setup (it may well be that it's OK but I need to sleep on it, especially as it's almost 8am and I haven't gone to bed yet). However, I checked your rules and PMs to make sure that they're OK; that takes rather less thought.

I know what you mean in setup rule 6 but it's really awkwardly worded. You probably just want "A Mafia member performing the factional kill cannot perform another action at the same time."

The gunsmith results are reasonable as is. However, I'd prefer to word a blocked investigation (i.e. an investigation on the Ascetic) as "Your action failed.", to avoid potential confusion as to whether "No result" means an action failure or a negative result.

Roles in Normal games can't self-target, and that's unclear from your role PMs (in fact, your Gunsmith results kind-of imply you can). It's likely best to word the roles as "You can check one other person", "selecting one other player", etc.. (This mostly isn't a problem as few of the roles you've listed benefit from self-targeting, but the Mafia Doctor might want to.)

Apart from those, I see no normalcy problems (and all the problems are pretty minor). Sorry for not being able to sign off on the balance immediately.

[callforjudgement]

OK. First off, I'm going to balance this as though crosskills (Bodyguard saving the Vigilante target, Vigilante and Mafia targeting the same player) are impossible. This is because if either of these events happen, something has gone horribly wrong (and the faction responsible ends up at a disadvantage as a result).

The Vigilante is by far the most critical role to this setup. If they play well, they can kill the players who would be lynched on D2 and D3 (thus gaining town a mislynch), and confirm themself as town by claiming the kills (scum aren't going to want to 1v1 a vigilante for obvious reasons). If they die N1 (or worse, D1), though, or miss a kill, they're basically useless. There are five scenarios in which the vig can fail to fulfil their full potential (lynched D1, lynched D2, shot N1, hit Doctor protection N1, hit Doctor protection D2). Additionally, players have a tendency to misplay vig in practice, making it considerably weaker. As such, we can treat the vig in this setup as approximately as valuable as confirming themselves and one other player. (Note that the Mafia Doctor is a major counter to the vigilante, meaning that they can be punished for choosing correctly. That's kind-of awkward as things go.)

The Gunsmith is in a strange place in this setup, because a result is necessarily going to be somewhat inconclusive. A 3-shot Cop would be fairly powerful, for example, but the 3-shot Gunsmith is considerably weaker. It can get a useless result on the Ascetic or Vigilante (who will claim out of the guilty); it'll get a false negative on the Doctor; and the Vanilla Cop has a pretty easy counterclaim against a Gunsmith guilty. It's hard to know how players are going to handle the role, due to the large amount of modWIFOM involved. It's also likely to be able to use significantly fewer than its three shots; each full day cycle, there are four potential ways it can become useless (being lynched or forced to claim to avoid a lynch; being shot by the Mafia; being shot by the Vigilante; or being found by the Vanilla Cop leading Mafia to shoot it the next day). I'd expect it to average a little less than two investigations, and maybe get a total of one Cop investigation's worth of value out of them.

We'd therefore (according to my current standards for balancing, giving town approximately 3 investigations' worth of night value + one player who can confirm themself by claiming) want to get about one investigation's worth of value from the rest of the setup. We have an Ascetic, who doesn't really help in this regard; a Tracker; and a 2-shot Bodyguard. Neither the Tracker nor the Bodyguard are likely to ever usefully hit, but they'll get an investigation's worth of value if they do (especially if the Bodyguard is good at breadcrumbing). I'm not sure if this is enough; it may well be. (Sadly, the Bodyguard probably has to be limited to two shots in case of an early town claim. Otherwise I'd suggest increasing the count to help balance the setup.)

There are some confounding factors here. If the Mafia Doctor dies early, it makes both the Vigilante and Gunsmith somewhat more valuable, so town's in particularly good shape there. OTOH, there is a very high chance of town messing up the theory in a setup like this one, which rather counteracts that. I'd say it's somewhat swingy, although probably not so much so that it needs a swing warning.

