Dierfire Mini Normal Review

[implosion]

First impression of setup is that it is normal and probably reasonably close to balanced, but probably very swingy in this state. Worst case, even with a d1 mislynch, it's possible with this much investigative power to effectively catch all three scum on n1.

The tracker is about as weak as tracker typically is as a role. The loyal cop can rely on its innocent results but not its no results, but a no result will still be seen as extremely suspicious and so with no other way to get a no result it is only nominally weaker than a cop. The role cop is probably medium in strength since it always gets a guilty on scum. Both the rolecop and tracker become much stronger when there is only one scum left, tracker because it always does and role cop because they will see two full strongmen and likely guess that the third is likely to be one as well.

From the mafia side they will see three strongmen and realize that there is likely no protective role, which gives them insight into the setup that could be useful for crafting fakeclaims.

I'll have more to say in a few hours though~

[implosion]

Alright.

So if you want to replace the tracker, there's plenty of options that work, although it's obviously somewhat constrained since giving town any blocking/protection is a very bad idea. Innocent child (either the immediate variation although that's kind of an amusing interaction with universal backup, or the reveal-at-any time variation) and friendly neighbor both aren't too strong given scum have impunity with killing. Watcher would be a bad idea imo since it would punish scum for killing claimed PRs when the setup is screaming at them to kill claimed PRs.

You could throw in a miller if you want another fun interaction with both the role cop and the loyal cop.

You could have a JOAT of some sort, with shots of tracker or follower or voyeur or other investigative abilities.

You also still have a greylist role to work with so the sky is really the limit!

Actually, now that I think about it, you should rephrase the loyal cop role PM either way - the way it's phrased right now implies there aren't any millers, which should give a guilty result even to a loyal cop if I'm not mistaken since they don't interact with the loyal modifier.

[implosion]

I think for rolecop-backup, the role cop gets the backup's new role, because they assume that role. Remember that in NAR, kills resolve before investigations, which is relevant here, so if a PR dies on and the UB assumes that role and the rolecop investigates the UB that night, they should get a result of the new role, not UB.

I could see an argument for the other way though.

The UB-neighborizer interaction can also be interpreted in a couple of ways, I think? The first way I interpreted it was actually that they'd become an entirely new neighborizer, which could also work. Not sure if either of those is actually canonical.

[implosion]

/pass. Seems good to me. With one hilariously pedantic caveat:

You might conceivably want to create the possible private topic for the backup-neighborizer at the same time as you create all of the other private topics, as otherwise it pseudo-confirms that the backup was in fact a backup and did not start as a neighborizer when recruited players see when the PT was created. Alternatively you could create each neighborhood PT upon the first successful neighborizing.

I think this is a good thing to do? The latter would require a slight modification of the neighborizer role PM and the UB result PM, and a note that the neighborizer target PM is also sent to the neighborizer itself after a successful targeting.

[implosion]

Actually, I didn't think of it, but it would also psuedo-confirm the backup as town. Normal universal backups only backup roles of players of their own alignment, so having backed up the neighborizer is tantamount to being confirmed town.

The issue I was thinking of is simply that it would role confirm the universal backup as a universal backup-turned-neighborizer, rather than, say, a mafia neighborizer. Which isn't necessarily bad.

[implosion]

although it is not strictly impossible for a Mafia Backup Neighborizer to exist with a Town Neighborizer

True.

And yeah, I guess there'll be some kind of telltale sign no matter what. It's possible to make it, at best, indistinguishable from a neighborizer who hadn't acted/had their action fail on night one (and any other night until the backup uses their ability).

[implosion]

looks good to me.