In general, I don't think there's a change to the setup that obviously makes it better-balanced, so I'd be willing to let it run as it is. I'd be willing to consider minor changes, too, but I think those have already been argued out. As such:

/approve

I'll let N know that the setup is ready to run.

[callforjudgement]

If you do allow daytalk without an Encryptor, that has to be specified.
The opposite doesn't technically have to be specified (players who have the Normal guidelines memorized would know that there's no daytalk upon seeing no rule talking about it), but something like "Mafia do not have the ability to privately communicate during the day, except via means of a power role." wouldn't be out of place.

[callforjudgement]

If you're unsure as to whether a mod action would be acceptable or not, you can ask a listmod. Luckily Marquis is a listmod, so the situation sorted itself out pretty well.

I would not get upset with a mod for force-replacing over something like that (although I'd have tried to stem it in the bud with a warning earlier if I were online as it was starting).

Note that according to the site rules, this is your call, but I'd strongly encourage you to force-replace in this situation. 917 in particular is well over the line.

[callforjudgement]

1) The list moderators do checks for alt-related cheating now and again. (Regular moderators don't normally have enough information.)
2) No, they aren't.

[callforjudgement]

(Also, note that it's perfectly fine for players to replace into a game on an alt, just so long as none of their other accounts is involved in the game.)

[callforjudgement]

Did he ask for it? If not, I wouldn't give it in order to avoid trouble.
If he did, I'd feel a little wary of things going wrong but would probably allow it anyway.

[callforjudgement]

Well, those night actions are quite a mess! Assuming they don't change, it'll be interesting to see what, if anything, people claim tomorrow.

Town had amazingly accurate targeting; they tracked scum to a kill, gunsmithed scum, and vigged scum. Meanwhile, the scum managed to negate all three actions: they killed the tracker, doctored the vig shot, and have a Vanilla Cop role that can claim out of the Gunsmith result. (That said, I have a suspicion that Shadow_step may end up getting lynched anyway.)

Scum came off rather better from the exchange because town need the help from power roles much more than scum do, and so cancelling all the town power out is a huge step forwards for scum. (At this point, the vig's only benefit from shooting is to confirm themself as a vig and thus town; they won't get a benefit from the kill itself due to even/odd considerations.)

All that said, Thor's night action hasn't been submitted yet, has it? I'd laugh so much if he decides to use it and protects IAI.

[callforjudgement]

Makes sense.

[callforjudgement]

Wow the scum have been accurate with night actions this game.

[callforjudgement]

It's important that you don't let actions be missed as a result of an empty slot. The usual way to do this (but not the only way) is to go to night, then suspend the night deadline until you can find a replacement.
If you think there's a chance that the player will come back, you can try to give them some extra time, although make sure you have a backup plan for if they don't turn up.
I'd recommend putting out an advert for replacements in the replacements thread as soon as possible (unless you have some other way to get hold of replacements). You can always say "never mind, the player came back" if they do.

[callforjudgement]

Both factions have been amazingly good at night actions this game.

[callforjudgement]

FWIW, that night was a perfect demonstration of why Bodyguard is a more powerful role than Doctor.

Merely stopping the kill wouldn't have done mhsmith0 any good at all, but dying in the process took a likely mislynch out of the lynch pool without costing town any mislynches.

[callforjudgement]

(Caveat: Bodyguard isn't

always

better, it can depend on the details of the rest of the setup.)

[callforjudgement]

If there's an obvious strategy for scum that wins the game (typically "kill a random player") that can be determined via looking only at the first post, and there's no reason why they might do something else, you can call the game right there. The normal way to do things is to mark the remaining townies as "endgamed".

[callforjudgement]

Yes, but that doesn't factor into their decision-making anyway. In any cases where their kill actually

matters

, it's because something was capable of stopping it. So although you're spoiling information it's not information that anyone can usefully use.

[callforjudgement]

BTW if you're unsure about this you can wait for a third opinion rather than taking my word for things. Letting the night time out isn't going to make a difference in the long term.